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Share your most life changing faith moment

Amethyst

¡MI TORTA!
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The time where I messed up taking the eucharist when I was 10 at my grandmother's church, and the priest threw it in my face and basically condemned me to hell...that changed from faith to no faith very quickly.
 

swordpath

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20061130egertonbishopap.jpg
 

Moiety

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I guess it was when I started noticing that going to the church was just plain old boring and I didn't get anything out of it. I went to sunday school even, I discussed with others about religion and never once felt like it was making me a better person. I realized why people, why my family was christian in the first place....indoctrination. When I made the parallel between what was taught at school (and realized it could and should be questioned a lot of the time) and at sunday school and saw how mechanically people professed to be christian.

I understood doing good to one another and all that...and I figured that if there was a God he wouldn't care if I was preaching his word or went to church or even believed in him...as long as I was a stand up guy. And I always felt like I was a stand up guy for the most part.
 

Mole

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The Bush

Share your most life changing faith moment:

Australians have a laid back religious practice that we take part in on the weekend.

And for this religious practice we have created the most beautiful cathedrals in the world.

For every weekend we quietly and unobtrusively go bush walking in the most glorious national parks.

Our Royal National Park is the second oldest national park in the world. And our newest is the Monga National Park, just down the road from me. It is of exquisite transcendent beauty, that has a life and voice of its own. I can hear it calling to me now.

Yes, bush walking is a calling. It is the bush calling to our very soul. And we answer, for we can't help ourselves - our very feet are led by the smells, the touches and tastes and music of the bush, until we can't help ourselves and we become one with the bush.
 

Tamske

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For me it was becoming a monist.

My religion teacher told us about monism: the idea that everything is made out of matter, without any spirits or any non-physical things. Even thoughts were electric signals and, as such, made of electrons. I was scared. I asked him if it was true. He reassured me, but I think he never realized why I was so shocked. I didn't realize it myself at that time.
I actually wanted to forget that lesson, to unhear it. Because, to know about monism, meant I had to think about it. I wanted to know why I intuitively rejected it. I wanted to reject it, to keep on believing in spirits, but now that I knew of some alternative, I needed an argument... and probably I was afraid of not finding one.

I thought for three or four days about it, agonizing and really going deep whenever I could.

I could not accept that thoughts, feelings, imagination and love were made of mere matter, were subject to ordinary and simple laws of nature I could understand, such as gravity or electricity. But what of the alternative? If there was another sort of stuff, spirit stuff let's say, that made up those things, that spirit stuff certainly interacted with matter. If it interacted with matter, we could measure its interaction and derive the laws of nature which governed spirit stuff. But then spirit stuff was not different from matter! The only difference I could see was that we knew and understood (for a part) the laws that governed ordinary matter; and we didn't know the ones of the spirit stuff.
And it was crucial that these laws would stay unknown. Otherwise spirit stuff and matter were of the same kind and we should better call it all matter. As I am a scientist, I couldn't accept some rule which says people mustn't try to understand something.

I had painted myself in a corner and I knew it. Whether known or unknown, things like thoughts, emotions, imagination (always a big one for me)... obeyed laws of nature. Like matter does.

I thought I had the choice between two alternatives. Either spiritual things were made of mere matter and, love and such didn't really exist; or there had to be some superior spiritual stuff but that meant there was a realm of reality we couldn't (Shouldn't? Mustn't?) investigate. There is a mistake in the reasoning and I converted once I saw it. "Mere" matter? If love is made of chemicals, like a tree, that doesn't mean love is less worth than I thought. It means chemicals are more worth than I thought. It means love is as real as a tree.

So if there is only one thing I will be able to convince you of, let it be this:

Matter is awesome stuff. It can make up stars and rainbows and chocolate ice-cream. It can make up eyes and taste buds able to take in input from stars, rainbows and chocolate ice-cream. It can make up nerves to relay the input and brains wired to enjoy it. It's awesome stuff.
 

Mole

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Tie a poem to a chair.

For me it was becoming a monist.

My religion teacher told us about monism: the idea that everything is made out of matter, without any spirits or any non-physical things. Even thoughts were electric signals and, as such, made of electrons. I was scared. I asked him if it was true. He reassured me, but I think he never realized why I was so shocked. I didn't realize it myself at that time.
I actually wanted to forget that lesson, to unhear it. Because, to know about monism, meant I had to think about it. I wanted to know why I intuitively rejected it. I wanted to reject it, to keep on believing in spirits, but now that I knew of some alternative, I needed an argument... and probably I was afraid of not finding one.

I thought for three or four days about it, agonizing and really going deep whenever I could.

I could not accept that thoughts, feelings, imagination and love were made of mere matter, were subject to ordinary and simple laws of nature I could understand, such as gravity or electricity. But what of the alternative? If there was another sort of stuff, spirit stuff let's say, that made up those things, that spirit stuff certainly interacted with matter. If it interacted with matter, we could measure its interaction and derive the laws of nature which governed spirit stuff. But then spirit stuff was not different from matter! The only difference I could see was that we knew and understood (for a part) the laws that governed ordinary matter; and we didn't know the ones of the spirit stuff.
And it was crucial that these laws would stay unknown. Otherwise spirit stuff and matter were of the same kind and we should better call it all matter. As I am a scientist, I couldn't accept some rule which says people mustn't try to understand something.

I had painted myself in a corner and I knew it. Whether known or unknown, things like thoughts, emotions, imagination (always a big one for me)... obeyed laws of nature. Like matter does.

