Ex theists: what did you believe?

[robvalue]

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

[Brakeman]

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

It's a bit embarrassing now, I did delude myself into thinking there was a god. Everyone I trusted growing up swore there was. I just assumed I was not quite as in touch so as to actually hear a response to my prayers, I could only have feelings about them.

Divinely inspired bible - sure, who was I to question it. If everyone in you family and friends bar none say it is, and you have no education to the contrary, why doubt it?

My Divine experiences were merely feelings of greatly exaggerated guilt relieved by self acceptance and forgiveness. It felt real enough for lots of tears.. (I was young)
As I aged this went completely away.

[Nope]

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 was brought up Southern Baptist and attended church as a child but my family stopped attending when I was a teenager.  For awhile I flirted with agnosticism. If I had a support group, I think that I would have probably become an atheist. For a long time, I read about many religions because I imagined that one must be true. That led me down some interesting paths. 

I became 'saved' in my thirties. Looking back now, I think the salvation was the result of a lot of pressure from my mom and friends. Once I became Christian, I went whole hog. Damn it, if I was going to be  a Christian, I would find the correct church. I went back to Baptists churches but their theology didn't seem to always line up with the bible. Later I would realize that no church can line up with the bible because the book is too  contradictory.  At one point I converted to  Roman Catholicism because that was more lenient than the fundamentalist church that I attended. Faith slipped away from me in my early forties and here I am. 

At one time, I am ashamed to admit, I was a long skirt, homeschooling mom who followed some very fundamentalist views. During that time, I grew physically sick but there was nothing wrong with me. I think now that the pressure of fundamentalism was making me ill. 

Yes, I believed the bible was divinely inspired and I thought god talked to me by giving me feelings about certain things. 

[Chad32]

As I recall back to my childhood years, I remember heaven being the place where good people go, and hell being the place where bad people go. Later I learned that we're all supposed to believe we're bad people, and all deserve to go to hell, and need to beg Jesus to let us into heaven. Also Jesus' dad created hell, and he's the one who decided we all deserve to go there if we don't worship him. Those things didn't come up in Sunday School. I believed that Jesus and God were separate people, because he was God's son and talked like they were different people. I believed that everyone knew who God was. You were either a christian, or you worshiped Satan. I believed the bible literally. Just like I believed there was a guy who lived at the north pole, who came down every year on a sled pulled by flying reindeer, to give everyone presents. Or coal.

I believe that homosexuality is bad. I didn't believe it was the same as discriminating against blacks, because sodomy is an action. If you're a gay guy, you just need to have sex with women like normal people. You don't need special rights. You can marry any woman who will have you, like normal people.

I believed abortion was wrong, unless the mother was going to die before the baby was at a viable stage. If she dies, the baby will die anyway, so you might as well save the mother. It bothered me that someone would complain about having to carry a baby to term. You're going to end a life that could last 80+ years because you don't want to be inconvenienced for about six months?

My views on homosexuality changed mostly because of discussions I had on a web forum I went to before coming here.

[vorlon13]

I received some mixed messages. My mom was pretty devout Methodist, dad much less so, in fact as a kid, my dad attended a church that was alternately Methodist and Presbyterian every week. The pastors rode horses, and could only make it to one church each Sunday, but each pastor had been assigned 2 churches by the home office. So they alternated. This made my dad pretty irreligious, as the Methodist pastor usually preached about the horror that was Presbyterianism, and vice versa.
Early on in my Sunday schooling I received a pretty fundamentalist take on things, but since it was the 60s, as the decade went by the church was rapidly liberalizing.
In high school, we visited other churches on a field trip. That included a synagog and a JW franchise among others. I think this taste of ecumenism started something with me.
So in regards to basic beliefs, it was somewhat of a moving target.  Starting out, all other faiths weren't doing it right, but Methodists were, but that was tempered with the ecumenism later on.
Mom worried incessantly what 'other people' would think of us, but looking back, I think our family was the one other families should have worried what we were thinking.
Mom was very concerned with folks promising at baptism to see to their child's religious up bringing.  If she was aware a family in our congregation was getting lax about sending their kid(s) to Sunday school, she was on a committee at church that sent reminder letters to those parents.
Also, marriage vows were inviolate to her. [period]  Divorce was super bad, but if there was a chance the couple could be wheedled, cajoled, or browbeaten back together, she was on board with that.  I had a cousin that divorced in the mid 60s and mom and others were brutal about grinding on both of them to get back together.  And they remarried, and it was even worse, and they went on to an extremely bitter second divorce.  They also used their son as a pawn in their terror campaigns against each other, and to this day, 50 years later, he is one of the most fucked up people I have ever encountered.
Being gay and going off to college where I found other gays that were actively hostile (reciprocally) with pretty much all things Christian (this was 1975) was a very liberating thing for me in regards to religion.

[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.

[vodkafan]

Although I never got real deep in, I do now see I was deluding myself. It is hard in hindsight to answer your questions because it involved mental gymnastics and quite a bit of denial of things I can see easily now didn't make sense. It's quite a load to divest your mind of and very liberating.

[watchamadoodle]

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

I believed a real God and a real human/divine Jesus were the inspiration for the Bible characters. I thought they were very loving, merciful, etc. I kind of believe in hell, but I assumed that salvation was virtually universal.

Did you really think your holy book was divinely inspired?

I believed the Bible was written by normal people based on actual events, and then it got messed-up and filled with errors and lies.

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

Yes. It was mostly confusing visions or synchronicities as opposed to the day to day assurances that most Christians describe. That is probably why I was never a Christian for long periods. Something would happen, and I would give Christianity another try, and then I would get disappointed and go back to doubting.

[Hatshepsut]

...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.

Lewis was a late convert to Christianity at a time when the influence of this religion was rapidly declining in the UK. He took it pretty seriously, and excepting the young earth and flood bits, literally, believing that once you gave ground you may as well discard your bible. So, those flames are real and forever for him; hell not just a metaphor.

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? ...How did they make you feel?

Which leaves out those of us who have come out of religion but are still theists. In fact I still prefer the Christian theology since it's the most familiar one, but I no longer take it at face value. The church has refused to confront its history in full and refused to confront the fact that its state of knowledge regarding divinity is poor. Organized religion beyond the basics of local meeting-house for friends is a waste of resources.

There are things very deep in the human social psyche which are found in the bible, however. Should we suppose we've advanced beyond blood guilt and sacrificial atonement, for instance? No. Modern multiculturalism still hews to both of these doctrines albeit in a modified form: It is the White race (and that word is capitalized) which is guilty for oppressing all the other races, owing them an atonement against vengeance.

I'm probably just too old to take on the snarky outlooks suggested by atheism after Madalyn O'Hair but prescriptive religion is certainly a crock of shit. May the wall dividing Church and State rise high!

[Whateverist]

Great thread Rob. Enjoyed reading the first few but now I have to get to work. Looking forward to reading the rest later and leaving my own.