So the christian brand you prefer right now and that is a choice but the core belief in god you can can't remember being a choice?
The primary reason you prefer the christian form or brand of god belief is that the 4 gospels really speak to you?
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Believing in god is NOT a choice
- Thread starter Sententia
- Start date
So the christian brand you prefer right now and that is a choice but the core belief in god you can can't remember being a choice?
The primary reason you prefer the christian form or brand of god belief is that the 4 gospels really speak to you?
They made sense to me. Other faiths ideas made sense to me, too. But the gospels had words that I felt I could live by. Yes, the Baptists ideas (I did not have a church at first, I joined the Baptists much later) did slightly differ from what I gathered from my reading of the Bible- but that is because they rely more on Paul's epistles and I don't. I don't mind the Baptists but sometimes wonder if there is a better denomination for me (That is getting off-topic, though.)
I wasn't raised as a Christian. My mother was an atheist until I was a late teenager. I had to search for my faith from the time I was about 13. I became a Christian at 17.
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
My wife and I had a long conversation about God yesterday. She would dearly love to believe in God. But she cannot.
I have come to a place where the idea that there is no God makes no sense to me. I cannot rationalise this - it is just how I feel. Further, I do not believe I have any choice in the matter.
My wife's view is the inverse of mine. The idea of God is just nonsensical to her. She would love to have a belief but it just does not feel right to her. If she had a choice she would believe. But she cannot.
Just_me_Mike
Well-Known Member
If we are to really consider what the Bible says, it seems to indicate that NO ONE has a choice in either believing or not believing.
What you currently believe is what God allows you to believe, and what others believe is because of what God allows them to believe.
It isn't more simple then that, and no more complicated either. We can sit back and name call all day long, me to you, and you to me, but if God is in charge of everything than that would include your belief that none of it is real.
Of course there is no arguing this perspective because it is unprovable, but it could be true...
Just_me_Mike
Well-Known Member
We can take for example Pharoh during Moses's escape. God kept hardening Pharoh's heart so he would not choose God. Hardly fair, but it does indicate God is in control of what we believe. another good example is in the NT with Paul. One day he is against Christ and the next For Christ.
The silly notion that we are somehow in control of our beliefs is only an idea that mankind has come up with so they feel more significant then we really are.
The silly notion that we are somehow in control of our beliefs is only an idea that mankind has come up with so they feel more significant then we really are.
It would seem a belief in god and in the bible to be more of a silly notion to derive significance from. Ultimately your talking about vanity and the tone of that argument sounds familiar:
Bertrand Russell said:
Kedar Joshi said:
I myself have doubts about many aspects of free will. I think too often we could have been free or made a choice but were unable to due to prior programming or influence. But a belief in free will and individual responsibility would seem to be less vain then a belief in everything you do is god acting through or choosing for you. Yay though on the first day I had sought to create light so let it be on the 18th day I have deemed BalanceFx must now drink decaf.
P. J. O'Rourke said:
Last edited:
Alright, it's dissection time. Now, let's say there are two types of people: people who were raised religiously, and those who weren't. Now, if you take those who weren't raised religiously, who either don't believe in God or figure that the jury is out, because we can't really ever know whether or not there is a God until after the death of our mortal bodies, they can choose to make a leap of faith, and take up religion, or they can choose not to. Point 1 in favor of choice. Then we have a person who was raised religiously, but at some point begins to question their faith, and if it's right for them, or correct. They can choose be religious, in the religion they were raised in, change religions, or rid themselves of religion altogether. Point 2 for choice. Now, take those same religiously raised people, and consider that their faith is so strong that they never waiver, and never stop reading the Bible or attending services. While they certainly could choose something else, they won't, and so, in that religious upbringing, their choice to believe was stripped from them as a child. So in my eyes, that's 2 to 1 in favor of choice.
The word "belief" in context of Chrsitianity means not only the mere belief in God's existence but also following God's will as well. This type of belief does not involve our choice or not completely at least because it involves the Holy Spirit enabling someone to believe in this way. Now if you want to refer to "belief" outside of the Christian context that I just described, then that can be done by choice alone. That is just the mere belief in God's existence. I'd also add that it's possible to believe in something based on something as little as someone telling you to believe which is what some people in some religious faiths do anyways. It doesn't necessarily take rationality nor objective evidence in order to convince someone to believe.
