Tell me what you think. Here it is:
Hi Mom and Dad,
I need to do this in triple for my myself, for you and everyone whom I love in my life because I feel the communication in a life issue such as this is mandatory. Not only that but deceit cannot ever do any good especially in this circumstance.
I am coming to you today to say that I no longer have faith nor believe in God. I no longer believe in the Christian god. I no longer believe in the god of the old testament. I am being very serious here indeed as this was extremely hard for me to come to this point in my life and tell you. Most likely this is also the reason you are getting news through this medium. In fact I didn't know for sure whether telling you would be a good idea in the first place, but I realized it needed to be done. Our entire family is Christian and was brought up Christian including me and because of this, telling you something of this magnitude was close to impossible for me. I was brought up having the faith told to me before I could actually believe it. I accepted through my childhood and through my teenage years, but I still don't know if I ever actually truly believed it to this day. Now that I think back going to church had more of a community aspect to it than an actual belief based one for me. Like I said I accepted it and lived my life like I believed but accepting is not the same as belief itself. I had never actually thought with an open mind about these things and believed it for myself, truly. It has been a very slow road for me to get to the point I am finally at now.
After I turned 18 was the first time when I actually started thinking for real about what I felt about my belief in God and Orthodox Christianity. At first it started with just doubting some of the more basic Orthodox dogmas such as the holy trinity. I didn't understand how any person could know such intimate information about a God that is supposed to be so beyond us and I am just supposed to believe what they say. Just because something is written down and theologians think this is what the true nature of God is does not make it true, not to me anyway. At this point not in believing God himself did not even occur to me. I was just confused about very specific dogmas, knowing we could not possibly know these things with no natural evidence. If God were real he would give us solid "natural" evidence which we could understand. This does not violate free will and it is completely ridiculous to me that a God who does exist and is all powerful and all knowing would do so. I know God is supposed to be so beyond us and have a plan but I no longer think that just plain faith is the right way to get to this point. For me since God created us and gave us "natural" logic and reasoning skills he would have provided us with "natural" evidence and I can come up with tons of things that could convince me or anyone even in this era. None of it makes any since to me and I cannot accept it. If I say I do I am a liar and if I say I don't I am a heretic. What kind of religion is this?
I have realized since then that I cannot just base what I believe off of religious faith and stories. Even the prospect of this all encompassing Orthodox Christian mysterious God was not enough. The fact that there is so much suffering in this world and God has some sort of unknown mysterious plan for us after death just was not enough anymore. There is just no actual evidence of any God in this world to me. What I do know for sure is that there is an eternal existence and consciousness itself gives this existence life. Consciousness itself and the connection of everything with it is the only thing that has as much importance as any God would ever have to me. Existence would be nothing without it and whether or not I individually go on to live after death, whatever I have imparted in this life will go on to survive and I will still live. Existence itself will still live and breath. That is the only thing that I actually know for sure and that is the only thing which I can live for in this life. Humanity is important and universal morals can still be derived from natural universal law without God. There is no need for a God and there is not enough evidence to force myself to live my life with my entire purpose being God. I just cannot base anything I believe solely upon faith. The bible demonizes doubters both in the old and new testaments and just because of this anti logic I will not submit to being a believer. I am a reasoning being and doubting is a key part of my being. I will not believe in a God or dogmas which shuns doubters and labels them as sinners.
For me the fact that existence is so complex is not enough evidence to base my life off the religious fact that there is an all encompassing personal being which is the pinnacle of all existence. I do not know what is beyond known existence and to me if science ever does find something beyond, there will always be something more to discover anyway. So, in the end asking how the universe came to being is a null question in this respect since the universe is eternal. At the end of all this there is once again no reason for me to base my life off of a faith God exists. There are so many other reasons that I have chosen to disbelieve, but I cannot include them here for you. This is for the simple reason that if I did the reading required would be hours. One other reason includes the Old Testament and all of the horrible things God did to people besides the Israelites not to mention all of the questionable things God asked of his own people.
In the end I still feel that most of the morals Christianity(Jesus) provides in the New Testament are a good starting point for how to treat others in society. By all means I will continue to live my life by them but there is no reason to continue my belief in God. I can only believe in and live my life based on things which have evidence I can see. Until other evidence is found there is no reason to change my views in this matter. I now at the time being consider myself an agnostic atheist and philosophical humanist. I am sorry in a way but this is who I am.
