What made you change your belief in God?

A miracle happened to me and none would believe me. So I believe that I might have made a mistake discounting God… now the miracle has become a curse and a blessing both at once so for a time I waited dumbfounded for answers…Now I just Fluther and live a happy life without proof of anything to tell anyone

I believe in God, it’s when I began to notice that the religious leadership of a lot of churches used the argument that “it’s in the bible” or “a lot of people think this way” or “It’s the church’s dogma that…” and I began to notice that there were a lot of mean and narrow-minded people who seemed to be smug in their perception that they were headed to heaven and everyone else was headed to hell, that I fell away from organized religion. I had a youth minister at a very popular church, in response to young people “being saved” that “We get them young and tell them what to think and how to think it.” Good-bye.

I began to read about the history of the bible, and writings of people like Robert Lax, Thomas Merton, and Mortimer Adler, and I began to doubt the validity of organized religion.

GQ by the way – next time add more topics to attract more people – or did you just want those who list God in their tags? For me, it hasn’t changed much – though I’ve been more or less “religious” over the years – depending on my weaknesses, I think.

But I do believe. Not Palin-like – Dinosaurs weren’t here together with Moses – the Bible is abit more figurative than literal for me – and I like to think the dozens or hundreds of contributors to it didn’t mean 6 of our days, for example.

But some days are so overwhelming – spectacularly so – depressingly so – I think there is something higher than Phil – something created all this beauty – science = God – maybe. I don’t have to fit in to anything or with anyone so I can continue to explore these thoughts. Interventionist God – I like to think so – but only when I need him.

When I was 13, it suddenly occurred to me one day that a god that knows the future is deterministic by nature, and that in turn makes all of life deterministic and eliminates the possibility of free will. I pushed this to the back of my mind as a minor inconvenience though, and continued to believe.

When I was 15, I decided I hadn’t been a very good Christian, because although I believed I had not invited a single friend to church. I didn’t like my church though, so instead I tried to convince a few of them of the truth of young-earth creationism. I came across a few difficulties, but pushed them to the back of my mind and continued to believe.

When I was 16, I got into a religious discussion with a friend who is an atheist, and I stated that the God hypothesis was totally consistent with facts. He asked me to construct the best argument I could. Over the next 3–4 months, I gradually remembered all the difficulties I had ignored over the years, and for the first time in my life I began to doubt what I had been taught.

When I was 17, I started university. I soon joined a Christian group and started meeting with them regularly. I found their understanding of religion to be somewhat shallow, but I continued going to church and this group in the hope that some, if not all, of my issues could be resolved. All this time, I kept reading and studying so whatever choice I eventually made would be an informed, considered choice. At times I would put more effort into studying religion than I would put into my schooling.

When I was 18, I realised that if there was a god who wanted a relationship with humans, they would likely make it blatantly obvious that they exist, and make the criteria of good/evil whether or not you agreed with them. This thought, along with mounting evidence for evolution over my now esoteric, convoluted interpretation of creationism, started to make scepticism appear to be a more feasible option. Over the next few months, I rapidly progressed to what can best be described as atheism.

While those are the most important facts of my story, I find it infinitely more difficult to articulate the overwhelming sense of relief I felt after the initial stress of telling my parents and wondering if it really was the right thing to do. It has now been almost a year and a half since I stopped going to church and have been calling myself an atheist for nearly as long, and I have never once regretted the change.

I didn’t necessarily stop believing in God, my belief has simply evolved into my own interpretation of what life and death is all about. The bible, Qur’an, the Tonakh, etc are all wonderful moral compass’s and have helped shape me and my beliefs but what I now believe in is really not encased in a book, it is in my heart and soul.

@FireMadeFlesh

So… because God didn’t live up to your expectations, and because people didn’t either, you have chosen to not believe? Hmmm. What’s wrong with this picture?

BTW… there is nothing which says that God cannot use whatever means s/he chooses to bring about change in creation. You know… like evolution? He/she is, after all, God.

@CaptainHarley I just mentioned the major events in my path from belief to non-belief. While they are not the reasons I no longer believe, they are events that are significant to my story. You can find the specific reasons for my choices elsewhere on Fluther.

I also realise that creationism isn’t the only Christian hypothesis on the origin of life/the universe, but that is what I believed when I was a Christian. I mentioned that to show that it was not science that convinced me, but that science supported my ideas once I had already rejected belief.

