Change of Heart?

B

bhudmaash

Banned
Banned
"To those who believe, no explaination is necessary, for those who do not none will suffice"

Much rampant debate has ensued with regards to the existance of God, and the discussion basically has two camps: those who believe and those who do not. Such debate in my opinion is completely futile, the believers try to convince the nons that God exsists and vice versa, and it's all a waste of time quite frankly, because "never the twain shall meet".
However I think a more interesting line of discussion would be to talk about people whose opinions have changed significantly at some point in their lives. That is if a non believer through some course of events has changed his/her views with regards to the exsistance of God, and off course if any believer now has become a non believer.
So if any members have "changed camps" it would be interesting to learn about the circumstances in which such change took place.:)
 
Okay, here goes...
i lost my religion at an early age, i think. Truthfully, i think the only reason i believed in the first place was because of 2 years of Catholic school, despite the fact that my parents weren't Catholic. i used to make my father take me to church. So uh... what happened? i prayed every night, all the prayers i knew, a bunch i made up, and man i believed that i could change something.
And i didn't. No, God didn't kill my parents and leave me all alone, my house didn't burn down, i just realized one day that i was wasting quite a bit of valuable time that i could be using to sleep. At 12. A very depressing thought it was.
Today i am an atheist pagan. i think? i guess i just think there has to be something to... conciousness? i believe in Love, and that's about it, however cheesey that may sound. Every now and then i do some... Magick(?) and sometimes i do see effects... but i know it's me... it's no god.
So that's it i guess... i prayed and prayed and nothing happened. No comfort or change or happiness. :D
 
Ahhh, Catholicism, my dear Penguin...
I had nine years of such schooling, and may I opine that there is little more than such as this required to put one off the concept of God - such as they depict, at any rate...
At some point, I realized that I could point to no one among the Parish "faithful" who embodied, or so much as followed, the Chatechisms which we were being taught were the only manner of conducting oneself in accordance with the "will of God"...
As you say, a somewat distressing thought.
After this, all things Catholic became mere routine. Rituals kept because it was expected of me...
Now?
Asian faiths such as Bhuddism seem to suggest that there is a perfection available to man which need contain no element of the "divine", but could be achieved "merely" by his own effort - a thing depicted as nearly impossible to achieve, and which I certainly make no claim to exemplify.
 
After a while of asking questions and being given unsatisfying answers, the critical mind begins to be suspicious. After many years and still the answer is “believe regardless” then it becomes obvious that there isn’t anything beneath the stories. When viewed in perspective it is clear the same empty stories have been circulating for thousands of years.

While I was a practicing Christian I said all the right words and followed the group but I don’t believe I was ever fully convinced of anything. But it was a useful experience to place oneself fully in the position of the claimed believer and argue from that perspective.

I believe that when reduced to its basics religion is nothing more that the offer and search for immortality. My belief now if that technology and science will achieve that goal in the not too distant future and I will continue to work to make that a reality.
 
Originally posted by Cris
I believe that when reduced to its basics religion is nothing more that the offer and search for immortality. My belief now if that technology and science will achieve that goal in the not too distant future and I will continue to work to make that a reality.
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These are the notions which I favor, exactly.
Heaven and God=the fallicious fancy of the desirous, life-enamoured mob
Hell and Satan=an extraordinarily effective fear tactic designed to subdue the skeptics of that very same mob
 
I "changed camp" about 15 months ago and became a christian.

My basic story is as follows:

as a child I had little/no religious training (just how to cross myself for grace at christmas at my catholic grandparents home) and my family moved a lot, my little brother died and as a kid i was bullied and teased and such and by the time i hit high school i was severly depressed. Then i was confronted with a lot of death as people close to me kept dying......I got into some pretty bad stuff and with a bad crowd. Then in grade 12 I met some people who were totally different form eveyone I knew (they were christians), they didnt seem to have all this crap in their lives and i was bored with the crap in mine. So I started ask them all sorts of questions until I ended up in the psych ward for self inflicted wounds....i was in there for about a week, but at one moment while i was there I suddenly felt great, there was no emotional termoil or pain, no inner wounds i guess, I was totally healed. (btw, I've never had a truly depressed thought since).........so when I got out I kept asking questions and trying to learn about God. And the answers kept making more and more sense and one day i realized that God had healed me.....soon after that I realized that I believed that God and Jesus were there and wanted a relationship with me so I prayed and have been a happy christian ever since :D
 
Originally posted by New Life
I "changed camp" about 15 months ago and became a christian.

My basic story is as follows:

as a child I had little/no religious training (just how to cross myself for grace at christmas at my catholic grandparents home) and my family moved a lot, my little brother died and as a kid i was bullied and teased and such and by the time i hit high school i was severly depressed. Then i was confronted with a lot of death as people close to me kept dying......I got into some pretty bad stuff and with a bad crowd. Then in grade 12 I met some people who were totally different form eveyone I knew (they were christians), they didnt seem to have all this crap in their lives and i was bored with the crap in mine. So I started ask them all sorts of questions until I ended up in the psych ward for self inflicted wounds....i was in there for about a week, but at one moment while i was there I suddenly felt great, there was no emotional termoil or pain, no inner wounds i guess, I was totally healed. (btw, I've never had a truly depressed thought since).........so when I got out I kept asking questions and trying to learn about God. And the answers kept making more and more sense and one day i realized that God had healed me.....soon after that I realized that I believed that God and Jesus were there and wanted a relationship with me so I prayed and have been a happy christian ever since :D
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This is an interesting story New Life. Were you giving any medication that could lift your mood while you were in hospital? If so are you on any now?

