My extended family is very religious and I tried, tried, tried for a long time to follow suit. It just never was right for me and I achieved more peace and happiness when I stopped going.

That, however, isn't your question. At present I count myself as undecided but when Mrs. Director was dying I got serious about prayer.

We faced a decision one day about whether or not to go to an appointment with a new specialist. It was expensive and we didn't have the money and she was feeling quite a bit better that day.

We discussed putting it off and rescheduling if her improvement didn't continue. Together we went over it again and again. I think we both felt there was no room for error in this decision. In private, I sobbed over this choice in my prayers.

In the end we went to the doctor and he literally saved her life the next day. She would not have survived if we had rescheduled.

Many in my family attribute her life to their prayers. For me, I'm just glad for the twenty years (and counting!) of bonus time with her. However it happened, I am thankful.

No.

No, I never have had that happen.

Nope.

Nope.

As soon as I read the definition of the word "atheist" in the dictionary, I knew that was who I was.

This happened when I was six years old.

I am a very tolerant guy, probably because my atheism came so early and didn't meet much opposition from my family or the larger society. I didn't grow up in a terribly conservative area; now that I think about it, most of the people in my home town would have been more uncomfortable with the fundamentalists than they would have been with my own beliefs.

I have a really open-minded church that I love. Unfortunately it's in Illinois and I'm now in Wisconsin.

Anyway, I went through a rough patch about a decade ago and chose adult baptism. I felt my agnosticism was overcome in this period by something I could only identify as grace.

I am not entirely comfortable with this intellectually, but I am comfortable with my decision to pursue it.

Despite all the evidence that there is no reason to, yes I do.

For most definitions of god, no. For some, maybe.

No, I don't.

God, no.

No.

Telling yourself you don't believe in gods isn't the same thing as not believing in them.

I used to believe in them (was raised Catholic), then told myself I didn't believe in God. Then I realized I'd been telling myself I believed in God all along without really believing it, and now I don't believe in god or gods.

I don't claim to know everything, but I do know if someone was all-powerful, he wouldn't require my thanks or worship. He also would not likely be interested in the minutia of my life. Futurama did a good "god episode" where they basically said prayer is fine as a form of meditation (to prioritize the desires in your life, if nothing else) but that if there's a god, he most likely helps those who help themselves.

No.

No. I kind of wish I did, but the premise is so illogical that I can't bring myself to. I would like to be involved in some sort of similar community, though. Sigh.

I do not. And I'm cool with that.

If you live a life where humility is present, when you feel gratitude more than you feel anger, and you carry the thought with you that someone out there is experiencing things that on your worst day would never come to you, that is enough.

Having said this, I like to think that God and I have a special sense of humor, and that the universe occasionally plops down something only I would think was cool and makes sure I notice it.

That's enough for me.

Oh, and any force that could present a world where folks like Thelonious Monk, Mahalia Jackson and Roy Acuff could do their thing, I most definitely want to believe in it's grace and power.

No I don't believe in god and it isn't something I really think about. My children are going to a Catholic school (partially to be inoculated against religion but mostly because it is the better school) and sometimes they want to pray before meals and that is okay with me (as an aside - my favourite prayer is "We will thank him" sung to the tune of Queen's we will rock you with claps and foot-stomping included). After my daughter died a few people asked how that affected my faith but it really didn't - although I did like having the choice of who would do the funeral taken out of my hands, at a time like that the fewer choices you have to make the better. Occasionally when I have had a near accident in my car I thank my Nana for looking out for me, but even that is kinda half-jokingly. I still use the expression "thank god" as an expression of relief after a stressful situation but I'm not really thinking of god, more like fate or chance or the easter bunny.

I do however, still believe in Father Christmas, fervently.

I believe in laughter, until milk comes out my nose.