I started out believing in the Christian God as a child. When I was around 12, the contradictions within the Bible and the conflict between various branches of Christianity made me change my mind. And besides, it all felt very useless and old.

So I fell into Neopaganism, and made myself comfortable under that big umbrella term somewhere close to Wicca. I worked out how the Sabbats worked in the southern hemisphere and celebrated them, cast circles, worshipped nature, had a number of gods and goddesses in my spiritual inventory, so to speak.

And then, quite suddenly but without any outside influence, I realised that the reason behind all this was that I wanted to believe. I also wanted to belong to something, to have ‘legitimate’ beliefs. But I can’t believe in something just because I want it to be true. So at the end of the day, my fading belief in God and gods is linked directly to my growing awareness of my self.

I’ve always believed in God and I always will. I haven’t had this great life that people think Christians seem to live (ie: happy family, wonderful boyfriend, money out the ying yang, etc.) I believe in Him because despite every fickle thing in my life, He’s always there at the end of the day.

@ducky_dnl Who exactly has an image of Christians having a perfect life? I’m sure we are all aware of stories of Christian martyrs all over the world, and most of us probably know at least one Christian living in poverty.

At some point, I realised that the harder I was working to please God, the less pleased my church leadership was with me. I could never make progress, no matter how much secular life I gave up, how little a life I had outside the church, nothing. There was always a scripture to tell me I was still evil in some way.

I stopped going to church, and started reading the Bible myself. I’d read it through before, but this time I wanted to do it without the tainting of “devoted follower”. I came to a realization – If God were a D&D character, he’d be Chaotic Evil. And Jesus was a jerk – forcing non-Jews to humiliate themselves before giving them any attention, killing a fig tree because it didn’t give him fruit when it wasn’t time for fruit, drowning a town’s entire herd of swine for no reason…

I decided if I was going to worship any god, it wasn’t going to be that one.

So I started looking at other religions. I’d studied mythology and world religion for a while, so I had a pretty good jump. None of them seemed plausible to me. Then I started to think:

“If all of those religions are impossible and wrong, what made my religion right?”

And then I couldn’t think of anything.

And all of a sudden, I was an atheist.

@FireMadeFlesh Every person I know in real life (that isn’t Christian) thinks that way and they try to play that card when insulting me or my religion. I know not everyone does this and I am sorry for generalizing, but the bulk of the people I know do it.

I quit believing in God when I realized that if he did exist he would never allow Christian rock to be so much worse than the devil’s music.

I quit believing when it became clear science constantly disproved a lot of religious assertions. It dawned on me those stories are just myths. That and the fact God never makes its presence obvious.

Critical thinking, Advanced sciences, technology, and powerful telescopes.

I often think if God were 100% real then why didn’t he just make us the center of our universe? Why is it that things found here on Earth are made up of the same chemicals, minerals, etc…found elsewhere within our Universe)? Why did he make the Universe so big that it is almost impossible for us to traverse it? What will happen when we find some other sort of life on another planet, what then? Especially if we find intelligent life, and then have no idea what God is? For those that say they need a reason for this Universe’s existence and creation but say the universe could not be created from “nothing” so therefore it has to have an intelligent creator…then me personally I’d rather skip the middle man and just say either the Universe itself was created out of nothing or that the Universe has always “just existed”...because God had to be created from someone if you say something cannot be created from nothing.

This brought me to believe that religion is a man made thing. Made by the most powerful people of it’s creation, it was an easy way for Pharaohs, Kings, Queens, Tribal Elders to control their people. Instill the “Fear of God” into people…keeps them under control. Although some of the ancient “Pagan” religions i could even see being somewhat “OK” because many of them worshiped the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Season..which had alot to do with their well being at the time (farming, fishing, etc)

I have no problem believing in a God, if that makes you feel better…it’s just this whole new creationist belief that they are trying to prove that God does exists and they are calling it a science now…i.e like the Banana Man and Kirk Cameron

I didn’t change…When I first became aware of religion, I made a rational determination based on logic and common sense that the suggestion that there was an all powerful, all knowing, invisible man in the sky who had set us on a predetermined course of suffering so that someday we could stand up in the clouds and be happy, was a con perpetrated by the powerful and elite who know they could manipulate ignorant people with spooky language for their money, because the all-powerful one was no good with money either. And, what a con it is, Hly Fckn Sht!

