Why do you believe what you believe?

There have been over hundreds of various religions throughout the history of mankind, so what makes your beliefs so right? This is mainly a question for Christians, Jews and Muslims. What makes you so sure the religion you follow is the one? Is it because at such a young age your parental guardian(s) told you to get into whatever transportation device you had access to, then lo and behold you're at a church, temple, mosque, etc. Of course at such a young age, you're going to hold the same beliefs as your parents, religiously speaking. And what I really don't understand is how people think that they've been a Christian, Jew or Muslim since conception. But as a baby, you have no concept of religion.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam are not even the oldest religions. There are religions that date back even farther into antiquity. Much of what is in The Bible, The Torah and The Quran has its roots in theistic ideologies, like that of the Ancient Egyptians for example.

How can you possibly know the religion you follow is the right one when you, most likely, have not even exposed yourself to other religions all across the world. I understand that religion does serve as a comfort system, since there are so many unknowns lurking in our reality. This is simply a question of why do you believe what you believe. What compelled you to devout so much time towards a religion that was a result of your upbringing?

A long time ago I denounced religion not like atheism but in the sense that all religion requires you to answer and look up to a deity, so why bother when this is MY life. Family did not take it well but it was more about self discovery and taking responsibility for my life rather than relying on faith or having to ask for help from a deity. I'm in control of my life and I'm the one who should take action. I'm trying to sum up 24 years of questioning and spiritual confusion but I gotta tell you, I found out a lot more about myself than my friend who is going through a mental breakdown the same way I did but he's relying on Jesus to get him through this.

As I've always thought though...

reply to post by IEtherianSoul9


This may be different than others, but, no one had to tell me about God, I always knew he was there. I was in preschool drawing pictures of the kingdom while others were outside playing. Again, maybe different than others, but this is how it was for me. The only thing I learned from church and others is that many say they believe but don't truly believe.

reply to post by jhill76


Okay, so you drew pictures of God.

Well what God? Apollo? Zeus? Osiris? Ra? Vishnu? Yahweh?

reply to post by IEtherianSoul9


I said the kingdom. We can't see God. But Jehovah.

I was raised in a Christian household. That being said, when I was a young adult you'd never know it. I had absolutely nothing in common with Christianity and no reason to follow its teachings. I was having the time of my life without God in it at all.

That started to change once I became a husband and father. I was drawn back to God, and I started to learn more about Christianity than what I was taught in Sunday School. I also studied Judaism and more recently Islam. Here is what I've found.

Judaism is incomplete without its Messiah. The funny thing is, the Jews were told in advance by their own prophets that they would reject Him, but when He showed up they did it anyway. From the crucifixion, Christianity has carried the torch of the church although God's will is still being carried out through God's Chosen People the Jews. Lots of times (most probably) people don't understand what it is to be "Chosen." The Jews weren't chosen by God to be better or superior to anyone else, He chose them as an instrument through which to work His will. Ask just about any Jew, and they might say they would prefer not being chosen; the Jews have been persecuted for millennia and it hasn't been easy.

Islam can not be considered due solely to the behavior of its founder Mohammed. If you compare his characteristics to other "prophets," you will find he has less in common with Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Christ, than he does with a Jim Jones or David Koresh type of malignant narcissist suffering from a God complex. By his own admission in the verses of the Koran, Mohammed was a liar, a thief, kidnapper, slave-trader, rapist, pedophile and murderer - and an unapologetic one. There is nothing "holy" about this man whatsoever. He shares NO attributes with any other prophet from the Abrahamic tradition; not to mention that Muslims deny that Christ is the son of God, relegating Him to the role of "prophet" secondary to the Mahdi. So Islam is crossed off the list.

But then we come to Christianity. You have Catholics and Protestants, which can be further subdivided along denominations such as Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Amish, Anabaptist, Baptist, Southern Baptist... the list is endless. So who is right?

I'm not going to bother with doctrinal differences, because the church - however you define it - lost its way long ago. I'm sure everyone thinks they're right, but I don't think it's worth fussing over (like the Muslim Shia vs. Sunni conflict) because when it boils right down to it we've been deceived. The Bible has been poorly translated, purposely mistranslated, and relevant books that the early church fathers used (Enoch) were left out of the Catholic canon early on, until what we have today has been significantly altered.

So I'm just going to hang my hat on one verse out of the entire Bible, one that I'm sure every Christian can agree on. It is one of the first verses I ever learned as a kid, and I hold it close to my heart.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

And that's it for me in a nutshell. Let everyone else argue over dogma; I'm going to trust in Christ, and that when He returns He will straighten all of this out Himself, giving us the REAL scoop behind His Father's plan.

What has convinced the left side of my brain that Christianity is true are fulfilled prophecies. We've been seeing them come to pass with our own eyes since 1948, but everyone just fluffs it off. Even if they acknowledge the extreme unlikelihood of a reborn Jewish state after 2,000 years of wandering the Earth, skeptics will say, "Oh well, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy." That is such a lame retort.

The Jews wandered the planet alone, friendless, and common targets of persecution for two thousand years. Never before in history has anything like the rebirth of Israel taken place - ever. A self-fulfilling prophecy would also ascribe power to the Jews that they certainly did not have at the end of WWII. Decimated, they were in absolutely no position to make the prophecy of returning home a reality; it took divine intervention for that.

