I presume many here are not believers. So, for those who believe—and in the spirit of open and genuine curiosity—I’d love to know what made them change their minds.
Almost every human being started believing in god(s) because they were introduced to the idea by their parents or other family members or teachers in stories and rituals and songs, usually long before they had the capacity to focus on objects more than two feet away. Every human society I’ve ever visited is saturated with the trappings of some religion or another, often many, and the messages and symbols of history’s many mythologies resonate in everything from the architecture to the money.
Those who don’t believe are usually the ones who have changed their minds, not the other way around. It’s not surprising that some number of those change their minds again.
For me it was that the implications of atheistic materialism contradicted basic empiric knowledge. Atheistic materialism is an onthologic monism, the ultimate implication of it is that nothing can be defined since everything is a continuum. yet we can discriminate concrete objects and things. No essence can be defined in Mat-Ath, When I was an atheist I argued that the essence of things can be defined in their composition and geometry (arrangement) of constituent parts. But that is a weak argument since "objects" constantly lose atoms and gain new ones. Think about the atoms you lose and gain through all your life (throwback to the greek boat paradox)
Ultimately it was that in MatAth the person could not be defined, yet we are persons. Also the concept of specie was broken too, every animal would be its own specie.
Then I realized that atheists have no explaination for quantum probabilities, i thought that for God to not exist everything had to be explainable with mechanisms. But when we measure the spin of a particle, whether is spin up or spin down, there is a 50/50 perfect chance? what mechanism makes the choice? There is none, and atheists have no answer other than "thats just how the universe works, period" I realized that since there is no mechanism the only thing that remains to explain it is Will, and if there is will there is a person behind that will.
So? Better to not be able to explain something, than a glib "god did it".
> atheists have no answer other than "thats just how the universe works, period"
I've never heard an atheist say anything like this. Or a physicist. They're more likely to say "that's how it appears to be. We don't know why. It's a bit of a mystery."
> Better to not be able to explain something, than a glib "god did it".
There is some theory that true randomness can be explained by some hidden behavior not yet known to man. Some local hidden variables not existing or something...
So in that case, yes, god did it. Or that is what God is, and by definition can be supernatural...
Grew up in the faith, but never made it my own. I fell away for some years after I left home, with psychedelics, and ‘free’ sexuality before I realized that I had been desperate to fill an emptiness and the find answers to the plaguing questions that plagued me of who I was and what I was for and why I should continue living. It took a night of experimentation in witchcraft to snap me to the realization that if there WAS a god, maybe it was possible that it could be the God that came to be with us as man. “If he is there, if he is all powerful and loving, then surely you will let me know you are there, that you are Truth, because that is what I have been searching for“ was the essence of the prayer that night and the rest is history.
I have an M.Sc. in the earth sciences. I loved learning previously about the beautiful and intricate interplay of factors across discrete systems in our physical world and, from the start of my reversion, I have looked for something that I can’t accept in the teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that is logically inconsistent or incoherent within an all-encompassing view of reality, physical and otherwise… something I can unequivocally view as bullshit so that I don’t have to believe it, so I don’t have to impose upon myself everything that would be entailed if religion were indeed all true.
Instead, The book has instead been wonderfully illuminating and found it to be a great primer for learning about the spiritual and human side of our metaphysical reality.
Regardless of religion, creed, or motto, it is human to seek the truth and understand it.
Why is "God did it" a better answer than "it just happened" ? If you prefer the "God did it" you then have to account for where God came from and end up with a set of answers that could just as easily be applied to the universe itself. Believe what you want, but this isn't some kind of gotcha.
what’s the difference between “god did it” and “it just happened”? you’re just hand waving over the question of “how did it just happen?”. matter just magically appeared?
I built a more solid foundation for life after discovering spirituality in my mid 30s, but I still do not believe in a God the way religious people do. The existence of a prime mover from which the universe expanded (pretty difficult to refute) doesn't require my worship.
The first few chapters of Alan Watts' "The Way of Zen" opened a completely new world to me outside of rationality which I sorely was ignorant about, and I desperately needed. Having a spiritual perspective from which to view the world is probably the most valuable part of the religious experience. The fantasies people have over the centuries built on top, I really can do without.
Reading Christian mystics, Orthodox apophatic theology. It's correct and all very real despite the language they use. Zen etc is a better starting point, achieve kensho then go read the New Testament and watch your brain meltdown.
