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Post by erictheblue on May 15, 2009 16:54:31 GMT -5
I was technically raised United Methodist, but I'm not sure I ever believed. I went to Sunday School most Sundays, church services every few weeks (including serving as an Acolyte and usher through middle school and high school), and was active in my church youth group.
On the other hand, it sometimes felt like I was going through the motions. "OK, it's time to light the candles" or "Pass the Offering Plates," but none of it was real, if that makes sense. Every time I was serving, when we got to the sermon, I started day dreaming.
When I was in high school, the Sunday School teacher was a local lawyer who encouraged us to discuss and debate the less talked about things in the Bible, which I loved. I suspect that was the first step towards losing my faith, but it wasn't the nail in the coffin.
When I went to college, I stopped attending church services, but still considered myself a Christian. I did attend non-denominational services while in Navy Officer Candidate School, but that was mostly to get away from the DI's and because it was peaceful. (Though I no longer consider myself a Christian, I find humming the Navy Hymn - Eternal Father - is a good way to calm myself down.)
About 2 years ago, I got hit with a lot of circumstances outside my control that sent me into a suicidal depression. I kept praying that god would help me and take away the pain, but that never happened. (I guess someone could argue that my golden retriever curling up on me was god's answer, but if so, it's a poor one. Once I got up from the cuddling, the pain was back.)
My depression was finally taken care of with medication and my faith was gone.
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Post by dantesvirgil on May 15, 2009 18:02:40 GMT -5
I was born and raised a Jehovah's Witness. I had a really hard time maintaining my faith from the time I was a little kid, but I worked hard at it. I got their version of excommunicated when I was 18 years old because I was considered "unreprentant" and "too influential," I guess to the other kids there. Which turned out to be true, I guess, because even though I didn't speak to any of the other kids after I got kicked out, over half of them left or got kicked out too within a year of what happened to me, probably because they saw the process for the bullshit it really was. I've noticed that other people are saying education helped them get past religion, and that was true for me as well. When you're a fundy, you learn how to compartmentalize if you're a smart person. You think things like evolution could still be "real" because it could've been God who started the big bang, etc. and maybe evolution is just His mechanism and the Bible is kind of metaphorical about it. Or something. :-D But after I got booted out, I went straight to atheism. One thing JWs do is prep you well on why all the other religions -- except theirs -- are wrong. So, that just left one religion to debunk...
I'm on the short list now for "apostasy", which in layman's terms means that I'm close to being declared a lesser imp of Satan. Lol.
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libertyprime
Junior Member
Hey, it was acceptable in the '80s.
Posts: 58
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Post by libertyprime on May 15, 2009 18:07:30 GMT -5
I was raised catholic.I'm not sure how I became an atheist, but I can sort of describe it as "growing out of it." by the time I was 14 I considered myself an atheist, but I've always stayed on the sidelines of tis debate because frankly it's not really all that important to me. Having been raised with sane catholics for whom religion is only a minor part of their life, I'm ill accustomed to the raving lunatics common on the nets and my opinion is that you can believe whatever you want as long as I'm not bothered by it.
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Post by fhatthewuck on May 15, 2009 18:10:45 GMT -5
(Yay, story time!) For a while, the only thing holding me to believe in god was Pascal's Wager.
My family was not religious. I never went to church until a friend invited me in second grade. You know how kids are, they'll believe anything an authority figure tells them. Why? Because that's what they're taught to do.
Before this, I'd been really interested in dinosaurs. I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up ever since I was young enough that merely being able to pronounce that word was impressive to adults. But as soon as I started going to church that changed. How could dinosaurs have existed 65million years before humans if god had created everything in a week? Something had to go and Bob Bakker never threatened me for not believing him. Thus, a child fundie I became. I even closed my eyes and covered my ears in biology whenever prehistory or evolution was mentioned. (For a while I even refused to have anything to do with Pokemon for the sole reason that the creatures 'evolved')
When I was 11 I was shot in the shoulder. Luckily, the bullet passed right through without causing permanent damage. I was out of the hospital by the next day but was sent to a foster home for a long while. I thought god was punishing me for something, or testing my faith. So I would cry and beg for forgiveness. Surely this was my fault. Do you see how much damage religion can cause?
