Guest SerenityNow Posted May 25, 2005 Share Posted May 25, 2005 It's only been a couple of months but I'm wondering (not debating)about what some of you went through that brought you to your current view of God, i.e.; Atheist, Deist, Agnostic, Spiritualist, etc. First, I swore that I fell into the Deist category but now, well, I'm not sure. I've read so many things on this site that I have never even so much as entertained in my head. There is so much to learn and its very exciting. I'm seriously leaning towards, but have not studied, spirtual connections. There have been studies of people being prayed for (but they didn't know it) by folks of various religious beliefs. The people prayed for, regardless, of their religion/non-religion healed faster than those not being prayed for. Things like that really make me think. I didn't start this thread to discredit or attack or even question ones current beliefs. This is just a thread I wanted to start to share ones current state of deconversion and how they got there AFTER deconverting. So please, it's okay that Han wants to worship Bob's Burger's, just curious about how you, Han, came to your belief in Bob...LOL ...btw Han, if my hubby ever deconverts, he would love you! :-) Who knows, we may even join the "Bob" cult. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Peyton Posted May 25, 2005 Share Posted May 25, 2005 I honestly don't know what I believe, other than I don't buy into the steaming crock of shit that is Christianity, Islam, Judaism etc etc. There may very well be a Sentient Creator, Supreme Being ... all I know is nothing I have seen, heard or read until now has led me close to this 'thing'. That doesn't however mean it doesn't exist. I just don't know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alice Posted May 25, 2005 Share Posted May 25, 2005 It's only been a couple of months but I'm wondering (not debating)about what some of you went through that brought you to your current view of God, i.e.; Atheist, Deist, Agnostic, Spiritualist, etc. First, I swore that I fell into the Deist category but now, well, I'm not sure. I've read so many things on this site that I have never even so much as entertained in my head. There is so much to learn and its very exciting. I'm seriously leaning towards, but have not studied, spirtual connections. There have been studies of people being prayed for (but they didn't know it) by folks of various religious beliefs. The people prayed for, regardless, of their religion/non-religion healed faster than those not being prayed for. Things like that really make me think. I didn't start this thread to discredit or attack or even question ones current beliefs. This is just a thread I wanted to start to share ones current state of deconversion and how they got there AFTER deconverting. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I've been toying with posting a 'testimony' (I'm as attention seeking as the next person whose ever stood up in church and given a testimony!) but have decided that this wouldn't be right for me. (I only gave my 'testimony' once - and that was when I got baptised - and this still features in my mind as one of my most precious days for a number of reasons - many of which still stand despite my change of view) But this sounds like a great excuse to talk about me a bit! I think I've possibly been 'deconverting' all my life - and I don't really regret any of the converting in the first place bit or the time I've spent at church or studying the Bible or considering the spiritual side of life - I see it all as a journey. I was raised in a christian home with very strict parents who held very rigid fundamentalist beliefs. My poor dad thought I was heading for hell and he had a terrible time reining me in and trying to get me to behave. Now that I'm parent I feel so sad for him - what a horrible responsibilty he thought he had - its scary enough at times being a mum or dad without thinking that if you set a foot wrong your beloved child will suffer eternal torment. I was a half hearted rebel at times - and although I went against my dads wishes in my choice of college, I added a bit of Theology to my Humanities degree to appease him a little and discovered that there was a whole lot of thinking out there from people who called themselves christians but who didn't ascribe to the 'every word in the Bible is true' thing. I also went a bit wild - having never learnt an ounce of self control (having had all my boundaries imposed on me) and made myself miserable being as wicked as possible for a while. Then coz I was unhappy being wicked I concluded that I would have to 'return to the church'. (I didn't realise at the time - that it was possible to live outside the church and be a nice person! ... eventhough I had friends who did exactly this! I guess I must have thought they were in the club without having noticed joining!) And so for nearly twenty years of adult life church membership has defined a big part of my own spiritual journey and I have mostly liked going. I love