Did you ever fully believe in a god and there not be any doubt?

[cynatnite]

Looking back over the years, I never fully embraced the existence of god. There was always some shred of doubt. There was a time when I was fairly sure god didn't exist, but I kept on it anyway just to cover my bases. I quit that because it was a lie and my conscience wouldn't allow it.

[awoke_in_2003]

1. Same here...

more like covering you ass or blending in with those around you.

[immoderate]

2. Not ever.

As soon as I was old enough to understand what "make believe" meant, I knew god was one of those.

--IMM

[trotsky]

3. I always had some doubt.

It began as soon as I could think for myself, I suppose. I was raised Lutheran, but never felt a "presence" of god or anything. I always felt like I was going through the motions. Powerful brainwashing though kept me "believing" until I was 21, sad to say.

[laconicsax]

4. Probably when I was very young--maybe 3 or 4 and didn't know any better.

Either way, it never affected how I lived my life. Made it that much easier to dispense with the fairy tales.

[Joe the Liberal]

5. When I was younger I did........

believe there was a god who was constantly watching over me but as I grew older I soon realized that religion and god is all a load of nonsense. As a kid you don't always think for yourself which I did not, but now I'm happy I don't believe in all of that.

[amyrose2712]

6. I believed in a form of god as a creator of nature,

and love and such. I never believed the bible nor was I expected to, however. That was until I was about 13 and I started going to church and I stopped believing all together. I mean I still can't say I know fully. After, studying quantum physics (as a very much a lay person), I find it hard to believe anything at all.

[YankeyMCC]

7. There was a time

... I hesitate to make a definitive statement about what I believed as a young child but I know I never took it seriously and definitely did not believe as a teenager. Even as a child I thought of the xian mythology as essentially equivalent to the ancient Greek mythologies I enjoyed reading so much.


But there was a time for perhaps a year - well maybe more like 6 months - where I believed. It was right after joining the Air Force and was the result of what I thought was a 'voice' from outside that I heard during a particularly trying moment at Officer Training School. I made all sorts of promises as a result and because of that tried to remain a loyal if not faithful member of the xian community even when the 'belief' faded away again under the light of my usual state of rational thinking (at least in regards to the idea of supernatural beings :) )


I realized the voice was just a aural hallucination and a manifestation of stress and finding some until then untapped inner source of courage and determination.

Overall I think it is good I went through this because it has sort of inoculated me against this sort of thing happening again. If I had not experienced this perhaps I would be tempted by fear of uncertainly to be someone who turns to 'god' at the end of life or something. I can't imagine that happening now.

[Kolesar]

30. A voice

I can vaguely recall some kind of voice talking to me when I was very young. It may have been my voice, for that matter. I have made a concious effort to forget what religion and my parents were doing to me, so I have lost the details.

[Deep13]

8. I came close, but there was always some doubt. nt

[TZ]

9. I always had some doubt.

Maybe because I had such an unpleasant childhood that it made me question why things were "allowed" to happen.

[Goblinmonger]

10. I believed 100% through high school

As a matter of fact, if you would have come to me when I was a junior in high school (1983 for god's sake) and told me that I would be an evil fundamentalist atheist in 2008, I would have laughed at you. I went to a high school seminary. Raised a very strict Catholic.

Then I reread the bible, went to college, started thinking logically about it all and the rest is history.

See you all in hell!

[Solomon]

36. Same here. God and Jesus were as real as the wall I'm looking at

right now. I went to bed every night with Jesus on my mind. When I went to college, starting with my freshman year, things atarted to change. I still remember feeling bad for a guy that I met the first few weeks in college. He was the first atheist I had ever come across. I kept asking him, can't you "feel it?" and he kept saying, "that's just a chemical reaction in your brain." I remember feeling so terribly sorry for him, and then within a few years, I was the same way after having spent hours upon hours studying religious works in an attempt to find the "truth". When I saw repressed pictures of the statues in ancient Egypt, everything turned for me.