I don't really know, but probably not. I used to have a lot more faith, if not in a Judaeo-Christian god, then in some kind of vaguely Shinto/Taoist/Buddhist/Hindu/magical/Star Wars force in the universe, preferably with multiple deities and rivers of energy and rebirth and cosmic wheels and all, but after my mother died and my world fell apart for a while, I don't think I even have that anymore. I prayed like crazy last fall and I got - nothing. Perhaps I got the realization that I was adrift on the winds of chaos like we all are and that there was nothing else out there. My mother, daughter of a minister, eventually converted Catholic, who took graduate classes on comparative religion and learned Hebrew to read the Bible in close to its original form, became an atheist in the last 10 years of her life. I guess I'm getting like her.

I'm agnostic, but lean heavily towards no.

No, but with the dogma removed, I think Intelligent Design is worth considering. My version is called AI Design. Consider though that I do not believe human intelligence is all that real either.

I feel that the guidelines of religion give some people great comfort. It’s a scary world out there and for many folks it takes a lot of the uncertainty out of living. It’s a great way to normalize behaviors in a society.

As a youngster, I had a lot of difficulty understanding how there could be only one way to “reach salvation” – that is, how could only one group of people who had one religion be the only ones who were saved in this afterlife thing? And, what about the animals? I tried to resolve that with a belief in there being a great unknown force out there – a kinda mega-religion, but couldn’t figure out what such a being/force was suppose to be for…. I mean, what good could it do; what purpose could it serve? Who wanted this never-ending-life thing? How awful.

When my hubby was ill, I understood that folks doing prayer chains, etc. were only trying to do what they thought was good and I always thanked them for their kind thoughts. I think it allowed them to feel like they were doing something to help; and it was, in fact, helpful for them.

I suspect that atheists are going to be overrepresented in this thread because the actual believers might find this question a little too personal, a little too emotionally charged, to answer in a public forum.

I have not figured it out quite yet. Can I get back to you?

(And I say this with all respect and sincerity. I just do not know.)

I don't think it matters whether I believe in God when I don't believe in myself.

Most definitely do.

Two nights ago, my right foot started hurting...by the next morning, it was really painful and I had a hard time walking. As I was hobbling to class and wondering how I was going to get through the day, I started praying for God to heal it. Less than five minutes later, the pain was completely gone. It had been hurting for twelve hours and stopped in five minutes--doesn't seem like a coincidence to me.

Personally, I think that the various religions and Christian denominations cause a lot of unnecessary strife, and I think people make their faith more about the traditions than about a relationship with Christ, and that turns a lot of people off to the idea. Sad.

But that's just my opinion, and I'm not going to try to tell anyone that they're right or wrong, so don't take this as that. It's something you have to decide for yourself.

If you live a life where humility is present, when you feel gratitude more than you feel anger, and you carry the thought with you that someone out there is experiencing things that on your worst day would never come to you, that is enough.

I'm like this. I believe in something divine, something for which I'm grateful. Sometimes good things happen that appear fantastic or unreal. Either these things come from the God or a god, or they themselves are gods/the God. I'm agnostic on the distinction. I'm optimistic that it will shake out down the line. I think I am like most of my extended family about this, although we are different in almost everything else. Which is unexpected.

*pats Hugh around the head* Hmm, I think you're real!

Yep. I'd guess I give thanks a couple times a week.

I feel that the guidelines of religion give some people great comfort.

Totally true.

Me, I believe in God, but I rarely talk about it because my conception of God usually has almost nothing to do with the associations most people project on the concept "God." As a Quaker I engage in a lifelong process of interrogating the idea of God and creating a continuing construction of it and conversation with it. My understanding of God fits within Quaker theology but that isn't easy to explain, and I reject most of what traditional religious paths insist upon while honoring the desire of people to connect with and express the ineffable feelings that something big is going on with existence and consciousness.

There's something in people that wants to both pray and to give thanks even if they don't believe they're praying or giving thanks to anything. Lately I've been mulling over the idea of 'story,' which neoroscientists are starting to theorize about - that the human brain has evolved not only to tell and appreciate stories, but that identity itself, spirit itself, is a story. And perhaps God is a story. And perhaps by all of us being a story we are together the story that is God. There is no reason the story that is God couldn't exist within an entirely rational universe.

