Have you ever had a Radical Shift in Beliefs? How did it Feel?

Question

If you have, what was it, and what did it feel like?

Some examples that come to mind of the sort of shift meant are:

Deciding that there is, or is not a God where you previously thought the opposite.
Deciding poverty is caused by oppression rather than laziness.
Shifting from a Pro Life stance to a Pro Choice stance.

What's interesting to me is not just what those changes were, but how you felt.

For me there have been a few of these sorts of changes, shifts in belief, and at the beginning I have always found them really uncomfortable. Shaking off long held ideas and ideals and moving to totally new ways of seeing things. Then becoming more comfortable and happy with the new established patterns.

Have you ever had a Radical Shift in Beliefs?

What are Your Experiences?

How did it Feel?

Answer 1

This is not as dramatic a shift in beliefs as some other answers you may get but I used to feel that everyone should vote. We'd encourage people to register, etc., etc.---real gun-hoe on getting people to the polls. Then after the Reagan election my husband asked a young neighbor we'd encouraged to register why she voted for him and her answer was, "Because he's so grandfatherly." From that point on I've believed that sheer masses of people voting is not nearly as important as having informed voters who are willing to take the time to study the issues.

Answer 2

As a young adult I was a conservative Christian. The more I listened to the lessons and the more I got to really know the members of a few different congregations the more conflict I had about the religious belief. I really tried in my every day life to be Christian like and became confused about the people who had been in the churches all of their lives and were not behaving as Christians. I found that people who were "leaders" and life long followers of religion were pretty much doing the opposite of what was expected of them in the Bible. I thought that Christians knew how to love others reguardless of the others life experiences, skin color, ethnisity etc... I was wrong. The Christians that I have met in my adult life are the most judgemental and greedy people I have ever met or known. I do not believe that there is a right religion, I do not like the history of Christianity and what they have done to the rest of the world, I don't like the thought that religions are a way to just control the masses and that people buy into it. People like the promise of being loved reguardless of whether they are worth loving by human judgements and I completely understand why religion can be important for people who need to be loved. It is a dissapointment that a being higher than any Earthly being does not have control over my existance, yet it is freeing at the same time. I know now that religion is a way of not taking personal responsibility for human actions and I do not need to follow twisted leaders like a sheep. Yes, it was a lonely and sad experience for me to go through this shift since most people that I had contact with had these religious beliefs in which I no longer believed... Besides, who doesn't want to believe in a fairy tale?

Answer 3

I was actually raised democrat. I'm still a registered democrat. I hate Obama though. I hated Bush too. I suppose I'm more moderate now. Since the internet and learning about all the censorship that's been going on, the stats, the political correctness, the science left behind I gradually shifted. I mean I thought about communism too, then considered China.. I like Japans system though. Not really liberal. They're super traditional, but have equal rights, severely against immigration, racist against anybody not japenese, and hell. They are probably the smartest culture in existence. China has a slightly higher IQ and so does Korea, but their text books are really old, so they sorta cheated their way up there. For communism, I think they tried that in the 20s once, but nothing got done since there were no leaders. The reason I'm not libertarian is because well.. Somalia is a good example of a libertarian country. But they're black, so inherently violent. *Shrugs* Evolution.

Answer 4

Yes I have had a radical shift in my life. I took a class with a Political Science teacher that changed my life for the better. I used to be a liberal. My professor showed me what conservatives were. Each class we began with talking about anything we wanted to talk about. It could be something from our personal lives or something from the news but if we made any proposition we had to back up our ideas with a sound argument and not an appeal to emotion, the masses, or other forms of mindless drivel. I respected him for that and, since so many of my former beliefs began to crumble under his scrutiny, I began to change my views. He also showed me that you don't have to be a Christian to be a conservative as he wasn't particularly religious. At first I felt as though he was always attacking me personally when we would debate in class but I later came to realize that it was my arguments that were faulty. He was merely pointing that out. He also took me from a Pro-Choice stance to a 'sitting on the fence' stance.

After taking psychology in college, my views changed as well. Psychological principles and what psychologists have found began to make me wonder if man really was good natured or if he is merely a pawn to his innate instinct. Before entering into a psychology class I thought I had human nature pretty well pegged. I was wrong. I learned how petty humans can be, or how fragile, or how simple, how courageous, and how cowardly they can be. Psychology also showed me that multiculturalism doesn't solve the problems we have now and that it probably never will.

All in all my philosophical and political beliefs have been challenged and I have evolved because of it. As a result I think that I now lead a richer, more full life due to this shift. Indeed, it is what has made me into the humanist I am today.

Answer 5

I had a bit of shift in belief a few years ago. I was brought up a christian, went to church on sundays, even attended groups etc. A few years ago now, I just started to seriously think about the whole thing, and generally question modern religion. Things started to ring less and less true, and through various experiences and thoughts, I stopped believing in the christian God.
Now, I guess you could say that I'm agnostic, I believe that there's some higher purpose and pattern to everything. It's hard to look at the universe and think that's not the case. But now I believe that no-one could truly understand the nature and form of God, in whatever form he/she/it exists, and that the modern religions are only man's interpretations, innately flawed and full of contradictions.

