Non-believers: Ever wish you *did* believe?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Long story short - I was raised in a pretty liberal Protestant denomination, met my wife in a church, but over the years attended less and less and believed less and less to the point that it no longer plays a role in my life. I am an agnostic/atheist/whatever-term-you-like, but not terribly militant about it. I just don’t see any convincing evidence for an all-powerful deity (or a deity of any kind).

Still, once in a while I kind of wish that I did have some kind of faith. My mother is still active in the church I grew up in, and I know that she regularly prays. She’s not sanctimonious about it, I’ve never seen her try to evangelize anyone, and she’s about as socially liberal as they come. It’s just a quiet kind of faith that I can see gives her great comfort and some sort of inner peace. And, occasionally, I wish I had something like that to fall back on.

On a different front, I love Christmastime, and especially a lot of Christmas hymns. I heard a particularly stirring rendition of “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing,” the other day that sent chills up my spine, and I found myself wishing that I could believe in the literal message behind it. But I just don’t.

So, am I weird (well, I am, but I mean in this context :D) in this way, or does anyone else have this happen to them?

2

No. I certainly don’t want to belong to an organized religion; that whole scene is anathema to me. I’m not a joiner and I hate being told what to do. I’m so grateful that my upbringing was free of that crap.

And not privately either, really. I do have spiritual feelings and I do deal with them as the urge suits me, but every time I start reading about any kind of pre-set system (most recently, modern Druidry) the urge leaves me immediately. Whatever the urge is that I get, it runs screaming the instant there are any neatly diagrammed principles, any liturgies, any poetry or songs, any triumvirates or dictates about what I’m supposed to value. No THANK you sir, good DAY.

This witch doesn’t get anywhere with other people’s grimoires.

3

It would have made my life easier in some ways. But its hard to tell. If I didn’t have this skeptical mindset, I’d probably be watching cat food cans roll by at my factory job until I died of a heart attack. I’m much happier than I would have been if I’d not been able to question things.

When I was younger it was more difficult and it was a standard response I would mention to help deflect the aggression i would be exposed to for not believing. So while I may have said I “wish” I’d believe. I don’t think I really meant it.

4

I’ve never wanted to believe. Not once. I’m somewhat tolerant of those who do (usually) but I don’t get it and I don’t desire it. As for Christmas, I have no tolerance there. I don’t like it, nor do I care for Passover, Easter, or even the 4th of July.

As for comfort and “inner peace,” I have more than anyone I know.

5

I like sleeping in on Sundays.

6

Believe in what, exactly? Which particular religious sect should I be contemplating?

7

No. With love and respect to family and friends who do believe, to me it means embracing an irrational and chaotic worldview that is at odds with science and evidence.

This morning a fairly smart-sounding and thoughtful man was on the radio (can’t remember who they said he was) talking about the Alabama election, and he claimed to be someone who relies on evidence and fact. For example, if someone tells him the Bible says something, he won’t just take them on their word, they need to show him the evidence (that the Bible says it).

There is such cognitive dissonance there, and while not all believers are as blind to the subjectiveness of the truth in their scriptures, they all, IMO, carry with them the same complete inability to see that their sacred texts are human-made fables, and if there is some truth about a god or gods (a conscious being responsible for creating the universe and/or influencing human activity here on planet Earth), it is not any more likely to be found in their particular faith traditions, and there is no way for them to know if their fables are actual truth or total fiction.

Sorry if that’s kind of a long answer, but the bottom line is, it’s still possible to be in awe of the world, to think deeply about love, kindness, and community, and care for your fellow person without believing in God. And, as a bonus, you don’t have to wear blinders to convince yourself that the book you’re inspired by is obviously fact (except, of course, the parts that aren’t fact, because you’ve just decided that those parts don’t quite count. The rest? Totally from the hand of God, though!).

And, if you want a sense of spiritualness, reverence, calm, purpose, or whatever, well, you can still try to achieve those. Faith in the divine is not required for any of those emotions.