Ordered roughly by what's most palatable to the modern mind:
Secular non-duality:
Awake: It's Your Turn -- Angelo DiLullo
The Power Of Now -- Eckhart Tolle
Buddhism with the focus on mystic praxis:
Seeing That Frees -- Rob Burbea
Dependent Origination and Emptiness -- Leah Brasington
Mystic/Orthodox Christianity:
The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian -- St Isaac around 700AD (one of the best Christian mystics (IMO the best))
The Complete Mystical Works Of Meister Eckhart -- Dominicon preacher around 1300AD
The Philokalia -- various authors but St Maximos and Kallistos Angelikoudos are great
The Mirror of Simple Souls -- Porette around 1300AD as well
Gnostic / Neo-Platonists:
The Gospel Of Thomas -- The Apocryphal Gospels
Plato's allegory of the cave (you'll get what he really meant after you have the awakening)
The Enneads -- Plotinus
If you keep searching you'll discover more over time, they come from different regions, cultures and centuries but all tell the same story. They say Sufi's have some good ones too but I stick to Christian works now days.
Humans have been inventing gods since the beginning of time as a way to control/exploit the masses or soothe the over active mind.
There are thousands of dead religions, but this round of current popular religions has hit the nail on the head... right?
A truly powerful and kind super being would not allow child abuse, cancer, famine, or rape to happen. Even if there is a god, I don't want to worship something that allows those things to happen.
Also, the term god is relative. To an ant, we are gods. Any sufficiently advanced being would appear god like to us. Should ants worship us given how little we care about them?
For every moment of beauty that must prove God's existence, there are an equal number of atrocities that must prove God's absence. We just don't see them as often, because humans hide that sort of stuff from polite society.
It's far more healthy to accept our mortality and short lifespan, packing it with things that make us happy. Masking your fears of death with a religion is a mistake.
Rather than devoting my life to worshipping something which may or may not reward me in the next life, I plan to spend my time doing and feeling positive things (because they feel good).
If I had to pick a religion, I think I'd choose Buddhism. It just seems like a good way to be peaceful.
The god does not need to have a concept of human suffering. Just like gravity does not know how it feels to be crushed under a big rock that just fell on you.
Natural scientist by education and degrees and raised in implicitly atheistic soviet family in my pursuit of truth I started noticing more and more evidence of the world picture without God not making much sense and fundamentally incomplete, flawed in many ways. Also it is heavily pushed down modern western people’s throats with very little real scientific support for its foundational claims.
Also noticing people pursuing their own agenda and manipulating others with “atheism” religion.
A lot of thinking, logical reasoning and a sprinkle of personal unusual experiences eventually made obvious for me that there is much more to all this than meets the eye. And there must be some deity.
Nobody knows for certain what or who he is, but world with him is much more credible model of reality than without. And by definition he can’t be “proved” so I believe in him technically, though it feels like I know.
Also on a personal note (as you see from many comments here) - many so called atheists are arrogant people (in same way as religious radicals), while most true believers I met are more humble about their faith. Though it is definitely a biased perspective. But still Id rather be associated with best religion thinkers (like for example vast majority of mideveal thinkers that shaped our modern civilization) rather than with so called atheists who tend think they are the center of the universe.
I had an atheist phase when I was like 15. Probably lasted until my early 20s. I blame that on Carl Sagen, Richard Dawkins, et al. I obsessively read science books, and all of these smart people were telling me there isn't a God. They made sense; I believed them.
I think around age 20-21, I read Descartes' Meditations on Philosophy, which forced me to evaluate all of my beliefs about existence. Digging further into other philosophers (and religions), I realized there's not a whole lot I really know... about anything.
Eventually, I came to the belief of there being a creator, although who or what this creator is, I have no idea.
I have a PhD in STEM. I started believing in my late 20s in graduate school. Readings that were influential included: accounts of high profile scientists who were also believers (e.g., Freeman Dyson), Tolstoy's "Confession", poets like William Blake and thinkers like Simone Weil, philosophers like Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard, and apologetics from C.S. Lewis and GK Chesterton.
My motivation to read any of this was downstream of some other internal feeling that I couldn't shake and slowly began to gnaw at me in my 20s -- that what I could sense around me (or sense at all) couldn't be all that "is". I suppose one way to phrase this is that I became increasingly disturbed by my inability to answer fundamental "where?" or "why?" questions (e.g., "why did the Big Bang happen?", "where is the singularity?", etc.). The standard retorts that some things are simply mysteries didn't satisfy me. Instead I started to suspect that much of what I thought was "territory" was actually just various "maps" that people have created in their minds to help navigate the territory. Around this time I stumbled onto Immanuel Kant's antinomies and realized that many people had thought along these lines in the past. Once I was on this trail, I've never strayed.
