Belief question....for believers and non-bleievers and everyone in between?

Question

How did you come to know your current belief structure (or structure of non-belief as applicable) as truth? What other belief structures/religions have you studied before determining that yours was right for you? Or did the first one you learned stick? If you learned from your parents/family/etc... how do you KNOW that it is the only one out there with so many choices?

and any responses that simply say "I Just know" really don't help....

AND I'm sorry about the typos... I was in a hurry cuz the boss was coming and I made the choice not to do spell check! LOL!

Answer 1

Well - that's a deep subject.

I was born into the Adventist (SDA) denomination. I was scared of burning in hell so I believed. - Ultra fundie.

Then I got baptized into a baptist den. which is very fundie. Still feared hell. God was a great big baptist preacher ready to kick my @$$.

Fast forward many years later I've started from scratch. Yahweh demands to be believed in with me so I don't ignore it. However, I believe that a lot of doctrines that I have been taught are silly so I've wiped the slate clean in that regards.

Now I am heretic but I believe in Yahweh and I believe that Jesus was sent from him to show us how to live.

I'm still forming my ideas so it is hazy still.

Answer 2

The fact is we do not know the fact ! Or in other word, we are not the one who have the fact !

How could you know that your wife loves you ? From her word ? ...She just could perhaps simply lie to you ! The fact that she gives you flower is not a direct fact that she loves you ! Or the fact that she didn't give any flower is not a direct fact that she doesn't love you ! Both version is happening in all the time in our daily life - a form of experience ! But the fact whether she loves you or not is not defined by our perception on her ! But by her being !

But when she said "I love you !" - would you believe it or not ? I think the question is actually "Do you believe your wife ?" When you do, everything she said is true in our perception !

But it's not yet the truest - only if your wife is truthfull - then her statement is true - then all is true ! So her being is actually the starting point ! And when she is true - all what she says it's true - then all is true !

So somewhere somehow all human have their own "starting point" (stone) ! It can be the reasoning, logical method , hypothesis,experience, empirism, feeling or any other or a combination of it - but none of it is a "hard fact". Even the evidence is not a direct fact - but something to draw conclusion from !

Jesus said He is the Truth. No one ever dare to claim this - If this is not a starting point - then all can be argued ! But same with when our wife tell us that she love us - would you believe her or not ! As the why, can always be argued - and there are those who believe their wife , some not - but mostly all have the experience of believing it ! Some failed, some have the triumph - but it all depend on whether the wife is being truthfull and faithfull or not (not depend on us).

Perhaps if there's a method of proving it - it would be after we arrived in the end line - after we died - but it would too late ! Or perhaps if there's One who came back from death, we would believe Him so all what He said - what can be more ultimate than that ?

My conclusion is, all can be argued from and with so many aspect and angle - but in the end it is about faith , belief ! Even those who claim on believing nothing - they are still believing on something - the nothing ! Or perhaps this is the thing that have no room for other thing accept for the faith ! (And there's always a faith - only to what or to who ?)

Answer 3

Well, being of a postmodern mindset I have issues with calling anything I believe (or what others do) "truth," but I'll use the word for your sake.

I was raised a fundamental Baptist, although was never afraid to question authority. Even when I was a fundie, I was a staunch feminist and advocate of rights of all humans, even those of different lifestyles and beliefs. The first time I questioned a very basic fundamental belief of Christianity was when I was taking a course at church called "Basics of the Believer" and we were learning about how God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc. I remember being kind of surprised that it these things didn't seem to have as much biblical basis as I expected. I didn't take it any further at the time, though. I was sixteen.

In college I started to get really into philosophy, theology, and early church history. That was key in shaping what I believe, especially how I view the Bible and the basic character of God. I'm very different than my upbringing now, but am still consider a Christian.

After college I taught English in Thailand for awhile and got really into Buddhism. I think it's a beautiful religion/philosophy, but not for me. I almost converted, yet there's still something in me which finds more truth in Christianity. So that's where I am. :)

I can be pretty critical of Christians and Christianity in general but I really do love it.

Answer 4

I used to be a Christian, but went through some things that made me question if there really is a loving and involved God, who knows and cares about me personally. I see no evidence that there is. I don't believe the Bible is literal or can give me all the answers I need for how to live life. And I don't believe in trusting some preacher to tell me how I should live life, either. I have a brain and a soul, and I think I should figure out what I believe on my own.

I feel an awe when I am confronted with the true beauty that exists in the world, though, such as nature, music, family love, etc. I don't "KNOW" that something higher than me exists, but I feel like that's as good an explanation as any for why I get these feelings.

I'm a somewhat agnostic Deist.

Answer 5

I believe there is a creator. Whether purposeful or accidental I am uncertain. I was raise strict Lutheran, Missouri synod. That was until I turned 19 and went to an Easter sunrise service. I walked out the door and never returned. I finally understood that we have made god in our image not the other way around. We have endowed god with all our emotions and trappings. A real god would not know jealousy, hate, prejudice, vanity.
The history of most religions especially those Abraham monolithic beliefs are more about warfare death and destruction as well as murder and deceit. All while we heap on praise and wonders. This is "GOD" we are talking about. Why would he need emotions, self-righteousness, etc. all the thing you or I would demand if we were in charge.
How limited we are in or belief systems.

