From the accounts I've read on the forum, most former believers' stories are similar. The difference between you and them is you've turned off your mind and just accept everything the church offers you blindly. And until you start thinking for yourself you really have nothing to offer anyone here.
I believe this touches on an important point for everyone to consider.
Before I get to the meat of my post, I would like to preface my comments by saying that despite my strong, agnostic viewpoint, I have no issues whatsoever with those individuals who are
spiritual in nature; i.e. those who are content to have their own, personal relationship with whatever concept of a higher power they chose to believe in. It is when
religious beliefs come into play that I have problems with.
In addition, I can perfectly understand why many of these individuals congregate at their places of worship because they enjoy the communal aspect of such a gathering.
That being said, what I would like to pose to those of you of a religious nature is this: If you were to remove first learning about your god through your parents, peers or any other outside influence as a child and to also remove being taught about the commandments and wishes of said deity through the reading of your holy books or through the sermons of your priests... how would you even know that such a god existed? How would you be able to figure out what he expects from you? How could you even begin to know what are the rules and laws as laid out by him that you would have to follow in order to achieve salvation?
My response is that without these outside influences, there would be no way for anyone to even begin to guess at the answers to these questions.
I believe I can make a valid argument that we are not graced with from birth some innate knowledge of a creator of any particular, religious faith. Ask any child that has of yet been exposed to any concept of god to explain... even in a rudimentary form... what god is.I think I can safely say that words such as "heaven", "bible", "Jesus" etc. will never be uttered.
I can safely speak for myself that as a child, I was not contacted by any divine being nor offered any signs from the heavens to lead me to believe that there was a higher power looking down upon me with high expectations for my future worship of him/her/it. Had it not been for my mom giving me a vague notion that there was some kind of benign, invisible father-figure that I needed to offer my prayers to every night before going to sleep, I would not have any inkling of such a being.
This brings me to ask this question: Why would a god that seems to crave the love and worship of humankind to the point of obsession (why else would he make the punishment for failing to worship him eternal damnation?)
not make himself known in a clear and definitive manner to us from birth, or, at the very least from a young age instead of relying upon us hearing about him in such an unreliable, "second hand" nature (for example; having to rely on gaining this knowledge parrot-like from the clergy growing up, who had in turn received their knowledge parrot-like from the clergy when they were growing up, who then in turn received their knowledge etc...)?
Even relying on the bible is a poor substitute compaired to receiving this information directly from "the source" for gaining insight into such a vital and ultimately paramount subject as to how to properly think, act and worship such a tempermental deity. All you have to look at is the thousands of different interpretations of the Christian bible alone to realize that gleaning which one represents the absolute truth in regards to god's will is like finding a needle in a haystack.
In conclusion, it is my opinion that without the bible (or other similar holy texts) or by learning about god through the religions based around him, we would have no clue as to the existance or the nature of a Christian god, a Hebrew god, a Muslim god, etc., and any child or adult not having the good fortune... or having the bad luck... to have access to this knowledge would automatically be facing damnation upon their death.
I believe that if god truly was concerned about having his creations acknowledge his existance... to use their freewill to
want to worship him... he could have done a hell of a lot better than relying on us fallible humans to figure this stuff out based on the words and teachings of other, fallible humans (including our holy books).
With the possible punishment of eternal damnation at stake, I think it's the least he can do to ensure we all start off with a tap on the shoulder by god, saying: "I'm here. Now the rest is up to you..."
