No matter what faith you are, stop and think for a moment. Clear your mind of any bias your faith may have given you. Get rid of any preconceived ideas you have about religion. Try to look at this from a completely open viewpoint.

Think about your life, everything you do. The good things, the bad things, anything. It doesn't matter. Think about why you did those things. What was your motive? Love? Revenge? Money? That warm fuzzy feeling? No reason at all? Really think hard.

Now, think about who you are as a person. Not your beliefs. Deeper than that. Your personality. Your inner being. Your soul, if you have one. Who are you really deep inside, under all the beliefs you profess and all the masks you wear?

With this stuff in mind (especially the last), answer the following question:

Does it really matter if there is a God or not?

Don't kid yourself. Remember what I said about getting rid of your exterior beliefs and what you've been told. Deep down inside, would you be a different person if there was no God than if there was? If you knew for certain that God did not exist in any form, would you be better or worse than if you knew for certain there was, or didn't know either way?

It's a tough question to answer, I know. If you answered yes, it does matter because the Bible, Qu'ran, my mother says so, you're wrong. What do you believe deep down inside? Don't give me what a book or another person told you to believe. If there was no Bible, would you still do good? Would you do bad? Would you still not care?

It's something to think about, to be sure. I'm fairly certain that it doesn't much matter, but I could be wrong. I'll never know.

Take this as you will, I don't have some earth-shattering point to make. I just want people to escape the little shells that they've been forced into. I want you to think.

Oh, and if you don't like the topic, you don't need to post. I won't be offended if no one replies. You don't need to make me feel better by insulting me. But hopefully someone out there will have something meaningful to talk about.

You don't need to be sorry. It's not as if you can read my mind and know exactly what I'm thinking. Heck, even I don't know quite what I'm thinking at times.

Again, you've brought a new point of view, which is appreciated. Perhaps my faith did shape me, and the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it did, in some ways. But I don't think I lost it. There were a few times where I came close, but nothing ever shattered my faith. I just decided it was doing me no good, if that makes any sense.

As for the bit about having the concept of good and bad, I don't think that has much to do with faith, because you can have faith in anything. Faith doesn't necessarily make you good. You could have faith in evil, for instance.

It's definitely a complicated issue, and it's too late for me to be thinking this hard.

oohh.ok.. but..

i dont think faith is something you can give up... i mean.. it's something that you just lose...


think about it this way.. you say your the same person after giving up your faith... but do you honestly think you would be the same person if you didn't had faith to begin with??

your faith has made you into who you are whether you realize it or not..in a way it matters. it's in your blood and though you say you have given it up, a part of it is still there..

maybe you just got sick, tired and lazy of doing stuff your faith entails like praying and going to church and thinking about a higher authority everytime you 'sin' so youre saying you've given up your faith.. but though you don't necessarily think if the 'God' factor anymore, simply having the concept of good and bad is proof that you still have your faith (subconsciously)..


maybe..

i dunno.. sorry if im wrong

Thanks for the insight, audreee. The thing is, I was indeed religious in my childhood. I had faith and was everything a good Christian should have been. Now, I have given up that faith, yet I am the same person as I was then. Perhaps some people do need faith in God or any gods of some sort--and a few of the answers to this post seem to prove that--but I'm not one of them.

I feel that as long as you have faith in something, whether it be science, God, or something else entirely, you're okay. I just know from my experience that it doesn't matter if I believe in God or not. I'm still me.

you make it sound like we were forced to believe our religions (well maybe we were hehe.. but the reason i keep on believing is because we choose to)

like my professor says something traditions and systems exists because they still have a function in a society..

it seems to me that you were never a religious person so you really couldn't comprehend that faith is a part of you that makes you who you are.. would a bird be a bird without it's feathers?

so to answer your question, it does matter. I did the whole meditation reflection thing you said.. and what i found was myself of thinking of nothing... wen i took away the stuff that i believed in, i found myself with no personality.. just a selfish person trying to live... which is NOT completely what i am....

Well, then to answer your question, I think if you believe in Him and attempt to follow the Bible (in the way that I attempt to, not in the way that fundies attempt to) then, He does affect your life simply since you believe that He does. Does that make sense?

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True, you may say that he's still there, even if I deny him,

Now, come on, I know I've been gone for awhile, but when in the world would I say something like that?

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But don't you think you'd still be as moral if you didn't believe in God?

