Life without God

It must now be around 3 years now since I fully deconverted from evangelical Christianity - I guess I'm now a 6 on the Dawkins Scale, having spent much of my life as a 1. I still catch myself in old habits from time to time, but last night was a bit different...I'd had just a couple down the pub and then walked the mile or so up the hill to my house. On arriving home, I discovered that I had lost my wallet - not good. Already tired from the climb, I grabbed a torch, apologised to wife for being even later for dinner, and set off back down the hill, retracing my steps.I spent a good ten minutes searching the bit of field I had crossed, and found myself feeling the urge to ask God for assistance. This is not uncommon, and makes me smile. It was precisely this pathetic intercessory prayer that helped with my deconversion: if I really believed there was a deity willing and able to materially affect reality on the back of my prayers, how could I live with myself if I did not spend every moment of my life praying for the uncountable situations of sorrow and suffering occuring at every moment around the world?Anyway, it was no-where to be found on the field, nor anywhere on the pavement all the way down the hill, and I arrived back at the pub. No one had handed it in, so leaving with the comiserations of the regulars, I started back home. Back at the field, I once again criss-crossed it , searching in vain. Finally, accepting that it was gone, I made a last desperate search over by the fence, knowing full well that I hadn't been over that way.And there it was, gleaming black in the torchlight, lying in the grass right next to the fence.My first thought was to thank God. My second thought was to ask myself what I was doing. I stopped, wondering what to do. I had this overwhelming sense of gratitude, but suddenly I had nowhere to channel it; I could hardly be pleased with myself. It was all very very odd. Then slowly there formed this oxymoronic sense of fulfilled emptyness. The stars were shining, I raised my hands to the heavens, and shouted "everything just *IS* and I LOVE IT".I was smiling all the way back to the house, where-as the couple in the dark car, parked up on the field, were almost certainly thinking "what a dick"...

Awesome.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

It has been around 48 years, in my case. And yes, there are still events that make me wonder - until I think clearly about probabilities. It's the old problem that somebody always wins the lottery, even though the probability of winning is very low. And the effect is exacerbated by the fact that we notice the unusual things, but pay little attention to the usual.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Hi, Cavediver.I've had a rather different experience so far. Over the last 3-4 years of immersion in science, I've become progressively less theistic in my beliefs, until I now regard myself as essentially agnostic, even though I still go to church and participate.But, I think, like you, there will always be the moments when I forget the changes that have taken place. When I here people talk about "going inactive" or "leaving the church," it still feels sad to me, because that's always been a "bad" thing.I actually performed an ordinance in church on Sunday, something that's supposed to be accomplishable only by being "in tune" with the Spirit. I actually had to pronounce blessings on someone that came from God. And, several people told me how inspired it was. Amazingly, I didn't feel inspired when I did it: I just did it. And, despite the claims that people can discern the Spirit, I feel like I faked it, and got away with it. I always do.Where our experiences diverge is that this kind of depresses me. I'm not yet at a stage where I can embrace the lack of divine orchestration in things: I still want to believe that there is something magical or special about my place in the universe. Particularly, the idea of death depresses me: I still want to believe that I will live forever, and that I will always have my wife and children with me.I've actually become quite paranoid about it: I regularly have nightmares about my wife dying and leaving me alone. Of course, I'm prone to depression anyway, so this isn't a big deal. But, when I had strong theistic beliefs, I could always comfort myself by reminding myself that she and I would never truly be apart. Now, though, remembering her fondly would be the only way to deal with it, and that's just not good enough. Despite the common movie line, she would not "still exist in my heart": she would be gone. And, I don't want that.Maybe someday I'll be able to grow up and conquer the paranoia, but I'm not there yet.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Well I have spent a fair amount of time in pubs. And it isn't exactly unheard of for me to have misplaced keys, wallet, gloves, phone, coat, bike and just about anything else it is possible to misplace after a few beers.At this point I usually find myself cursing the gods I don't believe in for victimising me in this unjust and dispicable manner. Raging against them for toying with me in this outrageous way. Then, after a bit of searching for the item in question, the misplaced item turns up somewhere that it could not rationally have been expected to be. At this point I congratulate myself for being so insightfully intuitive as to have thought of that possibility and then I go on my merry way forgetting all about those divine meddlers that so vexed me only moments ago.I guess it is all a matter of perspective. This too is a role I am familiar with........