I thought I had the choice between two alternatives. Either spiritual things were made of mere matter and, love and such didn't really exist; or there had to be some superior spiritual stuff but that meant there was a realm of reality we couldn't (Shouldn't? Mustn't?) investigate. There is a mistake in the reasoning and I converted once I saw it. "Mere" matter? If love is made of chemicals, like a tree, that doesn't mean love is less worth than I thought. It means chemicals are more worth than I thought. It means love is as real as a tree.

So if there is only one thing I will be able to convince you of, let it be this:

Matter is awesome stuff. It can make up stars and rainbows and chocolate ice-cream. It can make up eyes and taste buds able to take in input from stars, rainbows and chocolate ice-cream. It can make up nerves to relay the input and brains wired to enjoy it. It's awesome stuff.

The Incarnation is God becoming flesh. So the spirit and the flesh are one. At one level this is profoundly and deeply poetic, and at the rational level, it makes no sense.

And there are so many on Central who keep on saying that poetry makes no sense to them. And I believe this is true.

But I tell them to tie a poem to a chair and torture it until it reveals the truth to them.
 

Such Irony

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I became agnostic just by doing some long hard thinking on things. Like the inherent unfairness in society and all the bad things that happen to good people. How some people live a very happy life and know no struggle while others no nothing but war and starvation. Or how there's all these religions and if you believe in some other religion you're going to hell. Its thoughts like that, which make me question the existence of a God. Or if there is a God, it isn't necessarily a merciful or forgiving one.
 

Tamske

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The Incarnation is God becoming flesh. So the spirit and the flesh are one. At one level this is profoundly and deeply poetic, and at the rational level, it makes no sense.

I'm afraid you don't really understand what monism is about. It's not "spirit and flesh are one", it's "there are no separate spirits". It means that, when the molecules of my brain rearrange themselves, when the neurons decay, thought and emotion aren't there anymore either. Mind and individuality is like a house of legoes. When you take the house apart, you have only legoes and no house any more. That's the scary part - there is nothing that lives on. Matter rearranges itself and creates new things.

Some poems make no sense. Some are even made to make no sense and are praised for it. Others are beautiful and meaningful at the same time. Incarnation? No... give me rather the dance of the planets around the sun.
 

Mole

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Sharing the Hiatus

And in between there is Victor.

This is true. I have always loved the hiatus. I have always loved the break, the in between.

For years I loved Orientation Week, the break between school and university, but I always called it Disorientation Week.

And for even longer I loved university because it was a break between school and work.

And I have always loved the break between the inner and the outer, between the introvert and the extrovert.

And I love the break between sleeping and waking, called the hypnogogic trance.

And so I came to love trances in general because in a trance we are half awake and half asleep. And I even designed two trances myself.

And of course I love the break between male and female and the dance of love that brings us together.

My eyes sparkle as I leave one shore but have not yet reached the other.

And I have come to understand we perceive by making distinctions. And a distinction is nothing but a break.

And so I love the break between birth and death and sharing this hiatus with you.
 

Tiltyred

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That thing that arranges the lego house, blows it down, makes something else? (the dewdrop slips into the shining sea) That's God. IMO.
 

gromit

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Mar 3, 2010
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I don't know if I've had one most powerful moment, but I’ve had countless small ones.

Enjoying beauty of leaves in the autumn, of the buds in the spring, of an evening snowfall, of a summer’s morning. Gazing upward inside a cathedral. Being with someone I love and realizing how deep my feelings for them are. Pausing before a meal. Singing hymns with other people. Swimming. When I am really sad or upset and I feel a sense of peace... etc.

I just feel grateful to be alive, and blessed by all that the world has to offer. And I want to share that with others.
 

Qlip

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I have one of these types of events about once every 3 years on average, and after everyone I become an ever so slightly more realized person. The last one is when when I said 'screw it' to nihilism and decided to embrace the ideas in which the world make sense to me. It's not worth being factually rational when you're living everyday in a state of cognitive dissonance.
 

ZPowers

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A couple: When I was very young, probably 3rd or 4th grade, I used to stay up nights terrified of the idea of nothing after death, and I'd try to imagine it (though I couldn't and knew as much). Around 5th grade, I realized one day how ridiculous that is to worry about (and impossible to conceptualize), even if it is so.

A couple years later I was on the edge of losing my faith. I decided to look for some kind of vague sign or meaning for a week or two before I let it go, more out of uncertainty and even concern than anything reasonable (faith is very reassuring, for whatever else it is). During this time, one morning on the way to school I saw one of the most beautiful early morning skylines I'd ever seen, and thought maybe that was it. Then I realized I'd seen mornings like that before, that I may even be playing it up solely because I was looking for something, and that it didn't really mean anything special. That was the first time I ever considered myself a proper agnostic.

Since then, I've moved closer to atheism, currently I am an atheistic agnostic and have been for some time.
 

DiscoBiscuit

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I've had a couple of big ones.

Being saved. Sophmore in High School. At Young Life camp in NC over the summer.

Coming out on top of depression this year and figuring out what I want to do has greatly strengthened and reaffirmed my faith.
 

miss fortune

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watching people's desperate prayers and hopes be dashed... what sort of sick bastard of a God would DO something like that :thelook:
 

Snuggletron

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Nothing instant, that's for sure. Over time I've just been hearing debates for and against god and the supernatural and eventually I came to the conclusion that they are squared circles. If you hear a rumor about something, to conclude if that rumor is true you will need real evidence. All people who value truth think this way... It's a simple and effective line of reasoning. The supernatural is a rumor and is above natural laws and nature itself (all we know to exist). Since it's above the natural world, we can't test or prove it, and if we could prove it it would no longer be supernatural. Using the perspective of possibility is ineffective also, because an idea won't prove anything, except the idea.
 
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