I was thinking earlier today and then I read Linz' question which made me wonder.
Do you ever wish you had found God to be true? Did you in your search for your beliefs hope to find that you found truth in the stories you had been told?
Here's the link to Linz question too. . . .{{{{{Linz}}}}}
2007-09-20 04:42:19 · 49 answers · asked by sparkles9 6 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ahm8FD.C_6qbMhRpZ8D2Kbnd7BR.;_ylv=3?qid=20070920083248AA8s8lv
2007-09-20 04:42:44 · update #1
Thank you so much for your honesty {{{{{HUGS}}}}}
2007-09-20 05:01:36 · update #2
{{{{Ish}}}}} I am sorry you lost your mother to cancer. My mother is a breast cancer survivor, but we too have lost many dear people to cancer. . .it is something I too do not understand.
2007-09-20 05:06:51 · update #3
Linz hit the nail right on the head. Becoming an atheist is not something that a person chooses to do because they are filled with anger or have an attitude problem. It is a result of coming to the realization that what you have believed (often for years, or in my case my entire life up to that point) was all a lie and a bunch of fairy tales.
Christians are so quick to criticize and extend unneeded and unwanted pity to atheists all out of self-righteousness and arrogance. What they fail to realize is that many atheists did not want to find out that the Christian god was false and that the bible was a lie. Many of us wanted desperately for the bible to prove to be true and for God to be real. We struggled for days, weeks, months, sometimes years.
It is probably one of the most difficult mental and emotional struggles a person can go through. It really takes a strong and courageous person to finally face reality and admit they had been wrong for all this time. It's hard; it's embarassing; it's humiliating. It can certainly leave one feeling lost and more confused than ever before.
But the fact remains that intellectual honesty is important for our own sanity. Denying the truth and sinking deeper into delusion and a false reality just to preserve ones beliefs is a very destructive force. It causes so much frustration and promotes unnecessary struggles in many areas of one's life.
It was the hardest thing I ever did, but I do not regret it. I picked myself up from the ground and rebuilt my life piece by piece and became stronger than ever. I am now complete, whole, and happy inside. I never feel lost or lonely anymore. I never have to look to God or anyone else for answers to the unknown. I have a brain and have learned to use it to my advantage.
And what does the Christian say to all of this? I must have had a bad experience with Christianity. No, no worse than anyone else. I enjoyed many parts of it. They say I must not have had faith. No, I had plenty of faith, much more than a mustard seed and probably more than they do. They say the devil tempted me to doubt God or that Satan confused me. No, I prayed to God for hours each day and had faith that he would lead me away from temptation and deliver me from evil. I read the bible assuming everything I read was true. It proved to make very little sense even though I wanted it to and prayed day after day for God to show me its truth. No matter what, intellectual honesty fought its way through and won me over in the most painful battle of my life.
Any Christian who dares to question my faith or level of dedication is simply lying to themselves. I know where I was mentally and emotionally. I know the condition of my heart and my sincerety. I was not lead away from truth. I was lead away from horsesh!t.
Before critizing me, doubting me, and thinking they know the answer, Christians should try challenging themselves to gather up the courage it takes to do what I did. Most of them don't have it. They are cowards. Their belief system is supported upon a foundation of guilt and fear. They are too weak to face themselves and the fact that they are living a lie.
If you can honestly be courageous enough to face the strong possibility that you are wrong and have been wrong all this time and be willing to change your life after facing this reality, THEN maybe we can talk. Otherwise, you're just babbling foolish lies that only feed your delusion.
2007-09-20 05:08:25 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 5⤊ 1⤋
How can such a God exist if he does things without reason, killing people who don't deserve it, taking things from people, creating all this mass hysteria throughout people. I've always wanted there to be some sort of God, but the state the World is in, clearly there is not one. Why would he continue to let people suffer? Now a lot of people out there have lost loved ones, people they love and need. I lost my Mother 2 years ago to cancer, why would such a God create something like cancer? My mother was only 45, quite young to be dying of cancer. And in her life she never hurt anyone, she was the person who loved everyone and everyone loved her. What such God would take someone so important and leave murderers and terrorist to live. No God would do that. And while she was sick I used to wish that God would come to his senses and realise he was fking up. Lot of good that did
2007-09-20 05:00:27 · answer #2 · answered by Ish 2 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Not really, the world is the way it is and it seems to be good enough (it could do with quite a bit of improvement anyway).
Besides, having a more powerful being could limit our potential in the future, just like why it would be better for us to be alone in the universe.
