Why Do You or Did You Believe?

[Jenny A]

As a person who can't remember ever believing in god I have a serious question for believers:

Why do you believe?

I want to be very very clear here. I'm not asking you to try to prove god. I'm only asking what it is that makes you believe even if it's no more than I always have.

For atheists who once believed I ask the same question:

Why did you believe?

And I add a second question:

What made you stop believing?

[Ravenshire]

Never really did beyond the "mommy wouldn't lie to me" stage. I tried really fucking hard though. It never took.

[ShaMan]

The only thing that I can know for certain is that I can be certain of nothing

[Chad32]

Back when I believed, I had no reason to think my grandmother didn't know what she was talking about. I was just a kid, and most parents teach their kid to obey the adults no matter what.

[Jenny A]

Never really did beyond the "mommy wouldn't lie to me" stage. I tried really fucking hard though. It never took.

That's kinda where I am. Only I just couldn't figure out why mommy thought so. And yeah, I tried really hard about three different times in my life.

[Citizenoftheearth]

I was taught that not believing would result in eternal torture. So it was easier to just believe everything that I was told.

What made me stop believing? I started reading the bible

[Wyrd of Gawd]

When I read Matthew 15:24 (ERV) I kicked the fairy tale to the curb. "24 Jesus answered, “God sent me only to the lost people of Israel.”"

[Jenny A]

I was taught that not believing would result in eternal torture. So it was easier to just believe everything that I was told.

What made me stop believing? I started reading the bible

That seems to be a common reason for losing faith. It's a strange book.

[Dystopia]

For atheists who once believed I ask the same question:

Why did you believe?

And I add a second question:

What made you stop believing?

I believed because I was very young (less than 12 years old) and possess little critical thinking, it was simply the normal way of looking at the world. My parents didn't indoctrinate me even though they gave me the basis of Christianity (but I was never sent to have official religious educations with priests)

To answer your second question, I simply thought (about 13 or 14 years old) - "Why do I believe someone exists if I have never seen/felt/heard/smelled him? This simple question was enough and I guess I was always a functioning atheist, I just didn't stop believing earlier because my intellectual skills when I was 10 (the same applies to most regular kids) were not enough for me to think 'Does god really exist'.

I should note that after that I stopped being an atheist and became a deists of some sort by some time, but then again, critical thinking came back and atheism won the match inside my match. I guess I was always an atheist, I just never realized or accepted it at all times.

[Mystic]

As a person who can't remember ever believing in god I have a serious question for believers:

Why do you believe?

I want to be very very clear here. I'm not asking you to try to prove god. I'm only asking what it is that makes you believe even if it's no more than I always have.

For atheists who once believed I ask the same question:

Why did you believe?

And I add a second question:

What made you stop believing?

I think when we think of ourselves or have a perception of others, we do so with faith but it's a strong justified faith. The same is the case with certain memories.

I think when we think of morality and morals, it's an amazing thing, and we have faith in it even though there is no evidence that we ought to have faith in morality or believe in certain morals.

I feel God is part of the world we live in, in the sense, he is part of every soul, or that there is a substance that comes from him. I believe we can sense our link to God and even see God himself but this is simply a meditative realization.

I think God's glory can be experienced and it's eternity being a property can be witnessed too.

The eternal nature of beauty, greatness, goodness, and glory, to me, is one of the proofs of God.

If someone asked you what makes you believe in morality, what would you say?