Serious Religion: Change in Beliefs

[Zeostar]

This is NOT a question of "Does a God exist" but more to share experiences of what you believe now against what you grew up believing, if that has changed at all. And if those beliefs changed what caused it?

After listening to the George Carlin speeches about religion, I don't think I've been challenged to question my beliefs in a long time. I intended to listen because I wanted to hear his perspective, but ended up almost changing mine. (Not dead set, as there were a couple key points I didn't agree with).

After I heard it, I started questioning what I believed, I even grew slightly depressed. It began to disparage any thoughts about an afterlife, but I began to think "Then what's the point of living anyways" because growing up I was taught to live is to prepare for the afterlife.

I still plan to attend church, but also plan to listen to more speeches. I'd say I'm more at a crossroads than anything.

 

[o1a1d1s1]

I was believing in nothing and it didn't changed. The most true faith according to what human is. Dust. Life is here. Thinking too far only leads to disappointments.

 

[Ivysaur]

The point of living is having fun with it and enjoying art, friends and the wonders of the planet Earth, and hopefully contributing to it and doing right by the other living beings and the future generations. Why miss all of that by focusing on a hypothetical afterlife no one can be certain about? That strikes me as such a waste. I know this reality exists, and it's blooming with emotive and beautiful and fun things to discover, I'll worry about the next life if/when I get there.

And, answering your questions, I've always been an atheist, even if I've read and learned about religions.

 

[CiCi]

I identified as an atheist for a long time but recently I've changed it to agnostic. I find that you really can't say one way or another if there is or isn't a god out there and holding such an absolutist belief didn't really align with how I actually felt. Agnosticism is more accurate to my own personal views.

That said, I don't really care what religion people follow or don't, as long as they're not being an asshole in the name of their religion.

 

[Ninetales]

I was raised Christian and I am Christian today. It was quite interesting growing up, as I was influenced by all three of the major branches of Christianity. My maternal grandparents are Russian Orthodox, my mother is Protestant, and my father and his parents are Roman Catholic. Growing up, I attended Catholic school and when I entered my teenage years I began to question religion. After some troubled times, I lost faith and became an atheist, rejecting the mere notion of religion altogether. As an atheist, I was nihilistic and highly skeptical, and quite miserable in all honesty. However, I believe that I had a spiritual awakening of sorts and I believe that I had encounters with the divine. These experiences restored my faith in God and I became a follower of Christ once again.

I feel as though with every passing year I grow closer in my relationship with God. And while I don't necessarily identify with any particular denomination of Christianity, I am a practicing Christian and I consider my spirituality to be very important in my life. (I do have some rather divergent beliefs that do not necessarily align with any denomination in particular, such as the fact that I do not believe in hell) Of course, I've studied many religious, such as Buddhism, Shintoism, Islam, and Wicca and I am fascinated by the various belief systems that exist in this world. I do not judge others on the basis of their beliefs, nor do I judge things such as sexuality or culture. I believe that we are all equal under God and that He loves us all.

I do attend church on a rather irregular basis but plan to do so more as I'm older and more independent. Although, it is my belief that God would rather have his people out in the world helping others and spreading kindness, then idly sitting in a building. Therefore, I do hope to participate in more charity work/volunteer work as well.

 

[Zeostar]

The point of living is having fun with it and enjoying art, friends and the wonders of the planet Earth, and hopefully contributing to it and doing right by the other living beings and the future generations. Why miss all of that by focusing on a hypothetical afterlife no one can be certain about? That strikes me as such a waste. I know this reality exists, and it's blooming with emotive and beautiful and fun things to discover, I'll worry about the next life if/when I get there.

And, answering your questions, I've always been an atheist, even if I've read and learned about religions.

I'll be out enjoying myself with family or friends, but sometimes get this brief realization of how temporary it is. I've always been comforted with the belief that Earth is only a temporary place. However as I started questioning the existence of an afterlife, so does that comfort of family being permanent.

