NationStates Jolt Archive

How have your beliefs changed over a time?

I've noticed that over time my beliefs have changed a lot, especially since I am at the age where I am beginning to think about things. I was Christian for a while (I was raised Christian and almost converted to Roman Catholicism), eventually became an atheist, and progressed to an agnostic atheist. For a while I was conservative, then I became more liberal, and now I've reached a point where I avoid labeling my political views. There was once a time where I found religion to be a bunch of bullshit for idiots, but now I find myself believing in tolerance and open-mindedness. There are many more examples of my beliefs changing, and I feel my belief system is still being molded into shape.

It's a long boring story which somehow has explosions in it. I don;t think you want to hear.

It's a long boring story which somehow has explosions in it. I don;t think you want to hear.

If it involves explosions, I am interested.

I became an agnostic shortly after learning that Santa Claus was not real. Fool me once, shame on you....

i have never had a religion...my mom got sick and shit(personnal shit) so i never believed in a god.


i do believe in buddist teachings of self-awarness and the seeking knowleage
and not to make a god happy or the fact that only one religion belongs on heaven..if god loved us he would let us into heaven ust as long as you lived a good live not if you go to church all the time.and also that buddism the respect for all other religions



as for goverment....i just say what my heart,gut and brain say.

I was atheist and then Christian.

How have your beliefs changed over a time?

Hrmmm ...

Well ... raised Jewish and Pagan. Went to Hebrew school, became a bar mitzvah, etc; but the other side of my family were Native Americans and I learned their ways as well (though, with our tribe, not a lot of deep spirituality or religion involved there).

Around 15, I found Taoism and it jibed with me. I stuck with that until around 23 when I began to return to my Jewish roots - not that I ever really left them behind ... I still kept kosher and whatnot - and travelled to Israel to study deeper.

In November of 2004, at age 32, I had an epiphany and became Muslim. And there it is.

I wen't from none to my current religion
Buddhism, and I could'nt be any happier

i have never had a religion...my mom got sick and shit(personnal shit) so i never believed in a god.


i do believe in buddist teachings of self-awarness and the seeking knowleage
and not to make a god happy or the fact that only one religion belongs on heaven..if god loved us he would let us into heaven ust as long as you lived a good live not if you go to church all the time.and also that buddism the respect for all other religions



as for goverment....i just say what my heart,gut and brain say.



i love those old asian religions they have a mythical auroa to them.

I started off as a church going Christian, as time went by and I learned more about science and the hard facts, I shifted more towards Agnostic and now Atheist.

Right now I would say I am an Agnostic Atheist.

When I was quite young, I was pro-america, anti-gun rights, anti-Democracy, kinda racist and a whole lot of other weird beliefs. I was very young.

Then I got older, and I realized that I didn't like America, what it stood for, who ran it or what it did in the past and in the present. I also realized it wasn't Democracy I opposed, but unabashed Capitalism. So I became pretty hardcore Communist, and Anti-American. I dropped the racism(nasty evil habit, something I picked up I guess growing up in the South). I also got kinda religious and became Anti-Abortion.

More recently, I still am Anti-American, I'm now a more moderate, more compromise prone Democratic-Socialist, and more open of others beliefs and differences in general. I became much less devout, preferring sprituality, philosophy and a mix of Deist and Buddhist outlook to the Catholisim I followed before. I also became pro-abortion. I eventually became a pacifist as well, admiring people such as Gandhi and MLK. I was actually converted on this forum to a pro-gun rights stance. And that's pretty much where I stand now.

Hrmmm ...

Well ... raised Jewish and Pagan. Went to Hebrew school, became a bar mitzvah, etc; but the other side of my family were Native Americans and I learned their ways as well (though, with our tribe, not a lot of deep spirituality or religion involved there).

You're a Jewish Native American??! You should have started your own religion! You could make an annual pilgramage to Four Corners, NM and don tzitzit while high on peyote. After the festivities you could enjoy a glass of Manischewitz and some kosher buffalo jerky. I'd join!

