What is your religious belief or inclination?
Node LinkNextFirst of all, I should note that one’s general classification of a religious inclination (e.g: Jewish, Atheist, Agnostic, Deist, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc.) is not always indicative of their idea system or philosophy. Also note that despite the fact that I am Jewish by ethnicity, and heritage, and studied (or was forced to study, although I often enjoyed it) some of the Jewish writings, and incorporated influences from Judaism in my writing, I am not a religious or observant Jew.
All that put aside, I consider myself a self-sufficient, optimistic, idealistic and anti-cynical, pluralistic, anti-Fatalist, agnostic. Now let me explain what all those mean:
I’m agnostic because I’m not sure whether God — however he/she/they/it are manifested — exists or not. I suspect they do, but don’t take chances and don’t wish to risk dying - now or ever.
I’m self-sufficient because I believe that “The gods help those that help themselves”, that “reality to be commanded must be obeyed” and all that Jazz.
I am optimistic, idealistic and anti-cynical, because I believe that people are inherently good, can be trusted and that humanity is going forward instead of backward. I feel like my life is gradually improving and that almost every day is the best day of my life so far, and that 2014 (when these lines were written) is the best year I can remember (and I’m 1977-born).
I’m pluralistic, because I constantly have derived and will derive inspiration from many sources and also try to not dismiss an insight based on its source - see Ad-hominem, and Reductio ad Hitlerum for more information about why this is fallacious.
Also see this quote by Larry Wall about
All Truth is God's Truth
.I am anti-Fatalistic because I believe that humans’ survival mechanism - reason - operates by choice, and not automatically, and that we have free will. This is as opposed to the new age crop of neo-Deterministic materialistic atheists who believe that the laws of physics dictate exactly what a person will think and do.
Note: I was told that Fatalism vs. free will is a much older debate than Ayn Rand (reason operates by choice) vs. Sam Harris (who reportedly used to advocate Fatalism).
Also see Universalism (thanks to Emma Watson's Wikipedia page for the insight).