Losing belief

Yeah, that happens when you stop posting on Fark and Gaia. What do you want me to do about it, you fucking racist bastard?

Originally Posted by a lurker

Yeah, that happens when you stop posting on Fark and Gaia.

Never set a foot in those forums, cupcake.

Quote:

What do you want me to do about it, you fucking racist bastard?

Christ, are you off your meds? When was race EVER involved in this discussion before you brought it up?

Take your hate-speak back to Stormfront. We have no place for it here.

Fair enough. I don't need the mind fuck from some weirdos who misconstrue everything I say as hate or ignorance. And if it is sarcasm, it's not the least funny.

Goodbye.

Originally Posted by Jeffro

Fair enough. I don't need the mind fuck from some weirdos who misconstrue everything I say as hate or ignorance. And if it is sarcasm, it's not the least funny.

Goodbye.

Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:
Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:
Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:
Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:

Why did you get hit in the face so hard in the first place? Things might have gotten worse if you fought back, so the wisdom of turning the other cheek might have been better in that case.

I've been nonreligious my entire life, but I figure that sometimes religion has offered good things in the past, but also has done some bad things in the past. It's like any other tool, it just depends on how you use it.

Originally Posted by Radez29

Personally my favorite was the ark because you're given the measurements and then told that a pair of each of the world's animals fit inside.

Couldn't the animals have been... younger and smaller than what you always see in the pictures? I guess it's more popular to depict these huge elephants and rhinos entering - Oh, and also having the giraffes' necks sticking out a window.

Wow, despite a few wrong turns this thread took I've really enjoyed reading about everyone's experiences. I myself am a very conservative Christian while being moderately liberal in politics oddly enough. Go figure. Agnostic through high school, started praying in college, and now I'm heavily involved with my church.

Believing in God requires a leap of faith. And to me faith is something that you know in your heart is true regardless of the fact that you don't have hardened physical or scientific evidence to prove it. This is of course an unsatisfactory argument to nonbelievers. But without this system a lot of the major principles of Christianity wouldn't work. Jesus actually mentions this situation of nonbelievers being turned away by the exact same thing that attracts those who do believe.

Oh, and I find that MOST people who call themselves Christians do little to represent the intentions that Jesus Christ had for His followers. And the ones you see on TV and in newspapers are often the worst offenders. *sigh*

I lost my belief in God and roman Catholicism when I was 15/16. I had been feeling so down and out and prayed a lot for strength and all sorts of stuff.... but nothing was happening. Life got worse, and the harder I tried to extend my beliefs and build more faith, the harder things got. One day when walking back from Church by myself, I looked at the stars and let it all go....

Since then I have been unable to believe in anything like that. I was looking for answers for so long (Reading the bible, going to church groups, trying different churches), that it drove me crazy. Nothing was working and nothing gave me the faith I needed to go on. So, I just stopped believing. I haven't gone back since.

Instead, I just believe in helping others and being the best I can be. Yes, I have traits that may not be the best in completing that objective, but at the same time I do what I am capable of. Yes, in some ways, my soul searching with Christianity may have created a basis in which to live my life, but at the same time I have been able to live my life without the religion tying me up.

Besides, some people need it, and some people don't. And I found out at age 15 that it wasn't for me.

I'm glad this thread got back to the topic.....

I was raised Catholic, and have attended various Protestant churches since. I took a interest in science, wanting to learn more about creationism vs evolution, so I did an undergrad science degree at a Christian university. It was interesting that professors of theology and science generally tended to hold to some form of theistic evolution; philosophy profs a little less so, and the physicists and math profs more creationist.

When I started university I thought that good science would confirm creationism; what I learned was that the interpretation of the data had as much to do or more with one's philosophical starting point than with the data itself. I still think evolution has huge issues from a scientific perspective, but I don't think science can settle the issue. When I learned about science, especially things like Goedel's (sp?) theorem and quantum mechanics, I realized how limited science is at finding truth. Working over ten years in as a research tech has only reinforced this belief. So, I didn't loose my faith in God, but definitely my faith in science.

To expand on something in my journal:

Language is the archectecture that humans use to experience and explain reality, and religion is the language we use to explain the mystical parts of it.

THE OUTER CHURCH AND THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE ARE BOTH RELIGION. THEY'RE EVERYTHING AND THE SAME.






RAGGED ROBIN IS L. RON HUBBARD. DOES THAT MEAN IT WORKED FOR HIM OR IS HE JUST A CRACKPOT?

One night I was reading the book "Contact" and two characters were having a religion debate (blowing my Middle School mind right there) and I just said to myself, you know, that bible stuff I've been learning about all these years, it sounds like something an idiot made up. Why bother lying to myself about this shit? I don't believe in God, and I did.

It's not that religion is stupid (only in the hands of the ignorant), it's just a little too much for me.

I was hardcore catholic in my youth and then my dad divorced my mom to he could marry another woman. Only problem was he wanted the wedding in a church and being divorced he couldn't do that. So he paid a priest 20,000 bucks and had the marriage annulled. Didn't necessarily stop believing in God right then and there, just in the concept of religion in general, in institution of it. Was too hypocritical to follow.

Lost faith in God after being in a catholic school for 14 years. Can only take so many religion classes before you get sick of the whole thing.

I've always believed in God, but over the past few years I've started to question why. I have no obvious proof of God's existence, but that doesn't rule God's existence out by any means either. I think that most people have to lose their faith at some point as a moving from their given faith from their parents into a faith of their own.

I went through a Catholic Preschool, a Buddhist Japanese Kindergarten (possibly overlapping the timeframe I was with the Catholic school), and a Japanese Christian School (which was in session from Mondays-Thursdays from 3-7PM). Aside from the Catholic Preschool, the other schools I went to on top of regular/secular public school. For the most part, my parents are/were agnostic during this time frame that involved my religion-based schooling. My mother went through bouts of believing in some weird religion for a few years, but my father for the most part remains agnostic. The only reason why I was shoved into these institutions is because my parents believed these schools had better educational benefits.

I think before puberty, I was very much a believer in the Christian god. Skip forward to high school, I didn't really give a damn since most of my friends didn't bring up religion into our daily, normal life conversations and I wasn't affiliated with a church. Skipping forward through college until I took a religion class this semester/quarter--I decided I had enough of arguing about the Christian God and mainly the viewpoints on their religion. The more I read the Bible, the more I am repulsed by the teachings of it or how the mainstream Evangelical Christians justify their understanding of the scripture (mainly, Leviticus to start, but there's a plethora of other things I feel that Christians "pick and choose" that aren't very consistent).

I now go to a Buddhist temple and proclaim myself a Buddhist when asked. The lovely part about this is that I don't get into arguments about God anymore. Even more so lovely is that I get the Bible-humping church recruiters to get off my back as soon as I explain to them that I am a practicing Buddhist. When I used to say that I didn't go to church or didn't really care to believe in God, they were quite adamant about convincing me about their God, which in my view, was a waste of my time. When I explain that I'm a Buddhist, they smile, thank me for my patience and time (which is the half a minute that takes me to say what religion I belong to), and walk away.