Some while later I finally was able to return to my home and to church. One day they were complaining about Catholics and how they cross their chests when they pass churches. My church explained that it was ridiculous to do so as a church is just a man made structure and that god is everywhere. I used this logic as an excuse to stop waking up early every Sunday to attend church.
By the time I graduated high school, I already rejected creationism, church, the bible as literal truth, and that god's existence was even probable. (Hooray education and special thanks to Tunderf00t and TalkOrigins!) But I didn't want to burn in hell as that seemed most unpleasant, so I clung to a weak belief anyway. Eventually, I realized how ridiculous that was, for reasons that should be obvious to this group.
It wasn't until long after I started identifying as an atheist that I discovered that 'believing in god just to be on the safe side' wasn't my own original and clever idea.
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Post by NoLeafClover on May 15, 2009 18:51:57 GMT -5
I went through a relatively rough time when I was a teenager--not as rough as other people's, but still pretty rough. I always kind of believed in God, or at least I told myself I did.
To make an absurdly long story short, a series of different girls played mental chess with my head. I didn't have any guy friends, or any real friends in general, so not only was a dicked around with by manipulative girls, I didn't really have anyone to turn to. I was totally lonely and pretty well pissed off. I, like a lot of people, tried to ask God why he was putting me through all that pain and loneliness, but like everyone else, I got no answers.
A little while after I graduated (but still found myself more or less controlled by the same females who had ruined me in high school, and then some) I was cleaning my room. I flipped up my mattress to get some of the change from under it, and when I did, I found a bunch folded up letters.
The letters were from my mom, and were apparently prayers for me to...sleep on? I guess? When I opened up, the gist of them all was this--"God, please allow Kenneth to find someone special--unless it is in your plan for him not to."
It pretty much ended their. I could not buy that someone who supposedly loved me and all his children had a plan for me that involved me being lonely for the rest of my life. Any little bit I had of hope for a God was pretty much squased. Even more so, it hurt (and still hurts) that my Mom would want me to be lonely if it were part of some unseen being's "plan".
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Post by Tiger on May 15, 2009 20:48:58 GMT -5
Also, another thing that made me lose my faith was gradually realizing what a gigantic asshole the god of the bible is. I first started to realize this while contemplating one of the most asked questions when it comes to the existence of god: "If god is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-knowing, then why is there so much suffering in the world?"
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POSW
Full Member
Still metal, no longer Jewish
Posts: 217
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Post by POSW on May 15, 2009 22:53:24 GMT -5
My story might be a little different from the rest of yours. I've been raised in a Conservative Jewish house. Now in terms of Jewish denominations, "Conservative" is in the middle, between Orthodox and Reform. We aren't like this guy: but not very relaxed either - a lot of Conservative Jews do keep at least some of the rituals. I had an overactive imagination as a little kid, and on occasion I would lie awake in bed and make up theories. One of these theories - "The universe is God's body, and we're like little cells," was sort of similar to pantheism, and it stayed in the back of my mind for a while. During my middle school years, I didn't really question my religion, because Judaism isn't just a religion, it's also a race (sort of) and a nation. I was very proud - and I still am - of the way Jews have survived thousands of years of being hated and persecuted, and I wanted to carry on that legacy of survival. Any questions I had about God were buried under nationalism. That was the way it stayed, really, until I stumbled upon FSTDT. Someone on another forum linked me to the old FSTDT site. My first post on the forums got me in an argument with Julian - I happened to agree with something Skyfire said without really knowing who Sky was what either of them were talking about. ;D Some of the quotes on FSTDT are extremely clumsy and stupid "proofs" of God, which got me thinking about the existence of God. My first conclusion was that, yes, it's impossible to prove God logically, but I believe in him anyway. I discovered the "God is Nature" argument of Spinoza when I looked up what Einstein's religious beliefs were, and for a short time considered myself a pantheist. Eventually, though, doubt cracked that last bit of belief, and here I am, an apathetic agnostic. I still think that there could be a god, but if there is, he hasn't shown in any way that he gives a shit about us. Random observation that has nothing to do with the above post, but is very funny: one of the spelling suggestions that Microsoft Word gives me for FSTDT is "fisted". ;D
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Post by shiftyeyes on May 15, 2009 23:22:02 GMT -5
If I may continue the Jewish threadjack...
