Who has lost faith? (page 3)

Tuesday

Moxie's situation is my situation basically. I rather like searching for the actual answers instead of just blindly accepting the ones given to me.

tijkmo

that would be me then....

LOSING FAITH
BLACK HAVE BEEN MY DREAMS OF LATE
I NEED RELIEF I CANNOT WAIT
I KNOW THAT PAIN OF LOSING FAITH
I HOPE YOU LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE
GONE FROM BEING SURE OF EVERYTHING
NOW TO BEING SURE OF NOTHING
GONE FROM BELIEVING IN EVERYONE
NOW I’M DOUBTFUL OF IT ALL
THEY SAY A MAN WHO LOSES FAITH
HE MIGHT AS WELL JUST LOSE HIS LIFE
I LOST MY FAITH IN ALL BUT YOU
AND THAT’S JUST A MATTER OF TIME
I WOULD RATHER LIVE IN HOPE
THAN LIVE ALONE OR LIVE A LIE
AND I WOULD RATHER LIVE ALONE
THAN LIVE A LIE

Galileo

I have lost faith in things for which there is no evidence.

My formal education in hard science forced me to apply the same principals to my experiance with religion. Just because all my experiances with religion were less than satisfactory, I had to resist the temptation to condem ALL religion as I had not experianced ALL religions. Just as we make hypothesis in science yet we remain open to new data. For those that have closed down their minds to the possibitliy that religion is something more than what they have experianced to date, is a sad condition. But then, closemindedness is common in lots of spheres of life. carmel

Low-Key Lysmith

Not to sound gloomy, but I really don't have faith in anything but my wife & friends these days.

I definitely have no faith in God, government, the U.S. Dollar, or polite society in general. Geez, what a buzz-kill.

parakeet

Losing "faith" in the WTS is no loss at all. I consider it a gain in unlimited freedom to think, live, and love as I choose.

Robdar

When I was a witness, I had no faith. It took leaving for me to gain it. When I discovered faith in myself, I discovered faith in God also.

logic&reason

Wow. I appreciate everyone's replies. I cannot tell you how good it is to know that so many of you feel exactly as I do.

I went through a phase at the beginning where I tried to convince myself that the new things I was learning were somehow twisted... that in some way I must have been misunderstanding the facts. I tried to do even more research to reassure my faith; READ more, STUDY more, PRAY more... but it had hte opposite effect. It's funny because I can remember praying and praying to Jehovah to give me the correct understanding, help me know that I was really in the "truth", and that I was following the right path. But that didn't help, so I resolved to stop reading the history books, stop relying on "Google" to answer the tough questions, and just concentrate on the meetings and WTS publications.

That lasted about a week. I can remember leaving the Hall irritated at everything.

Then I had the bright idea to look into examples of people who have struggled with faith in the past and had overcome their doubts. Maybe I could get some pointers... and get myself back on the road to life. That, of course, dropped into the realm of philosophy, and I came across some information on Soren Kierkegaard. In case anyone doesn't already know, Kierkegaard basically argued that in order to have faith, you must have doubt. If you can prove something exists (without a doubt) it takes no faith to believe in it. So faith equals believing in the unbelievable; embracing the absurd as reality.

Back to the books I went. I stumbled onto some books about textual criticism, and began to realize that it wasn't just the WTS that was peddling the absurd... Like I have said before, as a witness, you can easily dismiss other religious doctrine as ridiculous. But the reality seems (to me) to be that the stories of the Old Testament were just an invention of a bunch of primitive desert nomads that were edited, and embellished over centuries of telling and re-telling. (Or more realistically, they were plagiarized copies of stories told by other cultures that at one time or another dominated the Hebrews)

Anyway, once I got over the JW/Fundamental Christian mental block about Evolution, and I realized that there really is a lot of proof for evolution... undeniable proof for evolution, I started moving at light speed.

The thing is I can't really call myself an Atheist. Though I do agree with many Atheists, I cannot prove they are right either.

Sorry for the rant, and thanks again for all of the responses.

Alpaca

Hey there L & R,

Welcome to the board.

I went through a very similar transformation. What really helped me the most was going back to school shortly after making the big exit. The Borg's oppressive attitude toward knowledge and education made me crazy and I was thirsty for as much knowledge as I could consume. I majored in geology and got my BS in 2004. Now I am nearly finished with a masters in geology and a law degree, but the geology education means the most to me. Geology and astronomy are the two sciences that deal with the concept of "deep time" -- 100s of millions to billions of years.

You simply cannot think about those vast expanses of time without questioning everything about where humans came from and where we fit into the evolutionary history of the earth. I too am not an atheist, but rather I consider myself an agnostic. My experience with the hard sciences has taught me to apply the scientific method to evaluate things. Nothing in science is ever really "proven" but, instead things sit on a continuum between false and true. As science progresses and hypotheses and theories are tested they are pushed toward one end of the continuum or the other.

On the faith continuum, with 0 = "no doubt/full faith" and 100 = "complete doubt/no faith," I am probably at about 99.5. I can't go to 100 because I feel that is just as presumptuous as the person who is at the other end of the continuum with full faith. On the other hand, I don't really don't expect anything to draw me below 99.5, but I am always open to ideas.

When I was going through my transformation from Dub to Agnostic it was a very scary experience. Almost like stepping off of a cliff in the dark and not knowing where I was going to end up. However, I can honestly say now that I have the greatest calm and peace of mind I have ever had.

Good luck, you are well on the way to an enriched life.

All the best,

Alex

keyser soze

I began questioning the bible first, so once I left, there was no point in looking into any other religion. My mentality was that if JWs are false, than they all are.

Who has lost faith?