You see why I rarely talk about my own spirituality, especially in forums like this. It's a pretty involved conversation. I enjoy talking about religion, though - it's a concrete human phenomenon based in history with plenty of fact and text and stuff associated with it. You can discuss religious philosophy until the cows come home and I find it pretty interesting, without ever once thinking anybody who follows those paths has it right. My central spiritual path is a Christian one, because that's my heritage and culture and the basis of my ritual life. But I don't have any illusions that it's truer than agnositicism or Shintoism or anything else like that. It's just the part of the elephant I'm holding on to.

One thing I have strong distaste for is the idea of God as magician. There's a tendency to attribute good things and lucky strikes in life as the doing of God. And yet the bad luck, accidents, and bad news then should also be the doing of God. The idea that God rewards some people with good luck is anathema to me. In one of Kurt Vonnegut's books (I forget which) he elaborates on this idea and repeats the refrain "Do you still believe luck is the hand of God?" If you do, it's a lousy and inconsistent God. Sometimes we pray for things and they come to pass. Sometimes we pray for things and they don't come to pass. Sometimes people do die despite being prayed for. Sometimes young children's parents are killed in stupid accidents. For everyone that prays to get the job and gets it, there may be a dozen who prayed to get the job and don't get it. There are too many good people saying equally good prayers for me to think that prayers are 'listened to' and fulfilled as lunch-counter orders or rewards for the virtuous. Prayers are simply a way of articulating what you want and hope for, or what you fear. God as short-order cook, good things as rewards to the deserving - the ramifications of that idea upset me. Bad things do happen to good people, and not because they are bad pray-ers or deserving of bad luck. We have all prayed for things that didn't happen. It's okay to just understand that prayer is an expression of our deepest hopes and values. Sometimes we get to experience those results, sometimes we don't, but either way we get to know the full experience of our own human desires and yearnings, which to me is the point of prayer, and maybe God's point.

My fundamentalist grandparents ended all their prayers, no matter what they asked, with "Thy will, not mine, be done."

No. Wait, yes--well, I might say 'thank god' or 'god bless you' or something occasionally, but I've never believed in any of 'em.

Well, it looks like I should put my two cent's in here too, since jason's_planet said "I suspect that atheists are going to be overrepresented in this thread because the actual believers might find this question a little too personal, a little too emotionally charged, to answer in a public forum." which I think is accurate, and not something that I had thought about, so sorry guys.

But you know what, before the accident, I was a believer, or at least I thought I was--I tried to pray five times a day, and follow all the rules and regulations of my religion, but I wasn't really religious... I used to jerk off sometimes, and try and believe that God didn't mind, I had a very Strained relationship with my Folks, and all in all--I didn't believe in him much to tell you the truth.

But ever since the accident, and coming so close to Death, and noticing both of my Parents giving thanks to him for giving me another life, it sort of makes sense to me that he might be just out there. Would I have thought the same way if I didn't have the same experience--probably not--but thank God I did, and I got to see a side of him which not everyone does.

Why do some people do, while others don't... I don't know, and I wish I did, but at least the rest of us are here to pray for them, and I don't mean that in a superior way, even though it might sound like that, but there's just so much to give, and be thankful for, hopefully, maybe someday, we all can feel it, together, shoulder to shoulder.

Until that day comes, I know I'll be praying for all of us, that I wish we all receive good health, and our age is well looked after, and that our prayers are answered.

I suspect that atheists are going to be overrepresented in this thread because the actual believers might find this question a little too personal, a little too emotionally charged, to answer in a public forum."

You know, that's a great observation, about the internet in general. I was recently taken to task over on MeFi for not saying anything about my own beliefs in a thread where I was attempting to suggest that believers aren't necessarily idiots any more than nonbelievers aren't hellbound infidels. I didn't like the idea that somehow I had to profess my own beliefs in order to strengthen my argument. It should be immaterial. I don't like dragging it into internet forums and for 99% of moral and philosophical debates, personal religious beliefs are totally irrelevant. My participation in this thread is an exception to the general rule that I don't bother talking about it online.

at least the rest of us are here to pray for them, and I don't mean that in a superior way, even though it might sound like that

Yeah, it does sound like that, no matter how you slice it. It's presumptuous. I mean, certainly it's nice to pray that everyone be happy and cared for - it reflects your values. But feeling that you have to pray because others aren't? That always bothers me. Everyone's their own best advocate with the divine. You don't need to intercede on anyone's behalf. I know this often comes from a good place, but it's impossible to feel this way without inherent superiority - 'I've got access you don't, and I'm going to use it because you won't. I have a better idea of God's activity than you do and I'm looking out for you even if you're too messed up to do it yourself.'