I was raised conservative Jewish. I don't think my dad ever really believed it. I remember him saying that anyone who truly believes there is a god is insane. My mom was a believer and her parents even more so. I went to a Jewish preschool. I remember being taught about God's omnipotence and all of the terrible tragedies that had befallen God's chosen people. I didn't make sense. I went to Hebrew school twice a week until my bar mitzvah. The stories and ethical debates were interesting, but I always thought that they made more sense to look at from a humanist perspective than a Jewish one. My classmates, and most teachers didn't like this. And god forbid I should ever consider Israel in the wrong on anything or consider Jewish as not the most important part of my identity. And the prayers we learned made no sense. My family went to synagogue on the high holidays and for bar mitzvahs. The only interesting part of the service was the sermon where the rabbis would share wisdom that didn't really require Judaism to work; often it was humanistic and liberal. At this point I was an apathetic Jew. I think I was agnostic about god, but felt that being Jewish was still a good thing, provided no effort was required. About a month before I turned 15, my dad died suddenly (yes, I know this is an atheist cliche; I apologize). My mom wanted us to go to synagogue in the evening once a month or so at this point. If you've never heard the mourner's kaddish, it is one of the most sickening statements there is. Paraphrased, it's eight or so adjectives explaining how great god is, nothing about death. I couldn't bring myself to utter it, or any other prayer. After about two months my mom realized this wouldn't work. It didn't help any of us. The next high holidays, we went to his grave for a traditional prayer and did a traditional Yom Kippur service for those who have experienced the death of a loved one; both sucked. I decided this was all meaningless to me and a pointless tradition. I tried to believe that god, was just the way of describing certain aspects of the natural world and explainable phenomena. There was nothing supernatural about it. By the time I reached college, I realized that I was just an atheist.
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ytdn
New Member
Posts: 35
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Post by ytdn on May 16, 2009 6:57:29 GMT -5
It's slightly different for me, since I consider myself Christian-ish at the moment. Any, I was raised catholic, got bored, went atheist mostly because my older sister went atheist, then went agnostic so nobody could accuse me of copying my sister, and then vaguely stumbled my way back into catholicism, mostly out of the niggling feeling that God probably exists and that the nearest church is a catholic one.
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Post by Aqualung on May 16, 2009 9:54:54 GMT -5
I'm agnostic mostly because Christianity doesn't make a lick of sense to me. It raises too many questions. I've gone back and forth between believing and agnostic a few times. I grew up in a Lutheran church whose main focus is actually on being good people and helping others in need. I was made to go to Sunday School, confirmation classes and summer bible school and all that noise. But the sermons were never really fire and brimstone or preaching about teh evil ghey people. My parents really didn't do anything religious outside of church. We had the Last Supper and holographic picture of Jesus on the wall and that was pretty much it. But I do remember being really young and almost crying in church during a sermon where they said the part about how you're supposed to love God even more than your parents that someone else mentioned. I questioned things. I had friends who were other denominations. I didn't understand why my Catholic friends had to go to religion classes every Wednesday after school and I didn't. I heard about how Catholics are anti-birth control and that pissed me off. I had a friend who was Assembly of God whose family disowned her older sister when she turned out to be a lesbian. My grandmother's church is also Lutheran, but part of the Wisconsin synod; I would go stay with her for a week when I was little and had to go to church with her on Sunday morning but I wasn't allowed to take communion because I wasn't part of the same synod. I thought that was kind of shitty. My mother used to be a lot like the folks over at Rapture Ready. Once when I was little she wanted to read to me from the Bible, and she started with Revelation. Now I was like 7 when she did that and it scared the shit out of me. Probably it had to do with her upbringing in the above mentioned Wisconsin synod; I once looked through their hymnals and they even have a section of songs for "end of days". At least she seems to have mellowed out since then. I could not buy that someone who supposedly loved me and all his children had a plan for me that involved me being lonely for the rest of my life. Any little bit I had of hope for a God was pretty much squased. Yep, I could've written that myself. Why, if God is supposed to be so loving would he want any of us to be miserable? Why would he punish you for eternity for something you did as a stupid kid? Why would he do that to someone just to make an example of them? Why would he create homosexuals if it's so wrong? And why would he talk to people like Pat Robertson and W Bush and not everyone? Why would he create such a beautiful earth with all the different animals only to destroy it? I decided the only answer to all of this was that God is an asshole. Having said that, who says the universe couldn't have been created by some God or other? I just don't believe that it all went down the way it says so in the Bible. I guess I just want to believe there is something more out there because of how much bad shit we go through in life that it would be nice if we could at least be happy in the afterlife. :/ [Edited because I think I put the wrong synod; I think our church is Missouri synod. Doh.]
