I keep trying to believe in god, but I just can't anymore.

[JeremK]

I deconverted from Catholicism because I stopped believing in the supernatural, realized that the Bible was fallible, and discovered that I was an LGBT person. However, since my deconversion, I've had lots of internal conflict over religion. It has significantly decreased lately, but it's still there to an extent.

For the past few weeks, I've continually shifted between atheism and Christianity. Additionally, I've been reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins at the same time to remain truly open-minded. For me, Islam is now out of the equation because I can't get over the more violent verses in the Quran and find that the concept of abrogation falsifies the entire religion for me.

I'm kind of an angry person, and my wrath has brought me two injuries lately. One left a scar on my left hand's index finger, and the other fractured my wrist. Since then, I've gotten a lot calmer and less angry, but I'm wondering whether or not that's some kind of "sign" from God telling me to come back to him.

When I ask for the holy spirit to come to me, I definitely feel some kind of positive presence, but it could definitely be a placebo. However, no matter what, I just can't get over the contradictions in the Bible, and I disagree with its views on suicide, abortion, gender roles, and LGBT action. I also don't want to be delusional. What should I do?

 

[JeremK]

I've also started looking at http://www.reasonablefaith.org, and while a lot of what it says makes sense to me, I fear that scripture is still impossible for me to accept. For example, according to its page on God's existence, it makes sense for God to exist for the following five reasons:

1. God makes sense of the origin of the universe.

2. God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.

3. God makes sense of objective moral values in the world.

4. God makes sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

5. God can be immediately known and experienced.

I can agree with points 1, 2, 3, and 5, but I don't know if I can agree with the fourth. :/

 

[metis]

Or you can take my position, although I don't claim it to be correct: Whatever caused this universe/multiverse I call "God" and then pretty much just leave it at that. I then treat all scriptures as allegory, learn the morals and values taught within them, and use that which seems to make sense and can be applied to today.

Works for me at least.

 

[PackJason]

The God Delusion is a good read. If you enjoyed it, I highly recommend God is Not Great by the late great Christopher Hitchens.

Since you are LGBT, it will sort of narrow the religions that will be accepting of you. I think the Unitarians would welcome you, but I'd stay away from the Catholics and Baptists if religion is the route you want to go.

I personally see no need for religion. I choose to be a good person for goodness' sake alone.

 

[allfoak]

When I ask for the holy spirit to come to me, I definitely feel some kind of positive presence, but it could definitely be a placebo. However, no matter what, I just can't get over the contradictions in the Bible, and I disagree with its views on suicide, abortion, gender roles, and LGBT action. I also don't want to be delusional. What should I do?

God does not want anyone to be unhappy.
I would say go after the positive feeling.

You are not delusional, you want to be happy.
It is so sad to think that people are afraid they are delusional because of a belief in God.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

You can believe in a Supreme Being without aligning yourself to any particular religion, especially the Abrahamic ones. If believing in God makes you happy, why not just leave it at that without bringing a bunch of baggage into it.

 

[Desert Snake]

I don't think this is necessarily a problem. It's only a problem if you lose all your faith. Clearly, you aren't there yet.

The part you seem to be having trouble with, is the theism, /right?. That is going to affect the entire religious paradigm. I don't think you can be an ''atheist'' Xian, it won't work. What exactly are you struggling with, as afar as doctrine? You can't drop the entire Bible, either; that will leave you with essentially no faith.

 

[Desert Snake]

I've also started looking at http://www.reasonablefaith.org, and while a lot of what it says makes sense to me, I fear that scripture is still impossible for me to accept. For example, according to its page on God's existence, it makes sense for God to exist for the following five reasons:

1. God makes sense of the origin of the universe.

2. God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.

3. God makes sense of objective moral values in the world.

4. God makes sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

5. God can be immediately known and experienced.

I can agree with points 1, 2, 3, and 5, but I don't know if I can agree with the fourth. :/

Morality is subjective, btw. I think you have more of a problem with that, than the resurrection.