Not as moral, no. Still moral but...I mean, I pretty much do what I want but there are some things I have not done or would not do simply due to the teachings I've had through Christianity. This is just the first example that popped in my head (so it is not very good) but - You all know I am Pro-Choice. But because of what I have been taught through my religion, I don't think I would ever have an abortion. So I can justify it for others based on my non-religious morals...but I could never justify it for myself based on my religious morals.

Welcome back Worth, haven't seen you here in a while...

But don't you think you'd still be as moral if you didn't believe in God? Personally, I know that I would, since it was my morals that made me examine religion in the first place, and made me choose Taoism to boot.

I think it's more the second question. Does God really affect your life at all? I would venture to say that he doesn't. My life today is exactly the same as it was five years ago. The difference? Today, I life my life for myself, with no consideration for religion or God at all. Heck, I doubt he even exists. He's never shown himself to me. Five years ago, however, my faith in God was as strong as any devout Christian here. I desperately wanted to believe in him, for him to be there. I did nearly everything for God. I had no reasons to doubt. Still nothing from him, but oh well.

I'm still a good person. I still have morals. But I don't have God. True, you may say that he's still there, even if I deny him, but that would mean that he's forcing my actions to adhere to his idea of morality, which contradicts the idea of free will. I do what I want, and most of what I want is good. But I am still a little bit selfish, just as I was five years ago. So in my experience, the presence (or assumed presence) of God in my life does not make my life any different than it is when I lack God.

So to clarify the original question, does it matter if God exists or not in regards to who you are?

I hate I wasn't around when this thread was created...I'm gonna respond to the original post anyway.

clpo, I have been trying to answer this but I keep getting confused and turned around...your bold question is, "Does it matter if there is a God or not?" But what exactly do you mean? You see, it matters to me because I believe that is how the world and everything in it came into existence. It matters to me because I believe I will go to Heaven when I die. It matters to me because I can feel Him working in my life.

But all you individual questions are basically asking, "Does God really factor into your everyday personality and life or would you still be the same person if God didn't exist?" In answer to that question, yes, I would be similar...but perhaps not as morally oriented since a lot of morals stem from God.

So which question do you really want answered and I'll give you a more extensive one.

And...here's another...does anything really matter in the big scheme of things? Probably not. But they matter to us as individuals.

Yeah no problem. I tried to make an attempt at answering your questions. But I'm sure you've heard it all before. I know having faith is hard, it doesn't ever come easily. If you could see and know for sure that there really was a God then it wouldn't be faith would it? Thats what faith is all about. Following the unknown. And thats why I completely understand why many people refuse to do that. We are full of reasoning and rationality. This whole believing in a God seems like the opposite of rational. But when you think about it, we don't have all the pieces of the puzzle that is the world. So can you really just rely on sight and human understanding?

Whenever the topic of religion crops up, I always gripe to my girlfriend about how everyone expects me to have faith when it doesn't come that easily to me and she usually gives me the same advice that you have. It doesn't bother me because I know you both mean well. Thanks anyways.

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You sound very much like my girlfriend. It's eerie.

I'm sorry? lol... I swear I'll stop harassing you about God b/c I'm sure you're probably sick of it by now. I understand what you are saying, and though I feel really bad about it all, you say you are happy enough not believing in God, so I guess there isn't really much I can say. It sounds like you have already made your mind up.

But since you said that you will probably continue to keep searching for truth, please at least take my advice. If you ever start thinking that there is a God and maybe Christianity is the real thing, try reading the Bible. You can't rely on other people's experiences to convince you that God is real, which is good...means you're too clever to believe what everyone else says. Instead you gotta go right to the source. People can tell you all sorts of things, but you gotta find out on your own.

And please bear with me b/c this is my one last stab and I swear I'll leave you alone . You can believe in something and question it all the time. I'm always full of doubts, but its faith in what I've experienced and what I have seen so far that keeps me hanging on, even if it is only by a thread sometimes. Its always up to me to go back to God and do something for Him. The way you have to look at it is that we are here to do God's will, He's not here to do ours. He's waiting for you to believe and that's when He makes his moves. It's not an easy thing to accept. I'm still having a hard time with it. Its almost like you have to take the chance and trust him to guide you, wherever that may be. And you can expect him to take you through dark roads to test your faith. Through that he's gonna see whether you believe in His abilities or your own.