The reason I ask is because I know that depression is a serious mental illness and it is rare for someone to recover from it within a week, if it was serious depression (if self harm was involved it probably was) then it's almost miraculous to recover in a week! If you didn't and aren't taking meds now its even more astounding.

Nice one.
 
What i find amusing and also slightly bizarre is how come most religious folk who weren't born into that religion always seem to find god when they're in hospital.

It's not even like this:

Bob: Shit man my wounds are healed and i feel cool
God: Yes i healed you
Jesus: And i healed you too
Bob: Shit, now im religious.

Somehow you're lucky enough to survive and instantly it's attributed to being god instead of luck.

I fell off a bus travelling at 40 mph once and landed on my head onto a parked car. I stood up and didn't even suffer one bruise.

I've been run over roughly 15 times and not once have i ever suffered damage.

While skating down a hill on a new sports style skateboard its wheels got stuck on a rock, i got thrown through the air and went through my dentists mercedez benz head first. Not a scratch.

I can attribute that to luck, me having bouncy bones :D or some big invisible guy and his hebrew speaking son. I do understand the severe mental trauma that one faces at difficult moments in his life but that adds no credibility to the claims of god. I had a chat for many hours with some freaky religious dood who had almost died as an alcoholic and found god. I spoke to a guy who'd been run over and lost his legs and found god..

Why must there always be near-death shit involved with finding god? Why must god always show himself when peoples minds are not functioning properly?
 
Snake,

You were lucky and you didn't bother about God. When you had 'bad luck' you started hating God. Is that true..?
 
Originally posted by SnakeLord

I've been run over roughly 15 times and not once have i ever suffered damage.

Why must there always be near-death shit involved with finding god? Why must god always show himself when peoples minds are not functioning properly?
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Geez Snake, run over roughly 15 times! Did they not teach you the green cross code or something at school :)

Some religious ppl say that God does communicate with us all the time, but most ppl don't listen...

Maybe God shows himself when ppl need him the most, I don't know.
 
You were lucky and you didn't bother about God. When you had 'bad luck' you started hating God. Is that true..?
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I've never actually been 'unlucky'.

Ok i did have my appendix removed but ya see it was all lucky.... I was in egypt strolling along the nile, having forgotten to take any pills/injections to prevent some scary ass diseases. I was lucky enough not to contract anything but on the plane back to england i started getting pain. It was appendicitis. I got home in time to have my appendix out- im lucky- i could have been stuck in Egypt at the time.

Of course i could relate the time my son died but these things happen. I could mention how, just like every other religious folk, i needed god and searched for him with all my heart. I could also mention he was on vacation that year.

Aside from that i've never actually been unlucky. Undoubtedly a time will arrive when that will change but hey that's life. Now tell me where and why god has to play any part in any of this? Emotional need at a time of severe mental stress sounds about right. We don't look for god when we win the lottery, we look for god when our children die, when our friends and family die, when we are about to die. That in itself shows the true insecurity of man. Did anyone happen to sit down and say: "such is life?" Instead of "It must be an invisible entity testing my fear of him"?

Of course, it all depends what God we're talking about- there's too many to choose from.

Geez Snake, run over roughly 15 times! Did they not teach you the green cross code or something at school
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hehe well most were my fault admittedly ya see i always get a bit scared when cycling on the road- i feel cars are too close to me- as such i panic and swerve all over the place until i get squashed :D As such i no longer ride bicycles. However one time i was actually on the pavement cycling rapidly down hill when a car backed out of its drive and knocked me into the road where i got hit by a moving car. Double whammy. I got up, called both of them a bunch of assholes and went home.

Some religious ppl say that God does communicate with us all the time, but most ppl don't listen...
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Some people say they can hear fairies at the bottom of the garden, can see people's karma, can speak to the dead, can tell the future.... What's the point other than you either accept everything fantastical without any evidence whatsoever or you dont. It doesn't really make any difference what 'people say'. It's easy to say you have a 12inch penis if you don't have to pull your trousers down.

Maybe God shows himself when ppl need him the most, I don't know.
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Maybe god doesn't show himself at all. None of us know. However if he does he has certainly changed his attitude. He seems a lot more 'low key' than he is depicted as being in the bible. Ok, i guess god cause the earthquakes in america, floods in india and so on. Who knows, maybe he sent Osama's boys to fly a plane into a building. Maybe every night when there's lightning it's actually god striking someone down.,... or as a meager possibility it's just acts of nature that were in the early days attributed to coming from some bizarre invisible being because they had no scientific explanation?
 
Originally posted by davewhite04
This is an interesting story New Life. Were you giving any medication that could lift your mood while you were in hospital? If so are you on any now?

The reason I ask is because I know that depression is a serious mental illness and it is rare for someone to recover from it within a week, if it was serious depression (if self harm was involved it probably was) then it's almost miraculous to recover in a week! If you didn't and aren't taking meds now its even more astounding.

Nice one.
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I'll add a bit more detail for you....

I actually became 'clinically depressed' around grade 3 (so like 7 years of it or something crazy like that)

then I went to the hospital and the doc thought it was prolly situational depression (cause of all the death and the bad group i was with etc) so I did not get any drugs, nor have i ever.

It is QUITE miraculous, thats why i started asking questions!

And SnakeLord, I did have 4 months of questioning after being in the hospital before becoming a christian....it didnt happen right away
 
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