Now, if I speak up about what I have learned, I get villified.

On edit: LOL I've already responded to this thread once before. Should have read down further before writing this one.

[frebrd]

11. I never thought anyone actually believed in gods....

I just assumed I was supposed to pretend to believe - politically correct sort of thing. :)

[beam me up scottie]

12. Never.

I was raised without religion and have spent my entire life going :wtf: because of it.

My poor dad tried his best to explain the Holocaust, Middle East conflicts, the 'moral' majority, sin taxes and blue laws to me, but I was never able to understand why people were fighting and dying over something somebody who might have existed may have said thousands of years ago.

[YankeyMCC]

18. Richard Jeni quote I saw the other day might help

explain it: "You are basically killing each other to see who has got the better imaginary friend." Richard Jeni

[beam me up scottie]

19. Exactly!

How the hell do you reason with someone like that?

I guess life is easier if you can just use God to fill the gaps.

[YankeyMCC]

20. Are you equating God with spackle ?

lol

[beam me up scottie]

21. Magic make up!

The daily maintenance must be a bitch. :(

[Warpy]

13. I was afraid not to believe when I was a little kid

but I never really bought the whole line. I'd learned very early that any sort of doubting questions brought down severe consequences of defensiveness and the threat of social isolation, so that was about it. I got good at giving lip service but the words didn't arise from my heart.

I was a kid who'd pulled the beard off a department store Santa when I was two. There was no way people were going to convince me about any fairy stories after that.

[Solomon]

14. I believed hook line and sinker until doubts set in after a couple of

years of college. I literally went to sleep every night thinking about "Jesus." I chased my doubts through law school and it took me a number of years after that to finally come out and say it's all bullshit.

I grew up in an extremely religious family who are still that way so I am the black sheep now. I'm currently 54 years old.

I'll never forget the discussion I had with another classmate as a freshmen. The guy I was talking to was the first person I had ever encountered in life who didn't believe. I was totally shocked by that. I kept saying, "but I know it's true, I can feel it, I can feel my soul", to which the guy replied, "that's just a chemical reaction in your brain." I remember feeling so sorry for him, so sad that he couldn't feel it too. I was as certain of God as I am of anything.
I do remember that when I learned that Santa Claus was a myth, the thought occurred to me that Santa Claus is religion for the wee folk, so perhaps, religion for big folk is not true as well, but after a while, I let that pass and went back to absolute certainty for a while.

Religious people are really blind to the fact that they push themselves all over people all the time. They just don't see it, even when you try and tell them. On the other hand, if you make a statement of your own belief, and it doesn't comport with theirs they get extremely upset, very defensive.

[tbyg52]

17. Hear, hear, especially to your last paragraph.

Sorta like Repubs - one set of rules for us, another set for you.

[stpalmer]

35. AMEN!

[LynzM]

15. I was about the same as you...

Even when I was 'saved' and baptized and whatnot, somewhere deep in my brain was doubt and self-deception. But, like you, I kept at it for a good decade, until my husband started reading a lot of anti-theism stuff, Zen, etc., and shared it with me. And then I read the Mists of Avalon and something just kinda snapped in my brain...

[tbyg52]

16. When I was *real* little, I "believed" as a sort of ghost story, gonna getcha thing.

I didn't like that at all. I have no recollection of ever believing in a good way, and decided I was an atheist as soon as I knew what that was - about age seven, IIRC.

[Ian David]

22. When I was a kid, and I did something bad, and I'd say god made me do it. n/t

[prostock69]

23. I had doubts. Just never thought to research them to find out if

there was any truth behind the claims about god and Jesus until 3 months ago. I just assumed there was a god.

[Iggo]

24. Yep. Born into it.

One and a half years of Catholic School and I was convinced the church was bullshit.

By the 3rd grade I was basically over it.