Don't know if I believe in God in the typical sense of the word (specifically the traditional idea of omnipotence), but I do think it's quite logical to assume there is some form of higher power. The idea that human beings are the end-all to reality, the highest form of consciousness and most powerful being, just seems hopelessly self-centered to me.
When did this happen? Probably in college when I studied philosophy and realized that the typical atheist arguments from Dawkins etc. were not taken seriously by actual thinkers.
I haven’t read enough of their work but I think whitehead / the process philosophers are probably on the right track.
Arrogance, self-centeredness, "militancy" (laughable when applied to elderly armchair thinkers who call for no-one's death) are all criticisms of humans and have nothing to do with objective reality.
But while we're looking at it,
> The idea that human beings are the end-all to reality, the highest form of consciousness and most powerful being, just seems hopelessly self-centered to me
It is hopelessly self-centered to claim that they were made in God's image.
It is hopelessly self-centered to claim that He made the world just for us, and put us above all animals.
It is hopelessly self-centered to literally centre the Earth, and have the Sun rotate around us.
The atheist position is that there's nothing special about us. We're a growth on a wet rock that's nowhere in particular in space. We lucked out with opposable thumbs and language and have been burning through our resources ever since. No intervening supernatural third party is coming to rescue us.
> The idea that human beings are the end-all to reality, the highest form of consciousness and most powerful being, just seems hopelessly self-centered to me.
I don't understand how this needs to be connected to the idea of God. Couldn't one believe that there are alien life forms with more power and higher consciousness without believing in God?
In contrast, the Christian followers of God believe he made us (humans) in his image and sent his son explicitly to save us (humans). Isn't that a more self-centered view?
Why? Thats harder to answer. Because my parents told me about Jesus, and the Holy Spirit opened my heart to receive it. I didn't weigh the evidence. My eyes were opened and I "saw". The "why" is ultimately that I was pursued. My heart was changed and I was given faith. I wasn't smart enough and definitely didn't pursue him on my own. That's the best thing about it.
I think it depends on how you define god. Personally, I believe in pantheism. It's a philosophical stance which equates god to the universe and nature itself. It's hard not to believe in something that actually exists.
I ate mushrooms 10 years ago and it made me realize how little humans really know about existence, despite how confidently some people assert that there's no god. I didn't directly communicate with god or anything, but in some way the experience broadened my mind to be less dismissive about the idea of a higher power.
The fact that the brain can trip should be taken as evidence that, when the supernatural happens, a better explanation is someone's brain is tripping, and the supernatural isn't actually happening.
I started believing at 4 years old when going to a christian school, then stopped believing a few years later when I realised I couldn’t see any proof of any god watching, planning or influencing the world in any way at all…
Lecturer in Cybersecurity. I started to believe in God in my late teens, 40 years ago. I was at a party and a friend told me he had become a Christian. As I slept on a sofa in the party house I prayed, “Jesus, if you are out there, will you come into my life”.
Christian belief tends to follow by being told about God through colleagues, friends and family. Becoming a follower follows study of the Scriptures and disciplines such as prayer.
Some HNers may see belief as less intelligent. At 54 I can guarantee there are men and woman out there more intelligent than yourself who believe in God. My most intelligent, unbelieving Professor friend, would agree with me on this point.
I outgrew atheism but for me it’s been a process. I think this ongoing “wrestling with God” is an essential feature. Atheism for me was a stopping of thought, a conclusion or an end. Belief in a creator, for me, raises so many questions, it is a beginning or an opening of thought. Life is much better having moved on from the simpler view, and that evidence reinforces the value of that shift for me.
Obvs the first thing is that everyone interprets the word "God" differently. But for myself I'd say I believe that there is
1. a universal consciousness,
2. an energy that works through everything, and
3. that we can tap into both.
Been a slow journey from atheism to this, but mainly based on reading countless first-hand descriptions of enlightenment, mostly related to Kundalini experiences and psychedelic-induced. Reported experiences often fall into such similar categories, sometimes with the same symbology it's either something weirdly evolved in us (for no evolutionary advantage I can see), or some people gain access to deeper levels of reality.
