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How and When Did You Accept or Deny Religious Faith?

rhinefire

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I recall as a young boy 6-7-8 ? lying in bed reciting that prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep...." but as my folks dressed my brother an me for Methodist church it just never sunk in. I never once felt the presence of anything spiritual in or out of church. I seem to recall my folks saying, "if the boys want to go fine, if not fine". So after 5 or 6 trips to the church we simply stopped going and we never discussed to my memory. There were a lot of Catholics in my neighborhood and so I had them as friends.
When my Catholic friends began talking about what the requirements of the churches were I was immediately in disbelief. It was as if they were in some kind of religious military and the church was watching their every move. The punishments and the constant reference to different church fathers threatening them with disciplines, beatings and the like, I began to see it and all religions as the opposite way I will live my life. I never regretted my decision and I will never grasp how anyone could live a free life under the cover of a demanding if not ridiculing religion. Life is just too short for that.
 
Accepting or denying aren't the only choices. I would say at about age 18 I just stopped giving a **** about matters of belief of any kind.
 
I was raised in church- heavily. At around age 15 or so, I started to question it, and by my early adulthood, I was seeking information on other religions and on philosophy in general, trying to find something which made sense to me. My entire life has been one of searching and questioning, and life, plus experience, has led me from being devoutly Christian, to near-atheist at times, but I generally think of myself as a believer in a very broad concept, without being confined by opinions which make no sense.
 
I was raised in a church-going Christian family. I accepted Christ into my life when I was 14. I too was lying in bed, and confessed my sins and repented. It was an experience unlike any other. I felt this immense presence and then a rush of sudden calm.

I rejected religion when I entered the real world. I taught English to study abroad students and lived in Europe for a stint. I realized that my religious beliefs and convictions were not only similar to others' of different faiths, but that my faith in Christ did not make me a "better" person than anyone else. I began reading about my religion and learning about world history and biology/geology (Creation). I learned about the philosophical problems with Christian belief, the factual inaccuracies of the Bible and of Christian tradition, and I began realizing that there were many moral faults in the Christian community and in their leaders.

One day I just came to the sudden realization that whatever my religious beliefs, they were so riddled with excuses, apologetics, work-arounds, denials of facts and other modifications that they didn't make sense anymore. Most people experience a sense of loss when they become irreligious. I felt a pretty strong sense of relief. The world suddenly made sense and was a happier place.
 
I recall as a young boy 6-7-8 ? lying in bed reciting that prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep...." but as my folks dressed my brother an me for Methodist church it just never sunk in. I never once felt the presence of anything spiritual in or out of church. I seem to recall my folks saying, "if the boys want to go fine, if not fine". So after 5 or 6 trips to the church we simply stopped going and we never discussed to my memory. There were a lot of Catholics in my neighborhood and so I had them as friends.
When my Catholic friends began talking about what the requirements of the churches were I was immediately in disbelief. It was as if they were in some kind of religious military and the church was watching their every move. The punishments and the constant reference to different church fathers threatening them with disciplines, beatings and the like, I began to see it and all religions as the opposite way I will live my life. I never regretted my decision and I will never grasp how anyone could live a free life under the cover of a demanding if not ridiculing religion. Life is just too short for that.

I think it's wrong to take children to any form of overtly religious teachings. It's basically indoctrination. Kids simply do not have the intellectual capacity to make judgements on what they should or should not believe. If believers truly believe their religion is true, they should have no problems getting people to come to that realization on their own when they're at the stage of intellectual adult capacity. Teaching kids that your religion is right from birth is not a true test of a religion's validity. Christianity preaches free will....but so many Christians indoctrinate from birth. Islam proclaims it is the truth but punishes those who leave the religion often with death. Judaism passes from the mother as if someone coming out of a Jewish vagina makes you believe in the Torah. This **** makes no sense.

I leave you with a comic from the Oatmeal:

How to suck at your religion - The Oatmeal
 
I was raised in a church-going Christian family. I accepted Christ into my life when I was 14. I too was lying in bed, and confessed my sins and repented. It was an experience unlike any other. I felt this immense presence and then a rush of sudden calm.

I rejected religion when I entered the real world. I taught English to study abroad students and lived in Europe for a stint. I realized that my religious beliefs and convictions were not only similar to others' of different faiths, but that my faith in Christ did not make me a "better" person than anyone else. I began reading about my religion and learning about world history and biology/geology (Creation). I learned about the philosophical problems with Christian belief, the factual inaccuracies of the Bible and of Christian tradition, and I began realizing that there were many moral faults in the Christian community and in their leaders.

One day I just came to the sudden realization that whatever my religious beliefs, they were so riddled with excuses, apologetics, work-arounds, denials of facts and other modifications that they didn't make sense anymore. Most people experience a sense of loss when they become irreligious. I felt a pretty strong sense of relief. The world suddenly made sense and was a happier place.