I don't see this as true when you're praying for someone in trouble and hoping their trouble will be removed. But when it comes to trying to be someone's spiritual emissary, yeah, I think it's hubristic.

at least the rest of us are here to pray for them

Don't. Really.

In the interests of semi-full disclosure, I was raised by First Baptist fundamentalists. However, I came to doubt that everything in the bible is literally true or that the interpretation I was getting was an accurate representation of the text. It's hard to be interested in archaeology and paleontology and then take the idea of a worldwide flood at face value.

But when looking at the creation of the Universe, mechanically, the Big Bang seems to work to describe most of what we can see, but where did that primordial super-atom come from? Or was it two Branes colliding as String Theory would have it? Was it God? Is that moment of creation God? Interesting questions, or at least I find them so.

Evolution? Yep. Intelligent Design? No. The human body is something of a kludge, our eyes aren't particularly great, we have some organs or parts of organs that are partially obsolete, we don't have some of the repair mechanism that other organisms do, in other words... could be better. Or so says my bad knee, bad ankle, and near-sightedness.

If I really ask myself, is there God? Yeah, I think so, either as an entity or a mechanism of creation. Could that be a holdover from the way I was raised? Quite possibly. I do like most of the teachings of Jesus, as read, not the way many sects or denominations have chosen to codify or implement them. So many self identified "Christians" are so quick to condemn or ignore the "sinners", that they should really, really, re-read the New Testament and see what it actually says. They seem to be missing a whole lot.

(Thanks, Miko!)

Oh, and that last bit of mine was incomplete, I didn't mean to particularly single out the Christians, just left it as an incomplete thought, it was where I am coming from, seeing how people misinterpret the belief system I am most familiar with. There are plenty of other faiths and practitioners of faith who miss the forest for the trees.

but it's impossible to feel this way without inherent superiority

Thanks Miko, I didn't see how superior that was. Why should God be listening to me more than anyone else, right, what have I got that others don't, so I really see where your coming from and can understand that... good going :)

Every time somebody says, "I'll pray for you!" (mostly my extremely Catholic cousins) I want to say "Awesome! I'll sacrifice a black chicken for you at the next full moon Sabbat!" But I don't.

I really see where your coming from and can understand that.

Wow. I'm actually really glad that made sense and didn't come off nastily. Yay.

(That's extremely funny, mgl!)

Do you believe in God? Have you ever, has anything ever happened to you, or someone that you knew, that made you thank the Lord, even if you aren't a prayerful type of person.

No and sort of.

No, I don't believe in God, and even if I did, I wouldn't believe in prayers of supplication. If such a thing as an all-powerful, all-knowing God existed and had a "Plan," then supplication would be like second-guessing the Supreme Being, both useless (the Plan, being already, by definition, perfect, isn't going to change just because you kissed God's ass) and also presumptious almost to the point of blasphemy.

On the other hand, I have many times been filled with a joy of life so profound that I have wordlessly thanked the universe for the blessing of my existence. I do not think that the universe is somehow moved by the gesture, but I've found that being thankful is good for me on a fundamental level, so I cultivate it as a medicine for my humanity.

Agnostic with atheistic tendencies.

I was brought up Episcopalian and believed in it all. I remember the first time I ever heard the word agnostic; I was told that's what my step-grandfather was after he didn't join in a Thanksgiving blessing. After I was told what it meant, I was stunned that people could actually not believe in God or doubt his existence. That people were "allowed" (although "who" allowed it, I dunno) totally blew my mind.

MGL - I'd pay money to see something like that happen.