Personal experiences for me that tipped it were:
1. My own Kundalini experiences (not the full-blown transcendental kind yet, but energy surges, meditation phenomena)
2. Receiving remote shaktipat, where energy was projected into me. One of the most surprising was when I was just lying down and a woman 10 miles away sent energy to me for half an hour. It was unmistakable, and wasn't possible she had subconsciously influenced me as she barely spoke to me until after the practice apart from telling me to lie down and relax.
Also, I recently worked out how to 'drop my mind' like Zen practioners talk about. Realised that's the core of concentration-style meditation. Good feelings start to arise on their own.
It's a personal journey (and ultimately the only one that counts), and the mind gets in the way, but each to their own.
I'm agnostic, mostly. I'm not sure what my actual experience was, but I was given a choice, made said choice, and life pretty much went on.
However, tangentially, and related to this discussion, Peter Girnus (a satire account from Twitter) makes what I believe is a quite strong argument for having time away from instant gratification (especially that from AI), and letting yourself sit with problems, and in that space you might find the spark from God.
55 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 97.1 ms ] threadThose who don’t believe are usually the ones who have changed their minds, not the other way around. It’s not surprising that some number of those change their minds again.
Ultimately it was that in MatAth the person could not be defined, yet we are persons. Also the concept of specie was broken too, every animal would be its own specie.
Then I realized that atheists have no explaination for quantum probabilities, i thought that for God to not exist everything had to be explainable with mechanisms. But when we measure the spin of a particle, whether is spin up or spin down, there is a 50/50 perfect chance? what mechanism makes the choice? There is none, and atheists have no answer other than "thats just how the universe works, period" I realized that since there is no mechanism the only thing that remains to explain it is Will, and if there is will there is a person behind that will.
So? Better to not be able to explain something, than a glib "god did it".
> atheists have no answer other than "thats just how the universe works, period"
I've never heard an atheist say anything like this. Or a physicist. They're more likely to say "that's how it appears to be. We don't know why. It's a bit of a mystery."
There is some theory that true randomness can be explained by some hidden behavior not yet known to man. Some local hidden variables not existing or something...
So in that case, yes, god did it. Or that is what God is, and by definition can be supernatural...
Regardless of religion, creed, or motto, it is human to seek the truth and understand it.
The first few chapters of Alan Watts' "The Way of Zen" opened a completely new world to me outside of rationality which I sorely was ignorant about, and I desperately needed. Having a spiritual perspective from which to view the world is probably the most valuable part of the religious experience. The fantasies people have over the centuries built on top, I really can do without.
Secular non-duality:
Buddhism with the focus on mystic praxis: Mystic/Orthodox Christianity: Gnostic / Neo-Platonists: If you keep searching you'll discover more over time, they come from different regions, cultures and centuries but all tell the same story. They say Sufi's have some good ones too but I stick to Christian works now days.Humans have been inventing gods since the beginning of time as a way to control/exploit the masses or soothe the over active mind.
There are thousands of dead religions, but this round of current popular religions has hit the nail on the head... right?
A truly powerful and kind super being would not allow child abuse, cancer, famine, or rape to happen. Even if there is a god, I don't want to worship something that allows those things to happen.
Also, the term god is relative. To an ant, we are gods. Any sufficiently advanced being would appear god like to us. Should ants worship us given how little we care about them?
For every moment of beauty that must prove God's existence, there are an equal number of atrocities that must prove God's absence. We just don't see them as often, because humans hide that sort of stuff from polite society.
It's far more healthy to accept our mortality and short lifespan, packing it with things that make us happy. Masking your fears of death with a religion is a mistake.
Rather than devoting my life to worshipping something which may or may not reward me in the next life, I plan to spend my time doing and feeling positive things (because they feel good).
If I had to pick a religion, I think I'd choose Buddhism. It just seems like a good way to be peaceful.
A: Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
The god does not need to have a concept of human suffering. Just like gravity does not know how it feels to be crushed under a big rock that just fell on you.
Also noticing people pursuing their own agenda and manipulating others with “atheism” religion.
A lot of thinking, logical reasoning and a sprinkle of personal unusual experiences eventually made obvious for me that there is much more to all this than meets the eye. And there must be some deity.
Nobody knows for certain what or who he is, but world with him is much more credible model of reality than without. And by definition he can’t be “proved” so I believe in him technically, though it feels like I know.
