AIBU to ask if you believe in God - particularly if you didn't previously, and what that's like

[Pinesinthedunes]

Just as the title says really. I don't believe in God. I'm very curious about those who do - particularly those who didn't previously. How did your belief develop? How do you conceptualise God? Can it be a choice? I have a lot of admiration and curiosity for anyone who is able to sustain a sincere faith in Western culture. How important is having a community around you to strengthening your faith? Thank you in advance for any thoughts on this you would be happy to share

It's not hard to sustain faith in western culture. Religion has existed before western culture and will exist after it, so that makes sustaining it easier, knowing that your faith links you to those before and after. A big element of faith to me and I suspect many is the bigger picture, it's not really about me (unlike a lot of modern life) community is important, yes it's a choice and if you look at the rise in wellness, meditation, mindfulness, a lot of that is a substitute for a lot of things that religion offers. I grew up within a religion, at times I've not been practicing so not quite the opinion you wanted but it's mine.

I agree with this.

I didn't want specific opinions - your post is very welcome and thank you for sharing your thoughts. I agree with what you say, religion and religious traditions are the answers to so many problems we didn't realise we have or we do but solutions are provided by the market. I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has managed to bridge that gap from non belief to belief, because it seems pretty fundamental to being religious.

As a Christian I’m always really happy to chat to people about my faith provided that they are genuinely interested rather than trying to argue with me or catch me out

Ardent atheist until I was 39 ... then I had my first child and tapped into 'the force of love moving through the universe'.

What does that entail? Don't mean to sound off, just curious. Is it a belief in a deity? A sort of spiritualist thing?

I'm absolutely not looking to argue or catch anyone out. I am fully sold on religion (Catholicism to be specific, to be open about where I'm coming from) being "good", but this is very weak in my opinion. I would much rather I believed it was true, and I can't. I would love to hear from people who have found God and what that looks like and how that happened.

I used to. I don’t now.

I kind of get that Interceptor, but it just seems too ethereal for me to properly grasp and turn into a solid faith

I will never believe in God while children are left to suffer in this world. What sort of God would allow rhe horrors you read about on a regular basis?

If there is a God then they are a cruel one indeed.

I am a Christian but veered away from my faith for a long time. As a child I had a strong sense of God and my parents, who were pretty nominal, said I was always talking about Jesus. Everything fell by the wayside until 2014 when I couldn't get Jesus out of my mind. It was a slow process until 2017, when something supernatural happened, a kind of unbelievable healing in my life. Something inside of me was changing and I couldn't explain it. Every time I thought of Jesus, it felt like drinking a pint of ice cold water after being stuck in the desert. I'm sure I heard the Gospel a thousand times before, but I heard it for the 1001st time on Easter Sunday 2019 and suddenly it clicked, and I got it. My life has never been the same.

It is difficult to hold my views, to some degree, in the Western world. I think many people are very open to 'God' or 'The Universe', but can get a bit weird when you mention Jesus. Many of my views are counter cultural, traditional and very conservative. I tend not to speak about my faith unless asked, as I don't want to be seen as preachy, but I do want to share it with everyone. The thing is, I know that most people don't want to hear, so I respect that and take the lead of other people.

People think that having faith in God is an emotional crutch or a form of escapism. Trying to love your life true to Biblical principles and become more Christ-like is absolutely not for the faint hearted. However there is a depth and richness to it that is unparalleled by anything else. Since I became a believer, my world was turned on its axis. The entire focal point of my life is completely different. I feel like I spent my whole life rotating around the moon, and when I found Jesus, my entire orbit changed. Everything shifted. I have been sick the past few days, so can't muster up the language to describe how I conceptualise God.

My faith is so precious to me that I hate putting it out there, but I thought I would reply seeing as your post seems genuinely interested.

My 'belief', if you can call it that, is like the PP who felt the force of love. I can't subscribe to any description of a god that comes from a mainstream religion: I don't think a god is going to be intervening in, causing, or preventing human behaviours or suffering. There is no 'cruelty'.

I just don't think that a god is as personified or human-focused as your religious stereotype deity; humans just aren't that special.

No. Never have.

I can't imagine what it's like to have that kind of belief and can't imagine how I'd ever acquire it.

I'm really interested to see the replies here. I don't believe in God but I'm envious of those that do, I've just always believed the bible etc is just a man-made fiction to control the masses and ensure control to the church.

I'm very respectful of all religions, a lot of my family are Muslim, there are very humanist ethics in Islam that are admirable, such as compassion and kindness.

Also, sometimes I play a game with myself called 'imagine I'm an atheist'. I try and try and try but I just can't get myself into the headspace of not believing.

I was brought up in a conventional C of E church, Sunday school. youth club etc. In my late teens my friends got involved in a fundamentalist, evangelical church, I couldn't relate to some of the teachings and lost faith for over twenty years. in recent years mindfulness, contemplation and taking an interest in Buddhism have brought me to a faith in a higher positive power working through nature and people. I have read books by Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest which have given me a sense of peace. It helps to know a couple of people who are on a similar journey but I still see a lot of flaws in organised religion. I would say I have a faith though, which is more sustained by spending time in nature and private prayer and meditation.