No. Similar discovery story to Jason's Planet's.

I do respect many believers, and most seekers, and have had some interesting and non-combative discussions on the subject with friends.

But I do live in a Bible-y area, and stuff gets sticky like when it comes up at work, say. I'm closeted sometimes, and I don't like how that feels.

Ditto, rainbaby.

OK, set the time machine to 1985; a couple of youthful teens, blasting down the 21st and West area of Wichita, Kansas. Smoke pouring out of the interior of a fine 1968 Olds Delta 98, and lots of leftover rainwater on the street.
At about 45 mph the Olds meets the water; does a complete 180, and continues in a linear path in the same lane for a block. As the two teens laugh and grin at the cars blasting by in the opposite direction.

As hilarious as this was at the time; I can not help but to feel the very hand of God (or perhaps one of his children for the polytheists amongst us) was fooling with the damned (saved?) vehicle that day.

Somehow the mighty '98 Olds Delta straightened out and continued on its very merry way. More smoke from the interiour of the vehicle followed.

If I had artistic skills I would submit this to Field & Stream (well, it was water in the road...) for the "I shouldn't be alive" illustrated column of outdoor adventures.

Hm, I was raised by "devout" atheists and sent to Catholic school. I'm sorry, but I kind of cringed when saucysault mentioned "innoculation" of her kids. Long as you don't object to them "catching it" for a while, I guess you'll all be ok.

I went through a couple of crises of faith, and had some numinous experiences that I attributed to God or Jesus taking a personal interest in the most minute details of my life. Later on I left this behind because it was too restricting. Miko alludes to it in her post - if all this is planned out and known beforehand, how am I more than a puppet?

Skipping ahead, I read the book "Jewish Renewal". Rabbi Lerner's concept of God is close to what I believe now.

Carl Sagan had a great answer in an interview to that question, which I can't find now, but here's what he had to say.

I need to read Contact again.

This is an interview with Sagan's widow that is really eye opening.

And now I find it:

In a 1996 interview with NPR's Fresh Air, Sagan said: "I find that you learn absolutely nothing about someone's belief if yu ask them 'Do you believe in God?' and they say yes or no. You have to specify which of the countless kinds of God you have in mind."

If someone wants to pray for me, I don't mind. I am not going to call the thought police cuz I don't believe in them either.

no

No. I kind of wish I did, but the premise is so illogical that I can't bring myself to. I would like to be involved in some sort of similar community, though. Sigh.

Actually, this has been my position for most of my life.

I can not help but to feel the very hand of God (or perhaps one of his children for the polytheists amongst us) was fooling with the damned (saved?) vehicle that day.

But what about all the other kids who did die in car accidents? The ones in your story had a close call, but my friend's daughter had 4 of her classmates die in a single wreck last year. Where was the hand of God? Were those kids worse kids than the ones in your story? Those parents less deserving? Are we comfortable blaming those four young death on the assumed moral failures of the teenagers and their families? If not, we then have to assume that God was asleep, not paying attention, a screwup, not all-powerful, or actually kind of evil, right? Because I think most people who knew those girls thought that the hand of God, if God had a practice of using that sort of hand, would have been a big help to them right then.

Or was it just a terribly unlucky day?

I used to believe fervently, but some recent conversations I had made me realize that for most of my life, I've been confusing "God" with "faith" and "religion."

Even the "great miracle" of my youth (summary: Mom believes that St. Therese of Liseux intervened when I was sick once; hence, it is my confirmation name) I now question because I don't remember being that sick.

However, upon reading the Wikipedia entry I just linked, I wonder if I really am following in her way because my two secular credos ("Be excellent to one another" and "Wil Wheaton says, 'Don't be a dick!'") sound awfully similar to her "Little Way" which contributed to her canonization.

Anyway, I'll have some more interesting things to say about religion in a month or so...

No, I don't believe in god, but I feel weird about calling myself an atheist because I'm buddhist. In other words, most atheists I know have nothing to do with religion at all, whereas I do. It just happens not to have a god. But I wonder if that comes off as "I'm not one of THOSE people." I don't want to be like that.