thinking about the spiritual side of life, I love looking at ways to grow as a person - to deal with my own psychological issues (low self esteem - past emotional hurts) and for me - doing this within a framework that has a belief in God has been helpful for me. Whilst my own understanding developed further and further away from a literal acceptance of the Bible - somehow we ended up in more and more fundamentalist type churches ... since leaving I've tried to understand this - and I think it was more that I was drawn to churches where I could see really see social action in action (and in the UK these tend to be the more 'born again' type churches) but how - when I was having more and more trouble really believing the stories in the Bible - I lasted for so long puzzled me for a while. But I think this was the reason ... I've never really cared whether or not Jesus was a 'historic' figure ... I don't care whether or not the Israelites trogged around the desert for forty years or four weeks or not at all ... I just like interacting with the stories and seeing how I respond and what my responses teach me ... Just before I left my church (a little over a year ago) I was actually having the BEST time ever going to church. I was part of the naughty group reading Brian Mclaren books (He was on the 'banned' list and we had to photocopy chapters and circulate them in secret!!!) I actually felt quite 'spiritually' alive - and then our new pastor decided we had to sign a 'foundation' document if we wanted to remain members. (what a guy!) setting out our beliefs - and I think I fell at the first hurdle. I miss running a youth group - I miss the social side - I miss debating theological and spiritual issues with the naughty kids in the back row! I miss a good singsong )some of the music was ace - some of it was dross) I miss having my participation in social action made easy for me. I was already missing a little ritual (having travelled from the good ole church of England through several free churches and into the whackiest of 'new testament style' charismatic churches.) I don't miss being on the receiving end of some people's pity when I never did get the tongues speaking thing togther ... I don't miss people doing embarrassing things in the name of Jesus ... I don't miss being the last woman standing when the spirit of God blows across the congregation ...I don't miss being told I should be able to give a gospel message in sixty seconds ... or being pressurised into getting other people into the kingdom. Some days I love not having a label - other days I'm desperate for one! I want to be a 'something' - I still want to search for truth - to take heed of my spiritual side - I still want a steady supply of people I can connect with. I want to tell my Mum what I'm going through without getting all emotional. I want to get invited to the occassional church social (I don't care if they hold a special prayer meeting before hand to cast out the demons they think have gotten hold of me - as long as I don't have to go to the prayer meeting bit but can go to Bar-B-Q) I want to spend a bit of time in a monastery. (Ok so I have a crush on the abbott in the UK's latest reality TV excercise - but that's not the reason - honest!) I want to learn to meditate. I want to learn about as many ways and paths to enlightenment as I can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godless Wonder Posted May 25, 2005 Share Posted May 25, 2005 Which studies show that prayer works? The credible ones that I've seen show that it does not work, and many of the ones I've seen which claim to show that prayer works have been shown to be badly done, or even outright frauds. From The Straight Dope In summary, we have no good evidence of the effectiveness of intercessory prayer in which the person does not know he is being prayed for. Those who believe prayer will help them and know they are being prayed for may indeed get better, thanks to the placebo effect. The same could be said of giving pets to the elderly who like animals (which research has shown is related to both physical and psychological improvement). However, as Matthews, Conti, and Christ note, "if a patient did not like cats, for example, it would seem inadvisable to put one on an elderly lap." Similarly, "the current research does not suggest that atheists facing heart surgery should be told by their physicians to start praying." Some good links are in this thread: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=1...efficacy+prayer About a Columbia Univ. in vitro fertilization (IVF) prayer study http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=8...efficacy+prayer More.. http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=6...efficacy+prayer http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=5...efficacy+prayer Well, you can dig around for yourself easily enough, and you should. Perhaps you find a different view more credible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeathWorship Posted May 25, 2005 Share Posted May 25, 2005 i'm a pretty ardent atheist, but i feel sometimes there may be a god, but it wouldnt be sentient.. it wouldnt even be spiritual. i believe god is a wave [speaking in physics terms].. next time i talk to my friend who is a physics major, i will post his explanation of how god is a wave, its REALLY interesting, just kinda complex. but if that were true, i would still claim to be an atheist, because if god is only a physical event, not a sentient thoughtful being, then where does dogmatic worship come into play? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godless Wonder Posted May 25, 2005 Share Posted May 25, 2005 I could swear that I had read a couple news articles on MSNBC and FOX regarding this. I'll try and find what I'm talking about. Sorry bought that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Oh, I'm sure you did see such things. Not everything you read is true. Especially if it's from FOX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spamandham Posted May 27, 2005 Share Posted May 27, 2005 but if that were true, i would still claim to be an atheist, because if god is only a physical event, not a sentient thoughtful being, then where does dogmatic worship come into play? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No offence to you, but this is one of my pet peaves. No one knows what the fuck the word 'god' means, and so it means whatever anyone wants it to mean at any moment. It's a word who's only purpose seems to be equivocation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pandora Posted May 27, 2005 Share Posted May 27, 2005 It's only been a couple of months but I'm wondering (not debating)about what some of you went through that brought you to your current view of God, i.e.; Atheist, Deist, Agnostic, Spiritualist, etc. First, I swore that I fell into the Deist category but now, well, I'm not sure. I've read so many things on this site that I have never even so much as entertained in my head. There is so much to learn and its very exciting. I'm seriously leaning towards, but have not studied, spirtual connections. There have been studies of people being prayed for (but they didn't know it) by folks of various religious beliefs. The people prayed for, regardless, of their religion/non-religion healed faster than those not being prayed for. Things like that really make me think. I didn't start this thread to discredit or attack or even question ones current beliefs. This is just a thread I wanted to start to share ones current state of deconversion and how they got there AFTER deconverting. So please, it's okay that Han wants to worship Bob's Burger's, just curious about how you, Han, came to your belief in Bob...LOL ...btw Han, if my hubby ever deconverts, he would love you! :-) Who knows, we may even join the "Bob" cult. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ok, first off I had a friend in HS. She and her sister were totally into this whole "Bob" thing. It was extremely vague, I only knew they had an obsession with Bob. Are there other jokes out there about this Bob or were my "christian" friends secretly ex-Christians and didn't want to tell anyone in our conservative town? They are both eccentric to the max and if you didn't know their mom was in the Christian music industry, you would never know they were Christians. Anyways, for me, I did a lot of Buddhist and Hindu thinking when I first deconverted. It was my way of staying grounded and spiritual. I mainly read about their worldview and soaked it in. I meditated a lot too. I then went to theism, then to deism. I am now an agnostic. I don't think I will ever be an athiest unless I really some really good stuff supporting it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted May 27, 2005 Share Posted May 27, 2005 It's only been a couple of months but I'm wondering (not debating)about what some of you went through that brought you to your current view of God, i.e.; Atheist, Deist, Agnostic, Spiritualist, etc. First, I swore that I fell into the Deist category but now, well, I'm not sure. I've read so many things on this site that I have never even so much as entertained in my head. There is so much to learn and its very exciting. I'm seriously leaning towards, but have not studied, spirtual connections. There have been studies of people being prayed for (but they didn't know it) by folks of various religious beliefs. The people prayed for, regardless, of their religion/non-religion healed faster than those not being prayed for. Things like that really make me think. I didn't start this thread to discredit or attack or even question ones current beliefs. This is just a thread I wanted to start to share ones current state of deconversion and how they got there AFTER deconverting. So please, it's okay that Han wants to worship Bob's Burger's, just curious about how you, Han, came to your belief in Bob...LOL ...btw Han, if my hubby ever deconverts, he would love you! :-) Who knows, we may even join the "Bob" cult. Well, the Bob cult started with someone, on a different site, that