Agnostic. I would say atheist but that is only really towards certain conceptions of gods inside popular religions. I consider myself generally open to some arguments for something supernatural and do not think many of the atheistic approaches to theism meet a good standard to label theism false. — Chany

This quite unfairly implies that those who self-identify as atheists are not open to arguments. One can be an atheist (in the common sense of not believing in any deities or the supernatural) with an open mind, and most atheists probably think of themselves that way.

Unlike many atheists here, I was raised secular. Religion wasn't much discussed inside or outside the home. My father, as I later realized, while being of a skeptical disposition, leaned towards deism, and on his deathbed he became convinced of an afterlife of some sort. My mother was leaning more towards mystical spirituality, but she was too complicated a person to settle on any definite religious belief.

I myself gave little thought to god and religion until later in life, but for as long as I remember myself I had, as they say, no religious bone in me. Emotionally, subconsciously, a religious belief or practice just never seemed like a live option. When I did turn my intellect toward these matters, I became increasingly confirmed in my atheism. Though of course I like to think of myself as being open to persuasion, I have not seen any argument that would move me away from this position.

This is a critical insight. Ingenuously* is the way they were intended to be read. The narrative of scripture is compelling. — Bitter Crank

I read Jewish and Christian scriptures for the first time in full at a fairly mature age. While I did not expect a religious conversion, I was actually surprised to find my attitude dimming towards these scriptures, especially the Christian ones. A rather unattractive image of Jesus as a cult leader gradually took shape as I was reading the New Testament: moody, alternately ingratiating and imperious, soppy and short-tempered.

I'm a Bug Buddhist. Seriously. I'm taking my recycling to work to dispose of it because some ants started a civilization in the bottom of the recycling bin I'm suppose to take out to the side of the road every week. I keep thinking I should be a normal person and dump the ants out, but I know I can't.

I'm painting a front room and I carefully relocate a little spider who had set up shop in the corner. I consider last year when I allowed two different mother spiders to raise their tiny young in the comfort and seclusion of the back room. I groan.

The problem is that insects and spiders, especially little ones, are just so fucking amazing. All that complicated stuff packed inside a little device that can spin webs, make little underground caverns, and yes, fly. Some of them can fly.

Dangerous ones... not so much, but yes: last year I felt something on my face and I casually brushed it. It fell onto my t-shirt. It was black. With a little red spot. Shit.

I did take it out back and earnestly telepath to it that I was sorry. I crushed her.

I'm still sorry. I need a priest.

It would be wholly naive to believe that there is nothing wrong with this world and if you cared for Nature, the 'we', you would be wholly righteous, disgusted at injustice and at all things morally deplorable. This is where I have some trouble with the Stoics. — TimeLine

I don't think the Stoics believed there's nothing wrong with the world, or that the world is perfect, as that would require them to take the position that we can't improve ourselves. The Roman Stoics in particular were concerned with how we can do so. In fact, ethics and how to achieve happiness was their primary if not their only concern.

Spinoza, I believe, felt that the problem of evil is one that troubles us because we're finite beings. Not a satisfying point of view, but one which is understandable when the evil in consideration is, for example, the result of natural disasters (provided we don't assume ourselves to be God's favorites in all the universe). The Stoics certainly thought that certain conduct was wrong, and those professing to be Stoic have refused to do what they thought was wrong even when the result was their deaths at the hands of some of the more disagreeable Roman emperors. But I don't think they would think it desirable to be disgusted or outraged at the injustice of the world or deplorable conduct, because I think they would believe being disgusted and outraged wouldn't serve to prevent the wrong but would serve to unduly disturb and distract those opposing it.

A Black Widow; I just recently found out that the Redback Spider, the second most venomous spider in Australia, which is not really at all aggressive (or even life-threateningly venomous, except perhaps for children and the elderly) is a member of the Black Widow family. I have encountered countless Redbacks while working as a landscape gardener, and I never deliberately kill them, and always feel remorse when I accidentally do.

Sounds like you have bug buddhist tendencies as well. Black widows aren't aggressive. But that one was in my house. Too close.

Yes, I hate to kill anything unnecessarily and I refuse to disturb the numerous Golden Orb Spider, and other, webs around my house. Even the relatively innocuous (compared to Funnel Webs) Redbacks in the house would be a bit of a worry, but I have very rarely encountered them there, instead usually outside under rocks and sheets of corrugated iron and the like. How about your Black Widows; are they commonly house dwellers?

Insects outside the house - okay. Inside my house? I'm sorry, but you're fucking dead. I don't stick my hands in your beehive, so you stay out of my cheerios! ;)

Usually not. They're under things as well. They start behaving a little oddly in the autumn though.

I heard recently that the idea that the female Black Widows devour their mates after copulation is a myth; that they only do that when stressed; i.e in captivity. I have never heard that female Redbacks devour their mates, in captivity or otherwise; or behave funny in the autumn. Maybe they're more laid back than their American cousins? They don't have Trump to deal with I guess.

They're not hostile at all. I actually had one on me and it didn't offer to bite. When I think of it, I've been around them all my life and never been bitten.

Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually. — Issa, translated by Robert Haas

34% religious on a philosophy forum! :-O

Being religious and being philosophical have two different senses: unlike the philosophical the religious ultimately allow reference ad-hoc beyond human comprehension: e.g. "god did it!", which is philosophically unsatisfying.