I've been pretty much where am I politically for a long time. My views have shifted only somewhat.. before I accepted my sexuality, I had serious issues with my own sexuality and discriminated (I still regret doing that). That was when I was 15. I accepted myself when I was 16. I stuck to my beliefs (pro-gun rights, pro-America, neutral on abortion)... but now I changed to believe in gay rights. I've basically was agnostic till I was 19 more or less.. I've become an atheist because my views became more intense. I made it a personal mission to refute christian fundamentalists everywhere, and spreading a message of tolerance and respect.

You're a Jewish Native American??! You should have started your own religion! You could make an annual pilgramage to Four Corners, NM and don tzitzit while high on peyote. After the festivities you could enjoy a glass of Manischewitz and some kosher buffalo jerky. I'd join!

*snicker* Well ... that would almost work ... except my tribe is NE Texan ... no peyote and Four Corners is a long ass walk. ;)

If it involves explosions, I am interested.


Alright, let's see.

It all started long long ago, in a far away land accross the harbour from where I live now. I was borne into a Catholic family, my father having been raised Anglican and converting to Catholocism to marry my mother. My mother having strong wiccan tendancies herself more or less raised me as an agnostic. Rarely did the question of a higher power or system come about in my early life. I went to church durring Easter and Christmas eve, often with my deeply religious Catholic grandmother who would try and leade me and my siblings in prayers and teach os the stories of the Bible. My grandmother did her best to raise me Catholic, but it just didn't stick. By the time I hit Junior High school I came to the conclusion that I just didn't care enough about the whole "religion" ideal to pay any attention and officially labled myself an Atheist. Durring my three and a half year stint as an Atheist I played around with home made explosives, living in the rural areas and having nothing better to do with my time. Playing with progressivly larget explosive devices got me deeply interested in nuclear weapons, which in turn got me interested in physics. After about a year of looking into physics as best I could, especially anything related to nuclear weapons, I posed to myself the idea of the "Grand Unifying Theory" (herefore refered to as the GUT). Meanwhile as I was doing this I had been researching more and more into ancient history, watching how humanity progressed (mostly in the military fashion) to what we are today, and noticed that despite my lack of caring towards the subject, religion had played a major role. So, on a whim one day in my grade 10 Ancient History class I decided to adopt a religion as my own. I spent six months carefully researching a number of religious beliefs, carefully eliminating them one by one as they conflicted of who I knew myself to be. I had finally brought myself down to a choice between Islam an the Sumerian religion. Both appealed to me, and both I had a deep interest in for various reasons. The harder I thought about which I would adopt the more I began to question the nature of "gods(s)" in a sense of the human mind. I began to question where exactly the notion came from, and how we had devloped it. Then one day as I was adding to m little notebook of nuclear weapons stuff, I noticed a note I had written regarding the GUT, and somehow connected the GUT with the notion of a god. I decided that any belief we as humans hold shold have origonated from a real or percieved real thing, and decided that there was no better "master force" in the universe to relate to "god" then the laws of physics. I came once again to a thought that had 2 options; 1: All physical laws and theories are connected via one GUT, which I refered to as my "single god" theory, and related all monothastic religions to believers in that idea in some form (wether or not they know it). 2: The universe is composed of numerous physical laws in a state of chaos, barely able to hold themselves together and not bound together with anything specific, this I equated to polytheistic religions. Finally I had brought myself back to the major question, Islam or Sumer? I took some time and carefully thought it out, comparing each side again in light of my new ideas on the relationship between religion and physics, and came to the conclusion that the only thing that could decide what to adopt was wether or not I believed in the GUT. I eventually decided that I could not accecpt the GUT at the present time, and subsequently chose the polytheistic Sumerian religion as mine.
This chouce has led me quite far into places I would never have otherwise visited whthin my own mind. I have had to spend signifigant ammounts of my time simply researching Sumer, its history, culture, and anything I could find on it and it's cultural derrivitives to compile my system of beliefs. I have had to spends countless hours interpreting, and reenterpreting data, writings, and scriptures. I've even had to begin to learn a language that has been dead for over three thousand years to acheive the kind of understanding I wish to have. I believe this struggle has mademe a better person, even though it is nowhere near over. I also believe now that it I would never have experianced this had I chosen Islam (Although, I know I would have had one wild intellectual ride if I had gone that way to. There are good reasons why they tied top).

So there you go, my long boring story of the evolotion of my reliigious beliefs, including the important explosions and nuclear weapons.

