Pretending that this post is about religion, I was raised in a fairly religious Christian household and absorbed surprising, and actually really useful in a literary way, amounts of Christian mythos. Around 13 I started checking out Wiccanism and was into that on some level starting at "very literally and seriously" and devolving into "not really very literally or seriously but meditation and nature are good" by 18. I did help found a Pagan club at college but that's a story for the "what event changed your life" thread that I'm not yet telling.

I had been interested in Buddhism and meditation for a while by that point. Around the time college started getting hard and I started getting anxious I had a very dear friend who taught me the mantra "om mani padme hum" and showed me her prayer beads. Repeating that mantra, often with the use of prayer beads, over the next two years helped keep me sane and keep my anxiety in check. I would often think I couldn't breathe and would use the mantra to distract myself (prevent myself from making it worse) and then regulate my breathing. It was very meaningful to me. During some of this time I also believed in reincarnation. Reincarnation was actually really important to me for a while then. As a result of the Buddhist influence on my life I got a tattoo of the Om symbol on my chest. It remains very meaningful. I have found I have picked the mantra back up lately, and also in times of stress or stressed breathing (when I think I can't catch my breath, for instance).

It became clear to me, probably by the end of high school but definitely by the end of college, that the existence of divinity simply wasn't very important to me. If a God did exist that cared about whether I had premarital sex and worshipped him, not questioning anything "he" said (and by "he" I mean "his disciplines wrote down hundreds or thousands of years ago before there was a reliable way to copy this information other than by hand" aka "how many layers did this get distilled before i saw it?") then I didn't care for that god and that god seemed petty and stupid. And in that context hell could be a great party: sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll baby! If there was a God that didn't care about the particulars but just wanted me to be a good person I figured hopefully we'd square at the end and if we didn't, well I deserved it right? But still if I was all powerful, why would I spend my existence caring so much about one species on one measly planet? Fuck that I'd be exploring the solar system. And if there wasn't a God, then I was also square.

I can't find a version of God that makes sense to me. I don't bother with superstition if I can help it and I don't like to believe in things that don't make sense and especially those that don't make sense and don't have any evidence. Joan of Arc was cool for instance but she was also nutso. Pretty sure most prophets, etc, were.

The question that arrives in my mind when faced with the idea of a god is why? Why would a god exist? What evidence is there? Why would God only care about humans? Why would God only care about this planet? Why would God care about tattoos (levitcus) or pork (muslims, jews)? How petty of such a being - how vain of us to imagine we would be his or her only, entire concern! The only thing so interested in the fate of humans is humans.

It comforts me to know/believe that this is it; that when we die, we break apart like a spark; that our existence, singly or as a whole, is far from the end all and be all for this world and universe. There is more beyond us, it's just what's around us every day. It's just us and the void but the fact that it's a void encourages me to stay out of it, and live with what i've got to the utmost.

If there is a thing that exists that seems to us like a God, I posit it is a member of the fourth dimension, not unlike the 3-dimensional sphere that intrudes on Flatland and baffles the flatlanders. It is not something we can comprehend, and as a result it is also nothing like what we imagine - but it is, in the end, explicable.