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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t think I ever really truly believed. I gave it a honest go...when I was a teenager I became really worried during alter calls and that I was going to hell b/c even though I’d done all the stuff you’re supposed to do (saved, baptised, rededicating). And then I did it all again  But the reality is that underneath it never felt real, I was always acting.

Eventually I was just honest with myself and others and things fell into place. [/quote]

This is basically my story too. I tried really hard to pretend I felt things I didn’t until the cognitive dissonance nearly broke me. Being an atheist puts me in a tricky place sometimes and my family still doesn’t know but at least I’m being honest with myself. [/quote]

Fascinating -- and not the first time this sentiment has been expressed on this thread.  So different from the religious perception of non-believers being "lost sheep" or devil worshippers.

[b]It seems like what people have lost is the promise of an afterlife[/b] - which takes faith to believe in.  There's no proof at all.  And in religions, "faith" is considered a good thing.  Really, there couldn't be religion without it, because nothing in the physical world we all live in indicates that there is anything after we die.  Just the opposite, in fact.[/quote]

I hear what you're saying, but respectfully, I don't think this is quite it. It's not as if before losing my faith I believed in everything about an omnipotent God [i]except[/i] for the promise of eternal life. Faith goes well beyond belief in the afterlife.

I'm not saying this is you, but I find as a non-believer that religious people are sometimes eager to "explain away" my losing faith by asking whether I [i]really[/i] ever believed, and then I explain the conflicted feelings I had and the doubts that started to grow when I was a teenager and then they seem relieved when they say, "ahh, okay then, you never actually believed because you basically had doubts all along." And I don't know why that is, or why it matters whether I lost faith or never had it. But for me personally, even as I had my doubts I still believed, and I still prayed, and I thought hard about it and wrestled with it. And I eventually came out the atheist I am today. [/quote]

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