I don't know what to say.1. You will curse at me as usual for contradicting you. (Which never works, because mikey-happiness never ceases. )
2. You will not believe that there is a genuine "faith" rather than this generic false faith you guys infer from the modern pluralism.In all honesty, your asking God to find your keys or wallet, is, to a person born again, for many years, rather child-like. What we would do is to thank God, not for the keys, whether we get them back or not, but for our lives. For our food, during the day, for the gift of life, etcc....this gratitude is lesson 1 at best. It's just that you cut-off the fact that you can feel gratitude towards the One that made you. Why ofcourse you can. If anything perhaps God could have been trying to get your attention.That is to say - a mature and genuine faith in God can be equated to an old wise man, but a person that "de-converts" usually will expound stories like yours that prove to the old man that you never got past the milking stage.That you never got past the stage most of us would consider embryonic, as a whole is not special news.I think that a lifetime of faith is not comparable to the superstitious generic "faith" you are talking about.Unfortunately, when people such as yourself read the Gospels, they don't seem to understand that there is no second-guessing God. In other words, you can now only believe that faith is a generic psychosomatic cognitive dissonance, in short - a mental "trick" people play on themselves. But when I read your posts, and read other superstition-type posts, and responses from similar chaps with similar experiences, the one thing that strikes me the most is that you can only analyze these scenarios intellectually.But the whole point of the New Testament is to show that there is a faith that comes from God, by receiving the Holy Spirit, and through revelation. Not intellect. Now I could be the biggest bore and talk about confirmation-bias, memory bias, post hoc ergo propter hoc and the likes, but these things do not tell use anything about the faith that comes from The Lord Himself.Most believers, we left the superstitious when we left milk and went onto solids. As you learn more, and experience more, then the more you grow and mature until you get to a stage that God has given you so much personal confirmation evidences that you reach a point which is called past the point of no return, where no reasoning or science or argument however persuasive, can remove the reality of a life lived in God. Therefore it does not surprise you when amazing things happen - miracles, etc..cavediver, it is not the miracles or the proof that satisfies me anymore. Christ said that the people were fulfilled not because of the signs they saw but because they ate of the bread and were satisfied.Unless you eat of the bread that came down from heaven, you will not be satisfied.Oh man, today you are here, tomorrow you are gone. We are less than vapour, if we were weighed on the scales we would be altogether less than vapour.When I consider the heavens the works of Your hands, what is man that you are mindful of him?I have ate of the bread. But you spat it out. But I believe that you have not passed the point of no return. You have not reached that stage of arrogant intellectual pride, that you see yourself as omniscient. It's a sorry scale. For at the end of the day - who is Dawkins? Is he not also vapour?Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

Mike,So how do you square the pain and suffering in the world with "What we would do is to thank God . . . for our lives"? How can we differentiate between a God guided universe and one that is not?Cavediver, and atheists such as myself, see a universe that is indifferent to our daily existence and experiences. The bacterium that may cause my death is, in the end, really indifferent to my existence. The hurricane is completely unaware of the pain it causes. The cancer that is killing a 5 year old and causing great pain is not the result of a distant ancestor eating the wrong fruit, nor is it due to some inexplicable greater plan put in motion by an inscrutable supernatural deity. Cancer just happens.

I was "born-again" for about as long as you have been alive, Mikey. And wasn't it Satan who encouraged our faith to be child-like, or was it the other guy?Anyway, try and convince yourself that what you say applies to me. I can tell that it makes you feel better, and that is no bad thing. But you are so very desperate for you to be right about me and you are so very very wrong.But keep believing that I really was a very weak Christian all along - that while I witnessed and evangelised at school, uni, work, door-to-ddor; while I led worship at church, CU, house group, Vineyard, Spring Harvest; while I taught at study group, retreat, life group; through all of this, my faith and walk with God was embryonic, and doomed to failure. Keep believing that Mikey, and you'll get through. You'll be ok.

You don't get it. You can do all those things for a thousand lifetimes.Maturity does not come via quantity. My parents are as children to me, BECAUSE of what the bible says about the sinful nature. Petty arguments, trying to get others to support their side of things, constant bickering, hysterics.What about personal sin? I can look back down the road and see the changes God has brought about through the conviction of the Holy Spirit.I don't say these things to judge you, or judge what you have done. You have either walked away from a genuine belief, that was immature, or never had any faith, or whatever - I am not going to state things about you I can't know, what I am saying is that your life, the beief you had, or left or didn't have or whatever, does not say anything about a life-changing faith.Have where Jesus says people will do all manner of works, and yet He will say, "I never knew you."I don't judge you. I am just showing you that if you think my faith is a genuine sham because of your life-experience then you are dead wrong.It proves nothing that one can have done all those things and still walk away because that does not negate genuine faith.If you genuinely did know Christ, then you can say that He answered you, because all those in faith know this to be so. We know how, and what He has done for us.But people such as deconverts that I have talked to, most of them do not describe a genuine relationship with God. Most of them will think they had it. Some will do works, and believe they believe. t is usually very obvious, because they will mention that they do things for God, but they are stone-cold, not feeling anything, not truly talking to Him, not truly worshipping Him.I am not trying to comfort myself, I simply know that there is genuine faith. I have been doubtful myself, despite having this faith - it is entirely possible. People have walked away only to return years later.I like you cavediver. I am not attacking you, I hope you will come back to belief. I would be interested as to why you left.