Hrmmm ...

Well ... raised Jewish and Pagan. Went to Hebrew school, became a bar mitzvah, etc; but the other side of my family were Native Americans and I learned their ways as well (though, with our tribe, not a lot of deep spirituality or religion involved there).

Around 15, I found Taoism and it jibed with me. I stuck with that until around 23 when I began to return to my Jewish roots - not that I ever really left them behind ... I still kept kosher and whatnot - and travelled to Israel to study deeper.

In November of 2004, at age 32, I had an epiphany and became Muslim. And there it is.

sounds like you have trouble commiting.......
but then again variety is the spice of life

When I was younger I strongly believed in God, and my faith in Him grew more and more as time passed.
But in this Summer I wanted to improve my relationship with Him even more. I started reading the Bible, but it was kind-of boring. Then I read some religious sites and... it all just felt like it's all bs... I mean, the whole phylosophy just seemed... primitive. But my faith was unafected by this.

I changed my strategy: I wanted to read about other religions and see their flaws. One of the most interesting religions to start with was atheism/agnosticism. After a few weeks of reading and writing to people it was clear to my mind that any God (especially the Christian one) was made up by the primitive people some thousand years ago. At first I was shocked, but the evidence was too good, and so many of them too... but while talking to other people I have also discovered that people should choose their religion without pressure from anyone; it's their choice, and if they're not willing to question their own, then nothing will change them.

The Bible was right about one thing: search and you shall find.

I became an agnostic shortly after learning that Santa Claus was not real. Fool me once, shame on you....

We have a winner.

To be honest i dont really have a religous preference. maybe its because i was never raised to or preached about a religion as a young child. but mainly i like to think its becuase anytime someone religous trys to explain their faith to me they get all biblical like "god will judge you for your sins" and "the truth can only be obtained by solitude and prayer with the one". honestly i like to believe that we are not judged for sins that there are no real sins (except pointless hate) and that we are not controlled by some unseen force, but we are controlled by ourselves and our own choices if any knows a faith that can follows those ideals pls respond to this

Is 'apathy' a religion? My family has never been much in the way of practicing-religious... I think I'd been to church maybe three times, barring weddings and funerals.

As time went on, more and more I've found religion to be a moralistic fiction built up over the centuries by those who are too afraid to look too close at reality, or as a political control structure developed by those seeking power.

Not that there aren't some useful ethical and practical lessons in some of the world's religious texts, but people could learn them just as well without all the supernatural cladding, IMO. :)

too long story.:
essentials:
I was something between atheist and Pagan in my childhood, when I got rid of baptization with Pagan methods. At time of finishing highschool for three years I really got into Buddhism, but then slowly went back to atheism, keeping Buddhism moral norms, but nothing else. Been atheist ever since.

sounds like you have trouble commiting.......


Heh ... not really ... though I'd be very frightened of anyone who still thinks at 30 the way they did at 15. *shudder*

I became an agnostic shortly after learning that Santa Claus was not real. Fool me once, shame on you....

Maybe that's it ... I was never taught about Santa Claus ...

When I was younger I was very much a believer, once a friend of mine told me he didn't believe in God and told me about the Big Bang and I thought it was completely absurd. That was when I was much younger. I had always believed in evolution and most scientific theories about the beginning of life. Then in about 10th grade, one day, I sat and thought about what I believed in and realized that I really didn't believe in God, I just always had for some reason. Logically it just didn't fit. And since then I've been an Atheist.

I believe there is something underlying the world to which all religions aspire. The story for that is nothing new; Christian family, so I naturally took it for granted and made a commitment to the Jesus that was shown to me. Then, around ages ten and eleven, I fell into despair as a string of organized bullying both in school, by pupils and teachers, and home by parents. Jesus and the church offered me no relief, and I only kept going through fierce determination to show everyone up. It felt not that he didn't exist, but that he'd actively turned his back on me and that hurt.

I developed an acute sense of selflessness as a result of that experience. As time went by, I continued to follow Jesus's moral teachings because, to me, they seemed like a good idea in themselves rather than because of anything Jesus was supposed to represent. But I didn't care about myself; everyone else mattered, and that was fine. As I read and studied, I slowly began to drift towards eastern philosophy, which seemed to me to be a more appropriate way of thinking in our world.