 

[bobhikes]

I deconverted from Catholicism because I stopped believing in the supernatural, realized that the Bible was fallible, and discovered that I was an LGBT person. However, since my deconversion, I've had lots of internal conflict over religion. It has significantly decreased lately, but it's still there to an extent.

For the past few weeks, I've continually shifted between atheism and Christianity. Additionally, I've been reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins at the same time to remain truly open-minded. For me, Islam is now out of the equation because I can't get over the more violent verses in the Quran and find that the concept of abrogation falsifies the entire religion for me.

I'm kind of an angry person, and my wrath has brought me two injuries lately. One left a scar on my left hand's index finger, and the other fractured my wrist. Since then, I've gotten a lot calmer and less angry, but I'm wondering whether or not that's some kind of "sign" from God telling me to come back to him.

When I ask for the holy spirit to come to me, I definitely feel some kind of positive presence, but it could definitely be a placebo. However, no matter what, I just can't get over the contradictions in the Bible, and I disagree with its views on suicide, abortion, gender roles, and LGBT action. I also don't want to be delusional. What should I do?

My advise, take some time to relax. Learn about some other religions. If you can visit a few other religions. Take a break again. Then decide, at that point you could use the RF to fine tune your decision. Right now you seem to be in panic mode.

 

[First Baseman]

I recommend reading The Resurrection Factor by Josh McDowell. If the resurrection is real Christ is real and Christianity is real. If the resurrection did not happen then it isn't real.

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

The God Delusion is a good read. If you enjoyed it, I highly recommend The God Delusion by the late great Christopher Hitchens.

The God Delusion was written by Richard Dawkins, not Christopher Hitchens.

 

[PackJason]

The God Delusion was written by Richard Dawkins, not Christopher Hitchens.

Ooops. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. I have edited my post.

 

[illykitty]

Well, since you have UU under religion, I suppose that's a good step. Try to find your own way, your spirituality (sorry if this word makes others feel icky/shudder but I am not afraid of using it). That doesn't need to involve theism, books, doctrine, etc. Explore ideas, meditate, find what inspires you... It's fine to be an atheist or agnostic. You can still have a sense of awe and wonder at things greater than you. There's no reason to feel like one has to be in one of the religions of the world or to agree with everything. But only you can decide and realise what is suitable for yourself. Do some searching, ask yourself, what do you want with all of this?

 

[DawudTalut]

........For me, Islam is now out of the equation because I can't get over the more violent verses in the Quran and find that the concept of abrogation falsifies the entire religion for me.

...........What should I do?

1=Previous Books leaned either to hard teaching or very soft teaching, Quran brought balance. War verses does not mean to fight and kill all of non-Muslims.

There are many verses praising pious people of previous religions. Quran is the final and perfect message. But it acknowledges pious people of other previous religions too. These are the ones to whom true message of Islam is not properly reached.

You may read details about war related verses at
http://www.alislam.org/quran/tafseer/guide.htm?region=E1


2=Please note, there is no abrogation in Holy Quran

Image

Translation : [2:107] Whatever Sign We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than that or the like thereof. Dost thou not know that Allah has the power to do all that He wills?


The fourth word from right to left is:
اية = This word and its plural has been used hundreds of time in Holy Quran in various senses. Generally it is translated as 'Sign'. Discussion and uses in Quran can be found from

pages 46-48 @ https://www.alislam.org/quran/dictionary/dictionary_quran.pdf

More for your enlightenment: http://www.alislam.org/egazette/upd...-is-composed-of-verses-cancelling-each-other/

 

[George-ananda]

What should I do?

I see it as you are too much looking at it as Christianity/Bible versus Atheism and the answer is probably 'none of the above'. I see you listed Unitarian Universalism as your religion which sounds like a good idea. Many people today find comfort in a more modern (and often more eastern) understanding of God and the meaning of life. It can't hurt to expand the boundaries of your search for peace and truth. Best wishes.

