Cap'n are they orange? If they are purple no, but the orange ones seem believable.
Any atheists here who were once believers?
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Cap'n are they orange? If they are purple no, but the orange ones seem believable.
These are nice.
They also do
Very feminine and tasteful.
http://www.labyrintherock.com/earring-fuck-off-p26588/
Too funny!
Initially it was belief in the idea of god that I was told to believe in, much like it would be for most people growing up with religious parents.
Then it was belief in God, with Christianity being just one religion among many that seeks to understand and know God.
But then no one could actually show me why that belief was important to me. No one could explain how belief in god actually affected anything I did (i.e. that i would do something because of of holding that belief that i would not otherwise do).
And then I realised I was looking for an excuse to believe, looking to the benefits to justify the holding of a belief. And it was then that I realised I simply did not have the belief, and even if there were benefits, even if it affected the way I acted, those alone could not make me believe: I find Pascal's wager to be promoting lip service only.
And I realised I was atheist.
Now, God may exist or He may not, I don't know, so I also consider myself agnostic on the matter.
This is why I opened this thread, thank you for sharing this!
I can relate very much to your story, here.
But there was a time that I felt joy from believing in a god. I felt comfort even.
Looking back, though...it was just an idea that brought me joy and comfort.
Just a question and I'm not trying to pry...once you realized you were an atheist, were you angry at all over spending so much time in the faith life? (in your past)
I can't prove it but I am such a case. I was a deep believer, even the Acolyte of the church and deeply troubled that my best friend in high school, the Rabbi's son, was damned to hell. This was my main problem - the conflict between good manors when in someone's house the need to save my friend from eternal suffering in Hell.
I was often their guest for meals and over night stays, taken with them for several weeks vacation -fishing on a remote Canadian lake. He spent nights with us. We keep Kosher food for him and covered our plates, which had been used for both milk and meat meals, with aluminum foil as he was just as deeply an orthodox Jew as I was a Christian. He is now an atheist and I an agnostic.
Sarkus,
What made you realise you believed in God, not just an extension of the idea of God you believed in??
jan.
What made you realise you believed in God, not just an extension of the idea of God you believed in??
jan.
@ Jan;
I saw your reply to mine from yesterday--thanks.
May I ask you, what makes you feel God is real? What makes you believe beyond a mere idea of him?
Just wondering how you have come to believe what you believe.
Common sense.
jan.
"Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things which is shared by ("common to") nearly all people, and can be reasonably expected of nearly all people without any need for debate."
As you can clearly see, Jan, your irrational religious beliefs have nothing to do with common sense, by definition.
Great Old One
Registered Member
I am new here. So, this discussion is very confusing to me.
We are not talking about Cthulhu existing are we?
I have to point out being a Lovecraft reader that Cthulhu is completely fictional, with no historical cult. Lovecraft's stuff is spooky because he weaves in bits of 'legit' occult stuff now and then (meaning, books/titles/people who actually existed related to the occult). It is not real.
Also, I feel compelled to say that Cthulhu cares nothing for devouring souls but instead wreaks evil and destruction in wanton abandon. If he stepped on you then you were in his path to destroy something more important (referring to the literary monster).
There was a Necronomicon written and published in the late 70's I think, which is either completely fabricated or derived from various historical hermetic sources.
Turn down your earphones a little to not blow out your eardrums and watch this. The secret of bizarre weirdness is the fabrication mixed with historical figures of the occult.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBSuRB1AhxY
(Q),
So what's your point?
As ''I'' can clearly see?
Are you a psycopath?
jan.
So what's your point?
As ''I'' can clearly see?
Are you a psycopath?
jan.
No, not really. It was a gradual change, and I adapted with the change. Frustration more at having to still abide by the religious practices of the school I was at, which became a chore rather than anything particularly in-/cons-tructive.
Besides, I used to believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy et al, and I'm not angry at believing in those either.
Although I dropped those beliefs somewhat earlier, as they weren't perpetuated in the same way.
In a word: Education.
