Throughout the year i have been going to confirmation classes at my catholic church, but after the first class i started to think that i didn't want to be confirmed. I don't beleave in all the views of the catholic church: i support homosexuals and i think that women should be allowed to be preists. i used to be really into God, i would pray to him every night, but it seemed that everytime i prayed about something it just got worse and i started to think about why God would let certain things happen, i may have lost my faith because i don't understand why God let my grandmother, who was extremley giving and religous, suffer from disease for 10 years and die. anyways i don't want to get confirmed but my parents don't know and i don't know how to tell them plus the classes and requirements for confirmation are taking up a lot of my time and i don't even listen in the classes. does anyone know how i can tell my parents? i can't think of enough good aguments that would convince them

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How can heaven be so great. Every day people who aren't bad people, but can do awful things. Make mean jokes, say cruel things.... So once they get into heaven, how is that different? Do they loose the ability to be mean? I mean, a bunch of mindless zombies without free will isn't exactly the great idea of what heven is, so how is it so great?

If heaven(in the hypotheticall case that it existed, it doesn't)is anything like what is said in the bible, and has anything to do with christian principles I don't want to go anywhere near it.
According to christianity I think hell would be much more fun.

you can tell them what you've told us here. you can also tell them that you're faith is personal and tell them that you don't want some priest telling you you're an adult of the church or w/e ya' know? i told my parents i didn't support the church in any way and i don't need anyone to tell me about my faith. it worked, and im' not getting confirmed...my family was a little disappointed but i really don't care, they'll get over it lol.

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You have no belief God will take care of you, no belief that you can talk to God, just really no belief so i would qualify that as weak faith. Look at how you're constantly looking for answers beyond any shadow of a dount, you will never find an answer without some doubt and you're always going to need faith.

You're not getting the whole story here. I currently don't believe any of that. But I once did. Did anything ever come of it? No. Therefore I don't believe any of it.

Look, you can believe in something all you want but it can still prove false. Or at least, fail to prove true. And that is why strong faith can be lost.

If faith requires not knowing, then it's useless to me. I don't need to feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I need to know. End of story.

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but what do I know?

you don't. I simply choose not to believe in hell(and heaven for that matter) because the whole idea that when you die if you've "been bad" you are going to go to hell as punishment seems really childish and dumb.

And Hell...This might sound weird but I really think sometimes that we are living in Hell right now. If you think about it, this life we have here kind of sucks. We suffer from loss, violence, we get our arms ripped out in a car accident, faces burnt off in a fire,, ..i mean..we have so many emotions and feeling. Seems like it cant get worse than this, but what do I know?

I don't get the whole heaven thing either, someone who believes in this whole idea care to explain what they think it would be? When people talk about heaven it just sounds like an extension of life, except that everything is somehow supposed to be beautiful and nice and happy and great, like a movie. So really I don't get it either. I think "heaven" is simply death, not being.

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How can heaven be so great. Every day people who aren't bad people, but can do awful things. Make mean jokes, say cruel things.... So once they get into heaven, how is that different? Do they loose the ability to be mean? I mean, a bunch of mindless zombies without free will isn't exactly the great idea of what heven is, so how is it so great?

Quite a thought. Makes me think you might be right.

So my most recent rant....

How can heaven be so great. Every day people who aren't bad people, but can do awful things. Make mean jokes, say cruel things.... So once they get into heaven, how is that different? Do they loose the ability to be mean? I mean, a bunch of mindless zombies without free will isn't exactly the great idea of what heven is, so how is it so great?

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Originally posted by conflictingzest:
Maya, That is pretty much my thoughts on the matter. How can you lose a strong faith, in my eyes a strong faith cannot be shaken.

But isn't that kind of weird? Let's think about this for a sec. You really don't KNOW that God exists, that it loves you, that when you die you are going to heaven, and all that other stuff. You can only have FAITH but you can't actually ever KNOW any of it, correct?Therefore faith can be lost at any given time, because it is a belief in something that you don't actually have any proof of.

Maya, That is pretty much my thoughts on the matter. How can you lose a strong faith, in my eyes a strong faith cannot be shaken.

Trisscar, I didn't say it was wrong but i was pointing to examples of his lack of faith that i've read from other posts of his. And my point still stands that he's never going to find the answers he's looking for, he's never going to get as concrete as he's looking, he's always going to need to believe ad that's just the truth of the subject.

Also Faith isn't a personal thing. People can see and tell what kind of faith you havve by your actions/reactions. So really anyone can judge what kind of faith you have by how you act.

lol, I think conflictingzest's theory is that if you have strong faith you will never lose it, no matter what, if you do lose it it means (according to him) it was never that strong in the first place, because you wouldn't have lost it if not. or something like that(correct me if I'm wrong) . whatever I think someone's "faith" is a very personal thing, no one except themselves can actually judge or know anything for that matter.

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You have no belief God will take care of you, no belief that you can talk to God, just really no belief so i would qualify that as weak faith. Look at how you're constantly looking for answers beyond any shadow of a dount, you will never find an answer without some doubt and you're always going to need faith.

You are being a bit over the top here stating that clpo13 has "no faith and weak faith" - how can you judge? You have no idea his back ground or whether he had faith.

And to state that it is wrong to want answers without any doubt in them is wrong is a bit foolish. Some people need proof to beleive in things (i'd risk to say most people).. blindly putting your faith in something without proof doesn't seem that smart.

Stop using the argument that people's faith is too weak, faith is a very personal thing, not open to being judge by other people.

clpo13,
My knowing you or not doesn't change my statement or the truth there in. Also You could use those words against me if i was trying to use as any kind of defence (ie. i lost faith but it was strong). If i were to use a sentence like that i would hope someone would call me on that. In all reality you might have believed you had a strong faith but you still lost it in the end. It might have even been stronger than most of your friends or most ppl you knew but it still wasn't strong enough.

