Ex theists: what did you believe?

[robvalue]

Thank you Watevs

And thanks so much to everyone for sharing their stories, I really appreciate it. They are very interesting, and help me understand better what it's like to be in that mindset.

The hardest thing for me to figure out with theists is what they really believe.

[Exian]

It was kind of an odd experience being someone who believed in god but, at the same time, having an adverse reaction to anything ritualistic. We never went to church, never prayed at dinner, never observed any biblically related special days other than the big holidays. Anything to do with gatherings or preaching or evangelical action was extremely odd and off putting to my family and I on a social level. The few times I went to church left me with the same feeling. Why act all weird one day and normal the next?

But, when asked I'd say I believed in the Christian god and Jesus, and I was familiar with all the stories (not as familiar as I am now as an atheist). I thought Satan and hell were silly ideas, but it scared the shit out of me as a kid. I convinced myself in my later years as a "Christian" that Satan and hell were just stories. I couldn't justify a loving god sending people to hell. If a child dying was looked at as "not a big deal in the grand scheme", then why are people going to hell for things that aren't a big deal on the grand scheme?

[KevinM1]

It was kind of an odd experience being someone who believed in god but, at the same time, having an adverse reaction to anything ritualistic. We never went to church, never prayed at dinner, never observed any biblically related special days other than the big holidays. Anything to do with gatherings or preaching or evangelical action was extremely odd and off putting to my family and I on a social level. The few times I went to church left me with the same feeling. Why act all weird one day and normal the next?

I totally get where you're coming from.

I've mentioned it before, but I come from a mostly non practicing Catholic family.  We were taught to believe in this vague notion of god, and Jesus, and that bad people went to hell, etc., but not a lot more than that and some of the more prominent stories.  I've been to church maybe 10 times in my entire 35 years on this planet, likely less, and every time was off putting.  

Church as a kid was, well, frightening.  Catholic church is a somber, dreary experience.  As a 5-8 year old, I really had no clue what was going on.  I was just surrounded by a bunch of older people I didn't know in addition to my family, with some guy talking about stuff I didn't understand.  And everyone would sit/kneel/stand in unison, and recite the same prayers in a joyless, robotic monotone.  And to see my parents do the same thing was nightmare material.  All I wanted to do was go back home and play with my toys.  It was always creepy as shit.

Even though I vaguely knew about god and whatnot, even at an early age I didn't believe in it.  Like I mentioned several times, I cried when my brothers told me I was baptized.  I felt like it was a violation, that it was done without my consent.  I knew that other religions existed, and was worried I would forever be tied to the wrong one, and I hated church for the reasons I gave in the last paragraph, and didn't want to be forced to go back there.

And, as a kid, it was always weird that the other kids in my class would talk about going to Sunday school.  Who would ever want to do that?  Wouldn't you rather sleep in, then watch football?  Or play?  And wasn't Sunday night when you were supposed to do the weekend's homework?  They thought I was the weird one for asking those questions.

As I got older, I found myself wanting to believe more than actually believing.  So much of it just didn't make sense, likely because my family was lazy with the indoctrination process.  Like I said, we hardly went to church, never read the bible, never said grace before meals, etc.  I was in the process of being trained for my first communion by my grandmother through bible story picture books when I was 6 and 7, but that just sort of slowed down and stopped by itself.  I knew of the communion ritual, but never really understood the point of it.  It seemed barbaric to joyfully eat the symbolic flesh and drink in the symbolic blood of the guy.  But everyone around me just accepted all this oddity as reality, so I went through the motions.  "Uh, yeah, woohoo, Christ!"

When I entered college, I went through a brief period of believing in a more generalized version of god and satan.  Jesus existed, but was just a prophet.  None of his miracles happened.  And, of course, none of the divine things in the OT happened.  Satan existed, too, and the afterlife would basically be a huge LOTR style fight between the forces of good and evil.  Accompanied with that was a forced, "I love everyone" mentality.  I tried to become more accepting of everyone and everything, but it was an act.

When I finally admitted to myself that I didn't believe, and never believed, I became a lot happier and sure of myself.  That was shortly after 9/11.