 

[Riverwolf]

What should I do?

Consider that there's dozens of alternatives besides monotheism and atheism.

 

[Kueid]

What should I do?

Be yourself and stop trying to fit.

 

[Laika]

@JeremK

I would suggest looking into Deism, Natural Theology (and maybe Old-Earth Creationism) as this will give you a way to believe in a deity without necessarily attributing authority to scripture. Deism isn't very common nowdays but was popular during the Enlightenment among intellectuals such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine (who wrote a book on the subject The Age of Reason which inspired many other people to follow Deism). What this does is at least begin a seperation of your own beliefs from any particular commitment to the authority of scripture and gives you space to experiment with new ideas. You can still believe in a god without necessarily having to believe in the Quran or the Bible. Some people may call this a soft option, but personally I think it is extremely good intellectual exercise and makes a compelling case that you can make a rational argument for gods existence. As you've mentioned C.S.Lewis, I will only breifly mention Christian Atheism and Jesusism as another possible approach of reconciling the loss of faith with making the decision to keep certain aspects of it.

Another option is looking into Ludwig Fuerebach's The Essence of Christianity which is a materialist and atheist view of religion. [The Full Text is avaliable here, but I confess to not having read it so it's up to you.] The latter is the source for the idea that man created god, and that god is ultimately a projection of man's qualitites. This represents a different view of atheism from the one you will find reading Dawkins and Hitchens, (which is more like David Hume's Scepticism of Miracles: "extra ordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence"). it was later used by thinkers such as Karl Marx, Fredrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. The reason I suggest this, is that whilst the outcomes of such forms of atheism are often much more anti-theist or anti-religious, they do largely accepted there is a "reason" behind religious belief and face up to the possibility of nihilism as a response to the loss of religious belief. It therefore provides sort of a window into finding ways to live without god.

I hope you'll forgive me, but the quote by Marx about religion being the "opium of the people" is worth quoting in full as it is far more sympathetic to religious belief than it would intially appear. My advice is essentially to not treat religion as a delusion but be forgiving of yourself- you are not defective for being religious because religion does represent a very "human" part of our lives and how we cope with the world. The point is that you haven't lost faith in god, but discovered that you can have faith in yourself. treating religion as a delusion gets in the way from recognising that there are things in this world which require answers to live by, and conviction to respond to those situations where our answers are either unsatisfactory or uncertian. the world can be cruel and unfair and there is no shame in wanting it to be otherwise or wanting some "higher power" to protect us and make it just. In recognising that no such power exists we instead have to have the courage to try to make ourselves and, in our small way, the world a little better for us being in it. that is hard, but can also be very fulfilling when you see the results start to add up.

Spoiler: Marx Quote

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.


Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

 

[morphesium]

I deconverted from Catholicism because I stopped believing in the supernatural, realized that the Bible was fallible, and discovered that I was an LGBT person. However, since my deconversion, I've had lots of internal conflict over religion. It has significantly decreased lately, but it's still there to an extent.

Religious thoughts can easily get into our subconscious mind and it will rule you. It is the reason why it is hard to quit ones religion. It is the reason why other religion won't make sense. All these religions are man made and they exploit human kinds weakness. Religion is a hindrance to scientific progress and cripple one morally.
No religion is from God and thats why it contain a lot of faults. No one is born with an innate knowledge or any religion. If God exists, it is our rational thinking power that every person is born with that is truly God sent and it is against every religion.

“All thinking men are atheists.” -Ernest Hemingway

If God exists why would god sent a prophet and then another prophet and so on and the followers of one never accepts the later prophets - only to make people fight over this. God can simply raise specific potentials in our brain here and there and the message will be conveyed. (perhaps God is doing this through our morale).

When I ask for the holy spirit to come to me, I definitely feel some kind of positive presence, but it could definitely be a placebo.

