Why is belief necessary?

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When I find an atheist or agnostic that's actually prayed and fasted and denied the flesh and still doesn't believe, THEN I'll believe in the atheist that wants to be a theist

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I was a practicing Catholic for more than half of my life.It was easier in many ways.

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but if you don't call to God, how do you expect him to answer you? If you don't seek, how can you find?

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I'm an Agnostic. That means that I am open to evidence, all the time.I just haven't seen or felt or heard any.

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Since we do not know each other beyond our verbal typed exchanges, none of you would have known me so as to see the changes that the internal, living presence of God has made in my life. Even if you had seen the changes, known my passion, and experienced the relationship with me personally, you would still be the judges of whether to attribute the changes to other reasons rather than to belief in God.

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I was once a very unhappy person.I had a rather, shall we say, interesting upbringing which left me with a low self esteem and a lot of anger and fear.I worked really hard at getting better because I didn't want to live my life like that. I read books, I talked to people, I wrote letters to the people who hurt me that I never sent, I confronted some of the people who hurt me directly.I am surrounded by wonderful people, and I have found meaningful work that I love.The reason I am telling you all of this is because I am a nearly COMPLETELY different person than I was before. I interact very, very differently with everyone I have ever known.I am really glad that many of my current friends never knew me 10 years ago, because I was, frankly, a mess.It was before all of this metamorphosis began that I started to question my belief in God. Throught all of this self-improvement and becoming healthy and the transformation, I had no faith at all.People noticed a difference in me for the positive, just like those people who get "Born Again" tell about, yet I just did the work myself and gave myself the credit for a job well done. I never once, in all of the tears and anguish, ask God for help. It just never occurred to me to do that, because it was ME who needed to do the work.

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But do you consider God a reality or a myth?

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Probably myth, but I don't really know.Nobody knows.

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I would say that He was with you all along.

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That may be true, but I did not once sense, feel, or otherwise experience anything that most people describe as "god/supernatural".I never have.It was me, teaching myself to love and accept and parent myself (corny but true). Just me, as far as I have ever sensed.So, my reason for bringing up the story was that I, too, had a major transformation, yet I had no faith at the time in any supernatural entity.

Coming back atcha!Thanks for the support.

Just so everyone here knows, the only people in Psychology who take Freud's divisions of the psyche seriously are the Freudians.Most professional research and clinical Psychologists consider them ill-defined, quaint museum-pieces of no real explanitory value.They were an early way to try to account for human instinct (Id), conscience (Superego), and the self that mediates between the two (Ego).

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I'm sorry, but some folk just have way too much free time on their hands.

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Not free time on their hands...free time in their heads.

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Shraff - we don't doubt your abilities to overcome hardships. But I think what Phathead () is saying is that he HAS experienced something and that he says this is God.

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Weeeelll, I think he also said that MY experience was of God as well.All I am saying is that I didn't experience anything like what people who say God intervened, helped them, etc. say they felt so that they "just knew" that God was responsible.

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I know that you are trying to say "it ain't God"

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Nope.I'm saying that I don't know if it was God or not, and that nobody has told me how to tell if it was if it doesn't already require belief.