Then I see Muslim nations lining up to attack Israel, and they are ALL NAMED in Isaiah's description of the Gog/Magog war, down to the very last one; including Russia. I'm sorry, but that is just too much coincidence for me to deny and not be lying to myself. Thousands of Biblical prophecies have been fulfilled, and more are coming true every day. One big one coming up is the total destruction of Damascus by what appears to be a nuclear weapon. If that happens, remember this post and read more about prophecies. If you consider the extreme unlikelihood of all of these things happening, even the most hardened skeptic will have to agree there is something to it.

And where there's smoke...

Christianity, specifically:

1. Well, I don't know where Mt. Olympus is, but I do know that the place we call Mt. Sinai isn't where we place it during the middle ages, because it's in the Arabian peninsula. It was mentioned as being there by Paul. And if you go to Arabian peninsula and talk to the natives, to this day they can tell you where Sinai is--and excavations are being done there. As much as people want to argue over whether or not Christ was real, enough historical information checks out, both in the ground and in textbooks about factual places. I have no interest in a God who cannot place themselves in real events--no matter how much we try to make them controversial at later dates. There's only 2-3 religions that even attempt to keep their faith in the real world. Anything less is useless. Yes, there may be a few other religions with real places, and historical evidence, but I'm talking about the ones that don't have a thing to stand on at all. Getting into the differences between the ones that do have evidence, and which one to pick takes a bit more.

Believing at all:

1.

Before beginning the examination of the evidence surrounding current cosmology, it is important to understand what Big Bang Theory (BBT) is and is not. Contrary to the common perception, BBT is not a theory about the origin of the universe. Rather, it describes the development of the universe over time.

Here
Since the only logical choices are:
A. The Universe has always been. (Entropy of an enclosed system. The Universe could not have always been. Even a multi-verse is against this. It just removes the evidence of the absolute origen by a few steps.)
B. Something "other" made it. (Avoided because if you make the whole Universe, WHAT are you?)
C. It made itself. (What the BBT is often touted as.)

By the way, to be more confused by the BBT:

Another cosmologist, the German Rudolf Kippenhahn, wrote the following in his book "Kosmologie fuer die Westentasche" ("cosmology for the pocket"): "There is also the widespread mistaken belief that, according to Hubble's law, the Big Bang began at one certain point in space. For example: At one point, an explosion happened, and from that an explosion cloud travelled into empty space, like an explosion on earth, and the matter in it thins out into greater areas of space more and more. No, Hubble's law only says that matter was more dense everywhere at an earlier time, and that it thins out over time because everything flows away from each other." In a footnote, he added: "In popular science presentations, often early phases of the universe are mentioned as 'at the time when the universe was as big as an apple' or 'as a pea'. What is meant there is in general the epoch in which not the whole, but only the part of the universe which is observable today had these sizes." (pp. 46, 47)

And the History of why it's called the BBT:

Finally, the webpage describing the ekpyrotic universe (a model for the early universe involving concepts from string theory) contains a good recounting of the standard misconceptions. Read the first paragraph, "What is the Big Bang model?".

There are a number of reasons that these misconceptions persist in the public mind. First and foremost, the term "Big Bang" was originally coined in 1950 by Sir Fred Hoyle, a staunch opponent of the theory. He was a proponent of the competing "Steady State" model and had a very low opinion of the idea of an expanding universe. Another source of confusion is the oft repeated expression "primeval atom". This was used by Lemaitre (one of the theory's early developers) in 1927 to explain the concept to a lay audience, albeit one that would not be familiar with the idea of nuclear bombs for a few decades to come. With these and other misleading descriptions endlessly propagated by otherwise well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) media figures, it is not surprising that many people have wildly distorted ideas about what BBT says. Likewise, the fact that many in the public think the theory is rather ridiculous is to be expected, given their inaccurate understanding of the theory and the data behind it.

Basically, it's a dispersal method that messes with our ability to figure out the absolute age of the universe. The funny thing is that we have black holes (literally massive pea sized objects), and I'm still waiting on evidence of one exploding.

2. No matter how many people tout information arising before intelligence, it's a bit of a daffy concept, no matter how many people sit there and try to reason around it.

I was a cradle Christian as you describe. For a long time I was uncomfortable with Christianity, but I was afraid to doubt. I thought my salvation depended on believing certain things, so that made me reluctant to question things that I would have thought were silly if I had been introduced to them later in life.

I would be curious about Christians/Muslims/etc that converted as adults from a different culture. Why did they believe they chose the one correct religion?

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
-John 4:16

I believe it because it is TRUE. And so should you!

It has taken a while, but now I believe in goodness and how man can progress with each other without religion rearing it's ugly head.....

Here is another thread of thoughts...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by davethebear
It has taken a while, but now I believe in goodness and how man can progress with each other without religion rearing it's ugly head.....

Here is another thread of thoughts...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Just curious dave... Where are you seeing all of this goodness? Looks to me like everyone - the religious and the atheist equally - are on the brink of a meltdown to me. But when it comes to caring for their fellow man, I'd wager that donations from religious people to organizations like Feed the Children, or Red Cross EQ & Tsunami relief, outstrip atheist donations by leaps and bounds.