Exactly. At times of stress, there is a need to be pacified. For the believer, religious thoughts have a huge pacifying effect - but the truth is it is much sinister that it can cripple ones rational thinking power ultimately.

[/QUOTE]
However, no matter what, I just can't get over the contradictions in the Bible, and I disagree with its views on suicide, abortion, gender roles, and LGBT action. I also don't want to be delusional. What should I do?[/QUOTE]
It is possible that your views on Suicide, abortion, gender roles and LGBT are more right than that of religions. You may later disagree/ or reaffirm with your present opnion as you gain more knowledge/morale. But then thats how you can be yourself and you are valuable much more than your religion.

I've also started looking at http://www.reasonablefaith.org, and while a lot of what it says makes sense to me, I fear that scripture is still impossible for me to accept. For example, according to its page on God's existence, it makes sense for God to exist for the following five reasons:

1. God makes sense of the origin of the universe.

2. God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.

3. God makes sense of objective moral values in the world.

4. God makes sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

5. God can be immediately known and experienced.

I can agree with points 1, 2, 3, and 5, but I don't know if I can agree with the fourth. :/

I am sorry, I can't agree with any of these.

For me Evolution makes much more sense. Beginning with a simple thing and as time progress, due to natural conditions,things get complicated rather than beginning with a very complicated and intelligent thing (God). (1 and 2)

Why can't God instill much more morale in each and every one of us. Even simple chemicals can make one lesser violent or more aggressive. (3).

Skipping 4.​

(If god exist) - I would rather say, God cannot be immediately known and experienced. If God's intention is to show his presence, then we all would have an innate knowledge of God and we would be born with it. it is not the case however. So if its God intention to hide from us, are we more intelligent than God himself to detect him. One can say you have search for God to find God - but then religion demands that one should not use ones intellect to find the answer which other wise would question the truthfulness of the religion itself.

 

[Acim]

I deconverted from Catholicism because I stopped believing in the supernatural, realized that the Bible was fallible, and discovered that I was an LGBT person. However, since my deconversion, I've had lots of internal conflict over religion. It has significantly decreased lately, but it's still there to an extent.

For the past few weeks, I've continually shifted between atheism and Christianity. Additionally, I've been reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins at the same time to remain truly open-minded. For me, Islam is now out of the equation because I can't get over the more violent verses in the Quran and find that the concept of abrogation falsifies the entire religion for me.

I'm kind of an angry person, and my wrath has brought me two injuries lately. One left a scar on my left hand's index finger, and the other fractured my wrist. Since then, I've gotten a lot calmer and less angry, but I'm wondering whether or not that's some kind of "sign" from God telling me to come back to him.

When I ask for the holy spirit to come to me, I definitely feel some kind of positive presence, but it could definitely be a placebo. However, no matter what, I just can't get over the contradictions in the Bible, and I disagree with its views on suicide, abortion, gender roles, and LGBT action. I also don't want to be delusional. What should I do?

Answers I find great, have already been provided in this thread. I'd add:

- stop using the word should in your thoughts. Not easy, but try it. Decide instead on what you could do, or what you truly desire to do. Since it is just you paying attention, just be honest and you'll be fine.
- Realizing you're anger has (destructive) consequences is a good, meaningful realization. That's a huge step to exercising self discipline. I'd suggest turning that wrath over to 'higher self' or if not wanting that filtered through divine type language, learn to let the wrath/anger go. I find turning it over is easier than letting it go.
- if it is a sign for you, it is one I believe you (or your higher self) is giving you and not your Creator. To me, it would translate to something as simple as "choose again" (next time around)
- I sometimes shift between strong theist and agnostic in a day. Shifting is okay, and I believe perfectly understandable from divine perspective. Not like any of 'them' who walked the earth didn't also have their own shifts at various times, even after they were so called 'enlightened.' Welcome to human land where everything is distorted and the path isn't always so clear. You are/we are a work in progress. The future's uncertain, and the end is always near.