I just know that my strongly anti-theist housemate is gonna give me shit about this post, so I’m giving him some link love.

Here’s some of my favourite posts by him:
– The ever controversial ‘What works in deconverting Christians‘. If you want to comment, at least read the last paragraph. Even better, read the whole post. Its not what it sounds like.

– An examination of what agnosticism really is, in ‘Why Atheist not Agnostic‘

I expect to read your rebuttal soon, Kieran.

I might be considered atheist. I know that the atheists I converse with generally consider me to be atheist. I don’t consider myself strictly atheist though. I consider myself to be *complex*.
Sure, I don’t believe in GOD. I don’t believe that deities actually exist.

I do however believe that faith is important, and so are rituals.
I have a book that I quite love, called ‘Real Magic Under a Southern Sky’, which is about the sociology of ritual in a religious context, using Wicca and other pagan religions as an example. I thoroughly recommend it.

The thing with humans is that we are extremely suggestible, and we see patterns where there are none. These traits lead to a feeling of cosmic design, and eventually development of religions, or ascribing to a pre-existing religion.

I am pagan. Belladonna guessed right, but she has the distinct advantage of knowing me when I was first exploring paganism. I believe various things, but I believe them aware that they are not true, and it makes me feel better to believe.
Its a kind of self-aware self-deception, which no doubt Bruce and Kieran will tell me is no better than plain old religious self deception.

I was raised in a very Christian home, part of the church for 12 years. Religious ritual is pretty heavily ingrained. I was a terrible Christian. Awful at it. Good at faking, but too trans and queer, to deal with the brand of Christianity I was raised with.
I am left with a void left in my life, where there should be religious rituals and spirituality, but I can’t tolerate having Christianity, because I think that traditional Christianity, and pentecostal Christianity wrong, and harmful and damaging.
I could theoretically pick up Anglicanism, which in Australia is quite progressive. Some of my dearest friends are progressive Anglicans. I have no real beef with progressive Christians.

I see a lot of atheists cling to something else in their lives as a *cause*. Some atheists are as rude and intolerable as some religious people. Some atheists replace ‘god’ with ’science’ or some other interest. Mac Zealots that don’t see reason about something which is *just a computer* is an example I am quite familiar with. Atheism, in my mind, has the disadvantage of not acknowledging that religious belief and spirituality can play a valuable role in human lives.

Human beings need ritual, they need to make sense of the world, and sometimes ‘its random chaos’ isn’t a good enough answer. We are prone to seeing patterns, even in true randomness. For example, a lot of Mac Zealots got freaked out by the iPod Shuffle, because they saw patterns in the randomness. Apple went on to make the iPod’s Shuffle function *less random* so that people would stop thinking their iPods were analyzing their thoughts and playing music accordingly.

My ‘religion’ centers around three beliefs, each of which has a specific purpose.

1. First, do no harm, then do whatever you will.
Its a pretty classic pagan tenet. It is my moral compass, and the same one that most people use. Its about respect, its about not hurting other people, but remembering that if I’m not hurting other people I can do whatever I want. Its also a reminder that not harming myself is as important as not harming others, because it doesn’t specify who or what I am not to harm.

2. Karma’s a bitch, and it will get you!
Pagan’s call this the ‘Three-fold law of Karmic Return’, but that sounds too mystical for my liking. My life is full of irony. Someone does something shitty to me, and hey presto! Some kind of appropriately shitty thing happens to them on a larger scale. Its all just coincidence, but its a reminder not to seek revenge, cos seriously, I don’t need to, life will get that revenge for me.

3. Every challenge is another life Lesson, and good will come out of the bad.
In my life I have noticed that every time something horrible happens (and that is pretty frequently), something good comes out of it. Something vitally important, or wonderful for some other reason.
I get depressed, because bad shit happens a lot in my life. Not just minor drama, but EPIC FULL SCALE DRAMAZ. I have had people in their 60s say to me ‘Ryan, life isn’t supposed to be THIS hard, it has to get easier for you soon. It just *can’t* continue this way forever.’
I’ve had several years of non-stop drama, stress, and major plot-developments, and every time things calm down for a while, I have about a week of peace before another disaster happens.
People aren’t made for that level of stress. Its dangerous. It makes you crazy. You have to do something to make yourself feel better about it, and for me, that is believing that its a lesson, and if I learn the lesson well enough, it will never happen again, and something wonderful will come out of it.

I tell people that I don’t actually believe that there is a cosmic force controlling these random events, but for the sake of my mental health and peace of mind, I believe in Karma, and life-lessons. I hate it when they start explaining to me then why its unhealthy for me to believe that, why its untrue, why its wrong.
I’ve just explained that I am aware I am deceiving myself, to help me feel like there is hope. Its only when religion and spirituality is completely unaware and superstitious that it causes harm. So, sometimes I wonder why people are so intent on poo-pooing my beliefs, even though it keeps me sane.

I don’t talk about my beliefs much, because they are something that I do for a bunch of pragmatic reasons, and I don’t believe in ‘conversion’, so there’s no reason for me to talk about it, unless I think that someone else may benefit from one of the rituals I perform.
One of my rituals was taught to me by my psychologist, and its unclear as to why it works, but it does work for most of her patients. Its essentially a way of constructing a ‘magical barrier’ around yourself to prevent sexual harassment. I used to do it all the time. I stopped months ago, and there’s been another surge in sexual harassment. It probably works cos it changes your subconscious body-language from ‘victim’ to ‘protected’.
Another thing that I do is reading tarot cards. Not to predict the future, but help me think creatively about problems. I use them in a similar way that psychologists use blot pictures, or word association. My book on Tarot was written by a psychiatrist, rather than some new age mystic.
I also keep a rudimentary dream diary (usually I only record the most interesting dreams), which helps me see patterns in my dreaming, and identify concerns I need to address before they manifest in nightmares, or neurotic behaviour when I am awake.

I rarely celebrate religious festivals. I was going to celebrate Pagan Eostre this year, just for fun, but cancelled it in a fit of cowardice. Something which was really stupid, and makes me feel bad now. After all, I am entitled to my beliefs, even if they are spiritual, or religious. I don’t back down about my identity, or my politics, why should I back down about my ‘religion’?