And worrying about the next life whenever you get there has never been what I was taught. I was taught that if you die without having accepted the existence of God and the afterlife as true, you go to hell. It's all I've known for about 18 years. So it's not easy just dropping all beliefs and worrying about it later.

I do agree with helping future generations. I'm studying in a field where I can do just that.

 

[gimmepie]

Questioning your beliefs is good. It's healthy and helps you grow as a person. What other people tells you is true doesn't matter, in the end what you believe is what makes sense to you. You can (and should) listen to the beliefs of others, but you don't have to let others determine what you believe for you.

I've never been super religious, but as a little kid I just sort of accepted "yup, there's a god". The older I got though, the more and more I realised that it was impossible for us to really know whether there is or isn't a god or gods out there, and I also came to the conclusion that it made no sense for a being so much greater than us to really care about our morality or have human-like values like religions keep telling us. So, for most of my life, I've been agnostic.

I never really had a big moment of sudden change or anything, it's just the more I thought about things critically for myself, the more realised that the things people said as absolute fact either made no sense or were impossible to ever prove.

To ease your worry a bit though, why would a being as powerful and alien as a good care whether or not a lowly human being believes they exist? Do you care whether an ant on the other side of the world thinks you exist or not?

 

[Megan]

I've never been big into any belief system. That's just how I've been raised. Instead I was always left to my own devices and boy did I make use of those.

While there have been many times during my youth when I pondered over the questions that nobody asks anymore, the question whether a god exists or not never came up until I got into university. The couple semesters I studied cs never came to fruition, but at least they gave me a lot of things to think about. One in particular was the P=NP problem, one of the problems of computer science that are considered unsolvable. After pondering on for a while I figured that solving this might give us a tool that should allow us to find a solution of the question on whether or not a god exists. It also got me to my "own" belief system.

Well, technically two systems: one of chaos and one of order.

The system of chaos is the one where at the origin of all there is something completely independent of external influences, that can make things just as it wants. It's "true random", as opposed on how we humans perceive randomness. When we see something as random, it's usually only because there are so many external influences that proper calculations are nearly impossible.
But such an entity would not have any such external influences, it really can do whatever it wants. Furthermore, such an entity would be so powerful, it could even turn the rules of physics upside down. And the worst part of that: if something were to happen, we as denizens of a lower dimension would not be able to perceive a change.

On the other side is the system of order. It is made up of a core that is an axiom representing the "absolute Truth". From it radiating are all possibilities, including our own world. I want to even go further and say that these possibilities may not even radiate out, but also flowing back into the entry point. This circular behavior would be very much one explanation on why cycle are such a big deal in our lives: birth and death, the seasons, so many mathematical things that can be related to the number Pi which is closely related to the circle, the fact that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, etc.

Out of those two systems I very much prefer the orderly one. That's mostly because I don't like the idea of some entity randomly making our planet explode overnight. xD

 

[Ys]

I was sort of raised Christian but also given a lot of liberties. As I grew up, in school, I became agnostic and even kind of atheist. But in my later years in uni, I realized that faith is (or should be) about choosing to believe. We will never have concrete proof that a God exists or doesn't exist, but we can choose to believe or to not believe. And I chose to believe. I don't think God is exactly what Christianity or any specific religion paints it as, but I do think we're part of something that's bigger than us.

 

[pastelspectre]

I was never pushed to believe in anything, really. I was lucky to be given free will to explore my religion.

My dad is a heavy atheist though and was often very uhm.. close minded I guess? Whenever religion was brought up in the house, so I never really explored my religion until I got older and after I graduated high school from what I remember.

I'm still unsure of what I am religiously. I just believe in a higher power, that's really the extent of what I know. There was a time where I thought I was Christian but realized that label doesn't really fit me.

So I'm still exploring, I guess? It's difficult. Religion is a.. complicated subject.

