People sometimes ask me if I’m religious. There’s an easy dodge to that one: “I think I’m more spiritual than religious.” This is a good answer because people don’t usually want that explained to them, since it might cause them to have to argue about metaphysics., and not their closely-held religious beliefs..
Also, people occasionally ask the question in a different way: “Do you believe in a higher power?” This does fit in better with my overall belief that all of creation is “God” and thus we are all part of the godhead/godhood/whatever. And I believe in reincarnation since this existence is likely a closed system and so everything recycles—including the structure of the universe—Big Bang, decay into entropy, Big Collapse, and then it all starts over again (which could account for deja vu).
Briefly put, I believe in an Imminent, not a Transcendent God.
In any case I certainly do not believe in an old guy in a long white beard sitting in a cloud and shooting doves down to earth from the palm of his hand like some peaceful Spiderman. This was a familiar image we Catholic schoolchildren were given; I even remember drawing this (well, a disembodied glowing hand sending out a dove/the Holy Spirit, anyway). Oddly, I never made a connection between this image of God the Father and Thing of the Addams Family.
My belief system evolved over of a long time spent researching comparative religions, following in the footsteps of Sir James Fraser, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and others. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I’ve had a chance to make up my own mind about what I believe, not the stuff invented and taught to me by the Catholic Church in my early, formative, and gullible years.
MUSOFYR 