I don't think the Stoics believed there's nothing wrong with the world, or that the world is perfect, as that would require them to take the position that we can't improve ourselves. — Ciceronianus the White

Generally speaking, the overall assumption that happiness somehow involves less in judging evils than it does in immersing oneself in the appreciation of Beauty, whereby one can reach a higher state by being non-judgemental to me is fallacious and fails in the 'We'. We can always improve ourselves, that should be a principle that never escapes us, but attaining happiness is not about ignorance of reality but rather righteousness. That if one authentically chooses to become one with Nature, the suffering of others is as much a wound to them as a deep cut on the arm would be and it is nonsensical to assume that ignoring the wound would suddenly make it go away rather than fester into something worse, even fatal. When one transcends to this consciousness of 'we', justice becomes a responsibility, whereby happiness is formed within moral consciousness. Morality becomes Beauty. The cycle between ourselves and the external world becomes the same, which is consistent improvement.

How is 'finite being' relational to the quality of the enduring 'we'? The children that I love and support will go on loving and supporting their children; the happiness of others is as much a part of me as my happiness may be to them. There is no finite. Correct conduct naturally evolves when one learns how to give love and where the happiness of others is instrumental to our own happiness, reaching a balance between fighting injustice whilst appreciating nature, love, consciousness. One falls in love with justice.

There is a deceptive ego, one hidden behind many systems of thought that purport reaching a higher plane of existence, of reaching a state of happiness can be achieved through what is merely the justification of ignorance, an image of kindness and morality but with no consciousness; people are becoming vegetarian or vegan but are only doing so because of the image not because they actually have a conscience for instance, thus a lack of consciousness in their behavioural decision-making. Fighting injustice, the products of your tireless endeavours and love for others is the expression of this authenticity. The fruits of ones labour, the good works that one does.

"god did it!" ... is philosophically unsatisfying. — jkop

Says who?

I'm quite philosophically satisfied with that statement.

unlike the philosophical the religious ultimately allow reference ad-hoc beyond human comprehension: e.g. "god did it!", which is philosophically unsatisfying. — jkop

No; religion allows for reference to things beyond human comprehension not ad-hoc, but because there are things beyond human comprehension. The religious or mystical faculty is what comprehends this aspect of reality; the reasoning aspect (what you erroneously refer to here as the "philosophical") cannot do so.

The religious or mystical faculty is what comprehends this aspect of reality — Noble Dust

What's ad-hoc and non-philosophical is the arbitrary assumption of a faculty for comprehending things beyond comprehension.

What's ad-hoc and non-philosophical is the arbitrary assumption of a faculty for comprehending things beyond comprehension. — jkop

What if it's not necessarily an "arbitrary assumption" at all, but a lived experience; and one that you cannot understand simply because you have never lived it?

What if it's not necessarily an "arbitrary assumption" at all, but a lived experience; and one that you cannot understand simply because you have never lived it? — John

To have or live the experience is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding it. Moreover, it is relatively easy to evoke the experience of the presence of something covert or incomprehensible, for example by will power, empathy, drugs, or indoctrination/psychological suggestion. Like the experience of nothing.

There are more things in heaven and earth, jkop, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Raised Jewish, been an atheist for about 13 years

You seem to mistake the refusal to be overwhelmed by reality for ignorance of reality. H.L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Are we to be tormented by the thought that someone, somewhere, is being harmed?

If I was truly deeply wounded every time someone or something suffered harm or was the victim of some evil I'd be incapacitated. A Stoic accepts that there are things beyond one's control, but as Epictetus said will do the best that can be done with what's in his/her control.

To have or live the experience is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding it. — jkop

I would say having the experience is certainly necessary for understanding it. Whether it is sufficient or not might depend, inter alia, upon the kind of understanding in question. Certainly people generally have understandings of their experiences, but it doesn't follow that they ever know what the absolute cause of an experience is, or even what the relative causes of their experiences are.

Then they sound like they are temperamentally close to Redbacks. Funnelwebs, on the other hand, are hyper-aggressive. Do you have an aggressive counterpart for our Funnies?

What's ad-hoc and non-philosophical is the arbitrary assumption of a faculty for comprehending things beyond comprehension. — jkop

It's not an arbitrary assumption though, it's an identification. What is identified is that which is beyond human comprehension. It is identified as intelligible in principle, but unintelligible to the human intellect. This is due to apprehended deficiencies in the human being. There are some things which the human being cannot comprehend. To claim that it is intelligible in principle though, requires the assumption of an intellect higher than the human intellect, which can comprehend it. If there is no such intellect, capable of comprehending what is beyond the capacities of the human intellect, then we cannot correctly claim that this part of reality is intelligible.

This quite unfairly implies that those who self-identify as atheists are not open to arguments. One can be an atheist (in the common sense of not believing in any deities or the supernatural) with an open mind, and most atheists probably think of themselves that way. — SophistiCat

I did not mean to imply that atheists are not open to arguments. Rather, I think there tends to be a difference in thought between someone who identifies as agnostic and someone who identifies as atheist. A better way of putting it, I tend to put some kind of stock into theism, while atheists, who are open to new arguments, tend to find the category of beings labelled "gods" to have failed to meet up to a reasonable standard.

Christianity

34% religious on a philosophy forum! :-O — jkop

Yes, it's strange. Both this forum and its former incarnation are slanted towards atheism. In a survey of philosophers through history (which are not to be confused with people who write about philosophy -- including members of internet forums), the number of religious people would be far greater.

Yes, it's strange. Both this forum and its former incarnation are slanted towards atheism. In a survey of philosophers through history (which are not to be confused with people who write about philosophy -- including members of internet forums), the number of religious people would be far greater. — Mariner

Through history? How is that a relevant comparison? I would assume that participants of this forum are our contemporaries - most of them, anyway.

This 2009 survey of academic philosophers had the following result:

God: atheism 72.8%; theism 14.6%; other 12.6%