I'll be a dissenting voice.
Yes, I believe in God.

I'll be a dissenting voice.

It's not really dissenting. In a quick recap of the thread, I got 8 unsure/maybe/mushy/dunno responses, twenty nos, and twelve believers of one sort or another, most with qualifiers (as indeed every believer has)!

I like a lot of Miko said about disliking the model of God as magician or short-order cook. I find the idea distasteful as well, and its prevalence within organized religion really bothers me.

I've always considered myself sort of atheist, but I was raised in the Hindu tradition, and I still enjoy the ritual and ceremony surrounding prayer. I enjoy going to temple and the rich religious mythology, not out of any real belief in their veracity, but as a part of my culture and family. Indian ceremonies can also be extremely aesthetically beautiful, so there's that.

I treat ritual prayer as a chance to break away from everyday banalities, immerse myself in introspection, identify what's important to me and deeply appreciate what I have. I'm a little bit spiritual, in that I believe that appreciation and respect for my life have a positive influence on the world, partly because of an unseen "good vibes" kind of force (corny, I know) and partly because that attitude enables me to act meaningfully with love and care.

There should be a "what" before "Miko" in that first sentence.

And now that I'm reading what I wrote, that "good vibes" force that I talked about isn't really anything mystical or magical. I just think that appreciation, love, and respect for my own life allow me to be more open to giving and receiving those sentiments in unconscious ways (and because they're unconscious, the forthcoming results may seem as if they were guided by an outside force), in addition to changing the things that I do with deliberation. That's the basis for the very little bit of spirituality I believe in.

You expressed something very well, unsurprising -that there are a lot of benefits to prayer and ritual that don't depend on divine activity for their effect, but result in real value as activities in themselves.

no

there are a lot of benefits to prayer and ritual that don't depend on divine activity for their effect, but result in real value as activities in themselves.

Absolutely. I was raised Catholic, and all my family are still practising Catholics. When I go to a family member's funeral, I am always blown away by how comforting and peaceful the rosary the night before is.

I don't believe in god or in any other higher power, no. These days I call myself an atheist, though I'm not a member of any local militant chapters and I don't have a problem with other folks' belief in its own right.

For a long time I described myself as an agnostic, and I suppose I could still slot myself in as a deeply skeptical strong agnostic, since I don't believe I or anyone else will ever produce objective evidence of the non-existence (or existence) of God or gods or reincarnation or spiritual lifeforce or what have you.

I consider the supernatural explicitly beyond the reach of human testability, and have trouble fully accepting belief systems that treat the existence of the supernatural or the metaphysical as anything other than a matter of the starkest faith. Belief in the unknowable despite it's unknowability sits okay with me; belief in the personal knowledge of the unknowable seems like eating one's cake and having it too.

My mom is a faithful, practicing, but very liberal Catholic; my dad is a reserved and not very visibly observant Jew. I grew up going to Catholic mass, often times as a celebrant in some musical capacity since my Mom was often a/the music minister wherever we were attending, so I got very used to having both staid Catholic ritual and the occasional joyful subversion of same as a part of my weekly life as a kid. (In one church, a tiny old woman with a thick accent once gave my mom the business for daring to have balloons in church on Easter Sunday. And every now and then Mom would do a rousing bluesy version of an Amen chorus, with Dad, the loving and gentile-supporting husband, backing her up on electric bass.)

I grappled with my non-belief in my early adolescence, telling my mom eventually that I didn't actually believe in God or any of this stuff in church when I was maybe twelve or thirteen. Church stuff dropped off for me significantly over the next few years though I'd still go and help Mom out with music stuff occasionally, playing guitar and singing backup vox for her.

That was about it for god-stuff adjustments for a while; I settled on not believing in god but not really knowing how I felt about spirituality in general, and started calling myself an agnostic when it came up.

Then, late in high school, I fell for and dated a girl who was becoming increasingly serious about her own Christianity, to the point where my lack of belief became sort of the central hub of uncertainty in our relationship.

