Why Do You or Did You Believe?

[Whateverist]

In a nutshell, it's largely an enduring intuition that the Shakti and the path of dharma is the right path for me to be on. I can't explain it in terms of logical reasons. I don't believe that logical reasons strongly inform belief or disbelief, it's our biases and inertia that shape our path more than anything. My path has been thusly shaped, and there is no other guide for me but that strong intuition that this path is the right one. If that should change, I could easily see myself becoming a skeptic of theism, as I am of a skeptical bent about things in general. However, until now, the trend has always been to go deeper into religious belief. Perhaps that's inertia. Perhaps that's sense. For me, there is only "the path" and wherever that might lead. I can't step outside of myself to use something different as a guide.

Thank you for this. I've wondered exactly how you hold your theism but have been reluctant to intrude. I don't have the same explicit attachment to a particular discipline, but I identify with the acceptance of a similar inner compass toward what gives meaning and understanding. I don't think it is all reducible to a dry, rational enterprise. I guess that means I also rely on intuition but I don't know how to distinguish that from feeling. Perhaps the two together inform reason and establish perspective. Regardless, I refuse to turn it all over to pure reason or to authoritative experts.

[Jenny A]

I believe because my personal experiences lead me to believe.

Other than that, I don't know. Perhaps because I feel a personal need for religion, and the religion I found myself able to agree with the most was a theistic one?

*shrug*

Personal need and/or personal experiences I get.

I have a hard time with I'm religious. *shrug* But there are many unchurched Christians who seem to have the same attitude.

[CindysRain]

Why did you believe?
And I add a second question:
What made you stop believing?

I think I was around 8, when I was invited to church by people from The Akron Baptist Temple. I went, I accepted, and thus began many years of blind faith. Eventually, my whole family came to church with me.

I was raised to obey without question, so I suppose religion made me feel right at home.

The questions came after I became a mom. Every mother knows that love is the most powerful force, on the planet! So, when listening to a sermon, or reading my bible, I would often compare, how I felt about my child, and I could not understand how god, (our heavenly father) could carry out the atrocities, that I read about.

The bible says that god is and has always been the same, but clearly the OT stories of god, showed him to be horrible, vindictive, genocidal, egotistical....kill everyone - babies, animals, anything breathing. Then in the NT god was all lovey dovey, turn the other cheek, blah, blah.

Once the questions started churning, I couldn't turn it off. It was a rough road, and harder than you can imagine, but eventually, I was able to acknowledge that the bible is a fucked up bunch of pages, not even worthy to be used to wipe your ass.

[Chad32]

One explanation I was given for the change is that having a child changed Yahweh. Though if you think Jesus is Yahweh then it doesn't work so great.

Honestly I think claiming that Yahweh/Jesus is perfect may have hindered more than helped. If a parent raises a child wrong, you could say they just didn't know how to do it and had now experience. You could cut them some slack. With a perfect deity you can't really do it.

[Mudhammam]

Raised in an evangelical environment, believed the whole Bible was divinely inspired and literally true until I began to ask questions and slowly realized it was all bullshit and misinformation.

[Thumpalumpacus]

For atheists who once believed I ask the same question:

Why did you believe?

I was programmed to believe in God from an early age. Even as the questions started running up ( and that started at about 9 or so), fear kept me from seeking answers outside of the schematic view of my faith.

And I add a second question:

What made you stop believing?

It started when I was twelve, and lived through the revolution in Iran. That brought to my mind the Problem of Evil. I kept faith for a couple of years afterwards, again out of fear, but the questions kept mounting and I couldn't reconcile what I'd been told about God with what I'd seen around me. On seeking answers by reading Scripture, I started rereading the Bible, and that was enough -- once my fears had subsided.

[Jenny A]

It started when I was twelve, and lived through the revolution in Iran. That brought to my mind the Problem of Evil. I kept faith for a couple of years afterwards, again out of fear, but the questions kept mounting and I couldn't reconcile what I'd been told about God with what I'd seen around me. On seeking answers by reading Scripture, I started rereading the Bible, and that was enough -- once my fears had subsided.

Yeah, reading scripture is the road to atheism. It's why I'm always so surprise that Christians keep suggesting it. I think it's because they haven't really read the Bible themselves.

[Thumpalumpacus]

It started when I was twelve, and lived through the revolution in Iran. That brought to my mind the Problem of Evil. I kept faith for a couple of years afterwards, again out of fear, but the questions kept mounting and I couldn't reconcile what I'd been told about God with what I'd seen around me. On seeking answers by reading Scripture, I started rereading the Bible, and that was enough -- once my fears had subsided.

Yeah, reading scripture is the road to atheism. It's why I'm always so surprise that Christians keep suggesting it. I think it's because they haven't really read the Bible themselves.

To be fair, it was only when I read it with the then-recent experiences in mind that I saw how fatuous it was that a Good God could not only condone, not only perpetrate, but actually create the evil that he tells us to resist.

Of course, my immature brain couldn't formulate the thought in that concise and meaningful manner, but I goddamned well knew it in my bones. I've always had a pretty good Bullshit Detector.

[Whateverist]

Why I believed:

Like everyone else, I was a baby sucking up information along with milk. I was fed on Christianity but thankfully a very thin mixture. Stopped going to church long before I started going to school so I barely remember it.

I remember eating my Fritos on the way to school and tossing some in the air behind me for Jesus. But I had no contact with the bible. Most of what I believed I made up myself from the seed idea that God was all powerful, ever-present and listening in. I thought of Jesus as 'the best'. I imagined Him living forever and lonely. In order be good company I thought it important to do the right thing for the right reason. Rule following wasn't going to help poor Jesus feel any less lonely. It was important, for His sake, to become a peer. That meant I had to figure out and do what I thought best, act in a manner I could justify.


Why I stopped believing:

All I ever had was the warm glow of God's presence. He never spoke to me. After the real identity of the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and Santa Claus were revealed it just seemed likely that god would be the next to fall. I was an atheist before I got out of elementary school but I guess I felt I had to tread softly to avoid disturbing the belief of others. I seemed to be surrounded by believers but fortunately none of them were forcefully intrusive. Just as we older kids were conspirators in maintaining the Santa myth for the enjoyment of the younger ones, I became a conspirator in the ongoing belief in god by my extended family.

[Chad32]

For some reason being told Santa and such weren't real didn't really make it click tht god wasn't real too. Mostly because I was told it's childish to still believe in Santa by the time you're ten or so, but no one ever laughed at me for still believing in Jesus. He, then, must be the exception. It also never occurred to me that people used to believe just as strongly in Zeus than they did in Yahweh. That's something they don't teach you in sunday school.