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Post by schizophonic on May 16, 2009 15:37:03 GMT -5
My parents weren't really strong Christians in the first place. Made it fairly easy to shake my faith. I also wasn't raised in an extremely religious neighborhood, so most of my friends and neighbors weren't very hardcore, either. It's been a partial theory of mine that I was able to get out because nobody was making a serious attempt to hold me in.
But the breaking point for me was the conflict between the doctrine of Christianity and my sexuality and gender identity. Couldn't grasp why "god" would hate me so much. It simply broke my faith down by degrees, a spiritual war of attrtition.
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Post by Vypernight on May 16, 2009 18:12:00 GMT -5
My turn! My turn!
I grew up Roman Catholic, mostly in a small town with one huge Catholic church and a bunch of little churches. I went to Catholic school for a few years, got the Communion, skipped Confirmation, and rarely returned. I did pray before bed nearly every night though and crossed myself if I cursed in front of a church. I also turned down the music when playing heavy metal music while driving by a church after nearly getting into an accident (which I later realized was because I wasn'y paying attention to the red light).
Strangely enough, I respected other religions (I had a lesbian Wiccan friend and a classmate who followed a Native American tradition so those became two of my favorites), but I though non-Catholic religions were just people with mental problems or something like that. Other than that, I was pretty open-minded. Despite my being straight, I never cared what gays did, and I decided I had no say in abortion issues. I pretty much believed your afterlife would depend on your religion, with none being right or wrong.
Then, about 10 years ago, I saw a show on near-death experiences. In the show, people who supposedly died had seen the 'light at the end of the tunnel.' However, when they went back to look, they found the people's brains were still functioning, meaning they were still alive. In other words, those near-death experiences were B.S.!
I panicked really fast as they thought of ceasing to exist when I died terrified the @%^%#@ out of me! I spent a lot of time reading ghost stories, figuring that maybe there was something there that showed that something about you existed after death. But then I started thinking that maybe it was all a universal safe-guard against the fear of death.
I then asked the 'wrong people,' who only either prayed for me or told me to read the Bible. My friend, a hardcore Christian, leant me his Bible and told me to find out for myself.
So I read the stories from the beginning, thinking, "I'm following this tradition? I can't even follow the stories!" Eventually, I got to the war in Heaven, and I read somewhere else that it was all an allegory (correct word there?) for some battle in Rome. Well, if that story was made up, what's to stop the rest of it from being the same?
I finally decided Christianity was no longer for me, and I started looking for a new path. I encountered the term, 'Agnosticism,' and decided that fit me. I also began reading about other religions. At me fiancee's suggestion, I started reading about Buddhism, and it seemed to make more sense to me than anything else, especially the part where you're not required to believe anything; you have to find the answers yourself.
I picked up all four books of the Shobogenzo and really felt like this made more sense to me than the Bible (I love the story of Master Gensa learning wisdom from a rock).
Currently, I have no clue if a higher power or afterlife exists, but I feel I don't have to know. I just feel like my current path makes more sense to me than anything else. And there's no way I could ever go back to Christianity.
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starbrewer
Full Member
God can go to hell
Posts: 226
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Post by starbrewer on May 16, 2009 23:41:36 GMT -5
Someone asked me at Facebook once, I didn't feel like writing an essay right then and there, but now I have done so.
Banned From The Bible: things like some Roman woman who could have been history's first feminist, but eventually fed to the lions, by other Christians. Somehow the people with penises decided they did not want to risk any female insurrection.
Cosmology: I had held that there just has to be a God, because the Big Bang singularity could not have spontaneously exploded. I saw a show, I think it was TLC, how the supergravity crowd and the 10th dimension scientists, at each others' throats, were brought together by the introduction of an 11th dimension. It showed me that something could have happened like that spontaneously, and maybe we don't need a God.
I have to disagree with Yahweh, because the retooling of pagan myths into Jesus is a moot point, and makes you question the authenticity, at least question where it really came from. In all my rants and ravings, I can say I hate God, hate the Bible, hate religion, but ultimately it comes down to "I don't know." If that's true, then the Bible is bullshit because it claims perfect certainty on things no one really knows, 4000 year old snake oil.
