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Hey Pandas!, What Made U Believe In God. And If You’re An Atheist What Made U Stop Believeng In God.
I am trying to look at religious beliefs from different angles and understand why people chose to believe or not believe in God.
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I never believed in god. I was around 12 years old when i realized some people actually believe in a god and there chosen "holy" book. Seemed really weird and childish to me.
I was a believer. I read the Bible. It made me atheist.
I used to believe in God. But when I saw my mother suffer even though she prays two times a day, never thinks bad about anyone and tries to help whenever she can. Moreover if God existed would he let little girls be raped , innocent people be murdered. Would he just sit there and enjoy people suffering.
The sheer amount of contradictions. Even within one religion, there is very little agreement and different ones disagree on almost everything. There are really interesting similarities between a lot of them, so maybe there is something, but I just feel like if there is a god, then they are probably not omniscient or omnipotent and certainly not omnibenevolent, so imma just live my life and try do it as best I can in the world I'm in.
I believe in God because I look around me and I can't believe that all the beauty in our world was a happy accident.
Have you ever held a newborn kitten? Been out at dusk with the sunset on one horizon and the stars on the other? Met eyes with a stranger and they smiled back?
There's no way it's not purposeful. No way there isn't an artist behind it.
That's not to say I don't doubt Him a lot. I do. When I was younger I used to ask God for "signs" to prove He was there. I asked Him to send a bald-eagle one time, and when I looked up, there was an eagle soaring over.
When I had depression I used to stand out on a cliff, in the wind, and scream and sob at Him to please be real and please make the pain go away.
And He was so gentle about it. He didn't hit me with lightening. The sun just came up every day, and there were puppies to hold and --looking back-- I can see that He timed everything perfectly so that I could heal before I grew up and carried the baggage into adulthood.
He's never been harsh about my doubts that He exists...I just see Him more and more every day. I especially see Him in the way I learn to love the unloved and in my art and in my obsession with cute animals.
Please don't downvote. I answered the question honestly. If you want to discuss it, feel free to reply. I will be respectful of your view.
I’m an atheist for a few reasons.
1) There’s no proof that god exists. Yes, there are things that can add to a belief in god, but nothing flat out proves it.
2) Even if you somehow prove it, it’s absolutely impossible to prove which of the gods exists. Say that there are 100 different religions believing in different gods and they all have 1 million believers. That means that out of 100 million total believers, either 99 millions of them, or 100 million of them are wrong.
3) if you manage to prove my first two points wrong, why does god let certain things happen? People say that god has his private reasons for stuff, and saying that isn’t really convincing me. Why does he allow abuse, rape, murder, etc.
I believed in god until less than a year ago. Anyway I hope nobody is offended by this :)
This is a tricky one for me. I don't believe that there's a conscious, sentient entity controlling everything. But sometimes, when I'm trying to accept when something is out of my control, it's helpful for me to visualize giving control to something bigger than myself. It's a comforting thought to think that something out there is in control.
I was raised in an Atheist family and I have not found a reason to not be an Atheist myself. I also had some really bad/scary experiences with certain religious organizations in the past, which probably turned me off from religion in general.
I am Muslim, so let me answer from this perspective. Like others have said, all the intricacies of the universe, from the largest galaxy, through the stars and celestial bodies, the asteroids and planets, to life right here on earth with the largest mountain to the smallest atom, from the most complex organism to the smallest single-celled prokaryote. How the rain comes down, the dead decomposes, giving way to new life and sustaining the future. The way one generation inherits everything from their ancestors on this earth, and how it all is taken and passed on to the next generation. This balanced, organized chaos. Could all this just be left to chance?
People focus on how much hurt there is in the world. How could an almighty God allow such horrors to happen? He gave us all free will, and so people in power have free will, which they can use to inflict pain onto others. This is not to try and downplay the seriousness of the trauma people face, it is just a reality.
And to those who say, "If God wanted us to belief in Him, why doesn't He send out some miracle?" Well, I want you to answer this, to yourself, honestly. People are only going to believe if they want to believe, so if a miracle does happen, would firm atheists finally be convinced of God's existence, or would they strive to search for some other explanation, logic, or reasoning that does not attribute the miracle to God? Would they, even after finding no other reasoning, actually accept that it came from God, or just leave it at "an unexplained event that doesn't necessarily confirm the existence of God"?
I was raised as a sort-of christian. My parents taught me about god, but we never went to church. I always thought it was just a story, and I never really believed in the christian god, but then i found out about paganism, and I believe in the old gods :).