Both on the way to getting my Ph.D. in physics, but more via contact with many others whose different beliefs were, like mine, gained in their childhood. - That seemed to imply chance of birth determined your religious "truth." Also of some effect was of my own judgment about what is moral, correct way to behave. Christianity, in large part back then (early 1960S) supported the discrimination against blacks (just as most of it does now against gay marriage, etc.). Had totally strange form, in application, of the "Love your fellowmen," my memorized poem Abou Ben Adhem was all about or the more active love another memorized poem, The Bridge Builder, extoled.*
The Christian "Do unto others as you would have them do to you" (if positions were reversed) held up well, in my moral judgments, if only it were applied. Perhaps that need for application was part of why I was the tactical leader of Baltimore's Civic Interest Group the summer when after others had failed we got the restaurants open to all.
I used economic pressure, with the aid of many cars owned by well-off girls at near-by Gaucher College to move others, mainly black youths, to precisely timed** sit-in strikes. On a good weather Sunday we could costs the Restaurants $25,000 in lost business. I also understood that any market that excludes a class of potential buyers is somewhat self destructive or limiting. I completely abandoned the Moral arguments used before I became the leader. Hit them hard in their pocketbooks was my economic creed.
**Defeating the Restaurant's Association's telephone warning system that got doors of restaurants, locked within a couple of minutes of the first sit-in. But to return to your question:
I started to read some, not much, about alternative religious views and discovered several that seem more just, moral, and socially useful, especially Taoism, with its concern for living in balance or harmony with nature. Why this loving, all knowing, god did not give teenaged Hitler a fatal heart attack bothered me even as a youth and still makes it hard for me to accept the Christian POV about the nature of God. That "God works in mysterious ways." just does not cut it for me anymore.
* I learned my "classical mechanic" in graduate school from Goldstein's excellent book with that title. The fore page has a brief inscription, which translates into English (from the Hebrew) as: "Be yea doers of the word, not hearers / readers only." *** And indeed that was the way the three hour credit course was run at JHU. I.e. class briefly met once per week to get next week's assigned problems, turn our written solutions in, and see lasts weeks put on the black board by quasi-random professor selected students when no-one volunteered. - No lectures at all - just doers of the text's problem words. It is a fantastically well written book, perfectly preparing the student to begin his advance studies of Quantum Mechanics.
*** That and actively love my fellow men is my agnostic religion. The empathy gained by having been very poor all thru college helps one keep that faith. Full needs scholarship, wash dishes for food / baby sit for pocket money (until later with some technical skills and knowledge I got very good pay summer jobs. Back then, companies were desperate to get well-educated physicists and fell over them selves offering summer jobs to good students they hoped to hire full time after graduation.)
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Billy T,
How did it make you stop believing in God?
I'm not talking about religion, just belief in God.
Did you actually believe in God, or did you just go along with something?
jan.
How did it make you stop believing in God?
I'm not talking about religion, just belief in God.
Did you actually believe in God, or did you just go along with something?
jan.
There isn't going to be a Kingdom the way we are going!
I think it was realising that there was more than one religion, and there was no way the benevolent God I was taught about and believed in would consign all those souls to limbo just because they were born into a different family and religion than I was.
At first I'm sure it was just an extension of the idea of the God I believed in, but then I began to question all aspects of my religion: if one aspect was wrong, which others might also be, and why not all of them?
So I dropped the notions I had been taught and went back to the notion of a universal: if God exists then he is surely the same for all - lest we end up with the Roman/Greek pantheon that I had been learning about at school.
But from there, how could I possibly know which religion was being accurate about which aspect, if any at all?
And then from there I questioned how anyone could possibly know anything about God at all... and I became an agnostic (before I became a self-confessed atheist).
And from there I questioned whether God even existed, and whether God's existence or not impacted the way I lived my life (given that I had already dropped religious trappings).
And so I dropped my belief in God's existence... I was an atheist.
A potted history, but I hope it conveys the journey, even if my memory of the specific thought processes is lacking.
Ungrateful!
That's the last time I give you fashion tips.
Why would you worship someone who tortures people?
If you really believe that, then have courage. Do the right thing. Spit straight in his eye!
If you really believe that, then have courage. Do the right thing. Spit straight in his eye!
Thanking you once again for reading what I wrote. There is hope for us yet.