# Please help me find contentment in being an agnostic



## Anubis (Nov 30, 2011)

I can't escape the genuine feeling I have that there is some sort of god(s), but I don't see any of the man-made religions as being true or rational. Because of this contrast, I am extremely discontent. I feel like I'm falling into existential depression because it's like I have a puzzle in my hands and I'm missing all the pieces that matter... I just have a bunch of shitty pieces that don't fit together. Sometimes I'll just feel like I'm in a cage and reality is like a blanket over the cage obscuring my view of the truth. 

If you all could just give me advice or something that'd be cool because I'm too afraid to talk to people in real life about any of this.


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## Dark Romantic (Dec 27, 2011)

Anubis said:


> I can't escape the genuine feeling I have that there is some sort of god(s), but I don't see any of the man-made religions as being true or rational. Because of this contrast, I am extremely discontent. I feel like I'm falling into existential depression because it's like I have a puzzle in my hands and I'm missing all the pieces that matter... I just have a bunch of shitty pieces that don't fit together. Sometimes I'll just feel like I'm in a cage and reality is like a blanket over the cage obscuring my view of the truth.
> 
> If you all could just give me advice or something that'd be cool because I'm too afraid to talk to people in real life about any of this.


I think you're misunderstanding your position a bit. The fact that you feel discontented at your lack of answers means that you now have a drive to seek the right answers for yourself. You can dedicate your life, or part of your life, to searching for these answers. You now can give yourself a purpose, a reason for existing and living, which is something a lot of people don't have.


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## unINFalliPle (Jul 8, 2012)

Even people who believe in a god feel lost.


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## Aqualung (Nov 21, 2009)

To the human mind, the concept of God is not rational. The limits of our reason & intellect cannot grasp the concept of God. In other words, we cannot think ourselves into understanding God. Even Steven Hawking can't. So on the surface, the concept of God is foreign to us. God is found only through faith. That is the obstacle. Or the open door. There's a line in the Bible: Proverbs 3:5 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding". Leaning on my own understanding was my blind spot. We're human, it's what we do. It's what we're taught. Faith is not exactly intuitive. At first it's like closing our eyes driving down the highway at 120. But, with faith comes understanding & all the things that seem so strange & confusing in the Bible come into focus. And start making sense. When that happens, the things of this world start making less sense and become less significant. In time a bigger picture is revealed & worldly things become petty. Now, my old life makes little sense to me. Faith itself is hard to explain or grasp until you have it so this might not make a lot of sense on the surface. But, looking for God in itself is an act of faith. So is prayer. Anyway, to anyone who reads this & is offended, I understand. I was on the same page for 22 years & Christianity seemed weird to me then. Peace to all of you.


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## Temur (Jun 14, 2012)

Sounds like you're deist


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## Staffan (Nov 15, 2011)

Hope a little Queen helps:

If there's a God or any kind of justice under the sky 
If there's a point, if there's a reason to live or die 
If there's an answer to the questions we feel bound to ask 
Show yourself - destroy our fears - release your mask 
Oh yes we'll keep on trying 
Hey tread that fine line 
Yeah we'll keep on smiling yeah 
And whatever will be - will be


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## nakkinaama (Jun 20, 2012)

Oh i love innuendo.


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## AphroditeGoneAwry (Jan 10, 2012)

God is love. What is the difficulty in that? What makes you discontent about that?


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## Mendi the ISFJ (Jul 28, 2011)

Anubis said:


> I can't escape the genuine feeling I have that there is some sort of god(s), but I don't see any of the man-made religions as being true or rational. Because of this contrast, I am extremely discontent. I feel like I'm falling into existential depression because it's like I have a puzzle in my hands and I'm missing all the pieces that matter... I just have a bunch of shitty pieces that don't fit together. Sometimes I'll just feel like I'm in a cage and reality is like a blanket over the cage obscuring my view of the truth.
> 
> If you all could just give me advice or something that'd be cool because I'm too afraid to talk to people in real life about any of this.


dictionary.com says that agnostic is "a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable" so to be agnostic does not mean that you dont believe in a god or creator, yet that you are aware that a god of some kind exists, yet you will never find out the secrets behind the universe. Maybe in knowing this you can find some kind of calm. 

I personally wouldnt consider myself agnostic since the above description states exactly what you were saying, that there is a feeling of assurance in a deity. I feel no assurance of anything, i see no trusted evidence in that the universe was created by any kind of great power. But i dont think that you should feel yearning or a sense of emptiness about your beliefs. My advice is to keep learning about different religions, then make a determination on whether or not they seem logical to you. There could be a religion out there that you havent explored that fits within your views. If not, just be the type of person you believe a deity would not destroy.


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## GROUNDED_ONE (May 23, 2012)

I found in seeking answers, that I find so much more than I ever imagined. Separately none of it makes any sense to me. But I am starting to find that by piecing together religions, philosophy, and other science. It is all starting to make a pretty pattern. But that is in my own mind. I would be hard pressed to lay that out for all to understand. I don't know if I could do it, maybe one day I will. But don't lose hope. You will know one day, just try to find your center of gravity again and regain your inner calm.


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## Avian (Aug 4, 2012)

You could become *A* Gnostic, someone who seeks direct experience with the divine. I don't know if you've heard of it but you might want to check some of these?;

The Gnosis Archive: Resources on Gnosticism and Gnostic Tradition
Gnosticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's not exactly a religion, though it appears to be on the surface, it's more of a principle of life/philosophy. I don't know if you'd be interested but you never know what might come out of it.


