Discuss.

12/27/2007 6:28:10 PM

i switched from atheist to christian in 2001. not in the mood to articulate my story right now, but i will say it's the BEST thing i've ever done. if anyone really wants to know, feel free to PM

12/27/2007 6:34:11 PM

I beleive in God (or a higher power of some type)

I do not take the Bible literally. It's really just some guidelines that help you be a decent human being

Gay people are born that way and cant help it. (For the most part...some people are just weird) As a straight male, I could never ever choose to chase man-fanny

People that arent Christians will not burn in hell just because they practice a different religion. You mean to tell me that Ghandi is burning in hell?

12/27/2007 6:57:51 PM

my fiance and i were discussing the other day about what if we're (christians) wrong and maybe muslims are right, or jewish or hindu. kinda made me for a minute

[Edited on December 27, 2007 at 7:03 PM. Reason : .]

12/27/2007 7:02:58 PM

I'm an atheist.

I'm never goin back.

12/27/2007 7:09:25 PM

^^that's because no religion is right

i don't see how that would make anyone sad, unless you're a weak person and belief in a higher power makes you feel better or whatever

[Edited on December 27, 2007 at 7:11 PM. Reason : .]

12/27/2007 7:10:54 PM

I went from being a faithful Jew to borderline atheist/agnostic. Once you lose faith, it is very hard to get back.

12/27/2007 7:29:46 PM

empirical evidence

12/27/2007 7:31:28 PM

yeah i know the feeling

12/27/2007 7:49:48 PM

Damn good evidence. Or something I care about more than truth.

12/27/2007 7:55:45 PM

Quote :

"Once you lose faith, it is very hard to get back"

i agree

12/27/2007 8:25:42 PM

I was sick of Christian hypocrites around me. I have always had a deep reverence of nature and the environment around us to which we, as the highest order of being on this planet, have a responsibility to preserve. I thought this was one of the tenets of Christianity as well, but I came to find that to most God created the earth for man to rape and pillage at their leisure. So in autumn of 2006 I did some research and found that Shinto best fits in line with my connection to the natural world and has facilitated both mental and spiritual harmony.

12/27/2007 8:28:24 PM

I've been an atheist my whole life and I highly doubt that there's anything that could happen that would change my mind.

12/27/2007 8:30:08 PM

I don't think that there is really anything that could make me change my faith because of the fluidity and flexibility in my personal belief system.

My paternal grandmother made sure that I went to church every time the doors opened, but she also taught me to think for myself. My mother is not one for organized religion because of her strict religious up-bringing. My mother is very "new age" and exposed my brother and I to all kinds of alternate paths to spirituality.

I believe in a creator, an all encompassing life force, a higher power. . .whatever you choose to call it. I believe that this higher power goes by different names for different people and cultures. I choose to to achieve a connection with that power through Christianity because it is the path that I know, but I do not believe that it is the only way to reach enlightenment or the essence I call "God."

I also do not believe that the Bible is meant to be taken literally or pieces of it are meant to be taken alone and out of context. It's partially a historical record, the mythology of a people, and a set of morality tales. It's meant to be treated as such. . .read, absorbed, and interpreted.

The only thing that I have trouble understanding is "atheism" because I think that spirituality is a very important part of being human. Had it not been such an intrinsic need on our parts, we would have never "created our creator." Even if there is not a higher power, it's obvious that we have some sort of psychological and social need for one.

[Edited on December 27, 2007 at 9:18 PM. Reason : .]

12/27/2007 9:13:04 PM

A true religious experience.

12/27/2007 9:16:03 PM

Nothing in the world would change my faith. You can't change your faith it is part of you. It drives every choice you make in your life. Thats why athiest are almost always sad individuals because they have no hope for anything for they will one day die and then what. They also have no direction other than what they want or what they have learned in their lifetime.

Christians truely have a purpose in life where athiest don't.

