[Nacho King]

It is my belief that most religious people are still believers because they have never questioned their beliefs.

Most people only get a one sided opinion, what the Bible/Qu'ran etc. says, what their priest tells them, peer pressure from others. We can see most people don't question their beliefs because a large percentage of people are the same religion as they were born into and what their parents were and have never looked at any others.

Why not critically assess your religion, use logic and common sense to see if stories sound plausable (maybe start with Noah's Ark), watch youtube videos from athiests and see what they have to say etc.

There is nothing to lose, only something to gain. Why dedicate your whole life to something without even questioning it? Thats dumb.

So religious believers, have you ever strongly researched and evaluated your faith? I don't mean go through the Bible with a Bible guide, I mean look at what it says critically and without your emotional head on and see if it still sounds true.

I've thought of a good example, the Tower of Babel is in the book of Genesis, where apparently people attempted to build a tower to reach heaven and God destroyed it as it was a threat to him and then scattered everyone around the world and gave them different languages so they wouldn't be able to build another tower.

A logical person would say that this story is never going to be real because humans would never be able to build a tower to reach heaven because:
a) they wouldn't have the metal structures etc. to build a stable tower miles high, think of skyscrappers today,
b) planes fly 30,000ft in the air and they haven't been stopped by God and we haven't found heaven, military spy planes fly even further, space rockets even go out of our atmosphere,
c) how would they cope with the lack of oxygen without specialist equipment when that high up
d) we know whats outside our solar system and we still haven't found heaven, so how tall was this tower to be a threat to God.

See how stupid and unreasonable that story sounds now.



There have been over 500,000 different religions since the start of mankind. How is your any more credible?

[james22]

I was a Christian when I was younger and I did critically assess my beliefs. I just aksed myself why I believed the stuff I was being told and couldn't come up with a better reason than because my parents/the bible says so. That was when I became an athiest.

[Nacho King]

(Original post by james22)
I was a Christian when I was younger and I did critically assess my beliefs. I just aksed myself why I believed the stuff I was being told and couldn't come up with a better reason than because my parents/the bible says so. That was when I became an athiest.

Yeah, its too easy to say something must be real because the Bible says its true isn't it.

[Indian_Princess]

i'm a Muslim, n when i was younger it hit me one day that maybe my religion wasn't the true one and that all my family could be wrong and i'm just being pulled into it.. but then as i grew up and looked more into my religion and understood it more, i had no worries

[Nacho King]

(Original post by Indian_Princess)
i'm a Muslim, n when i was younger it hit me one day that maybe my religion wasn't the true one and that all my family could be wrong and i'm just being pulled into it.. but then as i grew up and looked more into my religion and understood it more, i had no worries

I don't have a problem with religious people who have actually spent time to think about their beliefs and made their own opinion

[The_Lonely_Goatherd]

Oh all the time. I always try to see things from multiple perspectives

[cesczizou]

I think everyone goes through that period of where they question their beliefs..i did, and it just made my relationship to God stronger. Same with football teams, i'm a gooner, last season i went thorugh the period of questioning my team..and it just made my relationship to my team stronger.

[CHEM_sucks]

I'm a muslim, before I went into islamic education I wasn't really interested, my parents asked me if I would consider going to islamic education, which I agreed to, but during that time it was to only make them happy. Now.. I'm so intrigued by islam, and the teachings, because when I went into the islamic education I haven't looked back! It was one of the best decisions I've ever made! I'm really happy to be attending.

I have learnt a lot about our Prophet, teachings of islam, our faith and beliefs.. It's made me believe in islam more.

[PhoenixxX]

Lots of Christians (liberal ones, more so) believe the Bible isn't literally true - its perhaps poetically expressed, therefore, in your example OP some may just interpret it as being an overall message to how God is 'higher up' or 'unreachable' or 'superior' to man.

A larger example would be the Creation story - where LOADS of people think its metaphorically expressed in "days" (which originally, as the Bible's been translated numerous times - were considered 'periods of time').