Also just because you believe 2 things doesn't mean you have strong faith. You have no belief God will take care of you, no belief that you can talk to God, just really no belief so i would qualify that as weak faith. Look at how you're constantly looking for answers beyond any shadow of a dount, you will never find an answer without some doubt and you're always going to need faith.

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Originally posted by conflictingzest:
Just because you believe that your faith was strong doesn't mean it was.

Do you know me? No? Then you have no grounds on which to base that statement. No one but I is more qualified to tell you of matters of what I think and believe. I could very well use those exact words against you, you know.

Besides, what is strong faith? Faith, as defined by Hebrews 11:1, "is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." So, would you agree that strong faith is believing very much that God (who we cannot see) exists and that Jesus came to save us (which we hope for)? I would say so. Thus, because I believed these things very much, I would say that I had strong faith as a child and teenager up until a couple of years ago.

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Originally posted by WorthWaitingFor:
Do you question why your parents love you? No, it's just a given.

Yes, certain things I do take on faith. But they are still open to being questioned. Using your example, I could indeed wonder why my parents love me. Is it because I'm their child? Their own flesh and blood? Because I do good things, make them proud? I could come up with a number of answers. But I don't need to question it because I know for a fact they do love me (or do I? Another good philosophical question). There is no need to question that. God, on the other hand, must be questioned because we have no proof of his nature and existence. Do I really know that God knows best? No. Can I trust that God knows best? No. In order to trust that God knows best, I must know that God first exists. You cannot trust in something that doesn't exist. That's like leaning against a glass wall, only to find out that there is no wall.

sorry for the double post, I tried to edit but it'd been to long!

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You simplify it so much. A person's child died. They don't say, "Thank you god for letting my child die." They say, "Thank you God for all of the other blessings in my life. For allowing me to live and fulfill whatever plan you have. Though I cannot see the reason behind my child's death, I know that it is in your plan and I just pray that you will help me through my grief."

Woah I can't believe anyone who's had their child die would think that. No one is supposed to live through their child's death, it is unnatural. I can't believe that someone would accept their kid's death as part of any sort of plan because as I said it is so unnatural and painful. I know what you're going to say, you don't have kids so how would you know, but I think it's logical. Then again I don't believe in God but...whatever not the point. I just can't believe someone could actually say that with their kid's death. Maybe with anything else, but not with that that is just to unnatural and painful for someone to just be able to accept it as part of God's plan, because that would mean God is a sick and EVIL being.


On another note...I can't accept this whole "plan" idea(even if I believed in God) because that would mean that I don't have control over my life. Which in turn would mean that I can do whatever I want, fuck it all up, because ultimately I'm not doing it, it's part of some plan. It's like I could go kill someone and it wasn't really my fault, I mean yeah I did it but ultimately it was still part of the plan. I don't know if this is making any sense, it does in my head but I don't know how to express it. fuck I hate when that happens

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But what is the truth? Can any of us truly say we know what the truth is?

No. No one can KNOW anything really. What if there is no final truth? People always look for the ultimate answer when maybe there is none. Maybe the answer is that there simply is no answer, the answer is what you make it. Maybe that's why people believe in God, because they can't live with uncertainty of not knowing, it gives their lives some sort of meaning and understanding and they can live at peace knowing. I don't know. Sorry if this is making no sense. I get what I'm trying to say in my head but I don't know how to express it.

question for all of you, do you believe in free will?

clpo13,
Just because you believe that your faith was strong doesn't mean it was. People who stick to God through hardships end up believing in him more despite the hardship. That's the truth. And we believe God will not over load us because that's what the bible tells us and we BELIEVE in the bible. That's central to our religion, that we have faith in the bible and what it says.

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Not to question? That's absurd. What is humanity other than inquisitive? You cannot quash that by saying "God knows best." Everything needs to be questioned. Imagine what life would be like if no one questioned Hitler or Stalin. Slightly different situations, but similar in my eyes.

But you don't question everything. Do you question why your parents love you? No, it's just a given. In mine eyes, God's plan is a given.

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Even the strong of faith can feel abandoned.

Yes, of course they can feel that way. I have felt that way. But they still don't lose their faith in God completely, it just weakens and they have to work to build it back up.

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How do you know? How can you claim to know what God thinks? Right, faith. Why do I even bother asking?

You bother asking because you know that I am not that simple. I'll rephrase my statement for you:

I don't believe God would ever give someone more than they could handle.

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The point is not to question God's plan but to accept it regardless of human pain, emotion, hardship, etc. because that stuff is not going to matter in everlasting life.

Not to question? That's absurd. What is humanity other than inquisitive? You cannot quash that by saying "God knows best." Everything needs to be questioned. Imagine what life would be like if no one questioned Hitler or Stalin. Slightly different situations, but similar in my eyes.

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these are words of people with a weak faith in God to begin with.

You say that with such confidence. I doubt you would feel the same if you knew some of the people I know who have lost their faith. Even the strong of faith can feel abandoned.

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God would never give this person more than he could handle.

How do you know? How can you claim to know what God thinks? Right, faith. Why do I even bother asking?

My faith was very strong when I was younger. Once I became older, I began to question what I was told about God and religion. That's my nature: to question. But God gave me no answers. I cannot believe in something that doesn't give me the answers I seek, or doesn't even give me the means to find those answers. I simply can't take things on faith, and this is why our views clash so much. You won't be able to convince me of anything if the only answers you give somehow relate to how God knows best.