Answer 6

I was raised Catholic. I attended 12 years of religion classes. I used to go to my best friend's Evangelical church and considered myself saved for about 1 year when I was around 16. But I was always asking questions like: how did Noah fit 200 million species x 2 on one boat? Where's the historical evidence to back up these parables and religious text? I was always searching for some MORE in it and I couldn't find it, but I chose to believe anyway. I was brain-washed to believe that God existed, so much that I couldn't see the forest through the trees.

It was very painful for me for a long time- I would love there to be a god. Admitting that there wasn't any real proof of any omnipotent being, was the hardest thing I have ever done.

I've now reconciled it and my life is all the better. My life is full and rich. Knowing life is finite gives every sunrise and sunset a meaning they could never have had as a Christian. I now live my life knowing Good is is good does and being good is its own reward. I don't need the promise of everlasting life to be a decent, ethical human being.

Answer 7

You can't really shop for a religious system the same way you shop for produce or a new washer & dryer. Reason being that there is no objective way to view these alternatives from above and then adjudicate which one is most correct.

Rather, I find that you can take your experience of the spiritual and find it expressed in nearly any major religion. For example, my experience matches most closely with Hinduism. But I was raised Christian, my family is Christian, Christianity underlies most of teh culture where I am, etc. Participating in Hinduism would mean a lot more than changing the location of a service or something. And DIY religion simply doesn't work very well, at least it doesn't provide the same points of connection, opportunities to help others, supportive relationships, or opportunities for self-reflaction and contemplation that organized religion provides.

So, I find myself looking to find my own experience inside Christianity. And through the works of people like Marcus Borg and Huston Smith and through Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy I see just how well it fits in actuality.

For me it was more a matter of having been raised with a very childish view of God and of Christianity, one which I could never hold or believe in. The supermarket approach to religions really didn;t get me very far, and atheism and DIy religion failed me as well. Luckily, I found the Christian context which is like a second skin to me would have sufficed all along - my vision of God and Christianity just had to grow up first.

Answer 8

I studied many different religions and spent the majority of my life as an agnostic. I always "knew" something was out there bigger than me and that this world seemed to perfectly put together to be "coincidence" but I just wasn't sure of much beyond that. I enjoyed the Eastern religions because they seemed less judgmental which was a natural fit for me. Then I "discovered" Christianity. Not the Christianity I previously studied/learned but the relational Christ. The non-judgmental Christ. I spent many months studying the Christian religion - the facts and opinions surrounding it, the faith that intertwines it, the history. And finally came to the conclusion that this is not a religion, but a faith. And it wasn't about doing good as much as being who God made me to be. I just realized I had been searching my life (albeit subconsciously) for this very understanding. I accepted that God was bigger and better than me. I accepted that I couldn't do it on my own - though I was very successful... I call it straw-hat success as it had nothing behind it but myself). And then I became a Christian. So that's the basic story of how I got my beliefs... thanks!

Answer 9

I am non-religious and somewhat a pantheistic spiritualist. Before that I was a Roman Catholic. I left the Church and religion when I sought answers about the Church and Christianity in the Bible and found mostly contradictions (by contradictions I mean contradictions between Christian/Catholic theology and the Bible). I have studied many religious and spiritual beliefs since around that time and continue to study. In short I believe God is everywhere and indifferent but not removed from religion.

Answer 10

I was raised loosely Christian and went to several different churches, mostly Nazarene and Church of Christ. It was more about the social camaraderie than anything else. As I got older I began to look at what it was about, and realized it just did not sit right with me. Like many people, for years I was unable to think outside the realm of Christianity, as if it was the only choice and I had to find a way to fit myself into it. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that in order to find true peace with myself I had to find a religion that fulfilled what I knew in my gut and heart to be true for me. It took some searching; I explored pantheism and Native American religions. I was getting closer all the time. At last I discovered that what I am is Pagan. I began as Wiccan but did not agree with the rote and rules, so now am simply "pagan."

Answer 11

I didn't search for "truth" and never intend to.
Rather I questioned everything and found it all lacking.
I checked line after line of belief and discovered they are all broken: some a bit cracked while others barely hold themselves together at all.

All I found in my investigation of the nature of things is that no matter what you believe.... you're wrong. Not only is the notion of the existence of an "Objective Reality" highly dubitable, but if there were even such a thing, its very definition would be so small and precise that the probability of any subjective being discovering it is infinitely small beyond even all conventional negligability.
As such... the very concept of "facts" or "truth" as anything other than a means of expressing one's own biased (and thus invalid in context) opinions is unfeasible... and to be treated only as hypothetical, redundant data.

For all intents and purposes.... nothing we "know" is real. Everything is error, garble and jumble.