@FireMadeFlesh

Ok. I can understand that. : )

I searched for most of my life for some connection to “The” that I could relate to. Spent many years as a Wiccan, because that seemed to give me more than the “big box” churches could. But we moved away from my community and I needed spiritual input. My daughter was a Christian and I knew it would make her happy for me to attend her church – I just needed a way to “translate” from Christianity to my own ideas, so I read The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel. It had been recommended by a friend who I believe has a very down-to-earth view of life, a very scientific-minded computer tech.

The book presented very logical, well-researched reasons why the New Testament is an accurate portrayal of facts and events. If the NT is accurate, then Jesus was who he said he was. If he was who he said he was, then I had a choice to make – admit I had been wrong and follow Jesus, or keep going my own way. The second choice wasn’t really an option.

I believe the Bible over everything people say (Jesus believed it, and He should know). I don’t always understand it, but I have faith that I will understand what I need to. I have faith that God loves us in spite of ourselves and set things up for our best interests, even though I can’t always see how. I am a limited being – I live in the physical world, and while I have a spiritual component, it is currently housed by the physical body and so I don’t know everything. But I believe God does.

And that’s what changed my belief in God.

@llewis

Great answer.

Don’t think I ever believed in god. I certaintly wanted to believe, I really tried to believe. Unlike Job I was unable to withstand the suffering that was in my life and IS all around me to possibly ever believe that it’s all gods plan.

An omnipotent being wouldn’t give two shits what I do, did, or thought about doing. To belive anything else is to give your life way more importance than necessary.

I was born a Catholic but I don’t think this to be the main foundation of my faith. It probably helped in the structure, but definitely not entirely or even mostly. I never really understood faith in a clear manner then, so I just followed along.

My perception of faith changed when something happened to me. Something big and sharp hit my head and created a gash across the top of my head and blood oozed over, and I fondly remember holding my face and seeing blood all over my hands. I was in a foreign country with a language I am not good at and no family with me. Among the crowd was a doctor who came from the same country as I do. I didn’t think much of it at first. But ever since then, I came to see the good stuff in life. There are a lot of bad things to, but they are mostly solvable and in retrospect I overreact too much.

I don’t think religion is for everybody. However, if you don’t believe in one, don’t bash or hate on one. Religions were originally there to guide people, they are supposedly methods that help people be closer to God. If some has gone out of course, it is for them to think. You could say your opinion, but don’t stereotype immediately. It does not make you any better. And you have to realize that there are many people that are part of this religions. There’s no audition, or something that big. Everybody is welcome. It is so vulnerable. One can just fake to be one, wreak havoc, and the world’s recognition of that religion changes dramatically.

Faith, however, is different. It’s a lot like love. You can’t force people to see it, or perceive it the way you do. You can’t dictate people what to feel or how they should feel. It just comes in naturally. In a certain time and in a certain place, it will just come.

Some may assume that they never felt it at all. As long as you do good, in you are indirectly experiencing it. God, for me, wanted something great for each of us. He made us all different and yet so the same. We live our lives differently, but still there’s no reason to be hating on differences.

I was raised catholic. I had to go to CCC. I would always get in trouble for asking to many questions. By the time I was 13 I realized that the church didnt have the answers I seek in life, nor did any other religion. They were just blinding following the words written on paper by man thousands of years prior. I came to the thinking of if there is no way of me to ever know wither or not there is a god with solid conclusive fact, how the hell could anyone else. So at that point I became agnostic. I’ve come to realize in life it is much much more important to have faith in myself as a person than some god that may or may not be there.

My thinking is, if there is indeed a god, it will judge me on how I was as a person in life, not wither or not I believed in it. That would be extremely vain. And if that is the case, I want no part of such a god anyway.

@uberbatman What’s CCC?

Time, exposure and reflection changed me. I think it was only the far-spanning experiences I had with different religions and the examination of the various dogmas that convinced me that, in all likelihood, not a god-damned one was anywhere close to the truth.

I am an atheist. I was raised Catholic.

At a very early age, as an animal-obsessed child, I realized that there was no way that all of those animals could have fit on the Ark.

In high school, I read Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Christian and found it compelling.

