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November 6, 2013 at 7:50 pm (This post was last modified: November 6, 2013 at 7:51 pm by Lemonvariable72.)
I have a question for resident theists, why did you become a Christian, or whichever faith you are. How old were you when you were taught this faith.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
November 6, 2013 at 8:57 pm (This post was last modified: November 6, 2013 at 8:58 pm by Polaris.)
(November 6, 2013 at 7:50 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: I have a question for resident theists, why did you become a Christian, or whichever faith you are. How old were you when you were taught this faith.
I became a Christian when I was 19 years of age. I had attended Church since I was 17 and knew about parts of the faith for years, but I guess I only believed that there was a God before that and the Christian stuff I did know about was only from what I learned through history or happenstance.
I became a Christian because it was better than giving up drinking to become a Moslem (well actually it was meeting the Holy Spirit and having great Christian friends for choosing religion over atheism)...I was trying to see if I could merge both together and found out my lifestyle was counter to Islam.
But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.
I born into it. I grew up with Christianity all around so all the myths and fables seeped into my young impressionable mind and so I so I grew up believing that there was this invisible magic who lives in the sky who was mad at me because some imaginary ancestors ate some fruit thereby making me inherit their mistake and that this invisible ude sent his son to pay for my mistake if I said sorry to him.
I think most people become Christians or Muslims or even Buddhist simply because they were born into that milieu.
I am not a Christian anymore but I still do hold some Christian customs and traditions closely like screaming out "Oh Jesus!, oh God" during orgasm or saying "Gosh dernit".when I am pissed.
I grew up in Catholic school with some angry nuns that didn't like questions, and I was asking a lot of them by fifth grade. So by seventh grade, when I repeated got the "mysterious ways" answer and told that I could not participate in the extracurricular activities because of my "attitude" I decided to I was atheist.
After arguing my mom in to a half heart attack I transferred myself out of the private school and into public school where I was free of religion class, but I still had unanswered questions, so I kept looking. I looked into eastern traditions and I saw a lot of wisdom in them. I loved the book Sidhartha and the eight fold path and everything, but I honestly felt like there was something missing from it. I admired the search for knowledge and understanding within the universe, but it felt a bit counterintuitive to me to be full of passion and bottle it up at the same time. To feel so full of everything but work so hard to empty yourself.
I got into some of the more depressing philosophies (nihilism and existentialism) near the end of high school, but the more I thought about those the more I started to think that philosophers spend a lot of time trying to sound smart without really saying much of anything.
By college I was an apathetic agnostic as for as God was concerned, but I still wanted answers, and when someone had an idea about something I followed them with it. I tried to just open up to any possibility, to seek out truth and challenge it, because Truth should be able to stand up to challenge and not be swayed. I decided this and it put me into some awkward positions. I was hanging with some LDS for a little while, I joined an atheist group in town to hear what they spoke about. I talked with professors and friends about their experiences.
And then some things happened that would not be taken seriously in this forum but they were so specific to me and who I was at the time that to challenge them would be to challenge who I am or ever was as a person. And so here I am.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but you asked and so I am offering it up.
". . . let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist." -G. K. Chesterton
(November 7, 2013 at 6:14 am)GodsRevolt Wrote: I know it sounds ridiculous, but you asked and so I am offering it up.
But you didn't answer the question that was actually asked. You gave a long explanation about how you moved away from Christianity, but nothing about what made you go back other that "some things happened" and that "they'd not be taken seriously".
November 7, 2013 at 1:07 pm (This post was last modified: November 7, 2013 at 1:09 pm by Lemonvariable72.)
(November 7, 2013 at 7:19 am)Lion IRC Wrote: I can't remember a time when I didn't think God was obvious and necessary.
And if you were born in saudia arabia would you not say the same about allah?
(November 7, 2013 at 6:14 am)GodsRevolt Wrote:
I grew up in Catholic school with some angry nuns that didn't like questions, and I was asking a lot of them by fifth grade. So by seventh grade, when I repeated got the "mysterious ways" answer and told that I could not participate in the extracurricular activities because of my "attitude" I decided to I was atheist.
After arguing my mom in to a half heart attack I transferred myself out of the private school and into public school where I was free of religion class, but I still had unanswered questions, so I kept looking. I looked into eastern traditions and I saw a lot of wisdom in them. I loved the book Sidhartha and the eight fold path and everything, but I honestly felt like there was something missing from it. I admired the search for knowledge and understanding within the universe, but it felt a bit counterintuitive to me to be full of passion and bottle it up at the same time. To feel so full of everything but work so hard to empty yourself.
I got into some of the more depressing philosophies (nihilism and existentialism) near the end of high school, but the more I thought about those the more I started to think that philosophers spend a lot of time trying to sound smart without really saying much of anything.
By college I was an apathetic agnostic as for as God was concerned, but I still wanted answers, and when someone had an idea about something I followed them with it. I tried to just open up to any possibility, to seek out truth and challenge it, because Truth should be able to stand up to challenge and not be swayed. I decided this and it put me into some awkward positions. I was hanging with some LDS for a little while, I joined an atheist group in town to hear what they spoke about. I talked with professors and friends about their experiences.
And then some things happened that would not be taken seriously in this forum but they were so specific to me and who I was at the time that to challenge them would be to challenge who I am or ever was as a person. And so here I am.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but you asked and so I am offering it up.
Too be honest with you, the "ridiculous" part is what I'm asking about.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(November 6, 2013 at 7:50 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: I have a question for resident theists, why did you become a Christian, or whichever faith you are. How old were you when you were taught this faith.
November 7, 2013 at 3:33 pm (This post was last modified: November 7, 2013 at 3:34 pm by WesOlsen.)
Born in to an anglican (but not THAT observant) family, and I was christened. Read some bible stories growing up, they were entertaining bed-time stories but it quickly became apparent that they were just that. By my late teens I was all too aware of alternative religions and their claims to fame. I was also beginning to ask why so many different version of christianity were living side by side, often in not so perfect harmony. By my early 20s I realised that any claimed word of god was completely unsuccesful in uniting anyone. Thousands of different christian denominations, with splits in all the other major faiths as well. They can't agree on anything, meaning god can't communicate his messages properly, which means god is an idiot, which means he's not perfect. By the time I was 22 i'd definitely say I was a non-theist. Shortly after I decided that I was agnostic because there's no single piece of evidence (that I've seen) that could completely rule out a higher being (who could simply be an advanced alien from our own universe) but currently nothing has been provided which even begins to prove the existence of a deity. I think it's unknown at this point, but might not be in the future. I'm an agnostic atheist any way.
My parents still profess a christian belief, and claim that christian values held them and their parent's generation together whereas my generation is full of filth and tearaways. I tell them that this is a rose-tinted view of history and is just golden-age thinking. We don't particularly discuss these things much nowadays, and there is absolutely no hostility between us at all (i'm closer to family than every these days). If my parents were strict and very observant practitioners of a religion then things might be more problematic.
Either way, free thought and an interest in science and history render all existing religions completely unconvincing. I am thankful for a largely secular education (minus singing hyms in school assembly and the occasional lord's prayer) and don't have a problem with my parents very occasionally making reference to some of the nicer teachings of the bible, even though they are ignorant (unintentionally) of all the nasty bits.
