never been there

I'll confess to consulting the I Ching once in a while. I did once compare the results of tossing coins to the output of a random number generator to see if there was a discernable "subconscious" effect on the coins. The coins won for "relevance", but I suppose I really should have someone blind the results for me to make it a real experiment.

On the other hand, my mother always advocates at least tossing one coin to make a decision. If you don't like the way it lands, you've at least figured out what you really wanted to do.

Apart from that, I don't find anything convincing about "ghosts" or such-like. My spiritual feelings consist of a feeling of kinship with other living things, and awe when confronted with my place in the universe.

Bree

Hey lunachick, don't worry, you won't get flamed. I'm in a sort of similar situation, myself. I don't believe in God, either, but I've had some pretty weird things happen to me that I simply can't explain. Maybe science will catch up someday?

I also own two Tarot decks (the Rider-Waite and a beautiful Arthurian set) and I'm pretty good at reading those, too. However, I don't believe they can tell the future - I use them as a tool to get myself thinking in different patterns.

Doubting Tom

Thanks everyone for the great replies. I will no longer assume that an "atheist" doesn't believe in astrology, etc.

Really? Like what?

I'm trying (once again) to believe in religion (Why? Well, I suppose we can take that to another thread if there is interest.), but I've never had anything happen to me that couldn't be explained by mere coincidence. In my (former) atheism, I was always quite the materialist. I found the idea of a benevolent god attractive, so I was open to the proposition, and even sought out potentially convertive discussion regarding it, but I also found the idea to be totally unsupported by evidence. In my efforts (as an atheist) to explain why others believed in God, I always thought that if I saw just one unexplainable thing, one supernatural event (ghost sighting or whatever) I would be inclined to take further steps towards believing in a god of some sort. It seemed to me that once the natural-supernatural barrier were broken, any number of things on the other side that were previously unthinkable would suddenly become quite normal.

Now, I have to admit, with my now developing faith in God (developing in spite of a lack of evidence), there is the temptation to ascribe meaning to events which I attributed to natural causes or mere coincidence before. For example, I had someone who knew I was an atheist call me and ask me something personal that involved belief in God (I don't want to get too specific, here) a few days after I made the decision to try the whole religion thing again. Coincidence? Yes. And yet, as a believer (or as one trying to be a believer), I find myself more inclined to go "Hmmm." I was quite surprised by my internal "hmmm" as I was never one to give such things a second thought, coincidence and pattern recognition having always been quite an acceptable explanation. Seems that one's point of view skews one's interpretation of events.

I use religion as a tool to manage my life and my thinking. Is it real? Is God real? I don't know. As I mentioned, I've seen no evidence that it is...other than it's effectiveness as a tool to manage my life to live the way I want to live. Believing that it is real can be useful in one's life in the "here and now."

We are trained, for the most part, that atheism and theism are diametrically opposed. But the posts in this thread imply that while sometimes they are opposites, atheists and theists can differ only in a matter of degree, or quantitatively rather than qualitatively.

It seems that a non-materialist atheist can be quite close to a practical religionist, a difference in degree rather than form.

Doubting Tom

Wow, that post scared everyone away. Did I come off as some kind of religious wacko missionary or something? Perhaps the topic has merely run it's course. At the same time, I thought my statement about the closeness of practical religionists and non-material atheists was quite controversial...but perhaps I flatter myself too much to have expected any response. Gotta go work on that ego thing.

seebs

Once upon a time, my wife and I were really stuck on some relationship issues, and she brought out a deck of cards she scribbled all over once. Long ago, she just started writing stuff on the cards, practically like "automatic writing". She is convinced that some entity, friendly but not particularly divine, is associated with this specific deck of cards. I have to admit, it's *surreal* how well it seems to "answer" questions.

Anyway, we were trying to sort some things out, we needed advice, and we got the idea of taking a bunch of blank cards, and writing stuff on 'em, and using it for divination. I was careful (because, after all, I *do* believe in nasty things) to put a few words like "prayer" and "bless" in the stack, but mostly, we just wrote down whatever came to mind. Then we shuffled the cards together and started asking questions, and sure enough, got "unusually" relevant answers.

After a bit of thinking, I said I was thinking that, if an entity were involved, it seemed feminine. Jesse corrected me (she's better at this stuff than I am): "No, it's more than one. Hmm. Two male, one female."

Next card up: "Yes, I am the boss of you."

Well, we asked a lot of questions, and sought a lot of advice, and we got *good* advice. For the next couple of days (we were still having a rough time), any time I shuffled and drew cards, I got one of "guardian" or "call me any time". At one point, I asked the deck "is this what I think it is?", and got "Yes, I am the boss of you." I asked why, and got "I like you; you're funny."

A couple days later, our relationship issues were clearly beaten; I thought to myself "that's probably the point at which this goes back to being a deck of cards", and drew "these suns will not come again".

Could it be coincidence, confirmation bias, and all that? Perhaps. But I don't *believe* it was, and I have never been truly sad, since; I know God likes my jokes.

seebs

I think you're quite right; I'm an agnostic who has chosen to believe, and as such, I have a lot in common with some of the less dogmatic atheists.

I rather liked your post.

beyelzu

i am one of those strong atheists or metaphysical naturalist or almost an objectivist. i do not believe in anything supernatural. i also own a deck of tarot cards. a beautiful deck given to me by an agnostic/wiccan friend of mine. i like playing with the deck. but do not believe that it really means anything. its just random. high idealogue argued that science is grim in a post, maybe so.


sometimes at odd moments, i wonder if perhaps magic would be more fun. but no emperical evidence to suggest it is real.