Is anyone else an atheist with BC besides me?
Comments
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I'm already a bit less orderly.
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I really appreciate that you’ve allowed me to express some of my thoughts here regarding religion and spirituality. I don’t wish to dilute the true theme of this topic which is for atheists to find support amongst each other, so I started a separate thread for those of us who have spiritual beliefs outside of traditional religions. If the subject interest you, here is the link:
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Spirituality Outside Of Organized Religionhttps://community.breastcancer.org/forum/7/topics/869412?page=1#post_5342378
Once again, thank you for allowing me to temporarily disrupt the topic with my ramblings. I’ll move over to the other thread.
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I actually take great comfort in the idea that we return to stardust. Or dirt. I’m not picky. Growing up in the Epicopal Church, I always loved the Ash Wednesday service for the reminder that we are dust and will return to dust. I still love it on a metaphorical level.
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Divine: I found your shares to be enlightening and productive to this group convo. Please don’t stop sharing! I think (and may be wrong here) that there are many folks on this thread (including myself) who consider themselves spiritual but not religious.
I think that being an atheist can be separate from being spiritual.
My family is Jewish culturally yet none of my brothers or sisters and I ever had a bar/bat mitzvah. We do gather for a great meal on the big name holidays but it is more to discuss how we desire world peace and for there to be freedom from suffering and violence. However, none of us consider ourselves religious and in fact, are really turned off by religion.
I enjoy being able to post and share and read in a forum where Jesus or any other “god” or guru is held in the minds eye with lack of curiousity or respect for others viewpoints.
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DivineMrsM, It's wonderful that you have started a thread for those who are spiritual. I hope you won't leave this thread and will continue to post. Although many of us here don't believe in an eternal soul or god (spirit), I think that perhaps all of us have at one time or another experienced what Asians call Yugen. "Yūgen is said to mean "a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe ... and the sad beauty of human suffering".
Perhaps some here who have practiced meditation have experienced the meditative state of jhana. "There is the case where — quite withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful qualities — enters and remains in the first jhana: rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thought and evaluation. He permeates and pervades, suffuses and fills this very body with the rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal.
Both these experience or perhaps they are the same experience, could meet a definition of spiritual as experience by the mind rather than a soul.
I hope that s solidly secular person like myself can visit your new thread upon occasion.
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My past experience (manipulation) with religion (fundamentalist Christianity) has left me with wounds that make me shy away from anything religious. I want to be open and accepting to Christians but what i hear is manipulation. My husband reminded me this morning of a saying he grew up with and i learned in church " better to be hated than to love someone into hell" something like that. Anyway I have wounds to heal and just glad for a community of others not pushing an agenda and also know what it is like to experience the devastating dx of BC.
I love nature and feel alive and healing just from being outside, when it is not minus 30 degrees lol. I am learning a lot here and enjoy reading the posts. I am also reading some of the books suggested here and will keeping doing that as i love to read.
This weekend i am having a baby shower for my daughter in law, i am going to be a grandmother in 2 months
. A real mix of people coming, should be interesting. I am waiting to here from my doctor, i have to go for uterine biopsy, thickened endometrium and i am not on any anti-estrogen therapy. 0 -
Welcome Nan, your words touched me deeply especially because I didn't sense bitterness and that is special. Congrats on becoming a grandmother. I feel the same about being able to get outside and drink in the life that's all around us. I'm in coastal Texas and right now the wind is beating down my milkweed for the monarchs and the temp is falling steadily. Nothing compared to Canada, I assume. Your DX is a real mix. Is that why your not taking Estrogen suppressors or is it by choice?
As far as the real mix of people, you have the opportunity to celebrate that new life that is coming and have the best reason in the world to guide the conversations toward that new baby.
Hoping the best for you on the test. Keep us posted. I'm waiting too. Hugs from Texas. J
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I think you don't have to be spiritual to be non religious, so I don't feel this thread is just for the spiritual. You can be but not necessarily. I think that's what you saying anyway ananda8.
I classify myself as an atheist and have absolutely no spiritual feelings at all. I feel I am more a scientist and am in awe of this wonderful world and the animals and people in it. I have no desire to be saved or converted. On praying, my opinion is when people pray its for themselves and they believe it will help their honest wishes of well being to work. So if they want to do so then fine do it by yourself or like minded people, not with me. I don't want any part of my celebration of life to be religious and definitely no praying at my last party!
