Beliefs

January 20th

A timeline of the status of my religious beliefs:

• Deeply religious (Roman Catholic) as a child
• Questioning as a teenager
• Atheist as a young adult
• Ambivalent in my twenties
• Combative and vocal atheist in my thirties
• Ambivalent in my forties
• Questioning in present time

I don’t ever plan to go back to the Roman Catholic Church or any church for that matter, but I do have questions about the nature of human belief in supernatural, religious dogma — especially how it all started, is there a primordial religious belief or set beliefs that were once common to all humankind?. And now I also question my beliefs and where exactly I stand on this subject. I still define myself as an atheist, I want ANY organized religion to be minimalized and marginalized. That goes especially to those that feed on and feed up their fundamentalist fractions — Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism. I do not believe in any “the supreme god” of any religion. I think that fundamental change from polytheism to monotheism was THE WORST thing to happen in the development of humankind and human consciousness. I don’t believe in any “holy books”, rituals, or supremacy of this or that deity. I am very wary of any morals that steam from religion and so-called “holy men” who spew it and want to force it onto others.

But I do question something about myself. Where in all that MY spirituality fits? I do feel the connection with other people, with other animals and nature at large, even with the vastness of the cosmos. I believe that EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING is connected in a vast and all-encompassing network. Every animated and not animated, sentient or not sentient being or thing. Alive now or already dead. All that has some spirit and soul. And we can see it or learn to recognize it if only we are willing to open our eyes.

Am I an animist now? If so, that feels rather comforting to me.