Happy Atheist Forum

Yes, I have been having this feeling.

Before I say anything, I will say, idk if it will help what you guys think, but I was baptized about.. 4 years ago? Idk, I was like 11 or 12 or something I'm not sure.. So like 4 or 5 years ago. Doesn't really matter when.

I have been having not really a feeling, but at the same time, a feeling.. It's like I don't like to deny God. I will deny Jesus and Christianity, I really don't care, I will. But when I start getting to God, something in me doesn't want me to, it feels like, doesn't want me to deny God.

Idk why I feel like this. I am technically an Agnostic Atheist.. I do not truly know, or like to deny the possibility of their being a deity or God, but I will argue against the possibility instead of arguing for the possibility. Make sense?
But for some reason, I do not like to get to whether God exists or not.. Something in me doesn't like denying him or she or it or whatever the fuck (sorry for the language) he/she/it/manbeargod is.

Has anyone else (Atheists) experienced this? I don't know what it is.. To the people whom I talk religion with, I don't say this to, but they all tell me that I DON'T WANT to believe in God.. I tell them I would love for Heaven, like for example the Islam faith, to have virgins waiting for me, but the reality is, there isn't one. But about God, idk, I don't like denying whatever that manpiggod is, if he/she/it/bearmangod exists.

It's the SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS!!! :D  :D

Fight it!  Before you feel the urge to go out and buy stockings, candy canes and little ceramic elves that light up when you plug in the cords coming out of their butts!  Pretty soon you'll be smiling, drinking egg nog, attending Catholic Masses, putting your life savings into a collection plate to help feed starving children and later discover they went to fund Father Donovan's sex change operation!

Oh sorry.  That was probably a little much.

Maybe it's guilt?  Maybe it's a need to belong to something greater even though you don't believe in the hocus pocus? Maybe it's just gas?

Perhaps it's a fear of being alone?  I hear what you are saying about wishing it were true but there are lots of nice fantasies we wish were true.  I've never thought of God as real but I can imagine that if I had, once I gave that up I might have felt a bit lonely.  My suggestion is to find companionship in real creatures such as humans and pets.

For me it helped to read lots and lots of books. I had to be convinced on pretty much every level before I was able to comfortably rule out all but the tiniest possibility that there is a "higher power". And now, if there is something that exists on some higher plane I think it would be so fantastic and so completely incomprehensible that religion couldn't even begin to describe it. If something like that does exist, I really think that it wouldn't care one way or the other if we "believed" in it, much less worship it.

Quote from: "Kylyssa"Perhaps it's a fear of being alone?  I hear what you are saying about wishing it were true but there are lots of nice fantasies we wish were true.  I've never thought of God as real but I can imagine that if I had, once I gave that up I might have felt a bit lonely.  My suggestion is to find companionship in real creatures such as humans and pets.

I get what you say.
Yeah, I don't have a girlfriend, and I feel out of place sometimes with certain people and that I'm not "in it" with people that I would rather be with. I do feel alone sometimes. But idk if it's God, Especially since I have really always questioned small things (i.e. free will with the 3rd Commandment) and never really prayed unless in Church, which I rarely did anyway.

I just don't really know what it is too much, and it's annoying.

Kevin...without making too many assumptions about you.  I would guess that god must represent something important to you that you are afraid of loosing hope for?

I'd consider myself an agnostic atheist as well, but there are certain truths I can't help but let prevail my conscience.

1. Heaven = desire for reward.
2. Hell = desire for justice.
3. Judgment = desire for meaning.
4. Afterlife = desire for immortality.
5. Ritual = desire to communicate.
6. Law = desire to obey.
7. Prayer = desire to/for help.

Most everything in religion is a manifestation of the human condition into a self-imposed false interpretation of reality. As I've said before, I don't see think the universe cares about us, so why should we believe reality just conveniently bends to our wishes like that? To take this a step further, we are the conscious, thinking, feeling, loving, hating, judging, forgiving creatures in the universe. We've only "just" emerged too, in the grand scale of things. Why would our emotional characteristics, whose origins are directly related to our biological evolution, suddenly apply to whole of the universe in the form of an ultimate consciousness?

We are the result of complexity and we are comprehensible. Our existence here, and resultant conscious experience, is not a "telling fact" of the universe, it is a telling fact about the nature of complexity. Be wary of your emotions and always think things through logically.

I know the feeling, but I try my hardest to not give into the human condition; just because I feel it should be so doesn't make it so, even if I can see through religion like swiss cheese...

Quote from: "Arthur Dent"We've only "just" emerged too, in the grand scale of things. Why would our emotional characteristics, whose origins are directly related to our biological evolution, suddenly apply to whole of the universe in the form of an ultimate consciousness?

