A Question for Thesists

[Jenny A]

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I was not raised as a Christian and did not attend any church growing up.  No one in my family had.  My first encounter with the word "God" outside of citing the pledge of allegiance in grade school was by my ill mother.  She told me that God was calling her home.  I was 8.  She died a week later.  She had been diagnosed with M.S. at 24 and died at 27.  I was then raised by my grandparents.  My grandmother grew up Catholic but denounced that when she was 17.  My grandfather was an angry drunk who hated religion because his sisters were Southern Baptist Bible thumpers.  I was angry at this "God" until I was 17.  I struggled through my teen years and left home to be on my own at 17.  I ran in to a friend I hadn't seen in a few years who was drastically different then I remember him being.  He talked to me about Jesus, the Bible, etc and well I didn't want to hear any of it, I could not get over how drastically different he was and toiled with a lot of internal thoughts and feelings of something missing in my life.  During the next four years I considered myself an agnostic atheist, but also could not stop thinking of how my friend has changed and kept going back to my mother's words about God calling her home.  I felt it worth looking in to.

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 In college I studied a lot of religions and philosophy and the one that really pointed me to a Christian was C.S. Lewis.  His argument from Morality I found to be logically consistent and coherent and honestly irrefutable.  To me it certainly pointed to a deity.  At the age of 21 I became a Christian and found profound change and peace in my own life.  I continue to pursue intelligent reasoning and do not shy away from opposing viewpoints.  I enjoy reading the works of Dawkins, Hitchings, Hawking, and Nietzsche (among others).  So one might say that my reson for believing is purely emotional but I continue to test it intellectually.

Thank you really taking the time to answer the question. I would say your reasons are primarily emotional. But when I hear someone say they have found "profound change and peace" in their life, I'm usually loath to try and explain why they should give up such a personally useful untruth. But you are here, and you do appear to want to test your belief.
I'd love to discuss the argument from morality at some point. I've read a fair amount of C.S. Lewis, and I must admit I don't find the argument from morality particularly compelling. There are perfectly good evolutionary and social explanations for morality.

I would be curious of the answers if it was posed to the opposing view.  Most atheists I have conversed with indeed started out in religion and walked away from it because of religion itself (hurt by church, find church people fake) or evil and suffering in the world, or find religious atrocities both current historical etc.  These are also emotion based reasons not to believe.  Not saying that is why anyone here does not believe, just that in my personal experiences that is why I find most people claim to be atheist.

Fair enough. I was raised in a Christian household. My father had a year of seminary and occasionally preached in our Presbyterian church. My earliest memories include VBS, and monthly meetings of the prayer group that formed the back bone of my parents social life. I went to church every week for most of my childhood and to VBS, and a Christian summer camp for a couple weeks each year.

About the time I turned twelve or so my parents moved from the Presbyterian church to a Lutheran. Mom was raised Lutheran. Dad was Swedish Covenant which is essentially Presbyterian. It was a style change more than a theological one. Lutheran services place more emphasis on worship and contrition than Presbyterian services and Sunday school is in-between services so that Lutheran children and many adults go to both service and Sunday school. I attended two years of confirmation classes on Wednesday nights at the Lutheran church and participated in Luther League events.

But I can't remember actually believing. I can remember listening to a sermon involving Genesis and wondering how on earth all of these adults around me could believe that. That was before I began school, but I couldn't have been all that young, so I'm guessing I was about five then. That puzzlement never really went away. But I didn't voice it for a long, long time. Children have fine instincts for self preservation.

However, as confirmation approached I found I really could not bring myself to make a public profession of belief, so I brought the matter up with my parents. They said it was an adolescent thing and that many teens question and then grow back into the church. When I persisted, they were more hurt than angry, though I think my mother had a fair amount of social embarrassment involved in that too. She wanted me to go through the motions. The pastor came to my defense on that one.

I had a fair amount of guilt over hurting my parents and I spent some time trying to believe. The pastor suggested reading the bible end to end with a good commentary. I did that, but it was a mistake on his part. If ever there were a good plan for deconversion actually reading the bible has got to be tops. I also read much C.S. Lewis at the urging of my mother. But in the end her argument came down to "you really do believe, you just don't know that yet."

I had another go at trying to believe in my twenties and again in my late thirties. The stumbling block has always been the same, the story makes no sense, and there's no evidence of it. At this point, I can't imagine why I tried.