Sarah
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All the spiritual I need is digging in the garden and looking at the sky. I don't have the question "Why?" because I don't need an answer.
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Scwilly, I think this 2,000 year old poem might be something you agree with.
Mere suffering is, not any sufferer is
found --- The deed exist, but no performer of the deeds --- Nibbana is, but not the one who enters it, --- The path is, but no wanderer is to be seen. --- No doer of the deed is found. --- No one who ever reaps their fruits --- Empty phenomena roll on, --- This view alone is right and true.And so, while kamma and result --- Thus causally maintain their round, --- As seed and tree succeed in turn, --- No first beginning can be shown. --- No god, no Brahma, may be called --- The maker of this wheel of life ---Empty phenomena roll on --- Dependent on conditions all.
-Visuddhimagga XIX
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DearLife - about MAiD (medical assistance in dying) in BC, it actually turns out to be remarkably well run and pretty easily avail. I know someone (online acquaintance whom I've known in a totally different online community for many years) who got dx stage IV de novo dx last March or April, and she's now gone. She had a public blog which is still avail. Her oncologist and gp (in Lower Mainland) were not very helpful but the MAiD team came to her house and made all the arrangements. I was actually surprised at how fast it all went. I know she wanted her words and experience to possibly help others so here's her blog https://shihtzustaff.wordpress.com/
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Thanks Moth. I am so sorry that you lost your friend. I looked at her blog and will read more. She is a good writer and it is sad but enlightening to read a first person account in such detail.
I wanted to use “is" a good writer because her words live on.
It is comforting to know that there is a way to exit with support and kindness. The problems I have heard about are with getting approvals and your friend met with resistance from her doctors. But she was brave and determined to live and end life on her own terms.
❤️
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hi Moth thank you for sharing! I am sorry for your loss too. At same time so impressed with a persons ability/mental strength to do what she did!
I am curious as to how/what people on this thread think about when people talk about “the power of prayer” and the supposedly documented research on how prayer has brought people back into health and such? Do you think that it could be better explained by focusing energetic forces towards one person and therefore bringing more energy to that person?
I guess that if I get really sick (right now yes I have stage 4 MBC but feel pretty darn good!) that I don’t mind if people want to use their mental energies to wishing me into better health or an easier experience of sickness. I guess I’m more of a let’s throw everything we’ve got at this and see what works when nothing seems to be working.
For example, I watched an episode of Dr Pol (AMAZING veterinarian!!) and there was a sick alpaca. The vet couldn’t figure out what was wrong so basically gave the alpaca all the medicines and fortunately something worked!! Not that anyone prayed for the alpaca - but more of the kitchen sink approach. Who knows which one worked but at least it worked
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I love to see opposing sports players praying. If they lose does God love the other team more.😁
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Hahahah SoCal!!! I love that too!!!
I always am like Oyyyyyyy when sports players do the cross over their bodies and when interviewed say things like “first and foremost I would like to thank god.”
God is not involved!!!! It makes me bananas
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Also, it makes me laugh at the shallowness... like God would work on a football game ahead of pestilence, war, famine...
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Just because person 1 prays for a cure for person 2 and person 2 gets cured does not prove that prayer was the cause. Causality is oh so hard to determine. I'm looking for a more causal link than random or low order correlation. I expect there are more than a few statistically sophisticated participants here who can address using prayer in a controlled experiment. Ethics aside, I for one would never volunteer to be in the prayer group to cure my cancer.
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I don't believe in miracles or the power of prayer. If it was that powerful, it would work all the time. If a person believes that prayer helps, it must make them feel better that something is being done.
My DS is a 'minister' in the 'Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster' which was made up by someone angered that his children were forced to pray in school. He has a chart showing that the lack of pirates causes global warming - because as pirates declined, warming increased.
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Thanks for the blog link, Moth. I've pulled it up so I can read through it later.
I went to a Rationalists of East Tennessee meeting today and we watched a documentary called "Losing Our Religion," about clergy who have discovered they can no longer believe in a god. It's really well done and also highlights a secular "church" around the country called "Sunday Assembly" that serves the social function of church without a deity. The next one here is on Joy and I plan to attend. I'd love a group that focuses on living now rather than banking on a mythical afterlife.