I spent a lot of time with her youth group friends and had some conversations with that (very much not Catholic) church's youth minister, who, when confronted with my I-really-like-this-girl-motivated attempt to characterize my feeling that people should be good to one another and treat each other with care and compassion regardless of the context as being 'essentially Christian', argued that while it was a very good thing to believe and Jesus would obviously be down with it, it was basically humanism if I didn't buy into the whole divinity-of-Christ angle.

That relationship bit the dust shortly after I went off to college, with the religious conflict as the core problem. Learning to let go of that and get over her went hand in hand with me assessing more clearly how I felt about the religious side of things, not for the sake of how the perception of my beliefs would affect those around me but rather for my own honest understanding of myself and damn the social consequences.

So, I'm an atheist. I don't reject religion as a social custom and I don't begrudge those who believe in general, even if I have a bone to pick with some folks as far as some of the ways that religion is used as a tool or lever in the world, etc.

Yeah, I lost a dear friend, that was also a 21 pt. insurance grade terrible driver. With a great deal of relflection and respect; it would have been far harder on me and her family if the loss would have occured with children future in the car to boot. It still sucks hard to reflect on; but me disrespecting your daughters friends via a light comment here?

No.

My father's father was an old-school German Catholic; his mother was an orphan, the unfortunate child of an long-gone French Canadian migrant and a Scotch-Irish mother who died bearing her. She was raised in a Catholic orphanage, and only sent my dad and his brothers to parochial school at the behest of "The Prussian General," as she called my grandfather. A self-educated woman, she spent her spare time reading about archaeology and biology and warning my dad and uncles about the pernicious threat represented by those who would deny Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

Of course, it was 1957, the modern era, so my dad rolled his eyes and said, "Mom, that's crazy; everyone knows evolution's true," but she kept up with her warnings until retreating into Alzheimer's for the last eight years of her life. She probably never saw much of the current resurgence of backwards thinking.

Eventually the gracious Sisters kicked my father (the eldest) out of school, for refusing to accept a beating, leaving school during class, and claiming that Jesus was leaving the building along with him. My grandmother had his back, and threatened to trample the wimple of any nun who came near her boys again.

My mother's parents were breakers of tradition; my grandmother and grandfather eloped for love when grandpa was in the army, and my great-grandmother lived bedridden an extra ten years just to hate him for taking her daughter away from him and her traditions. They were grape-juice and wonder-bread Episcopalians, in it for the social aspects of church and for the free Sunday school. My mom hated it, and her sister loved it.

So my parents were non-believers from the day they met. My father, the analyst, is more of a humanist, somewhat amused by people and their foibles, ascribing no hand of god to any situation other than the elaborate constructions people make to justify belief in the divine, or simply in what they are doing. My mom was a staunch atheist, a full-on god-denier, who couldn't understand the peculiar idiocy of the believer.

I think religion is a big part of what kept my mom from being friends with her sister until the last few years of her life, after their parents died. I think she hated to be condescended to, especially by someone she knew categorically was not as well-informed as she was, and my aunt is a condescender in the great tradition of true believers. So mom fought fire with fire, and it eventually took mourning their parents to bring them together.

I never went to church as a kid. I went to synagogue with Jewish friends, mostly for bar mitzvot, and there was a phase during which I was fascinated by the lives of the Catholic saints and visited the local Franciscan and Dominican monasteries and the National Cathedral out of curiosity. In junior high school I prayed sometimes, but it was empty and superficial.

In fact, the only real religious instruction I had as a young man was via osmosis, around my close Jewish friends and their families. Little of that instruction centered around the synagogue. Most was a demonstration of the ways a grounding in the little things can help a family towards happiness, and a community towards god. It wasn't until I was older that I confused the feeling of welcoming, and of belonging to a community, with divine calling.

I went to a Quaker college, where the lesson is that everybody's people, and everybody's trying, and everybody seeks god in their own way, or doesn't. I always liked that, as it jibed with my own patchwork urges for spiritual understanding and enlightened skepticism. Love, which I think is as godly as it is human and maybe is the triumph and ruin of life itself, sent me chasing after god to Israel, where I started the conversion process before convincing myself that I'd convinced myself to make a mistake. I don't think it was a loss of belief in god, or in love, but just a combination of young and dumb and insufficiently dedicated.