I believe that "Jesus never existed" is an oversimplification, because the only thing we don't know is exactly how many Jesuses there really were. More than one had eyewitness accounts of miracles and resurrection. Did God have more than one son, in case the first one screwed up?
As for the Jesus in the Bible, he was probably loosely based on several of the Jesuses who did exist. Fourth century theologians picked one, traced his lineage in the year CE 349. As for the Gospels, they've all been carbon-dated to nearly 100 years after Jesus supposedly lived. They could not have been eyewitnesses. In 2006, the Gospel of Judas became a hot topic. It was carbon dated to around 300 years after Jesus lived, making it equally authentic to the gospels we do have. However, one gospel we do have gives an account of Jesus praying, "...I have kept the son of perdition." With that quote, we don't need the Gospel of Judas.
Right now I am reading 101 Myths Of The Bible by Gary Greenberg. He says Moses did exist, was the high priest of one of the cities cults, during a brief time of authoritarian monotheism. When that Pharoah died, the country reverted to paganism. Another man led an armed secession from Egypt, and Moses joined.
The greatest hoaxster in the OT would have to be Joshua. Archaeological evidence says that the walls of Jericho fell 300 years before Joshua supposedly lived. That Joshua ruined Ai? "Ai" is the Hebrew word for ruins; that city was already in ruins when Joshua arrived. Joshua, conqueror of sandcastles! Also, the sun standing still for Joshua, while at Gibeon? Does this mean that the Native Americans and Australian Aboriginees experienced a longer than normal night? In 101 Myths, Greenberg says that the Sun and Moon standing still means that their local deities didn't go anywhere, and did not affect the outcome of Joshua's battles, and that Yahweh would not be outdone by them. In reality, Gibeon was vacant at the time of Joshua, so the Israelites kept their promise to no one.
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Post by ausador on May 17, 2009 1:27:34 GMT -5
I've always been a reader and as a child read well above my age/grade level. I fell in love with the stories of the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods and heroes and was reading everything I could find on them. I was raised in a fundie household and was dragged off to church, sunday school, and youth fellowship meetings all this time also. The more I learned about the bible the more convinced I became that there was no difference between it and the other myths I was reading. Although there was a time I actually believed in Christianity it was pretty brief, probably between about the ages of 5 and 10. I know that before I turned 11 I had gone from faith to knowing for myself that it was utter crap, some good stories maybe, but not reality. After that I started looking into the historical origins of the church and became even firmer in my denial of it's truthfulness. So what changed my mind? Learning and rational thought, IMO there is no valid reason to consider Christianity to be any more correct than any other religion or belief. I did cast about for a couple of years looking into other religions and seeing if maybe there wasn't one I could have faith in. Eventually I concluded that there wasn't and then followed the normal agnostic to atheist path that most of us do. I guess I'm getting grumpy in my middle years because for the last four years or so I have identified more with "anti-theist" than with "atheist". Then again maybe thats just my mental revulsion to having had G. W. Bush in charge for eight years.
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Post by Vypernight on May 17, 2009 4:05:48 GMT -5
Right now I am reading 101 Myths Of The Bible by Gary Greenberg. He says Moses did exist, was the high priest of one of the cities cults, during a brief time of authoritarian monotheism. When that Pharoah died, the country reverted to paganism. Another man led an armed secession from Egypt, and Moses joined. The greatest hoaxster in the OT would have to be Joshua. Archaeological evidence says that the walls of Jericho fell 300 years before Joshua supposedly lived. That Joshua ruined Ai? "Ai" is the Hebrew word for ruins; that city was already in ruins when Joshua arrived. Joshua, conqueror of sandcastles! Also, the sun standing still for Joshua, while at Gibeon? Does this mean that the Native Americans and Australian Aboriginees experienced a longer than normal night? In 101 Myths, Greenberg says that the Sun and Moon standing still means that their local deities didn't go anywhere, and did not affect the outcome of Joshua's battles, and that Yahweh would not be outdone by them. In reality, Gibeon was vacant at the time of Joshua, so the Israelites kept their promise to no one. Great book by the way. Basically, most of the pre-Bible deities either became demons or humans in the Bible itself. I was thinking of starting a thread called, 'The Bible, what really happened,' where people give their thoughts on the events of the Bible, as if they were based on real events.
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