I'll try an analogy. Think of the movie Shrek. (I have no idea why that would just pop up in my mind).. anyway, the castle in the middle of the volcano is heaven, happiness, or whatever you are searching for. There is that run down rickety bridge that crosses over the bowling hot lava. It is the only way to get across from the volcano to the castle. Say God is trying to get you to cross that bridge. The only way to go over is if you are blindfolded, b/c if you actually saw the condition of the bridge you would never in your right mind try to cross it. So, the thing is, you have to trust God to guide you across that bridge while you can't see anything and you probably have a million questions going through your mind. But, all of a sudden you decide not to do this because you don't know if you can actually trust God down a path you can't see. So, you take off your blindfold, see a little bit of the bridge (you can't see the whole thing b/c its long) and run away out of fear. Then you decide that you are going to try to find a "better" way of getting to that castle. You try alot of different things and you get close a few times but ultimately they all lead to failure. You still have decisions though. You can go back to God and try that bridge again or you can say "hey, I'm perfectly fine staying on this volcano." Its always up to you.

~sorry this ended up being so long. But I hope you understand what I'm saying. I'm not trying to preach to you or anything, even though I probably just did. I'll just say this: I hope that someday you will find answers to your questions and you will experience "truth" wherever you may find it b/c I know how frustrating all of this is.

You sound very much like my girlfriend. It's eerie.

In any case, the requests for signs happened only recently. In my younger years, I didn't question. I just assumed God was there. And things then were no different than they are now that my belief is not quite as strong. Again, I won't try to question your experiences, but let me reiterate that I have never experienced God, expected or unexpected.

As for the questioning bit, you are right on the dot. I will always question my beliefs. It's in my nature to question. I am not a man of faith, nor will I be satisfied with mere beliefs that are unfounded. God never revealed himself to me, so I abandoned that belief. Currently, I am indeed happy believing that it doesn't matter if there's a God or not, but eventually it will prove just as unsatisfactory, and I will continue to search for some sort of truth, just as I am now. I ask these sorts of things because I hope someone will prove me wrong, just as you suggested. The problem is, no one can. Or at least, they can't convince me of it.

Sometimes I hate being such a skeptic, but believing in something unquestioningly has got to be worse. You have experienced God, which is why you believe. I have not, which is why I don't believe. I am relatively happy now, but the fact that I don't know for sure will always tug at the back of my mind. I hope that explains things.

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Originally posted by clpo13:
Did you miss the bit where I said I was open to it? I think that was in the Resurrection of Jesus thread. My faith a few years ago was at least as strong as yours, but I still didn't experience anything.

Probably. But I'm just saying in general that people many times try to ask for signs or wait for something to happen to them in order to keep believing. I've done the same thing. And I've also gotten the same results. Don't think I'm just an ignorant believer. I've gone through the same exact thing you are going through. The only thing is that I can look back and see differences in my life between when my faith was strong and when I was lacking faith. Unfortunately I can't say that I have been happy in those times when I was far from God. I've been through really terrible things when I was strong in my faith, and I didn't have as hard of a time with it as when I was far from God and everything was going smoothly. There is too much evidence there for me of what He has done in my life. But He also works on His own time and lets you go through tough times where you are full of doubts. All of the times God has ever revealed himself to me is when I never asked for it or expected it.

And this might be a stab in the dark so please don't get mad at me, but it still seems like you are still looking for God. I mean when someone writes a post like this, the first thing I think is that this person is trying to find someone who can prove them wrong. If you are so happy without having any faith in a God or religion, then why are you still questioning it?

And the morality thing is not even really important. Nobody knows the exact point where morality sprung from or even where religion sprung from. But they do go hand in hand with each other. Speaking for Christianity at least, it teaches people to love everyone. And morals spring from that teaching.

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Originally posted by Holliewood:
Then how do people go insane?

My point is that remarkably few people, religious or secular, do.

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At least in my view, when someone gets jealous and starts saying terrible things about another person to slander them, and when someone is angry and ends up either physically or mentally trying to harm another person, I see this almost every day of my life.

It's true, when people first get hot and bothered about issues, they tend to overreact and start doing not so nice things. Any number of things can break them out of this cycle, though. Meditation, prayer, anger management therapy, Xanax...it all works. Plus, some people are just dispositioned to be resistant to hot-headedness.

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I'd like to see proof of this. As far as I know, religion has been around since ancient times and has played huge roles in society. Outside of a community mentality, why would people be doing good deeds if it didn't affect the whole group? Or basically, whenever a community has formed, there are usually laws, but those laws were definetly influenced (directly or indirectly) by religion.