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## Dope Amine (Feb 16, 2012)

Learn all you can. Thousands of years worth of thought have been put into the nature of God (whatever the name may be) and the Human Experience. The holy books of world religions might be a good place to start? Or if you can't get with the idea of God, Atheist Buddhism is pretty cool.


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## Kore (Aug 10, 2012)

Ask yourself why you must have an answer to the question right _now_​. It is okay to say "I'm still gathering evidence. . ." it's what science does! :tongue:


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## Razare (Apr 21, 2009)

Anubis said:


> I can't escape the genuine feeling I have that there is some sort of god(s), but I don't see any of the man-made religions as being true or rational. Because of this contrast, I am extremely discontent. I feel like I'm falling into existential depression because it's like I have a puzzle in my hands and I'm missing all the pieces that matter... I just have a bunch of shitty pieces that don't fit together.


This is because your heart and soul want to figure out this puzzle, but your mind is unable to frame it logically. The problem essentially becomes that what you're searching for, does not exist within logical beliefs as we currently understand logic.

This happens because, the Scientific Method and other logical argumentative methods are held out as the ultimate arbitrators of truth.

The Scientific Method explains and works on what it can deal with, yet what the human mind can deal with exists beyond the current limits of the Scientific Method.

For example, a human mind could suppose that this world is utterly fake and the creation of an advanced computer program. Thus making the scientific method, perhaps only applicable to a limited and simulated reality. If the laws of creation outside the simulation differ from our laws, the notion of the Scientific Method may be absurd in a place that operates without rigid rules, thus making repeat testing silly.

It's not that I'm claiming this is the truth, it's that I'm saying that when humans fuss over "logic" and "well constructed argument", they're huffing over very narrow things that humans have developed.

What if there was an advanced race of aliens that didn't use the Scientific Method?

We presume it's the end-all of scientific development in this reality... but that's a presumption, a presumption created by a limited human perspective.

It's not that S.M. should be abandoned nor am I trying to diminish what the method is... it's that just because this method exists, and explains most things we experience, does not mean it is able to explain everything.

And so... when one goes on a journey for personal belief, they have to make a decision whether to limit their understanding, and if so, limit their understanding based on what criteria... such as ideas like the Scientific Method, but perhaps others... some choose to limit their understanding based on religion.

Or one can choose to avoid limiting their understanding as much as possible... but doing this is difficult as well, because it requires considering points of view you disagree with... it requires supposing things are true, things which you don't actually believe... it requires avenues be explored and entertained despite their absolute absurdity... it requires the ability to bridge understanding from one perspective into another, so that many different perspectives blur into one. This is my preferred viewpoint, which is to say my viewpoint remains somewhat nimble, but within its nimbleness there are certain core beliefs learned through life-experience that I stick to.

Life experience being the criteria by which I limit my beliefs, and constrain possibilities.

God surely exist, this is fact... but the trick is how do you define him?

Those who try to believe someone else's rigid definition may have trouble believing. This is because they haven't come to terms with God personally.



> Sometimes I'll just feel like I'm in a cage and reality is like a blanket over the cage obscuring my view of the truth.


You are. Your heart & soul feels caged by the rigid limitations of your self-imposed perspective. Logic is easily gotten around if one entertains everything they see is an illusion... is the logic of a dream, really logic that should be strictly adhered to? Some might say so in that dream, but if your inner-self knows its a dream, clinging to the dream with the conscious mind doesn't necessarily change the inner-reality you feel and experience.


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## AphroditeGoneAwry (Jan 10, 2012)

Just embrace God and his love for you and you will feel blissful.


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## yakeye (May 24, 2012)

People have an amazing diversity of belief about what is real. This would drive me nuts if I couldn't explain it.

I'm amazed other people don't seem to need to explain why people believe so differently. Does anybody else feel a need to explain that?


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## Up and Away (Mar 5, 2011)

What is love pointing you to?

it is hard to remember what love feels like when we don't feel it, in fact, we usually deal with some sort of defense mechanism when even thinking of it unless we feel it.

Where is it nudging us to


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## caramel_choctop (Sep 20, 2010)

I think what you're going through is called a 'crisis of faith'. It doesn't mean someone had to be religious to start with, it just means they begin questioning and analysing all their former ideas of religion. They may decide that their initial beliefs were valid, they may modify them, or they might embrace a whole new belief system.
Something similar happened to me last year, and I kept puzzling over and over it, thinking in circles and trying to find a logical answer. Then I realised that, well, the world isn't really logical. And, if you'll permit me to be blunt, religion isn't logical either (but that's okay, because neither are human beings). Any religion is a fundamentally contradictory patchwork full of holes, but scientific theory is hardly flawless. There remain many questions for scientists as well. No one will ever know all the answers, and unless someone comes along and gives them to us on a platter, we'll have to keep guessing.


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## MmmmKoolAid (Aug 31, 2012)

Embrace it. It's difficult, we humans need ideas and superstitions to latch on to because we are rationalizers. we try to explain everything away. but sometimes its just ignorant and arrogant of us to do this. sometimes we have to admit we dont know, and cant know. this is the biggest example of that. live your life for yourself. enjoy it for yourself. and most of all, try not to think about it too much!


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## Paradox1987 (Oct 9, 2010)

Let doubt light up your life. God does exist, as an abstract idea. Which is mapped by philosophy. In terms of physical deity? I doubt it. Really, I find igtheism to be a great theosophical school. But in practical terms, why have a black and white world, when you can have doubt which paints the world in such deep and diverse hues?


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