12/27/2007 10:02:28 PM

^oh wow, i'm not even going to respond to that idiotic comment

12/27/2007 10:08:40 PM

My mother was a nonpracticing Methodist who never went to church. My father was a militant agnostic with Buddhist philosophical leanings. In fact, for most of my life the only consistent exposure I had to any sort of religious belief was my dad reading out of "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" to us every night before sleep.

I was borderline agnostic, tending slightly towards the belief in some supernatural force or entity, until I was about 17, and it was that year that I looked around at various religious denominations and ultimately became an Eastern Orthodox Christian.

I made my selection because it fit with my understanding of God. I liked that my church didn't tend towards the harshly judgmental, did not require blind rejection of obvious scientific truths (evolution, a world older than 4,000 years, etc), and, most importantly, had such a strong connection to the earliest Christians.

I am not quite as "good" at being Orthodox now as I was in the three years after I converted, but I'm still very firm in my beliefs and I don't think I could be swayed by anything short of the appearance of God Himself in such form as made Him recognizable as such.

12/27/2007 10:23:35 PM

with me and Karma, its never really faith

it seems more like a sense of understanding than something i believe

12/27/2007 10:24:33 PM

Buddha would have to come down and butt-fuck me with his stomach.
and even then...

12/27/2007 10:28:47 PM

God or whichever deity is the correct one would have to come down from the heavens and actually show himself to the world. I highly doubt this will ever occur, as I see no evidence whatsoever that there is a god.

12/27/2007 11:05:04 PM

empirical evidence

[Edited on December 27, 2007 at 11:08 PM. Reason : Some crazy shit must have happened for that atheist->xtian conversion in the second post.]

12/27/2007 11:07:44 PM

God doesn't have to come down and show himself........it's called faith for a reason. Plus he shows hisself all the time you just don't see it.

12/27/2007 11:16:23 PM

i dont have any faith so how can you change it?

12/27/2007 11:18:51 PM

so there is plenty of evidence for god all around me, but i am too blinded by my lack of faith to see this evidence?

12/27/2007 11:21:10 PM

^I think the idea would be that you're not blinded by your lack of faith, per se, but by the various other things that dominate your life.

12/27/2007 11:22:17 PM

Quote :

"i dont have any faith so how can you change it? "

12/27/2007 11:24:14 PM

^^^ Most of the evidence around me shows that people are apathetic and lazy and selfish. If that's evidence of god then you can keep him.

[Edited on December 27, 2007 at 11:28 PM. Reason : ]

12/27/2007 11:27:53 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/12/27/prosperity.preachers.ap/index.html

This is why i rejected Christianity in my late formative years. I do not deny the possibility of a higher being, however, I think Christianity like many other major religions are a sham. A means to control populations using fear and cultivating the use of irrational logic.

^ haha agreed. I remember in high school all the girls taht attended the christian club aka youth group were some of the sluttiest girls. They all smoked before the meetings while making plans on smuggling liquor to the youth group trips.

[Edited on December 27, 2007 at 11:34 PM. Reason : l]

12/27/2007 11:32:25 PM

i find that my skeptical nature keeps me from really believing in God, that and I really doubt a lot of the validity of the Bible especially the New Testament. Every time i try to have faith, i skeptically look at it as a cop out or a security blanket. the only thing that keeps me from completely being an atheist is those little coincidences that seem too odd to be a coincidence. i guess im like 80 percent atheist and 20 spiritual

12/27/2007 11:37:02 PM

^ has nothing to do with controlling people. It's the only way to living a truely happy life.