  This is gold.

Quote from: "laetusatheos"Kevin...without making too many assumptions about you.  I would guess that god must represent something important to you that you are afraid of loosing hope for?

I like how you stated that. Really, I don't know. I have, as I have said before, never been religious, in the "normal" sense, like I have never really gone to Church a whole lot (Use to on Wed.'s to hang out with friends) or prayed a lot or anything like that, even though my mom is Christian, my grandfather on my mom's side is a Baptist preacher, and my grandma on my dad's side is very pentecostal. But that hasn't effected me much, so God never represented much to me.

I just don't know what I am losing hope for, if what you are saying is true.. It may be that I am still "converting", if you say it that way, and that I am still young and around a lot of religious stuff.. Like I am very conscious about when something religious is said.
I'm not sure yet. I'm not fully sure if God exists or not yet, but I do not believe in Jesus, and probably never will.

Quote from: "BadPoison"

Quote from: "Arthur Dent"We've only "just" emerged too, in the grand scale of things. Why would our emotional characteristics, whose origins are directly related to our biological evolution, suddenly apply to whole of the universe in the form of an ultimate consciousness?

  This is gold.

Thank you.

My prose seems to resemble a mix of Dawkins/Sagan/Tyson. They represent the majority of my exposure to such concepts, so is it any wonder? :-p

Arthur, it's your life and your beliefs. I'm not going to try to keep you atheist, and I'm not going to try to influence your beliefs. Just know this: Truth does not have anything to do with feelings. Often, we use our feelings as a guid towards what we should believe in. That's human nature, but if you absolutely want to believe in the truth, I'd be very skeptical of any feelings I might have, towards any subject.

Of course, if you want to believe something else, you can, if you want. It's your life, dude, go for it.  

Quote from: "Wechtlein Uns"Arthur, it's your life and your beliefs. I'm not going to try to keep you atheist, and I'm not going to try to influence your beliefs. Just know this: Truth does not have anything to do with feelings. Often, we use our feelings as a guid towards what we should believe in. That's human nature, but if you absolutely want to believe in the truth, I'd be very skeptical of any feelings I might have, towards any subject.

Of course, if you want to believe something else, you can, if you want. It's your life, dude, go for it.  

huh? I never said truth had anything to do with feelings. I said I "know the feeling" because I have been there and it's more of an acceptance that we don't yet know everything about reality. I don't, for one second, believe the key is some sky fairy, but nevertheless, we don't know the whole story yet, and that truth is what creates the feeling of mystery.

Kevin, as you said earlier, you are still young.  You've got your whole life ahead of you, and years of thinking to do in that time, hopefully critical thinking.  

I've always been an atheist, so I've never had to go through a conversion from belief to atheism.  But from talking to ex-believers and stuff I've read in books and on the internet, this can be a very difficult and at times frightening experience.  Think about it, you're giving up the biggest, most important person/thing in your life.  It's almost like losing a loved one.  The rewards on the other side (no pun intended) are truly great, such as freedom from fear and hell and indoctrination, but I imagine going through it can be difficult.

I think your doubts show you to be a thinker, and that's a good sign.  No one ever said conversion was easy, or had to come overnight.  Just keep using your noggin and talking about the experience and you'll do just fine.  

No one likes to maroon a friend. God is most likely often portrayed to you as a very personal being. We as humans can tend to treat it that way expecially when we have already been "in relationship" with him. Having been a Christian, God may symbolize something of value to you, such as love and unity. Most likely it's that mental connection that will need to be severed via awareness.

Best wishes to you.

Kevin, I try to never underestimate the power of my indoctrination. The more logical I get, I often wonder if I am deleting it or merely burying it deep within myself. When any feeling begins to manifest in such a way that it will inform my actions, I think about the feeling instead of merely feeling the feeling, if that makes any sense to you. Good luck.

If the feeling of God encourages you to be a loving, tolerant person then I have no problem with hanging on to the belief.  On the other hand, if it gives you the right to impose your beliefs on others with fantastic dogma, I would say cut the chord.

Quote from: "Arthur Dent"

Quote from: "Wechtlein Uns"Arthur, it's your life and your beliefs. I'm not going to try to keep you atheist, and I'm not going to try to influence your beliefs. Just know this: Truth does not have anything to do with feelings. Often, we use our feelings as a guid towards what we should believe in. That's human nature, but if you absolutely want to believe in the truth, I'd be very skeptical of any feelings I might have, towards any subject.

Of course, if you want to believe something else, you can, if you want. It's your life, dude, go for it.  :blush:

I meant Kevin.