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
I'm sorry you feel that way.
For me, it means that it feels as if I was born believing. I realize on a rational level that this is an inaccurate statement. On the other hand, the conviction that there is a God is something that is so much a part of who I am that I believe it would be pretty much impossible for me to stop believing.
That's true, but it was not difficult for me to cast of my belief in the tooth fairy, Santa and lephrechauns. I realized that they were part of a make-believe world that exists only in the mind. I realize that God falls into the same category for you. He doesn't to me. It is not something that can be explained. Consequently I rarely try, since trying generally just brings about ridicule and no one likes to be ridiculed.
I have tried to answer that question for you in my response above. I doubt very much I have been successful. What you need to realize is that there are atheists (I've seen some on this forum, though I can't remember for sure who they are) who have said that essentially the same thing, that not believing in God was not a choice for them. They have insisted that it was not really a case of weighing evidence (or lack of evidence as the case may be) that convinced them, but something inside of them they didn't seem to be able to argue with rationally. In fairness, you need to ask this same question of them.
Last edited:
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
I would agree with that statement 100%.
Ok but why is not a choice?
You are not born believing in god. You are not born with knowledge of the gods. Yet now... all growwed up... you believe in a god.
No allah, not Odin, krishna, ra or Zeus... but your god...
Why or really how is that not a choice?
idea
Question Everything
Once you have felt the power of the Holy Spirit resting on you, there is no belief - you know.
The choice comes here:
We are given what we are able to act upon - we are accountable for what we know - we would not be given knowledge that we cannot act upon that would damn us... To know more, put yourself in a place to be able to handle more. You will be given what you can handle.
idea
Question Everything
I don't believe in the trinity.
I'm not kidding. scared the **** out of me the first time (I am an LDS convert - aparently they are used to it). Like the 6th sense or one of those movies that has a big twist in it that changes everything you have seen so far - onlyit was not a movie, it is real. Soooo very real.
Yes, I understand that it sounds crazy - until you experience it. Then it is not so crazy anymore (and not the throw your hands in the air work yourself into a frenzy type of thing - not an evil spirit - the spirit of God)
the phrase "fear not" happens 87 times in the scripts... it seems I am not alone in feeling "fear"
changes the scripts a bit when you read them and can say yes - I know what they were feeling.God is real, it is all real. So very very real.
Last edited:
I don't believe in the trinity.
I'm not kidding. scared the **** out of me the first time (I am an LDS convert - aparently they are used to it). Like the 6th sense or one of those movies that has a big twist in it that changes everything you have seen so far - onlyit was not a movie, it is real. Soooo very real.
Yes, I understand that it sounds crazy - until you experience it. Then it is not so crazy anymore (and not the throw your hands in the air work yourself into a frenzy type of thing - not an evil spirit - the spirit of God)
the phrase "fear not" happens 87 times in the scripts... it seems I am not alone in feeling "fear"
God is real, it is all real. So very very real.
Wow your story has moved me and after 26 years of trying to find god and only a fraction of that denying him I must convert to LDS. Yawn.
Honestly... I read... nothing remotely interesting has happened to me and I know this sounds really interesting to me and now I have convinced myself even I believe it so now when I relate it to you then you will too... Because really... most peeps do. And now I gots something.
Dude... Here is life (From the Cradle to the Grave... actually really well done.): Last Day Dream on Vimeo
Get it? When the credits roll... That is it. Thats my belief. You have some crazy flatliners, planet having, god making crazy (IMHO) afterlife belief system and you feeling what you refer to as the holy spirit convinces me none. Your whole story is hinging on the fear you felt and how its common in the LDS. Therefore... no biggie... just happens...
Heres a mormon chick who lost her faith: YouTube - My rant, Growing up mormon in utah and other issues pt 1/3
Your holy spirit story somehow convinces you Mormonism as a whole from start to neverending eternal (logically) absent finish is true. How did you make that leap.