Then I moved to Japan, where shrines abound, as do temple-related practices, but there's no great tradition of public professions of faith or proselytizing; perhaps it's cultural homogeneity or the hodgepodge of Buddhist, Shinto, and even Christian practices and holidays, but few of the Japanese people I knew made their religion the point that many Americans do. I was married without a religious ceremony, and though I can't say losing my family precipitated a loss of faith, from my current vantage point I can observe a lack of attention to these things for the decade or so after I left Japan.

Perhaps I was too busy. I spent years after my return with my parents, in the cradle of my youth, quietly healing and helping my parents live through my mother's breast cancer and bizarre gardening accidents. Maybe living with them reinvigorated my doubt, or coming to their ideas as an adult child made them clearer, but I emerged seeing the world as made up of people, and religion as just one of the many things that makes us individual.

I think I've always wished god existed but felt like that was foolish. People make the world what it is, and people have all kinds of beliefs, acting on them as they will, so the world moves on.

Before I moved to New York, I became obsessed with Gandhi as part of a project. What I take away from Gandhi is individual, forever changing, and imprecise, as yet undeveloped, but here's the germ of it: Gandhi lived inflexibly, for a man of his stature rightly cautious of hypocrisy; this made him an admirable leader, a terrible father, and an almost inhuman hero, though his struggle was as human as it gets. I think humanity often lies in flexibility, and that hypocrisy is often just flexibility forced on the inflexible, as gauged by the likewise inflexible.

Anyway, I've lost my bearings a bit. I see so many people every day trying to do whatever it is they do, in the life they live, with all their individual connections and influences, all so oblivious and convinced, and it stopped thrilling me the way it did when I was first here, Gandhi beating in my breast. I spent a long time liking people less and less, myself included. Or maybe most of all.

I used to talk to my mom on the telephone for hours every week, about this or that and sometimes about family. Her sister, with whom she reconciled after my grandpa died, lost her husband to skin cancer a few years ago. At the time, my aunt told my mother she couldn't understand how my mother could live without god in her life. Of course my mother didn't say anything, but she thought, "And how can you live life believing in magic?" I remember telling her that it doesn't matter what the reality of something is when it's something that's only talked about, that what matters is that people try to understand. If they can't understand other people, maybe they turn their understanding to the safely ineffable. Ever the diplomat, I.

I think what I meant to say is that flexibility is more important than the appearance of hypocrisy, that people do better when they come together to understand one another than when they band together to condemn someone else's behavior.

I think religion is something entirely constructed by humans, a construction I find natural, understandable, and even reasonable. I'm fairly convinced that the source of religion lies in song, more precisely in the exalted feeling of being part of a group singing or chanting. Lifting one's voice up in song, or hands up in drumming, or instruments up ensemble, whether on stage or in the pews, is a divine feeling, one I think is at the root of religious ecstasy. I think silent practice is another form of song.

When my mom died I lost the person to whom I told stuff like this; according to her wishes, usable tissue was harvested from her and then she was quietly cremated. Donations to the local food bank, no religious oversight.

Whatever lives on after people are dead isn't soul, it's memory. My mom continues to exert influence, to "exist," in my dad and my brother and my nephews and family and friends and, hell, everyone she mattered to, and to me. She's nowhere being judged, nowhere being found acceptable or wanting and being dispensed her reward; she's right here, and she's not leaving. She just isn't living anymore.

I wonder how I got here. I mean "here" in the sense of "this point in my response," not here as in, yeah, my parents had wild baby-making sex and electricity being what it is, the resulting soup turned into me.

I feel like I've sought after this understanding my whole life, and that as I grow older I care less about who god might be than I do about who my fellow humans might be; after all, it's what people do that matters, whether in the name of god or of themselves. I still read Torah portions and Psalms and the Bhagavad Gita because if there aren't answers there to my questions, there are answers there to others' questions, and others will use those answers to change their world and mine.

So god exists, I'm just not a believer.