 

[Corrin]

I wasn't raised with religion in my life. My mom abandoned her faith at a young age and my father and paternal grandparents weren't religious at all.
My step father has made christianity a part of our lives, but mainly protestant stuff as he was excommunicated from the roman catholic church for divorcing his wife (this was in the 70s). Also most of my moms family suffered through the catholic faith, and my cousins were abused in a home.
However I don't really partake, its just so foreign to me.

 

[Reyzadren]

When I was younger, I was slightly cold towards a/any/the religion because I had always preferred things which were natural and easily came to me, and religion didn't seem like that as I relied more on imagination and inspiration from within.

At some point in my life, I realised that there are lots of things that are true, obvious and natural too, ie ones that are not necessarily self-thought but are "unnaturally" taught to me, such as advanced mathematics and many other facts etc, which I can easily accept, so I accept religion too, as well as also having positive life experiences with those who are religious.

 

[Harmonie]

I was raised as a Christian, and believed because my family and community did. I never felt the presence any deity for myself and found church extraordinarily boring. Don't take that the wrong way, as I, in fact, did not like this. I always wondered what was wrong with me, why I couldn't feel what everyone else was. Nevertheless, I kept trusting in my family/community, that there must be something there.

The churches and family I was raised in were better and more progressive than the average church, and that's wonderful but it allowed me to become very sheltered. This created quite a conflict when I became exposed to history - history of the church, history of civil rights, and also when I saw that Christianity was used to justify sexism and homophobia today. You see, naive, sheltered me thought that being Christian meant being good. When I learned that discrimination and hatred was associated with Christianity that big bubble popped very spectacularly.

At the same time I had been exposed to the concept of non-belief, and between that describing how I'd always felt (never had seen any reason to believe in a deity for myself) and my newfound moral objections to Christianity (which, understand although there are many great Christians and churches, the Bible says things that I find absolutely horrible and wrong that I can not reconcile with either what's moral or what's true) I came to realize that's what I am.

This could put me at odds with my family, but thankfully my family stopped going to church (although still being believers) and are progressive, so there's no reason to ever have this conversation. So IRL I'm closeted, but that's okay.

 

[Hermione Granger]

The churches and family I was raised in were better and more progressive than the average church, and that's wonderful but it allowed me to become very sheltered. This created quite a conflict when I became exposed to history - history of the church, history of civil rights, and also when I saw that Christianity was used to justify sexism and homophobia today. You see, naive, sheltered me thought that being Christian meant being good. When I learned that discrimination and hatred was associated with Christianity that big bubble popped very spectacularly.

The ones doing what you're alluding to aren't acting all Christian like. While Christians are commanded not to support sin, but the way those people attack people who commit those sins is very much sin. It is seeming more and more Christians aren't doing what they are supposed to do and that is why I think Christians are getting a bad reputation. While I don't support the lgbt agenda, I do not dislike the people themselves as I've watched some on youtubers from the community that seem like good people.

 

[Harmonie]

The ones doing what you're alluding to aren't acting all Christian like. While Christians are commanded not to support sin, but the way those people attack people who commit those sins is very much sin. It is seeming more and more Christians aren't doing what they are supposed to do and that is why I think Christians are getting a bad reputation. While I don't support the lgbt agenda, I do not dislike the people themselves as I've watched some on youtubers from the community that seem like good people.

I don't think this topic is meant to be a debate, but I will say that I don't think there is any clear definition of what acting "Christian like" even is, and therein lies the problem. But I'm generally not concerned with the internal squabbles of Christianity (aside from the fact that hateful Christians cling to certain verses that align with their personal prejudices and don't care or even acknowledge sins in the rest of the Bible that might be inconvenient for them). As I said in my post, I have large problems with the very text of the Bible that I can not reconcile with what is good and/or true.

Using the phrase "the LGBT agenda"? That's so loaded with negative connotations (which I'm hoping you're just not aware of), I don't even know how to respond to that, TBH. There is no "agenda" that I'm aware of. We just want to live our lives, and in order for that to happen we have to be treated fairly - to be able to exist in public safely, to not be denied (or have any targeted trouble whatsoever finding/getting) work, medical services, housing, etc.