8

I’m assuming the OP was directed toward anyone in a culture abounding in any organized spirituality. Seemed obvious to me, but what do I know?

I remember as a kid enjoying the magic shows of Christianity. We were not full-on Catholic about it, but God existed and the general bible stories were part of our lives. Easter bunny, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy–they all have a special place in my heart if only because I have good childhood memories. For lack of a more respectful way to say, I feel I outgrew all that. I’ve landed somewhere in between outright atheism and what anyone on The Inside might recognize as religious. Which is to say, there is a bunch of junk I don’t understand, but I’m fairly certain I have yet to encounter a religion that doesn’t smell more like predation than salvation.

But I guess to actually answer the OP I would have to say Reality is pretty bleak, and I would like to think there is something better after this life. But to believe the systems in place, I would have to suspend belief in things I know to be the truth and that isn’t any good either. And I the holidays are bittersweet because what rings hollow to me now was enjoyable when I was ignorant. And I miss the enjoyment.

9

I’m not a fan of dying. If you ask me if I want to live forever, I can answer “no” but if you ask me if I’m ready to die right now I’ll say “no” and, assume my health is good I don’t expect that answer to ever change.

I can accept that if the universe works the way I think it does then there’s no chance of immortality and I’d rather be right than comfortable but the idea of my own personal death and oblivion doesn’t make me happy.

10

No. I find the idea of a supernatural being that I have to worship and who is going to judge me when I die to be kind of creepy.

11

No way, I don’t want to go to hell!

Seriously, when I was able to admit to myself that I didn’t believe, it was a huge relief. It really does comfort me to know that there is no plan and none of this shit is on purpose.

12

I find the idea that an all-powerful being wants and/or needs to be worshipped to be equally creepy.

13

Disclaimer: I don’t identify as an atheist

Having said that, I was never much inclined to “believe” something I had no real reason to consider true. That’s lying to one’s self.

Let’s talk about motivation for a moment: the reason anyone would give a shit as to whether there’s a God or not, or, to put it another way, whether there’s any meaningful truth behind the notion of there being a God, or not.

There were a whole slew of concerns that I had as a teenager and young adult about the human condition, idealism stuff I guess you could call it. Totalitarianism, coercive government, the possibility of the System controlling people and channelling them into meaningless lives, callously using ongoing warfare with external nations as an excuse for clamping down domestically. Slavery still persisting, the oppression of women, the mean-spirited ruthless competition that would leave the losers homeless and virtually starving and at each other’s throats and then use their violence as yet another excuse to clamp down domestically. Stuff like that. I wanted to believe that it wasn’t “just human nature” and therefore inevitable and unfixable that that’s how things were and would always be. I wanted to believe things could be different: people being kind and cooperating voluntarily and sharing and being free and not inclined to try to restrict other people’s freedom. Certainly it wasn’t unique to me that I had those feelings, that I found the first set of things intrinsically “bad” and the second set “good” — but did those feelings exist in me and in everyone else for a meaningful reason, or were they irrelevant?

I wanted to know, and I wanted that knowledge with an implacable intensity; it felt to me like it was the key to whether or not human life was even worth living. I was not willing to live a life anchored to a set of feelings and idealistic aspirations if they were meaningless empty “hope” things, like conceptual fluffy bonbons with no nutritional value, you know? Nor was I willing to live a life as a creature of a species that was fundamentally and inescapably so hostile and cruel to its own and where success was coterminous with competitive cruelty, the successful placing of one’s boot in other people’s faces so as to step up.

