Have Your Beliefs Evolved Over Time?

[Mock Turtle]

My parents were not particularly religious (Christianity being the norm here) - no praying before dinner for example or church-going of a Sunday (too busy) - such that the only religion I came into contact with was via school or whilst at the Scouts. At the end of primary school, I suspected religions had a problem because of the sheer number of different religions. Hence, when I looked into them a bit later - being more inclined to philosophy - I couldn't really believe anything from the textual material from the past - just not reliable enough as any sort of evidence.

The conflicting claims hardly helped, and the conflict over the years between all the various religions. Nothing has changed over about six decades to make me change this view and I have never had any sort of spiritual experience that might incline me to change in any way. None of my friends appear to have had any spiritual experiences either. Most are very intelligent and will have looked into religions no doubt just as I did. I have looked at most of the main religious texts and the various claims made. Not impressed - which undoubtedly is why many do become believers - they are impressed by what religions have to say.

 

[Frater Sisyphus]

I was a Christian as a kid, Atheist in my teens, and as an adult; a syncretic what'ja'call'it.

But yes, beliefs constantly evolve, some on a day-to-day basis. I am a constant skeptic and would like to keep it that way. As a syncretic (it seems to have settled between Thelema, Hinduism, Hermeticism and Discordianism at the moment) I naturally don't follow a religion on it's own and tend to find some value in all religions.

- and at the same time, I do find that all religions to varying degrees have their distractions too.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

That seems very sad. That you consider your past self as a wanker.

I respect every part of myself, as being and doing exactly as I was designed to do by my DNA and the conscience that developed through it in it's time.

I believed in the "War on Christmas," thought that no more school-lead prayer was an attack against god, fully supported the Religious Right, and thought Creationism rather than evolution should be taught in schools. I pretty much was a wanker - very strongly anti-LBGT, a streak of misogyny and rigid gender expectations, I even wrote in my freshman biology class that "evolution is a tool of Satan."

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Do you still believe what you were raised as a child to believe

.

Ive always been an atheist. I wasnt raissd that way, just my parents didnt cafe about religion.

If so, what captivated you about your beliefs and led you to stay the course?

If not, what were you told to believe (if anything) and what led you astray?

Did you go directly from what you were told to believe to what you currently believe or was there a process? If there was a process, please feel free to share.

Do you anticipate any further changes to your belief structure or are you locked in for the long haul? Why?

I feel we all grow. If we say we are stuck in our beliefs, we're taking the unknown in life for granted. We may stick to our ssme foundations but not beliefs.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I believed in the "War on Christmas," thought that no more school-lead prayer was an attack against god, fully supported the Religious Right, and thought Creationism rather than evolution should be taught in schools. I pretty much was a wanker - very strongly anti-LBGT, a streak of misogyny and rigid gender expectations, I even wrote in my freshman biology class that "evolution is a tool of Satan."

It's interesting that you could dig out of that type of thinking when many can't.

 

[trablano]

I was raised an atheist by my father and remained that until I was about 18. Then I explored angels and Jesus on a basis of free thought. Then I became a christian for about 12 years. I find myself returning to angelology and free (poly-)theism now. I am a syncretic, worshiping what I perceive as God through christian and hindu and hellenic means. Sometimes I am unstable and return to biblical christianity, only to leave it again later. I suppose at my core I am a God lover because I never want to leave the One who loves me. But I am also having a duty to the truth and had religious experiences with Zeus and Krishna, so I am relying on the christian God respecting the truth too because everything else would be entirely irrational. Of course, that view cannot coexist with the standard christian view as inspired by the bible. I read the book but am no slave to it and do not accept literally everything just because it's in it. I freely admit that I pick and choose. I really need God for my life and hope for a positive afterlife for all of us. That's also the primary motivation for my religious life.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

It's interesting that you could dig out of that type of thinking when many can't.

It was by no means easy. I think one of the things that helped me, ironically, was being as I gained exposure away from such a sheltered and insulated world view going back to public school, I quickly realized the world isn't nearly as harshly against Christians as the Evangelical crowd is known for believing. That probably made it much easier for me to accept new information as it was presented. In freshman biology I was vehemently against the idea of evolution, but by my sophomore year in world history I went from shocked and perturbed over seeing the rise of Christianity as a list of reasons that caused the Roman Empire to fall to understanding why Christianity was on that list and not having any problems with it. And while all this internal conflicts and turmoils going on, my dog who was pretty much all I had on this Earth was killed. Confused and longing for answers, I began to actually read the Bible, and I didn't like what I was reading. Though I tried and tried to hold onto faith, as it was the only thing I had known, I reached a point where all I could do was leave it all behind and move on.

 

[janesix]

Sounds a bit like myself.

What was your experience?

 

[dfnj]

Do you still believe what you were raised as a child to believe?