I consider myself a non denominational Christian (I don't see Catholicism as Christianity, and CofE and some of the other major denominations just seem too organised, hypocritical and rife with abuse).
I truly do believe in God, I do sometimes struggle with understanding some of the concepts in the Bible, but then I also struggle to understand Algebra and advanced physics that doesn't mean they aren't true.
The idea that humans evolved from nothing is as ludicrous to me as the idea that if you throw a hand grenade into a scrapyard it will turn into a Boeing 737. Yes natural selection / selective breeding can cause differences in animals like when you look at all the different types of dogs compared to types of cats, but the idea that first there was nothing then it blew up into everything then magically there was life just out of nowhere and this life suddenly went from aoemebas into elephants is very far fetched.
Chuck Missler does a good video on engineering and how you need certain components for something to work which is proof of a designer. Ie a mousetrap won't work without the minimum component parts and so won't certain cells. Il look for the video.
So I basically think that God / religion can tie in with science, as in that he is the ultimate scientist.

He explains it far more eloquently than I can 😂

Aside from anything else I've had some major coincidences and experiences in my life that "prove" it to me but too vague and too outing to go into here sorry

I believe Jesus walked this earth . As he is the son of God , I believe in god . The universe , where did it come from , how did it begin ? . People ask the same question about god . I believe there are negative and positive forces . I believe the devil exists . He has been clever in fooling the world he doesn't exist . He does . He appeared to me in a dream every night for a fortnight asking for my soul . At the same time every night . I never saw his face . It was only until I started to pray that it stopped .

Not what you were asking, but here goes.

I am a considered & committed atheist. Like most Brits, I was raised in a very lightly Christian environment; I sort of believed in a god until I was old enough to think critically about it.

I believe that humans, and possibly some other animals, do have a "god spot" in our brains: that is, a hard-wired predisposition to perceive a god/spirit presence in our lives. I don't really care how this may have evolved or what activates it.

I do care about my own emotional health, though. To this end, I satisfy my "god need" through small-time meditation; I sometimes appeal to the universe (in general) if required. These serve the same purpose as prayer and faith, without the overlaid constructions of religion. I'll sometimes have an imaginary conversation with one of my deceased grandparents, or even an imagined ancestor further back, so I guess I'm fulfilling the spiritual functions of older religions too.

Most religions venerate saints and other sub-god entities, a function that equates to "What would [expert, hero or celebrity] do?" in everyday secular life. I very rarely do that, but I do follow a lot of experts so maybe I'm in regular communion with them 😄

I should stress that these are things I do deliberately, they don't come from any place that could be called faith. I'm 100% sure that no conscious, non-human beings have any influence over any sphere of life. When I die, I will revert to the atoms of which I am made, nothing else.

I am using well-known psychological tactics as part of my mental health. That's all. The fact that they parallel universal aspects of religion is interesting, if not surprising. I prefer them as they come, without mythology!

I rarely get a chance to witter about this. Thanks, and sorry for the unexpected length 😳

My grandad said that when men were dying on the battlefield (Somme) they would all call out for god to help them .Men that said they did not believe .

I kind of always vaguely believed in God as a child, but never felt close to God at all, if that makes sense.

Then perhaps in my late 40s, I went to a funeral and there was a prayer read called ‘The Difference’ which just got to me in a way I can’t explain, and things started to make sense.

Not long after, a relative was taken very ill and I prayed and prayed for their health. I talked to God properly for the first time. They recovered against all odds.

I started a relationship with God, and I talk to Him and He answers. It has helped me so much. I don’t particularly find comfort or support from other Christians. I don’t go to church. Just me and God, talking.

I’m very aware that people who have suffered especially, cannot ever think they can believe in God. My best friend lost her son, she doesn’t believe in a God who can allow that. I told my own mum, who lost a child, and she said ‘If I didn’t believe there was a God when she died, who would have helped me. That’s when I needed Him most’

It’s such a difficult issue for people, especially those who have been hurt or bereaved, but I’m trying to answer your question as to what changed for me and why.

Here’s the poem- no idea why it suddenly changed everything that day but it did:

The Difference

I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day. I had so much to accomplish that I didn't have time to pray. Problems just tumbled about me, and heavier came each task. "Why doesn't God help me?" I wondered. He answered, You didn't ask," I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on, grey and bleak. I wondered why God didn't show me. He said, "But you didn't seek.: I tried to come into God's presence. I used all my keys at the lock. God gently and lovingly chided, "My child, you didn't knock." I woke up early this morning and paused before entering the day. I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray

I get that, @Newbie198. One of the things that makes life feel hard is the sense that we should be able to control everything; we should be able to dictate all outcomes. It's actually an impossible ask, very unrealistic and self-centred. A big part of happiness is knowing what to let go.

That's a sentence everyone can say, but many can't even begin to do it. In rehab, there's this thing called "handing it over". The original AA texts say hand it over to god; these days we can just hand it over vaguely (as I do) or pick a personal problem-bucket that has meaning for them.

Other, less spirit-y ways of doing the same thing include "Let the chips fall where they may", kicking the can down the road, and even "Fuck it" 😄

That's what your poem's about, isn't it? Letting go of the illusion of control, stopping to smell the flowers.

Sometimes I just look around me and see all the stuff on the planet and think it's mad isn't it? - that we are the only planet with all this stuff on it; So is it here, just because it is, or is it here by design? I think by design, because that is the most logical answer to me, therefore, there must be a designer. I do think there can only be one designer though, so all religions are just on different paths to the same being. I call them God and I believe they are a force for good. They gave us the loving rules to live by - In some respects, we're making a right hash of it but we also see wonderful and miraculous love every day too.