Question for former theists...

[Father Heathen]

It can, because the Creation is everything in existence, the Universe. Did you think I was just referring to little old planet earth?

Nope. I'm still speaking within the context of what my first response was to.

 

[Trailblazer]

Nope. I'm still speaking within the context of what my first response was to.

Sorry, I am kind of lost.

 

[John53]

I am a believer.

1. The non-believers may have been right to find fault with the religion they use to believe, Right?
2. but they were wrong to generalize it to other denominations of the same religion or to other religions. Right?
3. They ought to have used some reasonable Method ( like "Religious Method") to find right from the wrong in the denominations and other religions. Right?
4. My association with RF and other forums brings out that they never had any reasonable method to apply to know the truth in religions or non-religions. Right?
5. They got disenchanted with the religions but they never tried and applied the same approach to the ism they were heading to. Right?

Atheism or whatever form of non-believers are there, they are our friends not foes. Shouldn't they reflect on it, please?
Right?

Regards

I would need to know what you are a believer of to answer.

 

[idea]

What caused you to lose faith? When was the point that you made the step from being a theist to becoming atheist? What was the rationale?
As a man of faith, I find the idea of one day disregarding my faith to be a bizarre concept. I know everyone believes differently, but faith is a strong emotion, right? How did you overcome your faith to embrace atheism? If you’re able to drop the faith, do you feel it was still true faith in the first place?

I lost faith in God and faith in church after the detective called... after identifying children in videos with God's chosen "priests". After believers continued to sustain and protect these priests. After I found the video explaining what elevation feelings are.

Why do bees follow their queen? Why do people follow Jim Jones and Warren Jeff's? No one ever thinks they were groomed. People in a cult do not believe they are in a cult - people in cults "believe".

 

[danieldemol]

I would need to know what you are a believer of to answer.

He is nominally a believer in Ahmadiyya Islam, but his dialogue comes across as more Quranist in nature to me.

In my opinion.

 

[SigurdReginson]

Speaking for myself, I never "dropped" my faith, like one drops a sack of potatoes. I began by diverting that sense of awe, wonder, and love I had for Jesus onto other gods who I grew to know, and from there that sense of awe was diverted to life itself.

"Faith" as an aspect of awe in regards to things bigger than myself was never lost; only the focus of what I placed importance on changed.

As for "faith" as a belief system, meh... People change their belief systems all the time whether they utilize faith or not.

 

[F1fan]

What caused you to lose faith? When was the point that you made the step from being a theist to becoming atheist? What was the rationale?
As a man of faith, I find the idea of one day disregarding my faith to be a bizarre concept. I know everyone believes differently, but faith is a strong emotion, right? How did you overcome your faith to embrace atheism? If you’re able to drop the faith, do you feel it was still true faith in the first place?

Well I was never a full blown believer. Like most abused children in America I was forced to go to church. So I went and listened and I asked a lot of questions. Now mind you I was 8 years old and even though I trusted my grandmother when she told me about God and Jesus there was something in the back of my mind that found all this fishy. I kinda went along with the program for a few years. But I was one Christmas that pretty much blew Christianity for me. One of my aunts was Catholic. The other is Southern Baptist. My mom was a Universalist, and my grandmother was Presbyterian. My Baptist aunt did not get along with the Catholics over the difference in religion. It was subtle but it was noticeable. This really rubbed me the wrong way when they all talked about what Jesus taught. The hypocrisy of it all made a huge impact on me, a kid. I never found religion to be anything I found attractive. My twin sister was always seeking some sort of truth, bouncing around from one religion to another, never satisfied. When i was in my 30's I started to study philosophy and theology, and later psychology. I've been debating religion since the old AOL boards in 1996.

So from my youth I was just never attracted to religious belief. It wasn't a choice, it just never made sense to me. I listen to many theists express their thoughts and my impression is it doesn't make sense to them either, but for some reason they are attracted to the behavior of believing.

 

[F1fan]

Who created the universe?

A guy named Bob in my old 4H club said he did it. So it was Bob.

 

[Meow Mix]

Despite my anecdote earlier, it’s also the case that people really can be reasoned into and out of beliefs.

I used to believe it was possible to have infallible knowledge given enough facts about non-incorrigible things until I was convinced by an argument from fallibilism for instance. I couldn’t refute it, so I had to accept it despite what I wanted to be true.

 

[blü 2]

What caused you to lose faith? When was the point that you made the step from being a theist to becoming atheist? What was the rationale?
As a man of faith, I find the idea of one day disregarding my faith to be a bizarre concept. I know everyone believes differently, but faith is a strong emotion, right? How did you overcome your faith to embrace atheism? If you’re able to drop the faith, do you feel it was still true faith in the first place?

My childhood experiences as a pisco are set out in this earlier post.

And my one notable adventure as an adult is set out in this earlier post.

