I miss the sense of belonging and place that comes from rituals. While I don’t want to raise my child in the church, I’m trying to find ways to include ritual and ceremony in our lives. For example, I don’t want to pray before meals, so when we have a family meal I light a ceramic oil lamp to represent our time together.

I feel like, at their core, most religions boil down to two things, for most people:

• Giving you purpose/security/scapegoats (“I’m living a good life so I can go to heaven,” “the Lord has a plan/is watching over me,” “Satan/sinners/demons tempted me”)
• Dissuading you from inquisitive, critical thought (out of self-preservation, I’d imagine)

Personally, I prefer to define my own purpose, live a more “dynamic” lifestyle than is traditional, think critically, and question authority. Doesn’t make me “better” than religious folks, in fact they’re probably overall happier than I am. But I can’t imagine living that way, regardless of whether or not I believe in a magical sky Santa who can’t decide whether he loves us unconditionally or whether or not he’s actually omnipotent.

so etymologically speaking, faith doesnt come from any religious source. It’s just a word that’s meant trust, belief, loyalty.

I put my faith in myself and those who have proven they are worthy of me putting it in them as well… Faith in anyone is a risk, faith in anything is a risk. I don’t believe in a higher power, though I did once.

Pretty well, it lets me do things Jesus frowns upon and actually enjoy my life instead of being a spiritual slave to a human invention.

I’ve never envied those with faith. I feel freedom and have comfort in knowing that I am a good person with good morals without being threatened by some mysterious being that allows such disgusting hatred to exist in their creation.

Occasionally find myself envying people with faith and wonder how my life is different than theirs.

The thing is, there’s nothing stopping you from having faith. But do keep in mind that you want to have faith in something that is not shitty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong this one seems nice. Promotes meditation, physical exercise, as well as peaceful civil involvement in society helping others and doing good, which will help you reach spiritual enlightenment.

So while I personally like and prefer having a yawning void where some other people have faith, I generally recommend this religion to people who prefer having faith. If this one isn’t to your liking, perhaps research what other non-shitty options are there.

And as a general pro tip when going with the faith option: please, no fanaticism.

Edit: I’ve read some more on this, and this religion has some shitty postulations too. Well, keep looking out.

I think you’re actually looking for a different question to ask - “what do people with faith have that I currently do not?”

For me, personally, I found it to be a sense of purpose. In reality, life has no inherent meaning; we reproduce and hope to pass on our genes before we die. That is the one common denominator across all life on Earth. Faith tends to be an easy answer for giving purpose because you now live for God/Jesus/Yahweh/Allah/etc, and have guidelines for what one should strive to have in life. It’s an easy way to avoid having to face such a thing and I honestly don’t blame people for it - take away all the human elements of it and life is just hard, boring, and meaningless. Faith gives an answer for everything and provides a guide on how one should life live, for better or worse.

However, there’s an upside I don’t think people realize in realizing that life has no inherent meaning: you get to decide what is meaningful in your life. You get to choose the people who you want to care about in your life, what you want to aspire to be, what you think is worth living for… you get to find and create your own purpose, rather than an external influence telling you how to do so. It’s not easy doing that, and it will be a struggle… but if you’re struggling towards something more in life, whatever that may be… then that’s a beautiful thing to strive towards.