This is an intellectual question, concerning, The Problem Of Evil.This suggests a lack of knowledge about our beliefs concerning the fall of man, a deteriorating world, and a groaning world awaiting redemption?At this time, this is a fallen world we live in, because of what is referred to as the "curse". (I don't know how much you know about this, but basically, bad things happening, etc....are the result of going it alone without God. I agree, that in this world things can "just happen". I do not claim that Jesus came to change this "present sytem of things" (paraphrase).You have to remember Taq, that these are very common questions we get asked, but we ourselves believe that we have sufficient answers to these questions. Answers that don't seem to satisfy atheists, but to ask them again does not mean we don't have answers.Perhaps you could read my blog, as there are some topics that deal with the problem of evil, giving an explanation. HERE (As you can see by the date, I have not just written this.)All the best, mike.Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

Yes, I get it totally But you are correct, in that those things don't matter a damn. I mention them only so that you realise the world I inhabited was the same world you inhabit. I was a Christian for the simple reason that it was the Truth. One day I woke up, and realised that it wasn't...

The first statement That is not true (necessarily). Unless you have been me, and experienced what I have experienced, and made the decisions I have made then this is a fallacy in that you are conflating two potentially different things. Mike has X, as claimed in the bible.
Cavediver had something he claims was X but is now heavily NOT X and therefore has a natural bias against X therefore cavediver had what mike has.This does not follow because you yourself have no clue as to how mature your belief was or how mature mine is, even if we both have X.And you forget another possibility. That salvation is eternal. Therefore I do not necessarily believe that you don't have X. You could just have a very deep denial of X. Ofcourse, whatever you believe, the truth will be the truth, whether you believe it or not.Believing then not believing or not believing then believing, in itself cannot logically affect X, if X is true.Ultimately, we can both only argue from subjective places.You believe that it is inevitable that what you now consider a "generic false faith", will erode. But that is based upon the premise that it is false.Technically, I admitt that I can't prove my faith is true.I enjoyed our discussion and will let you have the last word. It's okay - you can curse me out if you want, mikey is willing to take it because he loves cavediver.All the best.Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

I understand the theology, but how does a fallen world differ from one where shit just happens for reasons that have nothing to do with us? I would suggest that they are identical. I am sure that you do have answers that are sufficient for you, but they are not always sufficient for everybody. Like cavediver said in the OP, "everything just *IS* and I LOVE IT".I went through what cavediver is going through, but at a much younger age. Doubt turned to apathy during my high school years. I kept going to church because it was expected of me, and I did enjoy seeing friends in youth group. Other than that, I had no fondness nor hatred towards christianity. I could see how others needed these beliefs as part of their lives, but I just saw no need for it. I, like cavediver, accepted reality for what it is instead of what I wished it to be. It is immoral to punish children for the sins of their ancestors. When we start throwing people in jail for something their great-grandparents did, let me know.

Exactly. Whereas I have never attended church.A true born-again faith is not the same entity. Not even the same ball park.Nothing was expected of me. I had a kind of agnostic-type Theism in my teens, which I thought was "faith". Sure - I would tick the "I believe" box but it meant nothing.You may not know this, but people who doubt, who never pushed deeper, who went cold and left, that is not a surprise to me. But did you ever genuinely repent, to God - and ask Him to change it? No - you left.I am afraid this is not what has happened to those that did not leave. But that's the thing - if I had wishful thinking I would do as my flesh wanted. I would obey lust, anger, selfishness, etc? ht does the flesh profit? It profits nothing - and if I am honest, I never particularly wanted to live forever, not in this world.Tis quote is begging the question in that you assume the truth of your assertion. You assume that your position is "reality", without proving it.Your atheism isn't "reality", except in your own subjective head.The sky does not proclaim that, "atheism is reality".You said yourself, a fallen world is indistinguishable from a chanceful one. Therefore I accept reality, without accepting the wishful thinking that I can sin and not be judged, and make my own morals, while Joe makes his.Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

Thanks to Taq and cavediver. I hope you will think about what I said. This concludes my participation.(Please don't PM me anyone, as sometimes I do not lurk for long periods of time).All the best.