If so, what captivated you about your beliefs and led you to stay the course?

If not, what were you told to believe (if anything) and what led you astray?

Did you go directly from what you were told to believe to what you currently believe or was there a process? If there was a process, please feel free to share.

Do you anticipate any further changes to your belief structure or are you locked in for the long haul? Why?

Most importantly, is @Sunstone correct in his assessment of my fashion sense or are you envious of my wardrobe?

In my 20s I was a staunch atheist. I started arguing on USENET in the Christianity vs Atheism forum. But I got bored arguing the atheists position. It's just too easy and simple to argue. So for fun I decided to try to argue the theist position. Arguing the theist position is much more challenging! After about 10 years of trying to argue the theists position a funny thing happened. I started to believe my own arguments! Now I am not so sure I would consider myself an atheist although I can appreciate the atheist position.

 

[RedDragon94]

Do you still believe what you were raised as a child to believe?

I believe the same things, just not in the same way.

Did you go directly from what you were told to believe to what you currently believe or was there a process? If there was a process, please feel free to share.

The process went something like believe --> doubt--> reject--> repent--> reaffirm.

Do you anticipate any further changes to your belief structure or are you locked in for the long haul? Why?

There's always something new to learn.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Do you still believe what you were raised as a child to believe?

If so, what captivated you about your beliefs and led you to stay the course?

If not, what were you told to believe (if anything) and what led you astray?

Did you go directly from what you were told to believe to what you currently believe or was there a process? If there was a process, please feel free to share.

Do you anticipate any further changes to your belief structure or are you locked in for the long haul? Why?

Most importantly, is @Sunstone correct in his assessment of my fashion sense or are you envious of my wardrobe?

I was raised a staunch atheist also & remained so for several decades.

There were many factors, but just turning my skeptical eye on my own beliefs for once opened up some cracks. that took a long time because I had long insisted atheism was simply 'a lack of belief' (of other beliefs) which makes your own very difficult to question

 

[SalixIncendium]

My beliefs have not evolved. Some have become more clarified, but that's about it.

...I don't know why this is.

Captivating... Which have become more appealing and why?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

In my 20s I was a staunch atheist. I started arguing on USENET in the Christianity vs Atheism forum. But I got bored arguing the atheists position. It's just too easy and simple to argue. So for fun I decided to try to argue the theist position. Arguing the theist position is much more challenging! After about 10 years of trying to argue the theists position a funny thing happened. I started to believe my own arguments! Now I am not so sure I would consider myself an atheist although I can appreciate the atheist position.

That's interesting, thanks for sharing that! - I had something of a similar experience, I was very much an atheist, but came to see a case for underlying information driving evolution, as it did physical reality, (through working in IT) I tried to argue this as an atheist, but in trying to defend against the backlash, found myself using many similar arguments to 'those crazy religious people' - and just started seeing the same evidence for a lot of other big questions from a new perspective.

Well, all I can prove now is that my opinion is totally unreliable !

 

[Cooky]

Captivating... Which have become more appealing and why?

What always seems most appealing to me is the love expressed through the crucifixion... It's breathtakingly kind for God to have assumed human form, solely for helping us achieve eternal salvation in his friendship.

...That's love. And it's the only reason Jesus existed on earth.

 

[Vinayaka]

Do you still believe what you were raised as a child to believe?

Raised agnostic leaning to atheism, discovered 'other paradigms' at around age 15, but found that aligned with Hinduism at about age 20. Nataraja found me.

So yeah, I switched rather dramatically.

 

[dfnj]

That's interesting, thanks for sharing that! - I had something of a similar experience, I was very much an atheist, but came to see a case for underlying information driving evolution, as it did physical reality, (through working in IT) I tried to argue this as an atheist, but in trying to defend against the backlash, found myself using many similar arguments to 'those crazy religious people' - and just started seeing the same evidence for a lot of other big questions from a new perspective.

Well, all I can prove now is that my opinion is totally unreliable !

It's not that our opinions are unreliable. I think each of us has a system of thought creating our judgments of good and bad. This system is based on a set of axioms accepted as being true without any proof. Certain statements like "Extraterrestrials exist" change your language. I once went to a night time space shuttle launch and met a couple of guys from Australia who just came from Area 51. These two guys believed in extraterrestrials to the core of their beings. When you talk with someone like this their language is amazing. After a while you think "extraterrestrials must be real.". But again, these two guys just have a set of axioms, a set of absolute truths, that unless you accept them as absolute truths, then you will find what they say as "insane". I interpolated this experience to conclude everyone has a set of absolute truths which if you do not share them exactly people will interpret things you say as "insane" if they contradict their closely held esteemed axioms.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Do you still believe what you were raised as a child to believe?

If so, what captivated you about your beliefs and led you to stay the course?