As to how it felt. I didn't really feel any major emotions, I just see it as a journey to where I am today. If anything I feel enlightened and unburdened.

Answer 6

I know this answer probably belongs in the R&S section, but you asked. . . I've had several life-changing, radical shifts in my beliefs, but I will limit my answer to two:

One of the biggest shifts in belief came when I was able to reconcile my belief in an afterlife AND my belief in reincarnation. For a long time (when I was in my late teens and early 20's the two beliefs seemed contradictory. But after a past life regression, I was shown clearly that the two are not contradictory at all. My initial conflict happened because I was applying limitations on something that had no limitations! I was shown very clearly that a one complete life cycle encompassed the time that life spent in human form and the time that life spent in spirit form. When the full life cycle is complete, then you are reincarnated. For example: a life cycle might include 2 years in human form, but 80 earth years in spirit form before reincarnating. Or the life cycle might include 80 years in human form and 2 years in spirit form before reincarnating. How foolish I had been to not see the limitless possibilities! That experience, back in 1981 was a life-changing experience. The shift was made and I can never go back. . . and don't want to.

Another radical shift in belief occurred on July 16, 1984. That experience radically shifted me from my "pro-choice" stance to a "pro-life" stance. I know this sounds "crazy" but my then husband and I were involved in an intimate moment **smile** when at the climax of the experience I felt a presence of white light enter me. I looked at my husband and said "we have just created a baby. . . I'm pregnant. . . I felt the soul spirit enter me. I've been pro-life ever since. (Our son was born 9 months later).

Answer 7

It was technically a radical change in belief, when I was 12 I believed in god and then one day I didn't. But to me it wasn't a significant enough event to remember the exact "epiphany" moment. I think it was a more gradual change. And one day I just realized that I really didn't think that there was a supernatural diety that controled and created everything. I can't pinpoint that moment. But can tell you for the longest time, living in the bible belt and in a very christian city where every corner there was a church, I did feel ashamed and hid it from all my friends. I didn't tell my parents till I was 17.

But now almost 13 years later I've shed those feelings and I have the most superior and holier than thou attitiude towards, all those that disagree with me and the FACT that there is nothing supernatural whatso ever in this world. ;p

;p = the international sign for sarcasm/joking, for all those that don't get it

Answer 8

I had a pretty significant shift in belief regarding the death penalty...I used to believe, no questions asked, that people who were convicted of certain crimes should be put to death. I was quite vocal, and in some cases vengeful, about it.

Now, after following the Innocence Project and discussing police DNA collection with some of the forensics PhDs at my university, I'm much less convinced about the universal application of the death penalty.

I still, in theory, believe that it is morally acceptable for someone who deprives another person of his or her life with malice and aforethought to pay for that deprivation with their own life. If the crime is an established fact, I'm OK with it. But the determination of "facts" is where I'm falling down.

The actual administration of the death penalty is extremely flawed...for instance, how can we allow people to be put to death based on circumstantial evidence? Absent a weapon, video footage or uncorrupted DNA evidence, how will we ever know if we executed the right person? There are people we certainly WANT to be guilty because there's evidence that they're lousy people (such as Scott Petersen) but without hard proof that he killed his wife, are we 100% sure we're depriving the right person of his life? It's conceivable, although highly unlikely, that he's the unluckiest bustard in California. Moreover, the reliability of eyewitnesses has been addressed many times in the exoneration of some suspects. And do the rich ever really get the chair (so to speak)?

I agree, it's very uncomfortable to re-examine beliefs, or be forced to retract my publicly-stated opinions. But we have to be honest with ourselves about doubts. I'm not yet completely against the death penalty but my view has certainly slid much farther to requiring a much, much higher standard of proof first. And if that standard is not possible in a particular case, then the death penalty should not be an option.

Answer 9

Yes. I was brought up as a Christian but at the age of 16, I started questioning the numerous contradictions in the Bible and of religion itself. I've become an atheist at the age of 17 and this is only after I have spent a lot of time pondering and questioning my own belief (or lack thereof) and talking to different people who belong to different religions.

Now at the age of 22, I am confident that I made the right choice for me and hearing other people's opposing view points on the matter does not offend me in the least bit.

How does it feel? Liberating.

Answer 10

After my mother remarried my stepfather, a minister, I then had a strictly religious upbringing and many questions that were unanswered throughout my youth.
The first few years of college, I had decided to find the answers on my own and researched the origins and historical background of my beliefs with careful detail, after coming across so much information, most of which led in the same direction, I made the decision to walk away from that faith and seek my own identification with spirituality, not what was taught to me by others.
It was liberating, I felt free yet disappointed at myself for having believed in something so strongly that was so flawed and deceptive.
Since then I have explored in several directions and found that I disbelieve in humanised versions of deities and doctrines designed by thoughts of men and women, but rather believe in spirituality and that each person follows their own path towards enlightenment and truth (no matter which it may be), my path is meant for me.