Ex theists: what did you believe?

[henryp]

I'm interested in hearing from those of you who have come out of religion. What would you list as your sincere beliefs while you were a theist? For example:

Did you really believe there was a god, and if so, what did you feel you knew about him?

Did you really think your holy book was divinely inspired?

Did you have experiences which you really thought were divine interactions?

What else did you believe then that you don't now?

I hope it goes without saying I'm not intending to make fun of anyone, I'm genuinely interested. Having never been the slightest bit religious, I can't even imagine what it must feel like to have any of these kinds of beliefs. How did they make you feel?

Thank you

I believed in God, because there was no other way to arrive at the conclusions of the world I wanted because I didn't think (and still don't mostly) objective meaning, right and wrong, and intrinsic human value could exist without a God.  I think this was C.S. Lewis' general take on the matter. 

I saw the bible in context written by people of those times, where we had to parse out the moral of the story, rather try to do some literal interpretation. (this is the Catholic Church's take, for example).  

I thought bad things happen because God was interested in our intentions rather than the results.  And in the face of eternal happiness, a 8 year old getting hit by a bus was sad, but in the big picture not that important.  Our lives being temporary, our intentions from our 'soul' or whatever, being permanent.

I used to do the nonsense proofs for God being a requirement for the Universe junk. I've since gone the opposite way, and just say "Who knows?" whenever someone starts rambling on about the beginning of existence.

For MANY people, God provides a logical explanation for a lot of the things that they would like to be true.  So if you start at the (faulty) conclusions and work backwards, you will arrive at God.  It's a reason I don't begrudge many sincerely religious people.  If you want to believe human life is inherently valuable, I get it.  If you want to believe Hitler was objectively amoral, that makes sense to me.  Want to believe death isn't the end, so it won't be as scary?  I'd sign up for that.  The need to pull back their curtain just doesn't seem that important.  It's basically the Matrix.  I'd certainly rather be plugged in eating steak than the goo in the "Real World."  But you can't unknow some things, so not really option of going back.

They lost me on the whole punishment thing.  The idea of God creating a being that was going to be eternally damned seems like a dick move.  There is no reason to create that person.  Even says so in the bible, with the 'better to have never existed' bit.  If they had better sorted that part out, I'd probably still be religious.  

I will say, I think a big part of the Atheist movement is 1) Our generation has 40 years of life where death isn't a real threat.  We're not being shipped to war, or getting the plague, or expecting to die at 45.  Not having death looming over our heads gives us some time to think things through without it being a huge influence.  2) Atheism is popular.  It's the idea people associate with being smart.  Kind of like sharing I LOVE FUCKING SCIENCE bullshit on facebook.  People REALLY want to be smart.  It's an amazing sociological control.  If you can frame any position as the 'Smart' position, people will stampede eachother to get onto that bandwagon.  3) I think we see a lot of right conclusions in general atheism with the same shitty quality logic that people use to believe in God.  I think many people just like the conclusion of No God, and half-ass the implications.   There's a lot of the same really wonky grade school logic thrown around here with atheists justifying their belief system that we're so quick to criticize Theists for. 

In the end, we all want to believe we are smarter than others for having figured out this puzzle, but in reality, if it was 1950, we'd be most likely heading to church tomorrow, and saying prayer before each meal.  And if it were ancient egypt, we'd all be worshipping Ra.  The point being, we are not smarter than everyone in the history of mankind, we just got lucky in our circumstances.  At least that's how I see it, which is why I cringe a little at the maliciousness and vitriol focused on religious people.