What do you believe in and why?

[Clipse]

Im christian, went to church before i could walk so up til this day when I open a bible, look down at the pages and read its what I believe is true. What about you?

[ratcharmer]

Howdy,

I am a Christian, officially a Methodist, although I frequently attend services from other denominations.

I was not raised religious- although my parents were Christian in the technical sense of the word we never attended church, prayed or did any other form a practicing religion in out household.

At about age ten I began to explore the possibilities of spirituality/religion on my own, and got myself into a very dark place. I'd rather not go into detail. If you really want to discuss it PM me.

Afterward, I was sort of staggered in my view of the spiritual world. I went through several strange years where I really didn't know what it was that I believed.

During my teens I toyed briefly with the ideas of atheism & agnosticism, but I honestly found myself unimpressed. For ideas supposedly founded purely on logic I found some of their arguments shockingly illogical. No offense meant to anyone who holds those beliefs, that's simply my impression from when I first encountered them. Maybe the arguments you encountered were better than the ones I did.

I first started going to church at age 17, and my parents started coming with me shortly thereafter.

I do not pretend to know the full story yet and I believe my faith is still evolving/growing as I learn more. I have read the entire Bible, the apocrypha and some of the gnostic gospels (haven't finished them yet). I have taken some classes on Buddhist teachings & read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I'm not really sure where a good place to get a copy of the Qur'an, but would be interested in reading it.

[Hamish MacWolf]

Ebay. For all your Islamic needs.

With the exception of Osama Bin Laden, you can find it on eBay.

[Resnov]

Im christian, went to church before i could walk so up til this day when I open a bible, look down at the pages and read its what I believe is true. What about you?

Pretty much the same with me.

[BluePriest]

Im christian, pentecostal. Raised church of God, and am now at an assembly of god. Believe in the absolute divinity of the bible. Yeah, im sorta old school. Everything I believe, I believe because of my convictions, things that God has shown me. I even had a period in life living in sin, and i tried to believe God didnt exist. Well, my convictions were so strong, I couldnt fully convince myself. Personal convictions are my reasons for what I believe, however, studying I do of things that are suppose to contradict and disprove Gods word, only affirm my faith that much more.

[az4rel]

im an absurdist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism

[Bloodshadow]

Nice link on absurdism, Az4rel. I believe it describes my more cynical side quite nicely.

I'm a radical, vehement anti-theist. I strongly detest the belief that there is some sort of all-powerful entity that created us. I'm a devout materialist, believing that there is nothing, absolutely nothing at all, beyond the physical world; souls (or free will) don't exist, and we're all just very complex machines made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. I believe that the physical world is entirely deterministic, and before you try to pester me with quantum theory, I know that it disproves classical Newtonian determinism; however, as long as quantum theory holds its own consistent rules, I consider it to be deterministic. I know that the physical world is entirely based on perceptions, and we have no ways to tell if our perceptions are true, but I do believe that there is an Absolute Objective Truth that fully describes the deterministic rules of the physical universe entirely. The absurdist part of me is rather cynical and thinks that the scientific method will never truly discover the Absolute Objective Truth, but a more hopeful side of me wants to pursue theoretical physics anyways and give it a shot.

I consider the Absolute Objective Truth to be my own sort of God, however it's so radically different from the creationist Gods that it might as well be something else.

[Daytripper]

I'm an (agnostic) atheist. The most correct way to say it would be: ''I've never seen any evidence that convinced me there actually is something like a God.'' For practical purposes that means I don't believe in God(s). Been like this since childhood. To comment on ratcharmer, I do not require any illogical argumentation for it either. It's very simple. 

[funerallaughter]

Catholic, born and raised. Though, brought up in an environment which advocated one's curiosity in disproving a superior being. Call it naive, but I believe in God. I mean, why else would it be statistically better for one to believe in Him?

	Believe	Not Believe
Real	Saved	Damned
Not Real	Nothing	Nothing

Yes, there are other reasons, but logically, one would believe. 

[KingOfArmagio]

My grandparents are christian, but I myself follow the Big Bang Theory (not the show, the theory), but even that has its doubts. My philosophy says:

"Don't dwell on the past, or the future. Dwell on what happens now."

This means, roughly translated:

"You don't really have to give a f*** how the world was created."

[UTAlan]

I am a follower of Christ. I choose to not claim any particular denomination, as there are none whose doctrine perfectly fit my beliefs. I simply cannot believe that this world (or universe, really) just came into being out of nowhere. The standard of good which seems to be so consistent across so many cultures around the world and throughout history has to come from somewhere. And I cannot ignore the historical truth of the man named Jesus who lived a good life, had many good teachings, died on a cross unjustly, and had believers who claimed to see him resurrected from the dead. And so much more that I won't bore you with. So yeah, all that to say, I buy it.

[Neopergoss]

I was raised Jewish. My atheism arose in part out of the contradiction between the bible's creation story and the one we know to be true through science. As a young child, when I first heard about dinosaurs, I asked my mom why it didn't say anything about them in the bible, and she didn't have an answer for me. I quickly decided on my own that fossils were a test of faith. This was around the time I was 5. And I never really questioned anything for a long time.

I didn't really even think about it again until I went to a day camp at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where everyone was perfectly confident in the existence of dinosaurs and several knew even small details about their anatomy. Feeling uncertain, I asked an adult I was close with what they thought about contradictions between religion and science. Thankfully, they told me that you just can't argue with scientific evidence. If they hadn't, who knows what path I would've followed. I was probably about 10 at the time, maybe a little older.

So from then on my goal was to reconcile what we know through science and the story in the bible. It was possible if you squinted your eyes a lot and didn't think about it too hard. The thing that ended my theism, though, was generally that I required a logical basis for belief (none of that "faith" stuff) and specifically my rejection of the first cause argument for God, which I had used for a while. It happened around the time that I was 14. I don't remember a specific moment when I stopped believing, but I remember feeling uncomfortable when people talked about religious belief for a while, and I remember some of the things I said to God shortly before I stopped believing entirely.

One comment: As I was raised Jewish, people have been throwing Pascal's gambit at me for a long time, and it's never stopped disgusting me. You may think I'm going to Hell because I don't believe your dogma, but the ancient Greeks probably thought you were going to the really bad part of Hades because you never sacrifice cattle. Who cares? I certainly don't. So stop using that argument unless you want to start sacrificing cattle "just in case."
Oh, and one more clarification about what I believe and why: I don't believe that the universe just came into being out of nowhere, either. Nice strawman, though. God isn't the only explanation; certainly not a very good one.