Chat across the great divide

[thegreenheartofmanyroundabouts]

So this is a bit of an experiment. Threads in this part of MN can get very heated and it is easy to loose sight of the person behind the screen so this is a place to chat and get to know each other whether we are christians, atheists, muslims or whatever. It isn't a place for proving that your viewpoint is right. It is more a place find out what it is like to walk in another person's shoes and that requires empathy, listening, tact and the maturity. We all know that tone is hard online as we just have words and a jokey comment ends up offending where not offence was intended. So to borrow a term from across the Atlantic - don't be a jerk and if you mess up, fess up. We are posting from places of safety (homes, offices, coffee shops) about things we hold dear. So be kind.

Maybe introduce ourselves?

I'm a vicar who was an atheist from 12-18 but I started exploring Christianity at university. The thing that keeps me going through long days is builders tea, non of your herbal rubbish, and plain chocolate digestives.

Anyone else?

I agree Greenheart, it is good to get out of the bubbles. I am a Christian but often struggle with people who are very fervent about particular topics. I particularly dislike it when people are not only convinced that they are right, but look down on other Christians who have other viewpoints, as though they are not proper Christians. Creation and the extent to which the bible should be taken literally can be such issues.

Can I just share this? I think it encapsulates how you can have wonder and transcendence without God.

"Our story is the story of the Universe. Every piece of everyone and everything you love, of everything you hate, of everything you hold precious was assembled in the first few minutes of the life of the Universe, and transformed in the hearts of stars, or created in their fiery deaths. When you die, those pieces will be returned to the Universe in the endless cycle of death and rebirth. What a wonderful thing to be part of that Universe. And what a story. What a majestic story!"

I don't really understand the doubt tbh.

It's not a choice to be an atheist. I had assumed it was not a choice to have faith.

I could not wake up one day and decide to have faith.
If faith ( as I understand it) comes from an emotional place then surely rationalisation of faith or grappling with doubt is never going to sit happily with belief.

For what it's worth my family believe that thoughts of doubt come from Satan, and are to be dismissed and prayed upon.

Carl Sagan?

I don't think faith is an intellectual concept.

I have watched family members becoming "born again".

It's wasn't done through reasoned rational debate.

Hello. I think that this is a particularly nice thread to start on the anniversary of Jo Cox's death, when we are looking to find the things we have in common with people with whom we might be in conflict.

I'm especially glad to see Bertrand on here, because she is someone I usually find myself on the same side as, on most matters other than religion.

My own religious journey has been long and complicated, so I'll save posting it until after the children are in bed.

I suspect many people experience faith differently, so I wouldn't want to suggest that what I feel is the same as anyone else. For me, faith is not an option. I believe in God, even though I do struggle to understand many things. I don't think my personal faith is always rational, but can't switch it off. It is a bit like loving someone, if you love someone you can't just tell yourself to stop loving them. I did go through a period when I thought Christianity doesn't make rational sense, and tried to walk away from it all but I still believed, I couldn't switch it off. After a few years of discovering what everyone else does on a Sunday morning I found myself being drawn back to church.

Hello everyone! I'm a rational Deist Reform Jew. What I love about Judaism is the ritual and how it always looks to connect with our ancestors. I believe in God but just like many fellow Jewish I do t believe in him in the biblical sense. It is there above us but doesn't really interfere.

I'm an agnostic/atheist/no idea-ist

I have numerous close friends and family for whom faith is incredibly important. I have friends who pray for me and my family in difficult times and that love warms my heart. I am a rational scientist who still believes that there is an unknown 'magic' to life and that we are more than just a collection of atoms.

And yet despite all of this, and despite being deeply attracted to the community, love and faith that religion offers, I don't believe. There is simply a void in the place that blind faith should occupy and I cannot overcome that.

It's almost not as if I'm a deliberate aetheist. It's simply that I cannot be anything else - despite being open to faith, if feels fake.

Why wouldn't God snap me up?

I think applesandpears has hit on something important. I've suspected for a long time that people do experience faith very differently. I'm married to an engineer and the questions he asks about faith are not the ones I asked when I first became a Christian. I'm more likely to look to poetry and music to express the inexpressible. He wants to know how it works. We have discussions where we try and find a language that works for both of us and it is hard.

So the doubt is there because I can't switch on religious experience. But when it comes there is no doubt about it if that makes sense. Probably not.

Hello, I'm a Christian - fairly new, although a very happy choir girl in my youth who believed she was a Christian. After a tough 10 years or so of not being sure if I was an atheist, agnostic or had just been abandoned by god, I too felt a tapping - that kept going until I took notice. I did a Christianity explored course, and finally 'got' it.