Quite the opposite with me. The more I studied the New Testament the more it made sense to me. The fulfilled, Messianic prophecies, the multiple historical testimonies, Jesus' teachings, and most of all, not one compelling argument that ever falsified the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I think the skeptics of Christianity bought into one lie or another when they walked away from Jesus, and in the end it's going to cost them dearly.
 
I think it's wrong to take children to any form of overtly religious teachings. It's basically indoctrination. Kids simply do not have the intellectual capacity to make judgements on what they should or should not believe.

That's why liberals ram their pro-gay nonsense down our children's throats at as early an age as possible, right? Talk about indoctrination, lol! The left has its own church (see below).

Christianity preaches free will....but so many Christians indoctrinate from birth.

Is teaching the truth about Jesus and his resurrection indoctrination? You may think so but I don't.

Recommended reading: Ann Coulter, Godless: The Church of Liberalism (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2006) ISBN 1-4000-5420-6.

In her book “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” Ann Coulter throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us its sacraments (abortion), its holy writ (Roe v. Wade), its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal), its clergy (public school teachers), its churches (government-controlled schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free), its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the “absolute moral authority” of spokesmen from Cindy Sheehan to Max Cleland), and its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident). (righterreport.com)

:lamo
 
That's why liberals ram their pro-gay nonsense down our children's throats at as early an age as possible, right? Talk about indoctrination, lol! The left has its own church (see below).

No one I know is pro-equal rights for gays because of what they learned early on. Most, if not all of them are pro-equal rights because it's the right thing to do. The mere demographics of the groups that are pro-equal rights for gays is strongest is the age group that had no actual instructions of gay rights whatsoever. Your argument has no bearing upon reality. The 1990s had effectively nothing in schools about homosexuality, either for or against, yet the 21-30 year old age group is one of the strongest supporters of equal rights for gays. I don't think you'll have a response to this.

Is teaching the truth about Jesus and his resurrection indoctrination? You may think so but I don't.

Teaching any dogma to children is indoctrination. Period.
 
I was just talking about this with the hubs the other day...

I went to Sunday School as a child...my best friend convinced me to go with her and her sister to a local church that my neighbor just so happened to be a deacon/bus driver for.

He'd take me every Sunday, I'd meet my friends in class, we'd do typical Sunday school stuff, then he'd take me home again.

I never once felt like what I was hearing was "fact". I had this vaguely disconnected view of the whole premise, thinking of the stories and lessons of something like Aesop's Fables rather than a history text.

I don't recall every really questioning or challenging God...I just didn't have any concern either way. I figured that if I was a good person it wouldn't really matter anyway, because it really doesn't make any sense at all for a higher power to crap on good people simply because they didn't eat a wafer and sip some wine, or get dunked in a gaudy tub full of water, or recite some stupid prayer in order to become "saved". And if there IS no God, or heaven, or hell...then it definitely doesn't matter, 'cause I'll just stop existing someday and there's nothing after the lights go out anyway.
 
I went to Catholic School, read the Bible, attended church, was an alter boy, and blah blah blah. But around 3rd grade I started doubting what was being said, and by the 4th I didn't believe in it anymore. Too many arguments of convenience, too many lies, too many unsubstantiated claims. It all seemed to me to be a rather convenient system instead of some discovery of truth.
 
Short version... well as short as possible...

I was raised in a Southern Baptist home, attended church regularly. In my late teens I had doubts and questions, not to mention a certain preoccupation with the usual things people of that age are preoccupied with.


In college I spent some time learning about other religions, and studied many other holy books... Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism, and even some obscure ones like Cao-Dai. My beliefs became a bit ambiguous.


When I was 22 I had a crisis of faith, of sorts, over the course of several months; there was a darkness in me I could not shake nor rationalize away... it ended when a spiritual experience came upon me while travelling down the highway; I pulled over and knelt in the weeds by the roadside to pray, repenting of my sins and doubts and confessing Jesus as Lord. It was what I like to call my "Romans Road" moment, somewhat like Paul.


Since then I have had no serious doubts and have tried to remain faithful to my beliefs and live by them as best I can. It was a turning point in my life... frankly, the way I was going at that point, I might well have been in prison or dead by now otherwise.
 
Short version... well as short as possible...

I was raised in a Southern Baptist home, attended church regularly. In my late teens I had doubts and questions, not to mention a certain preoccupation with the usual things people of that age are preoccupied with.
In college I spent some time learning about other religions, and studied many other holy books... Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism, and even some obscure ones like Cao-Dai. My beliefs became a bit ambiguous.
When I was 22 I had a crisis of faith, of sorts, over the course of several months; there was a darkness in me I could not shake nor rationalize away... it ended when a spiritual experience came upon me while travelling down the highway; I pulled over and knelt in the weeds by the roadside to pray, repenting of my sins and doubts and confessing Jesus as Lord. It was what I like to call my "Romans Road" moment, somewhat like Paul.
Since then I have had no serious doubts and have tried to remain faithful to my beliefs and live by them as best I can. It was a turning point in my life... frankly, the way I was going at that point, I might well have been in prison or dead by now otherwise.