Potentially an idea to counteract the plausibility of some stories, just my 2 cents.

[FamzB]

Hi, ok, so this is a reply from a Muslim female As I was growing up I questioned some aspects of Islam because there were some stories that I had heard of that broke the laws of science or seemed very unrealistic like miracles and some things just seemed too 'magical', do you know what I mean? Lol I thought maybe I'm being led onto something that my culture (I'm also Bangladeshi) had created. I was always one of those who questioned most things when I was younger because I was curious to know where things orginated from and questioned my surrounding. So, what I did was I did some digging, I tried to look into the teachings of my religion. On the side note, over the coming years I've also experienced spiritual feelings that I can't even explain and have observed some things that have amazingly astonished me. I have discovered some aspect of 'science' in some teachings of Islam, for example, the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h) advised Muslims to use a specific type of twig (known as Miswaak) to clean the teeth because it has many advantages such as strengthening the teeth, strengthening the gums, improves the eyesight and the memory and many more advantages etc. It amazed me when I found out these benefits of miswak was proven by scientific studies (e.g. by scientists in Pharba Basle Ltd) so I looked into other teachings and found out some other scientific proven findings. However, I didn't only question my religion, I questioned most things around me, it would be naive of me not to, I questioned other religion and science too, like the Big Bang Theory still fazes me I just don't understand how the Big Bang Theory actually started from a bang, like where did the actual Bang just 'bang' out from? How does science explain the law of physic? I still question what happens to my loved ones after they had passed away? What's going to happen to me when I die? Science just didn't cut it for me as it was too vague, there's a certain extent that I can be rational about things. Life is just a never-ending series of questioning so I still question, but I don't question my faith anymore without a doubt, if anything, questioning has actually strengthened my faith. Anyways, no more boring you all with my essay lol but hey, it was a long journey, ok! Any questions, feel free to mail me directly.

Parting note: Ignorance is not really a bliss, get out there and learn about the other side. But, don't brainwash, rather wash the brain.

[.eXe]

I question my faith whenever I'm in bad times. I'm only human.

It's never let me down, in fact it's only made me stronger and experientially I know it to be true.

[Spaz Man]

Of course I do. We're not all sheep you know.

[Frankie_say_relax]

I don't think many religious posters here are being entirely truthful.

[fummon]

As a Christian, I believe it is vitally important to own your religion. What I mean by this is to make sure that you aren't just going along with it without questioning anything. I do believe that any doubts I have about my faith, I should confront and I do have faith that any doubt I should encounter will not knock my faith in anyway. It would be a lie to suggest I've never had doubts, you think I haven't thought that I'm wasting my life believing in "some invisible God"? But I still believe. And I know that there is very little I could do to convince myself otherwise.
Saying all this, I was as you would probably expect, raised in a Christian household, but I believe that the decision I made to be a Christian was my own decision, and though in a Christian environment, I was never pressured into it. I think that the opposite is true- being raised in a certain way with certain beliefs will surely only cause you to question them as you grow more independent?
I do agree though, that it is very easy to sit back and just attribute everything to God rather than 'owning' your faith.


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[fummon]

Also regarding your comments about the story of the Tower of Babel, in my opinion, the height was irrelevant, the plausibility of man building a structure of this height in Biblical times is irrelevant. The use of the word 'heavens' I do no believe implies that the tower was in fact any where near heaven- it is probably the result of a description by biblical writers of a vey tall tower. The evil intention behind the actions is the important bit. I do not seriously believe God was actually threatened by this tower, but rather he saw the evil intention of man attempting to get to heaven without God and saw the evil that man could achieve when he worked together thus creating language barriers.


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[A Perfect Circle]

(Original post by .eXe)
I question my faith whenever I'm in bad times. I'm only human.

It's never let me down, in fact it's only made me stronger and experientially I know it to be true.

It's worrying that your religion has convinced you that doubting your faith (which is basically belief without evidence) is a bad thing.