But what really did it for me is the argument from evil, especially as it applies to animal suffering. There is simply no way to conjoin the image of a just God and the vast amount of animal suffering in the world.

There are many, many more reasons that I do not believe, but these were the most important milestones along my path.

@fundevogel errr ccd rather. It was sunday school church. So we basically went every week and learned some shit from the bible like classroom style. Through ccd I got communion and conformation

I can’t say my beliefs are a big hit with the religionists or materialist “free thinkers” but my beliefs have changed from believing in a literal religious type omnipotent god to more of a belief with a Universe with a purpose. More like a “Divine Universe”.

I’ve attempted, as far as I can remember, to be skeptical of anything that held itself out as having the answer to anything with absolute certainty – particularly and most critically when it pertained to some of the biggest questions (the nature of reality, why we are here, etc.).

I can’t say I’m convinced of anything…but what I do know is I’ve never heard a convincing argument against the existence of god in some form, nor any that there was no creative or purpose-driven impulse to set in motion reality as we know it now (I have yet to read Hawkings’ newest, although I’m fairly certain that I will be able to fully grasp so little of his reasoning that I will be able to make an informed decision about the prospect of the beginning of something from nothing).

@ducky_dnl I find that really interesting. I tend to think that Christians are more likely to be those looking for something than those who have something. Religions are supposed to be about character and morality, not possessions or circumstances.

@uberbatman They scold you for asking too much questions?Then read the bible for answers,my pastor lets people like me(lazy) ask questions and sometimes he will answer it next week because he will take time to research the bible…If your church don’t have people to do the work for you,just read it yourself

Cosmology.

To me, God is the best explanation we have for the origin of the natural laws.

@vamtire The questions I was looking for answers to werent in the bible. Ie in the beginning of the bible it says Noah lived to 900 some years old. How in the fuck is that possible? I would press for an answer but never get one. This isnt something I can just look up.

I would also find a lot of contradictions in the bible back when I read it but if i pointed any out I would get in trouble.

I was a Catholic, I ran away screaming. I had an experience with death, and am now a Christian again. That said, realize that one proof of God’s existence is the fact that we have developed the things that we have, the complex languages that we have, the scientific advances that we have… Would creatures that “just happened” to come into being be able to do that? I know that not everyone will come to the same belief that I have. The only thing that I can do is present what I believe. I cannot force anyone to arrive at the same belief. It is incredebily presumptuous to believe that I can.

@uberbatman In the past at Noah’s time before the flood the sky had more water and those blocked the UV rays from the sun and it gave the people and the fruits and vegetables that they eat more healthy and better-quality food that had no rain but went other the mist of God’s grace.These things you go by inference,a guy reading a bible 300 years ago would not have known about UV rays but he knows that the situation at the time was different,just like how different the world is today than 300 years ago,he couldn’t have imagined unless he experienced it,the bible can’t have explanation for people of different knowledge and from different era,but you can try to ask from reliable sources like a helpful Pastor who tries to find answers for you and clear your doubt but please don’t ask because you just want to challenge the Church,ask with a correct mindset.I think you church is seriously messed up if what you said is true(that you will get in trouble if you point out your doubts).Find a church that is not so corrupted

@vamtire “In the past at Noah’s time before the flood the sky had more water and those blocked the UV rays from the sun and it gave the people and the fruits and vegetables that they eat more healthy and better-quality food that had no rain but went other the mist of God’s grace.”

Actually Genesis describes the firmament as separating the waters above from the waters below [1]. This model of the world appears again in Psalms [2]. There wasn’t more water in the sky, everything beyond the firmament was thought to be water. The firmament was the dome that was thought to cover the earth sealing it off from all of the water above [3] and belief in this sort of world structure was widespread in the ancient world, it predated Jewish text and can be found in ancient Sumerian cosmology [4] as well as Babylonian and Akkadian cultures.

“you can try to ask from reliable sources like a helpful Pastor who tries to find answers for you and clear your doubt but please don’t ask because you just want to challenge the Church,ask with a correct mindset.”

I’m am sincerely troubled that you think it is wrong to challenge the church. No group, ideology or person should be above challenging. It is only by meeting and overcoming challenges, that a system, idea or set of beliefs show themselves to be worth keeping.

Worthwhile ideas don’t need to be shielded from challenge and ideas that need shielding aren’t worth holding.