[and-justice-for-all]

25. not at all...nt

[pauliedangerously]

26. I never "fully believed"

I did give it some thought, though. I contend that a lot of "believers" don't fully believe. I further contend that it isn't a matter of being or not being a believer, but simply how one defines the word "believe" or "doubt" or even "miracle."

Someone who proclaims their atheism (or agnosticism...another interpretation of belief, perhaps?) is really thinking about the goddies' proposition and considering its credibility. Anyone can just claim to believe. Hell, it's easier. You have a much better chance of avoiding an argument if you just say you believe.

You know how you've got those people who are atheist and claim to be Jewish to avoid long, drawn-out discussions with missionaries? I just thought of that...it's funny. I've never tried that one. My goal is to have them walking away in less than two minutes knowing I have no respect for their ilk whatsoever, taking their voodoo pyramid scheme down the road.

[vixengrl]

27. Easy answer--yes. She was a goddess, and her name is Sekhmet.

Which is dumb actually. The goddess Sekmet, as one might read about in Robert Masters, is pretty nearly a metaphor for the Clara Estes' woman who runs with wolves or whatever. I was in a very Normandi Ellis and Barbara Walker kind of place in my life, just getting over my first marriage while still married and still kind of in love--and in need of a mythological mentor. I needed to believe in my own female power or something like that. She is also the Durga, or Mother Night, or Kali, or the Black Madonna, and she has a thousand other names besides. That goddess I believed utterly in was probably the inspiration for thousands of women before me, and I think she's a nonetheless a good gateway out of faith, because there is this many-faced goddess who reminds women of their own stories and lifecycle and also lets them know women do not have to be mild or "nice". We are also strong, and warriors, and independent when we need to be. The image of the goddess was very real to me, but also made me clearly understand how we try to contort the language of the divine to our own desires, and the nature of Goddess-lore also reminded me to be practical and ruthlessly honest--

Once I was, I realized I did not need the idea of god or goddess to explain my world, or make my morality, or help me live. I just lived. Although I still like the image of her lion face and lionheart sometimes giving me strength--but the difference is, I know Sekhmet is also a part of me.

[Starry Messenger]

28. I was raised Catholic and was very serious about it for years.

Then one day I realized that I had never actually believed in god. At all. That was a surprise. Sometimes I miss the ritual and the comfort of the ceremonies, but not the guilt and the fear from not getting "the feeling".

[barbtries]

29. up to about the age of 18

then, i began to think....

[Auggie]

31. No. Even as a little kid.

[southpaw]

32. As a child... even into early adolescence

I believed exactly what had been taught to me since birth.

Being raised in a Southern Baptist church in rural Alabama, there wasn't much or a counter-argument to be found, either. It was only as I entered my teen years that I even questioned.

Still, I believed essentially the same stories I had been raised to believe until I was in college, and was finally truly exposed to differing points of view.

[stpalmer]

33. Absolute Belief until I was 30

I had questions, and asked them. But I accepted the answer that God was so much smarter and bigger than we could possibly imagine, that we couldn't understand with our feeble brains what his great plan was. I was raised by a Mormon father and a Seventh Day Adventist mother, but was mostly an Adventist. Both are very legalistic and mystical at the same time, with prophet and prophetess who "know all" and "see all".

[stpalmer]

34. I prayed for you all many times

After all, atheists were purposely blinded to the truth by God because he could see the future and knew they were never going to be saved.

I laugh at this belief now, but it was very real to me once!

[progressoid]

37. Sort of.

When I was young (pre- Jr High) I believed what I was told to believe. But it lost it's luster by my early teens. After that I sort of tried to believe to some extent for a about half of my adult life. I completely gave up on it about a decade ago. HUGE relief to finally get that monkey off my back!

But I remember my first big doubt came when I was about seven or so. I made a "deal" with god. I kept my end of the bargain but he didn't keep his! :eyes:

[dropkickpa]

38. Nope

Was raised atheist, so I never was a believer.