My experience is very similar. Started going to church as a youngster, through late teens became atheist, but studied Buddhism, Taoism, and read the Bible. Mid-twenties came to the realization that Christ taught like no other, understood like no other, acted like no other. I could not shake that off. Just as many here confess that "believing" made no sense, Unbelief to me no longer made no sense. Either Christ was a liar, a mad man, or he spoke the truth. For me, I could see the truth in him, his words, and his actions.
This sums it up the answer to this thread for me:

On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
 
I was baptized by the Evangelische Kirche (a rather liberal, mainstream Protestant church in Germany, a union of Lutherans and others), perhaps mostly because my parents wanted to please my grandma. As long as she was still alife, we would go to church once per year, on Christmas.

Apart from that, I grew up more or less as an atheist. My only contact to religion was the voluntary religious education class at school, which I was interested in without believing. But in general, my environment was rather atheist, the few pupils in my school who claimed to believe in God were ridiculed like the kids who still believed in Santa Claus.

In my early 20s, I had a very serious, frightening experience. I had a psychosis, it was almost like people describe a bad LSD trip, lasting for about 4 weeks. I was convinced I would die soon.

After that, my journey started. I'd ask a Christian friend for books on Christianity and the Bible. At first, I would only concentrate on religion for a couple of days, but then not care about it for months. Over the years, the time when I read religious books became longer and the times in between shorter.

Then I had a ... heavy flirt, I guess... with a Muslim woman. She said for us to continue, I have to become Muslim. I read Quran and seriously tried to find out if I could become Muslim. When I told her I can't, it was over, but it was nevertheless a very interesting experience to learn more about Islam.

I still didn't think of myself as a believer, more like an interested atheist, and went to a Baptist Bible group for a while. But something still held me back.

At some point, I felt I have to take a decision, prayed a lot and asked God to guide me on the right path. Very soon, when searching online for random things, I'd learn of the Baha'i faith. It felt like an answer to my prayers. I would read many of their scriptures, and they just felt right -- as if God was guiding me when reading it. I would start praying regularly.

When, after a couple of months, I went to a Baha'i devotion meeting for the first time, I had a very deep spiritual feeling -- like I heard Christians describe the Holy Spirit coming over them. Very hard to describe, but I felt pure and agitated yet calm at the same time, as if all my senses were on 150%.

I would go there regularly and join eventually, after a couple of months. Since then, I'm Baha'i.
 
It's more like I've never really given a ****, then by age 10 or so found the various religious teachings completely unconvincing, then by 13-14 started to conclude much of that does more harm than good and limits mankind intellectually, then by 16 or so decided most of mankind was born limited intellectually and (along with fear of death) therefore is drawn to certain beliefs. As far as a nontheistic belief in a creator of sorts, i don't see much evidence and more importantly, i'm not sure there's a creator worthy of devoting my sundays to worshiping.
 
I went to Catholic School, read the Bible, attended church, was an alter boy, and blah blah blah. But around 3rd grade I started doubting what was being said, and by the 4th I didn't believe in it anymore. Too many arguments of convenience, too many lies, too many unsubstantiated claims. It all seemed to me to be a rather convenient system instead of some discovery of truth.

An amazing age at which to have such reasoning power. I didn't get to where you are until the age of 13.
 
Christianity just never made sense to me. From an early age I remember asking questions adults didn't want to answer or couldn't. I have nothing at all against Christianity. It's just that it didn't/doesn't work for me. My family, my wife are good Roman Catholics.

Fast forward to a time when stress was eating me alive. I couldn't find a way to get away from it. I decided to learn to meditate to see if that would help. It made sense to me to learn from professionals. I made an appointment at a Vietnamese Zen Temple and talked to a monk...who refused to teach me. LOL! I told him I wasn't interested in Buddhism, just meditation. He had too many people who wanted to learn Buddhism to take on someone who only wanted to learn to meditate. As I was leaving he asked me how committed was I to learning. I told him I might come once and never come back, how did I know. He immediately agreed to teach me. We clicked probably because neither one of us took any crap.

Eventually, I began asking questions. I was exposed to the peace and the immense calm that seemed to surround the monks and I wanted whatever that was. At my request my training then began in Zen. The logic of Buddhism and Zen made great sense to me and it still does.
 
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I never really believed, but i became a super atheist after listening to richard dawkins and christopher hitchens.

This is probably my favorite hitchens video
 
I never really believed, but i became a super atheist after listening to richard dawkins and christopher hitchens.

This is probably my favorite hitchens video




Moderator's Warning:
The Religious Discussion Forum is specifically the wrong place for this sort of thing. Let this be a general warning...
 
I've never been religious to my recollection. I've varied from being an atheist, to angry atheist, to hateful jerk atheist. I recently tried being a Buddhist Atheist, but it never stuck. I still respect Buddhism, though.
 
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