My friends are still, by and large, all Christian, and I see that they remained with Jesus as a result of their experiences just as I left him through mine. But beliefs do evolve, and as I followed through with my way of thinking, I saw that it was very similar to theirs. In fact, while beliefs do evolve, they also evolve in a very linear manner; the object can change very easily without the underlying structure changing much at all.

Part of the evolution of my Beliefs is in fact due to the Evolution of Beliefs. I think it can all be boiled down to one universal explanation. And I think I'm thinking in the right direction, because I have so far been able to create a solid link wherein one can be most of Hindu, Buddhist and Christian. Combining Poly, Mono and Atheistic faiths into a single one sounds like a reasonable degree of success. ^^;

nothing -> athiest -> agnostic -> spiritually searching -> really fucking confused :headbang:

all i'm sure of is there's truth out there in (the teachings of) those ol' religions, and believing that just any one of them holds this truth alone is stupid. or to put it another way, i intend to explore religious belief and spirituality, but not just restricted to christianity (which would be the obvious starting point)
however i have no faith and am still thinking too rationally to actually believe in any kind of supranatural being.... which is a slight problem :p

How have your beliefs changed over a time?

My father taught me that "giants stole steel from Crom. Crom was angered. And the earth shook. Fire and wind came down from the sky, and killed the giants. Steel was left on the battlefield. Who found it? Not gods, not giants, just men. Learn the riddle of steel, Gartref. Learn its discipline. Only this can you trust, not men, not women, not beast. This you can trust."

Much later I learned from an evil man that "Steel isn't strong, boy. Flesh is stronger. What is the sword compared to the hand that wields it?"

I came to believe this for a brief period. Then I realized that what my Dad was telling me was that by learning to know the sword and the riddle of steel I would, in effect, learn to know myself. Self-knowledge is a high power, but it is not what is best in life. It is not happiness. This knowing of myself and of the riddle of steel was not a barbaric quest for self realization. The true answer had lain before me all along. The highest good in life is basic, simple, and strong. What is best in life?

To crush your enemies, have them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women.

I grew up Christian, not exactly going to church, but believing in God. At about 11 I realized I didn't believe in God anymore. Then I had a friend whose brother was a born again Christian, and I became one, but it didn't take. (I guess I didn't do it right.) In high school, I met a devout Christian who explained things to me, and I actually liked his answers. The next year I met some pagans and I liked some of what they had to say, too. A few years ago I found out about Buddhism, and liked that, too. So my beliefs are an amalgam of atheism, paganism, Christianity, and Buddhism.

It's a long boring story which somehow has explosions in it. I don't think you want to hear.

Ditto

I believe the following:
Few things in life are made worse by a nice cup of tea.

Hmm, my mother (father died when I was young) raised me on the idea of being a good person and allowed me to chose my own path. I ended up studying just about every religion I could find from rual Nevada (not a lot I admit) and ended up Christian.

However, lots of study in the sciences and philosophy, plus a cynical streak to my nature has led me to believe that men chose their own Truths, regardless of the truths actually around them, and that we all need these Truths no matter what.

So, for the time being I still identify as Christian because I agree with the notions of love, loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and loving everyone else as you love yourself.

Which doesn't sound like a bad thing to ME.

How have your beliefs changed over a time?

I've noticed that over time my beliefs have changed a lot, especially since I am at the age where I am beginning to think about things. I was Christian for a while (I was raised Christian and almost converted to Roman Catholicism), eventually became an atheist, and progressed to an agnostic atheist. For a while I was conservative, then I became more liberal, and now I've reached a point where I avoid labeling my political views. There was once a time where I found religion to be a bunch of bullshit for idiots, but now I find myself believing in tolerance and open-mindedness. There are many more examples of my beliefs changing, and I feel my belief system is still being molded into shape.

Raised in a Methodist Church...
Became very deistic and then agnostic through my teen years.
Became ardently atheistic during my early 20's
Began drifting back to Christian beliefs in my mid 20's...
Now in my Mid-30's am very much Reformed Presbyterian.... Though lacking much in the way of the CR movement and civil theonomy expressed by some in my circles (in very much opposition to it)...