[.eXe]

(Original post by A Perfect Circle)
It's worrying that your religion has convinced you that doubting your faith (which is basically belief without evidence) is a bad thing.

Um show me the part where I said that doubting my faith was a bad thing lol.

I said I'm only human...which means I too have unbelief like all others. I never said it was a bad thing.

[FrightBright]

Well I thought about it allot. I was not religious before now I am religious.

At first I was trying to push religion as far away as possible. Then I embraced it, a few of my family members are religious and life has been good to them.

The way I saw it was this at the time was this:

-If god exists, then ****
-If he doesn't then 'Oh well' still had a good life.

Then I decided to take a path at that point. I saw it as a 'nothing to lose kind of thing' at the time. So I decided to believe in God.

So I decided to follow the path of belief and it made my faith stronger ( I learnt the beauty of religion). I have never been happier, I feel better even look better.. I have been extraordinarily devoted in the last 3 years, from despising my religion.

I'm Muslim.

For the record I don't believe god just gives you stuff if you pray to him. I believe god values hard work more than anything in this world. Even the Qur'an lays great emphasis on work.

[Sheep]

(Original post by FrightBright)
Well I thought about it allot. I was not religious before now I am religious.

At first I was trying to push religion as far away as possible. Then I embraced it, a few of my family members are religious and life has been good to them.

The way I saw it was this at the time was this:

-If god exists, then ****
-If he doesn't then 'Oh well' still had a good life.

Then I decided to take a path at that point. I saw it as a 'nothing to lose kind of thing' at the time. So I decided to believe in God.

So I decided to follow the path of belief and it made my faith stronger ( I learnt the beauty of religion). I have never been happier, I feel better even look better.. I have been extraordinarily devoted in the last 3 years, from despising my religion.

I'm Muslim.

For the record I don't believe god just gives you stuff if you pray to him. I believe god values hard work more than anything in this world. Even the Qur'an lays great emphasis on work.

lol the way you talk about it just seems so stupid to me, so your family members were religious and had good lives and you 'had nothing to lose', and you just 'decided to follow religion', as though it's just something you can decide to do

where is logic in this? I couldn't just 'decide' to believe in fairy tales because my brain simply wouldn't let me, where is your brain in all this?

when you were devoting all your time to it, did your brain not ever stop to actually question the probability of any of it being real/true compared to just being made up

even if there is a 0.0001% chance of it actually being true , why would you devote your life to it and pretend you know that it is definitely true, isn't there some part of you that just feels a bit silly lol

(Original post by PhoenixxX)
Lots of Christians (liberal ones, more so) believe the Bible isn't literally true - its perhaps poetically expressed, therefore, in your example OP some may just interpret it as being an overall message to how God is 'higher up' or 'unreachable' or 'superior' to man.

A larger example would be the Creation story - where LOADS of people think its metaphorically expressed in "days" (which originally, as the Bible's been translated numerous times - were considered 'periods of time').

Potentially an idea to counteract the plausibility of some stories, just my 2 cents.

it only changed to 'not literal' since science discovered all the flaws in it lol

[Mazzini]

(Original post by Nacho King)
A logical person would say that this story is never going to be real because humans would never be able to build a tower to reach heaven because:
a) they wouldn't have the metal structures etc. to build a stable tower miles high, think of skyscrappers today,
b) planes fly 30,000ft in the air and they haven't been stopped by God and we haven't found heaven, military spy planes fly even further, space rockets even go out of our atmosphere,
c) how would they cope with the lack of oxygen without specialist equipment when that high up
d) we know whats outside our solar system and we still haven't found heaven, so how tall was this tower to be a threat to God.

a) They probably didn't manage to build it that high
b) They're not looking to get into Heaven
c) They probably didn't manage to build it that high
d) I believe that Heaven isn't literally "above" the earth, but in another dimension where we can only (except very rarely) go after we have died.

But yes, I have questioned my beliefs and I still am a Christian.