How did you know the holy spirit feeling you felt was the holy spirit god? And not Allah or Ra but Yhwh and not Catholic or Baptist Yhwh but LDS YHWH?
idea
Question Everything
from my little bio:
One Sunday, with nothing better to do, I tagged along with *** to church. **** was assigned to teach a class of 12 and 13 year olds, I did not know anyone else at the church, and not mature/brave enough to just go into a meeting on my own so I followed **** into his class, and sat down with the other little kids. A little embarrassing for an adult to be sitting in on a primary class, but I would have been embarrassed anywhere I went. The class was on the plan of salvation. **** drew on the board circles and lines representing the pre-existence, earth, prison/paradise, and the celestial/telestial/terrestrial glories. As I sat looking at the chalkboard the Holy Ghost bore a powerful witness to me that what I was looking at was true – it was what Budhists would call “enlightenment” my mind was literally opened so that for a few powerful moments I knew what I was looking at was true – and what was more, I became aware of a power in the room that was above and beyond what my eyes were telling me was there. It was the moment that changed everything – where religion went from people trying to be goodie-two-shoes stuck-up self-righteous prideful control freaks trying to manipulate me and force me into guilt trips – sorry – but that had become my viewpoint of Christian churches – Religion became real, so real it hurt. Of course knowing something is real, and understanding where you fit into the big picture are two very different things. ... A cruel trick to show someone Heaven, and then show them themselves.
I have posted this before, my first experience. I do not know what others have experienced, I can only know what I have, as can anyone. There are many many people who have had experiences like this. You can either start down the long road to finding something more in life, or stay where you are. It is your choice.
One Sunday, with nothing better to do, I tagged along with *** to church. **** was assigned to teach a class of 12 and 13 year olds, I did not know anyone else at the church, and not mature/brave enough to just go into a meeting on my own so I followed **** into his class, and sat down with the other little kids. A little embarrassing for an adult to be sitting in on a primary class, but I would have been embarrassed anywhere I went. The class was on the plan of salvation. **** drew on the board circles and lines representing the pre-existence, earth, prison/paradise, and the celestial/telestial/terrestrial glories. As I sat looking at the chalkboard the Holy Ghost bore a powerful witness to me that what I was looking at was true – it was what Budhists would call “enlightenment” my mind was literally opened so that for a few powerful moments I knew what I was looking at was true – and what was more, I became aware of a power in the room that was above and beyond what my eyes were telling me was there. It was the moment that changed everything – where religion went from people trying to be goodie-two-shoes stuck-up self-righteous prideful control freaks trying to manipulate me and force me into guilt trips – sorry – but that had become my viewpoint of Christian churches – Religion became real, so real it hurt. Of course knowing something is real, and understanding where you fit into the big picture are two very different things. ... A cruel trick to show someone Heaven, and then show them themselves.
I have posted this before, my first experience. I do not know what others have experienced, I can only know what I have, as can anyone. There are many many people who have had experiences like this. You can either start down the long road to finding something more in life, or stay where you are. It is your choice.
Smoke
Done here.
I never chose to believe in god. I was taught that there was a god, and I was taught that we could contact or commune with god through prayer, and I interpreted every numinous experience and every instance of insight in the light of that communion.
As my Christianity matured, and as I better internalized Orthodox mystical theology, I came to understand that what I believed about god was metaphorical and provisional, and did not express any objective reality about god. It was, of course, my choice to be Orthodox and my choice to immerse myself in Orthodox teachings, but this deepening understand also didn't feel like a choice, but more like a dawning realization.
I chose to leave the Church for moral reasons having nothing to do with its dogma or mystical theology. (However, some things that are not matters of dogma in the Orthodox Church are matters of dogma in the Western churches, so I could not have said that if I had been leaving, say, Catholicism.) Leaving the Church was a painful and traumatic decision, but it was also a liberating decision. I came to believe that since the way I understood god was metaphorical and provisional, there was no particular need to hold to that particular metaphor. Actually, I had begun to think so before I left the Church, but before I left I also had no particular reason to go beyond that metaphor. Again, there was choice involved, but my evolving way of understanding things didn't feel like a choice.
As I considered other possible outlets for my religious impulse, I didn't see any point in affiliating with another dogmatic religion or learning a new metaphor. Also, I had come to see myself as a member of a people. A religion is not just an intellectual proposition, but a community, and the community I belonged to was the one the Greeks call the Romaioi and the Arabs call the Rum Urthudux. Having made myself an exile from my community, I could choose, as it were, another place of residence and another nationality, but I was no longer at a point in my life when I could choose a new identity. A boy or a young man can leave home and become a Frenchman; a man in middle age can go to live in France and even take up French nationality, but he can't really become a Frenchman.