Also on a personal note (as you see from many comments here) - many so called atheists are arrogant people (in same way as religious radicals), while most true believers I met are more humble about their faith. Though it is definitely a biased perspective. But still Id rather be associated with best religion thinkers (like for example vast majority of mideveal thinkers that shaped our modern civilization) rather than with so called atheists who tend think they are the center of the universe.
I think around age 20-21, I read Descartes' Meditations on Philosophy, which forced me to evaluate all of my beliefs about existence. Digging further into other philosophers (and religions), I realized there's not a whole lot I really know... about anything.
Eventually, I came to the belief of there being a creator, although who or what this creator is, I have no idea.
My motivation to read any of this was downstream of some other internal feeling that I couldn't shake and slowly began to gnaw at me in my 20s -- that what I could sense around me (or sense at all) couldn't be all that "is". I suppose one way to phrase this is that I became increasingly disturbed by my inability to answer fundamental "where?" or "why?" questions (e.g., "why did the Big Bang happen?", "where is the singularity?", etc.). The standard retorts that some things are simply mysteries didn't satisfy me. Instead I started to suspect that much of what I thought was "territory" was actually just various "maps" that people have created in their minds to help navigate the territory. Around this time I stumbled onto Immanuel Kant's antinomies and realized that many people had thought along these lines in the past. Once I was on this trail, I've never strayed.
When did this happen? Probably in college when I studied philosophy and realized that the typical atheist arguments from Dawkins etc. were not taken seriously by actual thinkers.
I haven’t read enough of their work but I think whitehead / the process philosophers are probably on the right track.
But while we're looking at it,
> The idea that human beings are the end-all to reality, the highest form of consciousness and most powerful being, just seems hopelessly self-centered to me
It is hopelessly self-centered to claim that they were made in God's image.
It is hopelessly self-centered to claim that He made the world just for us, and put us above all animals.
It is hopelessly self-centered to literally centre the Earth, and have the Sun rotate around us.
The atheist position is that there's nothing special about us. We're a growth on a wet rock that's nowhere in particular in space. We lucked out with opposable thumbs and language and have been burning through our resources ever since. No intervening supernatural third party is coming to rescue us.
I don't understand how this needs to be connected to the idea of God. Couldn't one believe that there are alien life forms with more power and higher consciousness without believing in God?
In contrast, the Christian followers of God believe he made us (humans) in his image and sent his son explicitly to save us (humans). Isn't that a more self-centered view?
Why? Thats harder to answer. Because my parents told me about Jesus, and the Holy Spirit opened my heart to receive it. I didn't weigh the evidence. My eyes were opened and I "saw". The "why" is ultimately that I was pursued. My heart was changed and I was given faith. I wasn't smart enough and definitely didn't pursue him on my own. That's the best thing about it.
That's the only honest answer I can give.
Christian belief tends to follow by being told about God through colleagues, friends and family. Becoming a follower follows study of the Scriptures and disciplines such as prayer.
Some HNers may see belief as less intelligent. At 54 I can guarantee there are men and woman out there more intelligent than yourself who believe in God. My most intelligent, unbelieving Professor friend, would agree with me on this point.
1. a universal consciousness,
2. an energy that works through everything, and
3. that we can tap into both.
Been a slow journey from atheism to this, but mainly based on reading countless first-hand descriptions of enlightenment, mostly related to Kundalini experiences and psychedelic-induced. Reported experiences often fall into such similar categories, sometimes with the same symbology it's either something weirdly evolved in us (for no evolutionary advantage I can see), or some people gain access to deeper levels of reality.
Personal experiences for me that tipped it were:
1. My own Kundalini experiences (not the full-blown transcendental kind yet, but energy surges, meditation phenomena)
2. Receiving remote shaktipat, where energy was projected into me. One of the most surprising was when I was just lying down and a woman 10 miles away sent energy to me for half an hour. It was unmistakable, and wasn't possible she had subconsciously influenced me as she barely spoke to me until after the practice apart from telling me to lie down and relax.
Also, I recently worked out how to 'drop my mind' like Zen practioners talk about. Realised that's the core of concentration-style meditation. Good feelings start to arise on their own.
It's a personal journey (and ultimately the only one that counts), and the mind gets in the way, but each to their own.
However, tangentially, and related to this discussion, Peter Girnus (a satire account from Twitter) makes what I believe is a quite strong argument for having time away from instant gratification (especially that from AI), and letting yourself sit with problems, and in that space you might find the spark from God.
https://x.com/gothburz/status/2059621427561521251