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There was a study about prayer for cardiac patients. "Prayers offered by strangers did not reduce the medical complications of major heart surgery. Not only that, but patients who knew that others were praying for them fared worse than those who did not receive such spiritual support, or who did but were not aware of receiving it." https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2006/04/pra...
I have a lot of religious friends and I know they keep me in their prayers. I love my friends and I appreciate their support. I don't think it's doing me any harm. (that study speculated that maybe people felt anxiety and pressure to get better? I feel loved by my friends so I have good thoughts about them doing this even if I don't believe what they believe)
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People tell me all the time lately that they are praying for me, and I thank them. I code that as them letting me know they are wishing me healing and I sure don't have a quarrel with that. The only time I DON'T want someone praying for me is when they are praying that I will find god and turn from my heathen ways. :-)
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I'm not at all spiritual. I think it detracts from the wonders of reality. And to some extent, I think it's just another form of religion and it is just as unwanted in my life.
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Alice, it may well depend on what you mean (or I mean) by "spiritual." From my perspective there are religious forms of spirituality and secular forms which are just about connection to others, awe for the natural world, and values (which is what I mean when I use that word). But I do understand that many people aren't comfortable with the word in any context.
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I just found this interesting article! Thank you everyone for continuing to give me great food for thought!
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When talking about thermodynamics one must refer to the laws as describing a closed system. In this article the example of a deck of cards is given to explain with the addition of energy (shuffling) order can be destroyed but with enough shuffling order can be restored. The second example is that of a eight year old's room. Disorder increases until energy is added to the system in the form of mom's voice shouting, "clean your room" and order is restored. It is my understanding that at the present time, we cannot tell if the universe is a closed or open system. Heck, we don't even understand what gravity is. Perhaps gravity is god since the universe wouldn't exist without it.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12052-009-0195-3
I enjoy thinking but sometimes it makes my head hurt. 😉
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Wanderweg, what I mean is exactly what I said. I've seen a lot of people use forms of the word "spiritual" to pretty much soften or apologize for their lack of religion. "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual." Or they say they're atheist or nontheist, but still always seem to be looking for a substitute to fill the religion gap, like wanting a belief system without an embarrassing ol' god involved. I'm not looking. I love reality. I love nature and the universe, but I do not have a single iota of spirituality in those feelings. I guess to me, spirituality means something other than or beyond reality.
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I have hope....for SCIENCE
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Alice: I was looking for a safe place to discuss my beliefs and thoughts. I feel that if you disagree, I should not be here. Your beliefs are very specific. I do not even understand all these "specialties". I know I am not Christian, but I am afraid to sound stupid. I am afraid to be judged. It feels like I am back in church. Sorry.
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TB90,
Alice is describing her opinions. That doesn't mean she wishes to restrict anyone else's. I once misinterpreted her when she objected to one of my posts. I thought I had offended her and apologized, but now I realize she was just expressing herself just as we all have the opportunity to do.
Alice,
You said," Or they say they're atheist or nontheist, but still always seem to be looking for a substitute to fill the religion gap, like wanting a belief system without an embarrassing ol' god involved. " I think people can look for something that gives expression to something that they have been thinking. Sometimes they label those expressions as spiritual. Perhaps they label those thoughts as philosophy. It is no different than enjoying and being moved by a movie or a book. It is still human beings talking to human beings, a discourse if you will. 🙂
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Here are non religious definitions of spiritual along with example sentences from the Oxford Dictionary:
1.1 Having a relationship based on a profound level of mental or emotional communion.
1.2 (of a person) not concerned with material values or pursuits.‘he never forgot his spiritual father’‘Alex had been my closest friend, my climbing partner, my spiritual brother.’
‘Some dive for spiritual communion with their inner self.’
‘I have a spiritual relationship with Mullah Omar.’
‘He never got it finished and it was his friend and spiritual son, Edouard Dermi who finished his work.’
‘Scientists are really some of the most spiritual people.’
‘It is full of thought, and she was an intellectual and spiritual person.’
'Deep down he was a very spiritual person, kind, charitable, and a good neighbour to all.’
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