was making a joke comparing God to Bob, and Satan as Stan. And since I joined the ex-christian, it just was so easy to find all these funny things that could be done. For instance, the Jesus becomes Jebus instead And my kids and I we were joking about Satan Claus, with the little demon efvens and his reindeers with red glowing eyes. So, then we started to talk about to actually write a "Bible", which we would call the "Bobble", with crazy stuff in it. A true believer is called a Bobblehead. The I header about the Bob's Big Burgers, which is a burger joint I've never been to, but people claim exists. So it must exist. I believe in Bobs Big Burgers, or was it Big Bobs Burgers (sounds better). So there's a lot of fun, to add to this. The only problem I had, was that after joking with my kids, and they totally loved it, we had friends over for BBQ, and my kids was talking to their kids. I had to (silently) try to calm them down and not talk about it, because there friends are catholics, and I didn't feel they would appreciate the humor in it. I'm very respectful that way, I do accept other peopels belief. So, when it comes to the Bobble, I have this idea (which I don't know if I can make happen), to have a site, people have to sign up and approved. They can submit contributions in form of sections or whole books to the Bobble (The X-Rated version will be the Booble, with more pictures ). When there's enough written material, the Bobble can be compiled through some kind of a voting procedure, where the books will be divided into Orthodox, Apocrypha and Gnostic. The next step would be to print a couple of hundreds of the Bobble, and put them in "time capsels" and burry them around the country. Maybe one day 200 years from now, they will uncover these Bobbles and a new religion will start. Yay! Our own religion. That's what it's all 'bout. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted May 27, 2005 Share Posted May 27, 2005 I miss running a youth group - I miss the social side - I miss debating theological and spiritual issues with the naughty kids in the back row! I miss a good singsong )some of the music was ace - some of it was dross) I miss having my participation in social action made easy for me. I was already missing a little ritual (having travelled from the good ole church of England through several free churches and into the whackiest of 'new testament style' charismatic churches.) The social life is what I miss too. That's one of the reasons why religion is easier to captivate people. The need connection. When you become a freethinker, there's nothing binding anymore, nothing to force you to have gatherings, so freethinkers doesn't build congregations, which makes it so hard to support each other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted May 27, 2005 Share Posted May 27, 2005 Ok, first off I had a friend in HS. She and her sister were totally into this whole "Bob" thing. It was extremely vague, I only knew they had an obsession with Bob. Are there other jokes out there about this Bob or were my "christian" friends secretly ex-Christians and didn't want to tell anyone in our conservative town? They are both eccentric to the max and if you didn't know their mom was in the Christian music industry, you would never know they were Christians. Anyways, for me, I did a lot of Buddhist and Hindu thinking when I first deconverted. It was my way of staying grounded and spiritual. I mainly read about their worldview and soaked it in. I meditated a lot too. I then went to theism, then to deism. I am now an agnostic. I don't think I will ever be an athiest unless I really some really good stuff supporting it. The story of Bob is on one of the websites that helped me sort out my deconversion thoughts. I will try to find it again, and post it here. It's a short story, very funny, about these people going around and trying to convert people to believe in Bob. If they don't Stan will come and smash their kneecaps. It basically shows that religion, is using scare-tactics like the mob. "We want protection money, so we can protect you from us." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted May 27, 2005 Share Posted May 27, 2005 I couldn't find the story (still looking) but here's one that's similar: http://www.jhuger.com/kisshank.php Do you like my new avatar? It's the holy prophet Mumble Gumbo, he will have one or two books in the Bobble too. First book; one page blank Second book; starts with "mhmmf ffmpmphphpph fmfm fmfm mfmfm hmhmhm." Which can only be translated if you're under the influence of the Holy Jack Spirits. And translation says: "I've been around the whole world looking for Big Bob, and now I'm stuck here with my head in the ground, and I can still not find him. Praise Bob" But there's some debate if the last "mfmfm" should be "mfmmf" which would change the translation to: "Where the heck is my remote control? Desperate Housewives is on in 10 mintues!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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