[Hatshepsut]

The hardest thing for me to figure out with theists is what they really believe.

Conceded I may not be helpful on this. One item perhaps basic to theism is a conviction that naturalistic explanation doesn't cover all phenomena of interest. I can remember when everyone in school virtually worshiped the then-recently dead Albert Einstein and wanted to be as smart as he was. The 17th century divorce of "natural philosophy" from both classical philosophy and religious oversight was indeed a welcome development in western thinking.

But science has limitations. A phenomenon is explained only by a theory which can be tested by observation and measurement. Observations and measurements in turn must be communicable in words or language from one person to another, so that the second person can reproduce them. That's how theories are validated. This process necessarily excludes a lot of information privy to individual conscious minds, such as subjective sensations of color, sound, pain, desire, and so on. It's remarkable that brains which effectively act as computers even have subjective experience to begin with. There's no apparent reason they should; all the brain's workings can be explained by neurobiology without reference to a personal consciousness.

Thomas Nagel explored this gulf between minds in his paper, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (The Philosophical Review 83 [4]. Oct. 1974, pp. 435-450, copies widely available online) Personal, subjective consciousness, our vivid sense of being alive, is thus one phenomenon that science will have trouble explaining because it involves something that can't be measured and communicated. Existence of subjective consciousness doesn't imply existence of deity of course. Yet it does suggest that science and spiritual experience represent two modalities for understanding reality.

[Chad32]

I tried to go to proper church after Sunday school, but I have ADD. I can't sit through an hour of SS, then an hour or more of church. Especially when my stomach starts growling at me. I went to other church functions. Just don't expect me to sit through an hour of something, take a short break, then sit through an hour or more of basically the same thing. I wasn't too wild about singing hymns either. You do get free lunch afterwards if you attend, but I felt that wasn't the proper reason I should be attending church.

[emjay]

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 grew up in a kind of happy-clappy, evangelical/baptist type environment. In church you'd have people being touched on the head and then them falling back into the arms of someone, supposedly overcome by the holy spirit, and laid out on the floor, weeping, giggling and all sorts. When it came to my turn I felt myself willing it to happen and wanting it to happen, but it never did happen. I felt my legs go weak but I knew it was of my own making in some way. I couldn't let go because I was too self-conscious and that basically convinced me later that it was all just some form of mass hynosis and something that a cynical/skeptical mind would never allow. For the same reason I never experienced any signs or miracles while I was a Christian.


All that said, I was still a strong Christian but the lack of any of those sorts of experiences was a constant frustration.

I think my most memorable Christian experience was when I thought, as a teenager, that I had blasphemed the holy spirit - the unforgivable sin - and had nightmares for months. Nothing anyone could say could convince me I hadn't committed this sin. I don't remember how I got through it, but that was hellish.

[Polaris]

Weren't most ex-theists just cultural theists who only called themselves theists because their family forced them to attend religious services?

[watchamadoodle]

Weren't most ex-theists just cultural theists who only called themselves theists because their family forced them to attend religious services?

You have got to be kidding.

[Chad32]

No one forced me but yeah, I was a christian because my grandmother invited me to church, and i had fun in youth groups and such. I was never very spiritual. I didn't feel any spirits move through me. I went halfway, though. I went to church, read the bible, and said the lord's prayer. I can't go all the way to god, though, so there was nothing left for me to do on my end. I'm not going to spend my life searching fruitlessly. I gave him twenty years. I can only deduce that he's not the one true god, but I don't know how to look for any other one true god.

[Whateverist]

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.

I'll accept some of that criticism. Some of us here are sometimes prone to over state our case, seemingly more interested in being convincing that being correct.

Not sure what implications concern you. Mortality doesn't seem like such a bad deal. Hell it is a great deal.

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.

I don't think it is really a matter of wanting to think we're smarter. We all prefer our own opinion because, really, what else do we have? If we're content to defer to an expert, we'd still need the competence to select the right expert. May as well cut out the middle man and commit to cultivating our own wits and judgement.