If not, what were you told to believe (if anything) and what led you astray?

Did you go directly from what you were told to believe to what you currently believe or was there a process? If there was a process, please feel free to share.

Do you anticipate any further changes to your belief structure or are you locked in for the long haul? Why?

Most importantly, is @Sunstone correct in his assessment of my fashion sense or are you envious of my wardrobe?

I was raised a hard-core fundamentalist Christian (homeschooling, anti-evolution propaganda and all), but started questioning my beliefs in my early teens and had become agnostic by late teens. Two primary things that led me away were actually studying the bible in depth and realizing it contains errors (particularly failed prophecies about Jesus' return), as well as realizing the tremendous explanatory power of natural selection as a driving force of evolution. Realizing that no deity is necessary to explain the diversity and complexity of life forms on earth, I realized it's also plausible that no deity is necessary to explain the universe, particularly since the fundamental particles are much simpler than life forms. Additionally, it's interesting to note how quickly people of one religion dismiss the extraordinary claims (like miracles, for example) found in all other religions as being nonsense, yet cling to the miracle claims of their own religion and try to defend them. This is extreme bias and intellectual dishonesty.

 

[outlawState]

Do you still believe what you were raised as a child to believe?

I wasn't raised to believe in anything, although I suppose "cultural Christianity" was the norm for my childhood.

If so, what captivated you about your beliefs and led you to stay the course?

I eventually developed a sense I was making / had made lots of wrong decisions, so I turned to religion whilst at university to make the right ones. It did not actually help much at first. In fact it had the opposite effect as I was led into a legalistic cult.

If not, what were you told to believe (if anything) and what led you astray?

Did you go directly from what you were told to believe to what you currently believe or was there a process? If there was a process, please feel free to share.

I was told to believe in Jesus, but was expected to believe in man (i.e. religious leaders, priests, cultic leaders etc). It took a while before I realized that so-called religious leaders were not necessarily trustworthy. From my reading of the bible I realized that there were significant discrepancies between modern Christianity and biblical norms, and that many so termed Christians were morons.

Do you anticipate any further changes to your belief structure or are you locked in for the long haul? Why?

Beliefs mutate around a central core of truth. Like spiraling into a black hole, you spiral ever inwards, flinging off the dross that accompanies religion but is really no part of it.

 

[Earthling]

Do you still believe what you were raised as a child to believe?

No. I wasn't really raised to believe anything. My dad was strictly atheist, though he loved gospel music and my mom was someone who had been dragged from one Christian congregation to the other and thought they were hypocrites. I pretty much agreed with them but wasn't "raised to believe" as such. We weren't marching in any "atheist parades." We would have thought to do so would be like joining a church.

If not, what were you told to believe (if anything) and what led you astray?

When I was very young my mom was visited by Jehovah's Witnesses, she thought they were different than most religious so she politely took their literature and stuck it in the back of a closet. I was a voracious reader and would dig the stuff out and read it. I had one of their Bibles for years but never got around to reading it until I was 27. Once I did I became a believer.

Did you go directly from what you were told to believe to what you currently believe or was there a process? If there was a process, please feel free to share.

I went directly in belief but in action took a few . . . really sad dark years.

Do you anticipate any further changes to your belief structure or are you locked in for the long haul? Why?

I hope to keep on learning and growing in accurate knowledge. I hope I get better at it. If, though, I should discover somehow that it isn't true, and I investigate carefully to make sure and confirm that untruth, I would drop it in a minute.

Most importantly, is @Sunstone correct in his assessment of my fashion sense or are you envious of my wardrobe?

That's a difficult question. If you are truly in nature a Hermit, which I'm, it would make sense that @Sunstone might be critical of your wardrobe in which case I would certainly relate to, though not necessarily be envious of.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

It's not that our opinions are unreliable. I think each of us has a system of thought creating our judgments of good and bad. This system is based on a set of axioms accepted as being true without any proof. Certain statements like "Extraterrestrials exist" change your language. I once went to a night time space shuttle launch and met a couple of guys from Australia who just came from Area 51. These two guys believed in extraterrestrials to the core of their beings. When you talk with someone like this their language is amazing. After a while you think "extraterrestrials must be real.". But again, these two guys just have a set of axioms, a set of absolute truths, that unless you accept them as absolute truths, then you will find what they say as "insane". I interpolated this experience to conclude everyone has a set of absolute truths which if you do not share them exactly people will interpret things you say as "insane" if they contradict their closely held esteemed axioms.

I'm envious that you got to see a shuttle launch, I always really wanted to and missed the opportunity.

I take your point, though for me, atheism certainly was an 'absolute truth' I was utterly convinced- like looking at an optical illusion and measuring it, I think a change of perspective CAN alter our absolute truths, but easier said than done of course!