12/27/2007 11:39:33 PM

this has already been touched on here. but some of the hypocrisies i see in christianity definitely turn me off (i say christianity because this is the only religion i have been regularly exposed to, as i grew up in a christian church. i know hypocrisies exist in all religions).

i am not a fan of the moral crusades that have come to define politics. i think it is making this so much worse. issues such as homosexuality and abortion are not going to destroy us, however our constant focus on them definitely will.

as someone else mentioned i am not a fan of what christians seem to believe about the earth's purpose (i think someone mentioned that people think it was just given to us by god to exploit and do with what we please). i guess this point goes a long with the notion of contradictions in the religion.

i also just feel as though a lot of people that consider themselves, holy and religious people act according to their beliefs. if you really believe what you say you believe, then you should know it isn't YOUR purpose to judge others. yet that is all people seem to do--judge and condemn those that are not like them. well, i thought that was what god was for?

i have a lot of problems with what i have seen and experienced as far as christianity.

i would probably classify myself as agnostic. i haven't really found a particular religion that i really feel compelled to 100% embrace.

12/27/2007 11:42:01 PM

^^ You do realized that the way you interpret the world and your experiences aren't universal, and different people see things differently than you do? You have no basis for making the claims that you're making, which you've already admitted, but you don't seem to grasp what this actually means.

12/27/2007 11:48:59 PM

^^^

you're just making yourself and others who share your beliefs look like fools

[Edited on December 27, 2007 at 11:52 PM. Reason : .]

12/27/2007 11:50:42 PM

nm

[Edited on December 27, 2007 at 11:53 PM. Reason : ]

12/27/2007 11:52:42 PM

^ Thanks for your opinion. You are seen the same way by the people who share my beliefs.

[Edited on December 27, 2007 at 11:56 PM. Reason : .]

12/27/2007 11:55:23 PM

are you SERIOUS?

12/27/2007 11:57:02 PM

this is silly

you people are being silly

STOP BEING SO FUCKING SILLY

12/27/2007 11:57:22 PM

i never had any faith

12/28/2007 12:07:20 AM

religion ask questions that are, at best, unanswerable for about a billion years

lets just work on getting to Mars

ok?

12/28/2007 12:08:40 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States#ARIS_findings

The amount of people reporting themselves as Christian dropped 8.5% from 1990 to 2001 (about 10% of all christians) while other religions increased 1.3% (about 30% growth for the groups), with agnostics/atheists growing from 8% to 15%, almost doubling in size.

12/28/2007 12:09:00 AM

^ and look what has happend to the world during that span.

12/28/2007 12:35:22 AM

you mean it was pretty much awesome?

12/28/2007 12:38:06 AM

Don't feed the troll

12/28/2007 12:38:08 AM

sadly, i don't think he's trolling...

12/28/2007 12:38:48 AM

Quote :

" and look what has happend to the world during that span."

Nothing worse than what was happening before.

You had the great depression, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, civil rights issues up until the civil rights era, and hosts of other things.

For first world countries at least, things have been getting better over time (in terms of luxuries), and religion has been fading over time.

[Edited on December 28, 2007 at 12:50 AM. Reason : ]

12/28/2007 12:50:19 AM

If we swept UNC in all major sports, I would consider it.

12/28/2007 12:53:03 AM

bottom line is christians are all about throwing the bible in your face and trying to shove the gosspel down your throat hoping you will convert. People see this then the way they act and it just dosent match up. it drives me crazy and im a christian and all I hear is about lets go door to door and spread the word. Like all yall say its gonna take nothing less then a mircale for yall to change your faith, whats a few people at your door gonna do?

I'm about just making realtionships with friends. I don't need to make them change their minds cause its theirs to make the decisions. they know what i think and believe but hopefully they can tell my actions are sometimes different.

12/28/2007 1:15:40 AM

^^^ Morality in America has gone straight downhill and if you don't see that you are a moron. And to bring the wars into this has nothing to do with it. War is going to happend when this country is threatened.

Theres generations now that just don't have any principles anymore.

12/28/2007 9:55:14 AM

They said that about elvis too. Swinging his hips in public like that! No shame!

Seriously though, the world is gradually improving. There will always be wars, conflicts and such, but on the whole the world is slowly becoming more peaceful. Part of this is because the level of conflicts has risen (imagine the US and China going at it) but another part of it makes me think that technology, and the standard of living is rising and making people generally happier and less inclined to war.

12/28/2007 9:59:15 AM