In my unaffiliated state, I had the opportunity to observe what I really believed without any pressure to accept any particular framework of belief, and I really that the god metaphor was no longer useful, and no longer had any meaning to me. Once apart from my community, I realized I didn't believe in god.
That's a simplified version of what happened, but everything that happened in my own life leads me to think that while we may not choose to believe or not to believe, we do make choices that make any belief or disbelief possible. We choose to be open, to inquire, to continue our pilgrimage, or we choose to be closed, to accept, to sojourn where we find ourselves. Those kinds of choices so influence our worldview and the way we think about god, that our beliefs about god don't seem like choices at all. But I suppose that ultimately they do or at least can result from our other choices.
As an aside, I should note that while my particular pilgrimage has taken me through several religious traditions, there are people who make just as far-ranging a pilgrimage but do it within a single tradition, or who -- early on -- find a tradition that continues to allow them the range they need. I don't think that's necessarily any more unhealthy, psychologically, than my own experience. I do think it's unhealthy to stop changing and growing, and I do think that in that respect, religious dogma is unhealthy and even destructive. My grandmother found in her own back yard the kind of wonder and depth of experience that I can only find by traveling. Both are good. It's when you say to your own that if they leave the back yard they are no longer of you, that problems and conflicts arise.
As my Christianity matured, and as I better internalized Orthodox mystical theology, I came to understand that what I believed about god was metaphorical and provisional, and did not express any objective reality about god. It was, of course, my choice to be Orthodox and my choice to immerse myself in Orthodox teachings, but this deepening understand also didn't feel like a choice, but more like a dawning realization.
I chose to leave the Church for moral reasons having nothing to do with its dogma or mystical theology. (However, some things that are not matters of dogma in the Orthodox Church are matters of dogma in the Western churches, so I could not have said that if I had been leaving, say, Catholicism.) Leaving the Church was a painful and traumatic decision, but it was also a liberating decision. I came to believe that since the way I understood god was metaphorical and provisional, there was no particular need to hold to that particular metaphor. Actually, I had begun to think so before I left the Church, but before I left I also had no particular reason to go beyond that metaphor. Again, there was choice involved, but my evolving way of understanding things didn't feel like a choice.
As I considered other possible outlets for my religious impulse, I didn't see any point in affiliating with another dogmatic religion or learning a new metaphor. Also, I had come to see myself as a member of a people. A religion is not just an intellectual proposition, but a community, and the community I belonged to was the one the Greeks call the Romaioi and the Arabs call the Rum Urthudux. Having made myself an exile from my community, I could choose, as it were, another place of residence and another nationality, but I was no longer at a point in my life when I could choose a new identity. A boy or a young man can leave home and become a Frenchman; a man in middle age can go to live in France and even take up French nationality, but he can't really become a Frenchman.
In my unaffiliated state, I had the opportunity to observe what I really believed without any pressure to accept any particular framework of belief, and I really that the god metaphor was no longer useful, and no longer had any meaning to me. Once apart from my community, I realized I didn't believe in god.
That's a simplified version of what happened, but everything that happened in my own life leads me to think that while we may not choose to believe or not to believe, we do make choices that make any belief or disbelief possible. We choose to be open, to inquire, to continue our pilgrimage, or we choose to be closed, to accept, to sojourn where we find ourselves. Those kinds of choices so influence our worldview and the way we think about god, that our beliefs about god don't seem like choices at all. But I suppose that ultimately they do or at least can result from our other choices.
As an aside, I should note that while my particular pilgrimage has taken me through several religious traditions, there are people who make just as far-ranging a pilgrimage but do it within a single tradition, or who -- early on -- find a tradition that continues to allow them the range they need. I don't think that's necessarily any more unhealthy, psychologically, than my own experience. I do think it's unhealthy to stop changing and growing, and I do think that in that respect, religious dogma is unhealthy and even destructive. My grandmother found in her own back yard the kind of wonder and depth of experience that I can only find by traveling. Both are good. It's when you say to your own that if they leave the back yard they are no longer of you, that problems and conflicts arise.