I very seriously doubt every society with a moral code since the beginning of time has had a religion, but for the sake of argument lets say they have. Doesn't it make just as much sense (or, from where I'm sitting, more sense) to say that these civilizations shaped their religions around their moral code, rather than vice-versa? Obviously once the religions got established and passed down they started to affect the moral codes, but it seems to me that religion is, by definition, humanity's attempt to entwine spirituality with morality through storytelling. Saying religion is the foundation of morality is like saying tattoos are the foundation of needles.

Did you miss the bit where I said I was open to it? I think that was in the Resurrection of Jesus thread. My faith a few years ago was at least as strong as yours, but I still didn't experience anything.

Religion originated in ancient times, but morality originated in prehistory. I don't remember where I found the study that proved what I said, but I know I saw it somewhere.

And whoever said that people outside the community were moral? They tend to do whatever they want.

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Originally posted by clpo13:

I've managed quite well on my own, thank you. Your experience doesn't necessarily fit everyone else. While it may be so that some need God (whether real or imagined) to keep from "falling into sin," others do not. I'm not trying to demean your beliefs, it's just that I've fared well enough on my own as I did when I thought God was there.

That's great, I'm not trying to convince you to believe me, but I'm just giving you a different perspective. I guess its pretty hard to explain something that you have to experience for yourself. I'm not saying that I'm a mass murderer without God. I do perfectly fine without him. Nothing too tragic ever happens, but I just feel empty and like something is missing. To me there is a huge difference, but there is no way I could ever show that to you. So, you have to make up your own mind. And it already sounds like you have. And thats fine, everyone's experiences are different. But you also have to remember that in order to even experience anything, you must be open to it in the first place.

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Morals come from basic human instinct. In a community, acts which increase the group's happiness are considered good. Acts which decrease the group's happiness are considered evil. Those who do good acts are moral, and those who do evil acts are immoral. This can be expanded to larger societies such as those in modern times. Religion just expounded upon the idea of morality and gave a supernatural origin for it.

I'd like to see proof of this. As far as I know, religion has been around since ancient times and has played huge roles in society. Outside of a community mentality, why would people be doing good deeds if it didn't affect the whole group? Or basically, whenever a community has formed, there are usually laws, but those laws were definetly influenced (directly or indirectly) by religion.

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Plus, I believe the human mind is wired, in a lot of ways, to protect its own sanity.

Then how do people go insane?

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I think most people go through this cycle, and are almost always able to move on with their lives, whether they call it forgiving or forgetting. Even if the injustice they've suffered is severe and they can neither forgive nor forget, they can still move on.

Most people find this extremely difficult. There is always something that weighs in on people's minds and bothers them. It depends on what you are vulnerable to. It doesn't have to drive you ultimately to something extreme, although you see people react in extreme ways to things. At least in my view, when someone gets jealous and starts saying terrible things about another person to slander them, and when someone is angry and ends up either physically or mentally trying to harm another person, I see this almost every day of my life.

What clpo said.

Plus, I believe the human mind is wired, in a lot of ways, to protect its own sanity. My personal experience with feelings of intense jealousy, hatred and spitefulness is that they threaten to overwhelm at first, and then just when I'm starting to think I'm going to have to do something drastic to rid myself of the burden, the feelings begin to dissipate. In most cases, after enough time has passed and my brain has stopped pumping the anger hormones (or whatever they're called) out, I reach a state of calm and clarity about the issue. I think most people go through this cycle, and are almost always able to move on with their lives, whether they call it forgiving or forgetting. Even if the injustice they've suffered is severe and they can neither forgive nor forget, they can still move on.

They only alternative would be to start truly hating humanity, which I believe it is nearly impossible for a psychologically stable person to do (though many 15-year-old emo kids pretend to).

Anyway, I think you'll end up calling this process whatever you've been brought up to call it. "Forgiving sin" and "emotionally working through injustice" are two sides of the same coin.

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Believe me, you cannot do this on your own. Self-control only gets you so far.

I've managed quite well on my own, thank you. Your experience doesn't necessarily fit everyone else. While it may be so that some need God (whether real or imagined) to keep from "falling into sin," others do not. I'm not trying to demean your beliefs, it's just that I've fared well enough on my own as I did when I thought God was there.

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If morals are separate from religion, then where did they originate from?

Morals come from basic human instinct. In a community, acts which increase the group's happiness are considered good. Acts which decrease the group's happiness are considered evil. Those who do good acts are moral, and those who do evil acts are immoral. This can be expanded to larger societies such as those in modern times. Religion just expounded upon the idea of morality and gave a supernatural origin for it.