I didn’t “wish to believe” in God in the sense of being willing to brainwish (heh! typo but it works so I’m leaving it ) myself into embracing a notion that yes there was a God and therefore a reason to hope that all this gentle loving soft stuff wasn’t meaningless unrealistic bullshit. I also didn’t need a conscious prayer-answering entity, not in and of itself. But one would have come in damn handy, see? Because if there wasn’t one, it wasn’t obvious where I was going to find these answers that I needed so damn badly. Where as if there was… “Hey, God, yeah, you out there… I don’t know if you’re out there or not, but if you’re not then you oughta be. Get your ass down here, I want some explanations…”

14

No. If anything, my lifelong atheism has ripened and become stronger over time.

When my kids were little, I encouraged them to attend church with their friends, while discussing why I did not believe. They are fine, upstanding atheists today. I’ve lived my life knowing that one day it will end and I’ll be worm food.

L’chaim!

15

Honestly, I love the idea of an omnipotent wish-granting sky fairy, but one that only grants my wishes, not yours.

I think the actual belief being offered is that god answers your prayers, except when he doesn’t, in which case you just need to get over it. Or the god that created everything, but only chooses to reveal what science discovers. To me that’s the same as no god at all, so I’ll have my belief system with no god, please.

16

Yea. I can hear what you’re saying. I can understand the type of comfort you see in your mom.

There was a time that I wished I believed in something. I don’t think I wanted an answer for things; it was more of a search for a paradigm. This was years ago, but I felt a kind of hole in my life.

I knew that Christianity wasn’t going to work. I started to look at other religions. I knew -at the time- that religion was basically bad:rolleyes:, but I also began to understand the solace possible with having that set of guidelines. I even took a look at the Dojo. I just wanted some type of structure to my life.

Fast forward a few years to when I found the Buddha. Now that stuff made sense. I though it a wonderful outline for life, with its value of love and kindness. The mantras and the gods and stuff… not so sure. But I understood the *reason *for the mantras and gods. A few years later, I had a woman introduce me to Mohammed’s religion. Structurally, I thought Islam was beautiful. I still do. Though it was too Abrahamic for me, it let me begin to understand the science and philosophy of religion.

I’m still not a believer. There’s nothing divine about any of it, not even the Buddhism that guides me through life. So, even though I know it’s basically bunk, I’m still able to use its wisdom as a blanket to comfort and a shepherd to guide.

ETA: I feel the power in that Christmas music, too.

17

The closest I’ve ever come to wanting a god to exist was this time as a kid when I was just wracked with chickenpox - fevers, chills, pain, the works. Fun stuff. In the middle of that I was like, ‘well, I guess this is a good opportunity - I’ll pray to this God guy and if he’s real and magically cures me that would be spiffy! Also if that happens it would actually be a reasonable data point showing the guy exists.’ So I prayed, quite fervently. It worked about as well as you expect, and when the dust settled I marked another notch in the ‘doesn’t exist’ column and went on with life.

And the closest I’ve ever come to wanting to believe that a god exists (despite it not being true) is that there was an extended period where it very much appeared that if I simply developed faith I would be able to marry the woman I loved. However, despite that lure, I could never bring myself to truly want to believe, because by that point I’d come to realize that, based on the fiction/mythos about it, the christian god is a psychopathic manchild that makes Sauron look like Santa Claus. I couldn’t worship a thing like that and still pretend to have morals - so I could never work up a real desire to descend into the sewer of belief.

18

Sure. Wouldn’t it be nice to have eternal happiness, hookers, drugs, booze and wealth beyond imagination after I die? (what I believe “Heaven” would be)

But it would be incredibly stupid to believe any of that happening.

19

What would ‘believing’ get me?

or another way -

what would I have to gain by believing?
Most ‘believers’ simply use it as a scapegoat or wish fullfillment systmem (‘he has a plan’ - ‘pray for me so I get better’, etc)

20

It would have been awesome if I didn’t have to expend so much energy extracting myself from religious belief. More than once I wanted to give up, stop asking questions and just accept whatever mumbo-jumbo was in front of me at the time. The pressure to accept and belong is difficult to resist. I assume that’s what the OP means. No way do I want to stick my head back into that bottomless quagmire.