What one event best characterizes, defines or affirmed your current spiritual belief?

Question

For me it was when the 2004 tsunami struck. It reaffirmed my belief that there was no benevolent God watching out for those on Earth. I guess that's when I became an "out of the closet" atheist.

Zero cool: not boring. I'm fascinated by belief/disbelief and how one arrives at that juncture.

Answer 1

When I was shot, one of the doctors asked me if I wanted a priest. He thought I was bleeding to death and that they would be unable to save me. I couldn't answer with the tube down my throat, so I shook my head in the negative. He asked if I was sure, and I shook my head again. He just looked at me for a moment, and said, "Okay." I thought I was going to die, and I still did not ask for forgiveness or pray. I just felt myself going to sleep, thinking the entire time about my daughter, friends, and family. When I woke up the next afternoon, I was still alive. They told me they had to shock me several times to get a regular rhythm in my heart, but I never did flat-line. I had a conversation with that doctor, and I told him I was an atheist and that was the reason I didn't want a priest. He said when he was looking at me on the table with that tube in my throat he could tell. He said I had a "resolve" in me that he had seen before in other patients.

Answer 2

I came into my inability to believe that deities real while studying some descriptions of near-death experiences. It was interesting, that such descriptions from people who were not brought up in Western Culture were completely different than the descriptions from people who were.... on the surface. The project was an exercise in rhetoric and in studying the words people used and finding meaning in their experiences, it seemed that most people experienced very, very similar things, only in the context of their dominant religion or culture.

I came to the conclusion that deities and all the other supernatural entities are not actually real, but are metaphors for something our human minds can't comprehend - an attempt to define the undefinable.

Not long afterwards, I read the Tao Te Ching and was completely charmed. It described so well so many things I already thought. So I'm a Taoist (atheist).

I'd always believed inside it was all the same in the end.

Answer 3

I wouldn't really say it was one event, or even a series of events but random occurances here and there, mostly having to do with my depression and various issues I had with all the paths I've been on. For the one I'm currently on it was finally accepting the fact that I am a spirit-worker and that the Norse have always been there calling me.

Answer 4

My search for truth began when I was confronted with Buddhism after believing in Christianity for so long. I discovered that there is no logic to the Bible. Over the following two years, my beliefs changed drastically, not so much gradually but in spurts. Now I'm agnostic with some interests in Buddhism.

Answer 5

I would say, there was no one event. They were series of events or simply life's experiences.
I witnessed many fights as different religions and sects and denominations tried to out-do each other. I witnessed pastors, priests, ministers blatantly spreading divisions, I saw the hypocrisy of various church preaching water but drinking wine to their followers. I hearkened to the red-hot malice as different churches and religions drew swords to kill and destroy each other in the name of God. I saw how people committed heinous deeds, discriminated against women and refused to ordain their lot, poured vitriol on "X-orientation" folks, robbed the poor and collaborated with the wealthy, killed and sadistically maimed the weak and meek of society, broke all God's commandments. Yet justify all these in the name of serving God. Then I met Erich Von Daniken!
All these events and experiences reaffirmed my current spiritual belief in IT, the Supreme Force (call it God) as the omnipresent and omnipotent and that one can embrace and believe in God without being bogged down by church/religious creeds, traditions, rituals etc of different religions, sects, churches etc.
After all, most of us worship One God. Why fight over/for/about Him! I feel fulfilled simply Happy as I am without attachment to any church.

About me: There is no key to happiness. The door is always wide open.

Answer 6

There was no single event. I began to ask more and more questions as I was growing up. I transitioned from Catholicism to Agnosticism to atheism in a period of 8 years.

Reality came crashing down on my when I was 16 years old, when I realized I was an atheist, but there was no single event or even string of events.

Answer 7

Very good question tee.

Mine was when I was in the Air Force (after two yrs in the Army), I witnessed my first unidentified flying object on radar. It didn't make me an atheist, but later in college I asked a religious studies professor about ufos.

He asked me if knowing they existed will get me closer to God. I said probably not, and he said, "Then don't worry about it." He then walked away.

I felt confused at first but as I thought about it, I found he was correct. And I still believe in God. *shrug*

Answer 8

i was an atheist for most of my life, but then a couple years ago i learned some things. my mom told me that when she was pregnant with me she smoked and when i was born i had a heart condition that doctors thought i would die from. my mom prayed and told God that if i was ok she would never smoke again. a few days later my condition healed on its own and my mother has never smoked again. the next year i went on a retreat for my church and it was then that i truly became a Catholic

Answer 9

When I was about 10, I knew that two of my family members would die from luekemia. They did. And from then on, I always knew there was something different about me and I have spent a lot of years trying to figure out what that difference was. Then I found Wicca, and it all made sense.

Answer 10

Being a parent to two children opened my eyes and affirmed my beliefs. I am mystified about life, but choose to place my faith in that which I can control and know in my heart to be real.