As the sentence says. This is not a discussion about what evidence you think showcases god is real or what magical experiences you’ve had that makes you believe in god. This is about how many can shake faith even if they don’t see any evidence to be faithful to begin with? Logically an atheist. Emotionally a theist. Not able to turn off faith. Even if you don’t mind it just the realization that you’re not choosing what you believe, you simply believe it. Sort of like residual faith of ex Christians. What’s the difference between a ex Christian with residual faith and an active emotions Christian with it?
This is a tough response but I can relate. Long ago when I found God again I made a vow to not be swayed from His presence no matter what the world threw at me and I’ve stuck with it. We can’t read it all, we can’t know it all and we can easily be drawn in by intellectual peer pressure and whatever new argument pops up. We don’t need answers for everything or to necessarily know how some things work to believe them. I’ve been tossed too and fro with new biblical scholarship, new consensus positions and so on. After a while that needs to be put into perspective. Now I’m on an upswing where fine tuning points to God, philosophy proves God and I’ve overcome the abyss that is critical history. I feel that my knowledge has progressed in all the fields and the more I know, the less doubts I get.
Our culture is in a deistic and mechanistic rut when it comes to God and this leads to all sorts of problems for thinking people. I’ve gone through dark times where I thought evidence was strongly lacking but I came out of it. For me, faith is stronger than the babble we think we mean. When we elevate our intellects above our faith we have lost.
A real simple solution for me (KISS as one recent poster put it) is atheism doesn’t offer a life worth living. I realize this is offensive to some and many disagree but regardless, that is my belief. Logically, that’s enough for me to repudiate it. My belief in objective morals, truth and values is stronger than my belief that I need to be able to prove or justify everything. My experience with Christ is stronger than the intellectual peer pressure and embarrassment of believing in miracles or Jesus exorcised demons.
I would recommend turning the world off. Trying to sit quietly and just read scripture. Maybe I am wrong and this is not personal to you but purely hypothetical, but it appeared obvious to me you have been spiraling out of faith for quite a while now. At least intellectually. Your views became progressively more and more unchristian and went towards philosophical naturalism over time. At some point a long while I stopped considering your responses as being from. Christian perspective. I wasn’t commenting on your salvation or anything like that. I don’t do that. Just realizing where you were heading intellectually. I honestly think you are immersed in the wrong crowd. I could tell by the things you said and your thought process you seem to have been encountering the same type of thinking I did for 5-10 years as a village atheist. I think I even mentioned this to you a few times. You seem to have worked your faith into a box and now are stuck.
Unfortunately, I am not sure this forum, largely populated by non-believers, is really the best place to find help with that. Go to a Church. Talk to a priest or pastor candidly.
Maybe this response isn’t what you need and if so I am sorry. I can at least relate to being a believer who thinks the evidence is against my views. Maybe try reading a different perspective or some new literature. Switch it up. The crowd we immerse ourselves in is going to impact us. Just as the physical food we put in our bodies has an impact on our physical health, the spiritual food we put in is going to impact our spiritual health.
Vinnie
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LOL
Maybe the opposite is more the case with me…
LOL
Logically a Christian due to the only kind of evidence which makes sense, but emotionally an atheist because it is so much more appealing for a great many reasons.
LOL
Shackled? Don’t be ridiculous. Any attempt to shackle me to either side would have me triumphantly championing the other side. Not able to turn off faith? LOL The very idea sounds completely absurd to me (personally). It is a choice.
You are missing quotes on my end.
No idea what you are talking about.
All I see is an OP post by @SkovandOfMitaze with the title he gave it.
Your response calls his OP a response, but I have no idea why. If this is referring to some other discussion, perhaps it should be mentioned or linked.
The shackle is entirely internal: Feelings.
Not sure why the first part is missing for you. Maybe it shows up in that image. But I felt Vinnie was solely responding to what I wrote.
Yes, my response was to your opening post specifically. On my screen it shows up as the first one.
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Could the problem be I clicked the wrong “reply” so it looks like I was replying to Vinnie rather than the OP and title as I intended?
I don’t take offense to people’s perspective. For me I don’t feel that my faith is really in crisis, but my faith has always been far more driven by God firstly and Jesus secondly. How I view Jesus and his divinity bounces around, but I feel my faith in god is quite sound, even if it’s out of my control as in I don’t choose to think god exists or don’t exist. He just does and despite me personally not seeing the evidence the belief is still there. I feel my faith is actually far better now than when I first joined. Mostly just having better language to describe it. Such as in very much in the camp of conscious pantheism, conscious cosmopsychism, the omega point having already sort of occurred.
I relate to it as sort of like a more materialistic take on the supernatural. Still beyond what science supports and so just as “ridiculous” but easier for me to understand. Like with abiogensis, right and left handed molecules aligning, certain patterns becoming more common in nature including the cosmos and that maybe some sort of super intelligence was able to develop within a cosmic cloud of materials . Something that perhaps even spans dimensions and universes, and plays into open and process theology and the Holy Spirit being essentially some sort of Bluetooth power that we can tap into and that Jesus tapped into it so well he essentially was possessed by the power of it. Not in an evil way but super enlightened way to the point he and it was one and the same. The internet signal and the cellphone type of deal.
But yeah my days of traditional Christianity is far gone. I can’t imagine it coming back anymore than I can imagine my
Political stances doing a 180 or me suddenly becoming an avid hunter and livestock for food farmer. Just can’t imagine it.
Personally I don’t feel unchristian. But Christianity to me is no longer the same as accomondationism and the teachings of Jesus.
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Doxastic involuntarism: we don’t choose our beliefs the way we choose a meal. Belief forms itself from a long accumulation of habits, affections, and experiences. So even when the intellect says “no evidence,” the imagination or the moral sense may still say “yes.”
“Residual faith” is what psychologists might label cognitive residue of attachment — the emotional and narrative imprint left by years of worship, prayer, and moral formation. It’s not necessarily “delusion”; it’s what happens when a mind built around a sacred story keeps running its old software even after the creed is uninstalled.