My DH has been so patient with me as he is an atheist and always has been.

greenheart- so we agree.

Faith or indeed atheism are not choices.

And yet god supposedly gives us freedom to choose to make the decision to accept jesus as saviour.

But it's not really a choice is it.

Even if I decided to become a christian it wouldn't happen for me.

Like choosing to fall in love with someone. It's not something we choose to do.

There is a choice or at least there was for me. I was an atheist until I was 18 but various experiences, encounters and intellectual challenges in my first terms at university encouraged me to explore the Christian faith. That wasn't easy as the young Christians I knew at uni were just so uncool and that was important to my teenage self. The choice was to explore. To give it a go. To risk being seen as foolish. But that was the choice I made.

I don't think we chose to have faith or not either westray and green

but.... I have had very odd (but perfectly explainable) experiences that I have thought to myself 'I could call this divine intervention' When I was searching in my late teens I always wondered if I had had a religious experience but managed to talk myself out of it. I wonder if I had a different brain I could just say 'wow thats god!' and just believe.

My dh is an engineer too green and he asks those 'but how does it work' questions. I have a lot of whimsy in my life and he just can't let it in! he's so serious! :D

It's almost not as if I'm a deliberate aetheist. It's simply that I cannot be anything else - despite being open to faith, if feels fake.

^This is me as well.

I love your explanation apple

greenheart- your idea of choosing to have faith or not seems to resonate with no one here.

Do you suggest we can choose whether we fall in love?

Like others I can't "not" be an atheist.

It's not something I choose.

Thanks for sharing itshere Its very profound.

It was in the days leading up to and in the days after, the birth of my daughter, that I really took a 'spiritual inventory' and realised just how atheist I really was- before then I never really thought about it, I just didn't bother getting into religious issues, but in the quiet of those late night feeds, I began to quietly seethe.

I traced it back to some acquaintances who were staunchly conservative evangelical christians, who debated in my presence with dh at our house and theirs before dd came along. They believed very much in 'original sin' (among other things) and that god's punishment for eve's transgression was painful childbirth. One of the couple had just had her own baby, and told both me and dh that they both decided she wouldn't have any pain relief, and just pray. In the event, she wanted some, but he wouldn't give it to her all night and day she was in labour at home. When she got to hospital- she went straight for the gas and air.
He told us this proudly, like he was doing something good for his wife by hiding the co-codomol...like it was 'god's will' 9one of his favourite phrases)
They told me they prayed for me when my daughter was born without incident and with very little pain. I felt very angry about that- I didn't want them or the god they believed in anywhere near my baby.

The choice was to explore. To give it a go. To risk being seen as foolish. But that was the choice I made.

But if you join a dating site you do all these things, and you may or not fall in love. You don't meet someone then decide to fall in love. It's not a choice.

Many atheists are open too, in fact often far more adventurous than simply exploring flavours of christianity.

So the doubt is there because I can't switch on religious experience. But when it comes there is no doubt about it if that makes sense.

Oh it so does Green that's it exactly.

I am an atheist and a churchgoer.

I totally missed this! are you a regular attendee?

I don't think greenheart was saying she chose faith. She chose the risk of going out looking, and opening herself up to it, if I understood correctly. Faith followed. In that sense I suppose I 'chose' too. But it didn't feel like much of a choice - it was like being driven by an external force.

ollie that sounds awful. They sound awful. I'm not surprised you were angry. Just wondering though about I didn't want them or the god they believed in anywhere near my baby. Were they near? Was their god? Atheists often say they don't want someone else to pray for them. And of course if you don't believe in prayer it would be annoying to be told that someone had, was, or was going to pray about something. But does it matter, do you think, if you don't know about the prayers? Genuine question.

But the implication is that atheists are not open.

You see the church tells us that choosing faith is important because we are exercising our free will to accept christ as saviour. And all that is very important to the church.

Se greenheart is saying we simply have to be open and god will come.
And if he doesn't- well we were not really open.

Easy way out there.

I don't know anyone who has chosen atheism or faith.

I see what you mean westray but that implication doesn't necessarily follow for me. I have friends who actively choose to be atheist - or to close off any possibility of finding faith - deliberately. That's one way of being. I know people who are Christian because that's what they were told when they were kids and they have never questioned, or wanted to work anything out for themselves and simply follow their cultural religion. That's another. Both closed in my view. Then there are people who want to find their own path, and are open to different ideas, some of whom find God and some don't. I believe God calls us all all the time, and wants us to turn to him, but I only heard that call at a certain time in my life. I don't know why I did then and not sooner. And I don't know if you will find God one day. I don't think the fact that you haven't means you aren't open to the possibility - if you say you are, then you are.

veterinari Do you want to believe?