Not to mention that a lot of the stories about various gods portray the gods in a rather bad light. I can say right now that if the God portrayed in the Bible existed it would be worthy only of contempt not of worship.
To be worthy of worship a being must not want it or demand it or in any way cause problems for those who don't want to worship it.
2007-09-20 04:47:54 · answer #3 · answered by bestonnet_00 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Not really. For the same reason that I'm not that upset that ghosts, magic, father christmas or being able to fly aren't real.
They're all wishful thinking (same as religion).
I also STRONGLY believe that the scientific explanation of a randomly created universe is much deeper and awe-inspiring than any "he did it all by magic in 7 days" rubbish. That sounds to me like the explanation of someone who likes to think small.....a bit of a cop out really.
I guess the big point though is about death. Most religious people seem to need the prospect of everlasting existence to give their lives "meaning". I am quite content that I will only exist for a very brief time. It makes the whole thing even more special. We only have a brief time...lets enjoy it!!
2007-09-20 05:52:22 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
I did once. I am a recovering Christian. I tried to convert people and honestly believed in god. It was not until I started living in the real world and was invited into the lives of people I was told were "sinners" that I started to understand the pure hate I was being fed. It is a religion that preaches peace and love and all that, but only if you are not gay, don't have an abortion for the RIGHT reasons, and if you accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior. I started to experience the reality of the world and found that the people that I was supposed to hate were actually more kind, giving, accepting and all around better people than those that claimed to love me.
2007-09-20 04:51:33 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
((Sparkles9)) You always ask so nicely :)
When I was a little kid, my family was very dysfunctional. I was terrified of my father. I wanted God to be real because I wanted someone who would love and protect me and help me feel safe. Someone who would solve the problems a small child can't do anything about.
Unfortunately, the more I read about the Christian deity the less he lived up to what I needed emotionally, and I abandoned hope of finding what I wanted in that religion very young.
I recall once in Sunday school (I was about 5 I think) the teacher was telling us the story about Jesus feeding the multitude with the fish, and I got very excited. Here was the solution to world hunger! I asked how he did it, and the teacher gave me a blank, uncomprehending look before telling me it was a miracle. I said I knew that, but how? It was so great! How? We went back and forth before the exasperated teacher finally told me to stop asking. I remember feeling crushed that Jesus never showed anyone how to do it, so that we could do it on our own after he had gone. What was so great about miracles if they did not help anyone?
Anyway... as I grew up I took comfort in various more new-agey definitions of God before abandoning the idea entirely in favor of something more abstract, but somehow more comforting and empowering. Now I'm a Taoist.
2007-09-20 04:59:51 · answer #6 · answered by KC 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
I suppose technicaly I am not an Atheist, but an agnostic, as I have not come to a conclusion whether there is a god. I think I would like to believe in god - probably the christian god, because mostly, I think it would be good to know him and let him help me, but I find it very difficult to believe in somthing that I can explain as a collective imagination. (and I realy mean no offence to people who do believe here, but I can see the how you could believe in it when it is not true, especialy when other people believe it.) Unfortunately I do not experience what believers have experienced, which has made them sure that it is true.
I tried to find this experience, I asked god to let me find him, but as of yet it has been unsuccessful.
I think it is a very important question, which can not be taken lightly. A change in my religion would change my moral stances. a minority of the moral stances of christianity conflict with my own, and it would be difficult for me to change those.
2007-09-20 04:59:19 · answer #7 · answered by dione-helene 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Sure, that would be great, because it would so neatly explain away so many things that a thinking mind struggles with. And it would be nice to think there was someone out there looking out for us.
I don't mean any of this to sound snarky. I'm just trying to express why I think believers find the idea of God so comforting. They're exactly the same things I could never connect with in my own search for a god.
2007-09-20 04:59:28 · answer #8 · answered by Cap'n Zeemboo 3 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Yes and no.
Do I wish that there was an actual loving, benevolent god? Sure. It would be comforting to know that some higer power was looking out for people and preventing terrible things form hapening to them. A being that could stop wars, stop hatred, spread love and good deeds.
The god that is most preached to me, however, is evil itself and cares nothing for the people on Earth so I'm quite glad that god does not exist.
2007-09-20 04:50:21 · answer #9 · answered by t_rex_is_mad 6 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Not really - all I wanted in my searches was to find the truth and to find what was real. It may sound a bit pragmatic, but I don't wish for untrue things. If one of the god-stories had been true, then that would have been what it was, but since none of it fit for me I don't worry about it. What might have been is never as important as what is.
2007-09-20 04:50:35 · answer #10 · answered by Mahjani 2 · 3⤊ 0⤋