How I Lost My Faith

[Tricky D]

Originally Posted by NBLugan

I'm not sure how he can be the Living word of God if He's just throwing those topics around for the heck of it.

I judge people by their actions and not what they're saying or believing. The stories Jesus tells are consisted with his actions. So I believe that Jesus practiced what he preached.

I believe that it was Jesus' mission to teach us how to save ourselves, instead of actually saving us all by dying on the cross. I do not think that washing our sins away is what saves us, because this only happens after we are dead. But by teaching us to not to want to sin while we are still alive. And to love others like you love yourself is in my opinion a good and reliable way to prevent sin.
Like I said I don't care what happens to me after I'm dead, I just do not want to hurt people by commiting evil during my life.

Christianity is not a smorgasbord type of belief.

Neither is reality. You cannot pick what is real, just because you happen to find it convenient.

[Agility]

I can see how someone can be agnostic. But seriously the idea of Atheism is a joke. We came from nothing? Cmon we are way too intricate to come from nothing. That's why currently agnostics way outnumber atheists.

[Reticuli]

Below is from Jacob :

Hello, my name is Jacob, and I'm only fifteen years old. I'm an Atheist, which means I don't believe in a Supreme Being (but you probably knew that). My reasons? The evidence for a Supreme Being is flimsy.

1. Problem of Evil (why is there suffering, death, etc.)
2. Conservation of mass-energy (energy can neither be created nor destroyed, thus no need for a Creator)
3. The Evidence of Evolution (vestigial structures, abiogenesis experiments, the Fossil Record, continental drift)
4. Age of The Earth and the Universe (radiometric dating, speed of light [186,000 miles per second, studies have shown this to be a constant speed, see http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE411.html])
5. No good answer to the Purpose of Life (the "best" one I've heard is that God made us because He was lonely )

A while back, I was a New-Ager. I accepted everything without evidence. I believed in Ghosts, Demons, UFO's, you name it. Though I'm not sure if I ever really believed in a Guy-In-The-Sky. I always thought of Him as an "Inner Power" in our hearts, a way to find strength.
One night, I was watching T.V., and a comedian was talking about a "theory" called Intelligent Design. He was a critic of it. So, I went to see what all the fuss was about. I searched the internet. I found these videos Does God Exist? - Google Video (the ones by John Clayton), then quickly found the concept of Creationism on one of the videos. So, I searched for Creationism, and found a man named Kent Hovind. His arguments were convincing, since I had no way to counter them. So, I searched for Kent Hovind, and found this site Kent Hovind - Analysis of Kent Hovind (Dr Dino) . It provided a point-by-point refutation and analysis of everything Kent Hovind said. It astonished me. How could a person take the time and do all of this? I wanted to do that. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to question everything. My teen spirit was kicking in. I quickly adopted the viewpoint.

So, why am I an Atheist? I have no reason to believe that a Supreme Being is so anal that he will send me to a fiery Hell just because I have different brain activity than all of His minions. I have no reason to believe in Demons, Ghosts, or UFO's anymore, other than the comforting feeling that there's supernatural stuff "out there", just as you have no reason to believe in gods such as Zeus or Poseidon. I've tossed all of that away, and now I have more than I could ever have asked for than I could've had from God. But hey, this is just my opinion.

LOVE the thinking mind, Jacob, congratulations!!!
In answer to question number one, I think that evil exists for us to grow spiritually and learn from... why come into life if life were as perfect as Heaven (or what I call the other side)? So the reason must be that we grow from all the negativity even if we don't see it right away. An example is when John Walsh lost his precious son Adam to murder. The good that came from this tragedy is that Mr. Walsh has actually been instrumental in catching many criminals and also saving alot of childrens lives.
2. Just because we cannot create energy doesn't mean that God cannot. Obviously someone or something created the Universe including us, even if it took millions of years to do it.
3. Of course there is evolution! Also there is a God! ( I also feel God is a male and a female). I know what the Bible says about alot of things and I in NO way take it literally. I feel it is alot of symbolism of people trying to explain things. I do know Jesus was real, but the people's concepts of him to me are not necessarily accurate.
4. God lonely? No, I don't buy that one either. Because I know the Universe is teeming with all sorts of life, how could God be lonely? It makes much more sense that we are in school when we come into the hard knocks of life. Then we go home ( to the other side) and review what we have learned and grown from. And because I believe in reincarnation, sometimes we come back for more "courses".
It's wonderful to see thinking, inquiring minds... If you desire, you might check into Gnostic Christianity or Estoteric Christianity or any Esoteric/Gnostic thought. These people generally believe that God can be found thru research and intellectual reasoning and not thru blind faith. Because blind faith constantly creates "holy" wars (which are not holy by the way) and turmoil.
So we are not very different at all. Actually we are all a part of God and have a part of God in each of us. And it does not matter what you call Him or Her...Think God really cares about that??? We are all interconnected not only on Earth but in the Universe.
Love and Light,
Reticuli

[Oakback]

Jacob,

I remember well at the age of eight, believing at the core of me that Jesus was real. Although I had never seen him, I experienced him exactly as I did any other relationship, only better.
Then you know the cares of the world, choking weeds etc... and no more relationship.
Fast forward about thirty years. I had tasted everything this world had to offer, and all it gave me was indigestion. I was at the bottom, alone, afraid,
confused.
Out of shear desperation,I called out to the Jesus I knew when I was eight years old. Immediatley, I was no longer alone. I felt love again.
He had never left me. I had left him.
I'm an engineer. Was brought up in a family of egg heads. I too respect science and reason. But my relationship with Jesus begins with a choice.
First I choose to believe. Then he it all starts to make sense. Not the other way around.

Happy hunting!!