So I think the answer is that the concept of God won't stand up to examination. I guess that's why they call it 'faith'.

 

[an anarchist]

And my one notable adventure as an adult is set out in this earlier post.

So I think the answer is that the concept of God won't stand up to examination. I guess that's why they call it 'faith'.

Personally, I think the way you went about it as an adult is a good way to discover God. To suspend the intellect. There is a Taoist concept, to learn by unlearning. You discover God through your primal instinctual knowledge, once you have suspended intellect.
If you ever feel inclined to call out to God again, I say give it some more patience than you initially did in that post. I’m confident that you would receive an answer, but that’s just me, as a believer.
For me, God makes sense. But my emotions definitely take precedent when deciding what my world view is.

 

[F1fan]

Personally, I think the way you went about it as an adult is a good way to discover God. To suspend the intellect. There is a Taoist concept, to learn by unlearning. You discover God through your primal instinctual knowledge, once you have suspended intellect.
If you ever feel inclined to call out to God again, I say give it some more patience than you initially did in that post. I’m confident that you would receive an answer, but that’s just me, as a believer.
For me, God makes sense. But my emotions definitely take precedent when deciding what my world view is.

Right, if the experiments didn't work any of the previous times that doesn't mean it doesn't work.

 

[John53]

Personally, I think the way you went about it as an adult is a good way to discover God. To suspend the intellect. There is a Taoist concept, to learn by unlearning. You discover God through your primal instinctual knowledge, once you have suspended intellect.
If you ever feel inclined to call out to God again, I say give it some more patience than you initially did in that post. I’m confident that you would receive an answer, but that’s just me, as a believer.
For me, God makes sense. But my emotions definitely take precedent when deciding what my world view is.

How does one suspend intellect? We need for even the most basic tasks of life.

 

[firedragon]

My church had a policy of children reading from the bible. I'm dyslexic, at the time undiagnosed, i couldn't read to the congregation. Some members of the congregation began to mock me, others followed, soon everyone in the church was taking the **** out of the stupid 14 year old girl who couldn't read. After some months i plucked up courage to say **** you and walked out never to return.

Thats tyranny. 14 years old? Thats one of the biggest atrocities one could do.

If you have withstood that that's pretty amazing in my opinion. For that, I would say kudos.

 

[Shakeel]

Did anyone create the universe?

Did anyone create God?

 

[Shakeel]

We don't know.

Isn't that a great answer? I

Well if that suffices you why would you need answers about God in order to believe in Him? It's hypocritical.

 

[Altfish]

Well if that suffices you why would you need answers about God in order to believe in Him? It's hypocritical.

No it isn't.

I want answers based on evidence, not faith.
There is no evidence for a god - show me some and I'll consider it and maybe change my mind.

To say "I don't know" shows that you know the limit of your understanding; to create an answer without evidence is a cheat.

 

[firedragon]

No it isn't.

I want answers based on evidence, not faith.
There is no evidence for a god - show me some and I'll consider it and maybe change my mind.

To say "I don't know" shows that you know the limit of your understanding; to create an answer without evidence is a cheat.

What is evidence in your opinion? What is your epistemology?

 

[RestlessSoul]

We don't know.

Isn't that a great answer? It may not have been created, it keeps scientists awake at night.

It may be the only honest answer.

But I do hope those scientists get some sleep.

 

[RestlessSoul]

My parents were Christians, and I did go to church regularly as a kid. I think I believed in the sense that I didn’t know not believing was an option: I never really thought about God except when something was wrong, whatever petty things a little girl worries about. So I don’t count that so much.

Then my mom died and I went all-in on Christianity in grief: mainly, I think, because I wanted to see her again. I was straight edge, listening to Christian music, got my chestpiece tattoo (which is the Sacred Heart), went to church, all of it.

It wasn’t until over time, maybe as grief subsided, that I started to realize I never had intellectual reasons for believing; I only had emotional reasons. So I would think of questions and doubts that I was totally ill equipped to answer (and so were people I asked: I’d get totally unacceptable answers).

Also, major factor, I’m gay and I always have been. In high school I knew what my classmates thought of lesbians, so I pretended (and tried earnestly) to be straight. Same thing when I was “born again.” But it was lying to myself, and I really struggled with why God would make me a lesbian if He didn’t like homosexuals. I struggled with that so much, I cried a lot, I was in a really dark and self-abusive place because of it. So that was definitely a factor.

So, I left the faith slowly, piece by piece, first by allowing myself to stop trying to date men, by dropping the more hardcore aspects like young earth creationism. Then I finally allowed myself to date women, and as I had more and more intellectual questions about the faith, I kept dropping more and more.

At some point I realized that I had just stopped believing and was only going through motions. So I dropped the pretense. The guilt and the shame that was always there for being a lesbian was gone, I was finally happy.

At least you’ve still got the tattoo