Sincerely Your Son,
Michael
Hi Mom and Dad,
I need to do this in triple for my myself, for you and everyone whom I love in my life because I feel the communication in a life issue such as this is mandatory. Not only that but deceit cannot ever do any good especially in this circumstance.
I am coming to you today to say that I no longer have faith nor believe in God. I no longer believe in the Christian god. I no longer believe in the god of the old testament. I am being very serious here indeed as this was extremely hard for me to come to this point in my life and tell you. Most likely this is also the reason you are getting news through this medium. In fact I didn't know for sure whether telling you would be a good idea in the first place, but I realized it needed to be done. Our entire family is Christian and was brought up Christian including me and because of this, telling you something of this magnitude was close to impossible for me. I was brought up having the faith told to me before I could actually believe it. I accepted through my childhood and through my teenage years, but I still don't know if I ever actually truly believed it to this day. Now that I think back going to church had more of a community aspect to it than an actual belief based one for me. Like I said I accepted it and lived my life like I believed but accepting is not the same as belief itself. I had never actually thought with an open mind about these things and believed it for myself, truly. It has been a very slow road for me to get to the point I am finally at now.
After I turned 18 was the first time when I actually started thinking for real about what I felt about my belief in God and Orthodox Christianity. At first it started with just doubting some of the more basic Orthodox dogmas such as the holy trinity. I didn't understand how any person could know such intimate information about a God that is supposed to be so beyond us and I am just supposed to believe what they say. Just because something is written down and theologians think this is what the true nature of God is does not make it true, not to me anyway. At this point not in believing God himself did not even occur to me. I was just confused about very specific dogmas, knowing we could not possibly know these things with no natural evidence. If God were real he would give us solid "natural" evidence which we could understand. This does not violate free will and it is completely ridiculous to me that a God who does exist and is all powerful and all knowing would do so. I know God is supposed to be so beyond us and have a plan but I no longer think that just plain faith is the right way to get to this point. For me since God created us and gave us "natural" logic and reasoning skills he would have provided us with "natural" evidence and I can come up with tons of things that could convince me or anyone even in this era. None of it makes any since to me and I cannot accept it. If I say I do I am a liar and if I say I don't I am a heretic. What kind of religion is this?
I have realized since then that I cannot just base what I believe off of religious faith and stories. Even the prospect of this all encompassing Orthodox Christian mysterious God was not enough. The fact that there is so much suffering in this world and God has some sort of unknown mysterious plan for us after death just was not enough anymore. There is just no actual evidence of any God in this world to me. What I do know for sure is that there is an eternal existence and consciousness itself gives this existence life. Consciousness itself and the connection of everything with it is the only thing that has as much importance as any God would ever have to me. Existence would be nothing without it and whether or not I individually go on to live after death, whatever I have imparted in this life will go on to survive and I will still live. Existence itself will still live and breath. That is the only thing that I actually know for sure and that is the only thing which I can live for in this life. Humanity is important and universal morals can still be derived from natural universal law without God. There is no need for a God and there is not enough evidence to force myself to live my life with my entire purpose being God. I just cannot base anything I believe solely upon faith. The bible demonizes doubters both in the old and new testaments and just because of this anti logic I will not submit to being a believer. I am a reasoning being and doubting is a key part of my being. I will not believe in a God or dogmas which shuns doubters and labels them as sinners.
For me the fact that existence is so complex is not enough evidence to base my life off the religious fact that there is an all encompassing personal being which is the pinnacle of all existence. I do not know what is beyond known existence and to me if science ever does find something beyond, there will always be something more to discover anyway. So, in the end asking how the universe came to being is a null question in this respect since the universe is eternal. At the end of all this there is once again no reason for me to base my life off of a faith God exists. There are so many other reasons that I have chosen to disbelieve, but I cannot include them here for you. This is for the simple reason that if I did the reading required would be hours. One other reason includes the Old Testament and all of the horrible things God did to people besides the Israelites not to mention all of the questionable things God asked of his own people.
In the end I still feel that most of the morals Christianity(Jesus) provides in the New Testament are a good starting point for how to treat others in society. By all means I will continue to live my life by them but there is no reason to continue my belief in God. I can only believe in and live my life based on things which have evidence I can see. Until other evidence is found there is no reason to change my views in this matter. I now at the time being consider myself an agnostic atheist and philosophical humanist. I am sorry in a way but this is who I am.
Sincerely Your Son,
Michael
