My Journey From Being an Atheist to an Agnostic to an Calvinist Christian

If God chose those who would be saved, and you can't be saved by your own will at all, and you can't choose to be born into this world, and being born means total depravity -- then God is choosing who will be damned and creating them with this fate in mind.

Jumping in cold here...

It seems my faith followed my politics, or is that the other way around?

I grew up in a radically left-wing family. We were atheists. I took in the struggles of the 60's and 70's with the knowledge that it was people and only people who were going to make a change in the world, make a change in the lives of people.

Started a career and married a woman who believes in who she calls god. She prayed every single night but never went to church. I resisted temptation to make fun of her belief, not always succeeding. Then after 18 years we separated. I found I didn't like being a single dad to three kids, and realized that my drug use was at the base of our separation. In desperation I found myself making a prayer to the god she prayed to. Then the desire and use of the drugs was gone! Wife and I reunited! God had done me a miracle! We found a church (actually I found a church as she didn't like the other members, thinking they were "fakes") and low and behold, my politics changed and I became a conservatives conservative.

This went on for a few years, we moved across country and could never find a home church, finally giving that search up. Then the Tea party showed up and that got my political interest going, until the birthers and Obama/Kenya and Obama/socialist signs showed up and the racism of these folks became apparent. (Hey, I KNEW what socialists were.) But still, I had the GOP to support. Then my mom died, and in thinking about what she stood for and fought for I had to reflect on who I had become. I saw I didn't like it, yet wasn't ready to give up my "faith."

In this time I came here to this Christian Forums site. I could congregate with other believers! But Oh My... What I read from the keyboards of some of these folks who call themselves Christians...

No. That's not me. I am a radical left-wing non-believer who uses the Humanist symbol, for that's how my Socialist party member grandmother identified. I want nothing to do with a religion that has so much hypocrisy in it, who can flat out ignore or try to change the meaning of what Jesus said.

If this damns me to an eternal whatever I know I'll be in better company than some.

Faith Unites said:

We weren't created. We were born

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We were conceived, then born to be semantically accurate (since we are playing that game.)

And, still: why bother? Whether "born, bourne, conceived or created," our fate is certain by Him. He has His election. He knows His people - who He wants, and who will come to Him. Why bother with the entire charade? What is the point of feeling repentant, and repenting when you are already rejected? Why not have fun and be completely debauched if you have no signature in the book of life?

Received said:

If God chose those who would be saved, and you can't be saved by your own will at all, and you can't choose to be born into this world, and being born means total depravity -- then God is choosing who will be damned and creating them with this fate in mind.

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So again, what is the point? If one's fate is to be saved, nothing they do will deter that. So, why not indulge in all worldly pleasures? After all, something will "snap" like the prodigal son, and you will ultimately come back to the Father. I can see why his brother would be angry...

People can go round and round about the problems with calvinism armenianism and molism universalism atheism etc. What came first the chicken or the egg? Its ridiculous for us try comprehend the logic and function of totally sovereign being.

Faith Unites said:

People can go round and round about the problems with calvinism armenianism and molism universalism atheism etc. What came first the chicken or the egg? Its ridiculous for us try comprehend the logic and function of totally sovereign being.

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Ok, so you dont know...?

Honestly I was just asking, as this is a question I am sure is not unique to me, and actually greatly influenced my faith early as a Christian. No disrespect or ill will, but I dont think your answer (even if it is right) is satisfactory. Do we just "deal with it?"

Sorry I just wasn't trying to get into a drawn out debate about how God functions and how He must be evil or non existent because we live in a fallen world. In order to get around telling my entire life story and what brought me to Christianity and what kept me here I will keep this short. First was the spiritual impact I felt when being involved with it. Was this just psychological (perhaps). Next was the lifestyle shifts I could see in other people that were involved with it. Was this just moral teaching? (perhaps). Next was personal prayers. Prayers I would have that were answered that none could have known about Was this just chance (perhaps)? So I guess I believed with my heart before I believed with me head. Then later in life I started having some serious head doubts. I started to really study and dissect the word and listen to debates yadda yadda. I came to the conclusion that the historical reliability of the story of Jesus was pretty solid stuff. It wasn't some elaborate telephone game. Even non Christian modern scholars on Biblical text agree on a few key points. Jesus did indeed exist, His tomb was empty and that the apostles believed that they saw Him resurrected. You can come up with a number of circumstances to explain each point but you get my drift. I no longer felt as if I were believing some fairytale. My conclusion was that if God exists then Christ is the real deal. Christ came to fulfill the law and restore us to our original state. He didn't come to point fingers at people for sinning. He came to show us how to love each other. There are all sorts of things that have yet to be revealed to us but I can't see how anyone could look at Jesus and see an unmerciful God. We can't see the truth from an individual piece of the puzzle. We start to see the truth when you combine them all

Lollerskates said:

So again, what is the point? If one's fate is to be saved, nothing they do will deter that. So, why not indulge in all worldly pleasures? After all, something will "snap" like the prodigal son, and you will ultimately come back to the Father. I can see why his brother would be angry...

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No, I'm with you here. I was just pointing out the implicit reasoning, which I disagree with.

If you take it further, if God creates human beings who can't help but sin (given that you can only be saved through irresistible grace), then he's creating people who disobey him and then punishing them for his own creation.

ObamaChristian said:

Anyone here started off as a atheist and progressed towards being a believer?
Care to share?

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I don't think I know anyone my age who has moved in that direction. But then again, most everyone I know was raised in a religious household, so there's really only one way to go.

Paradoxum said:

Why do you think the Bible was written by God?

I used to think the same thing, but the Bible does seem to have problems, such as contradictions (eg: What with the resurrection?)

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Because that is what is written in the Bible (that it was written by God). I don't think there are contradictions; we may just not be understanding them correctly, so therefore they appear to be contradictions. I'm not biblically literate enough to explain all the apparent contradictions though. Mainly it is a matter of trust to me.

Paradoxum said:

It sounds like you believe because you want to believe. But I wont push my beliefs too strongly.

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I do want to believe, like I had mentioned--I want to believe very much. There was a time when I was an atheist (or rather, I had thought I was a Christian) and wanted to, but there was nothing there beyond a feeling. Nothing was at the foundation of my faith except what I was doing to try to maintain it; therefore, it went away. Now something has changed to where it, though it can't be described as hardly more than a feeling (similar to before), is so much more than that though only I can understand it that way.

Paradoxum said:

I loved God, the problem is that no matter how much you love someone, it matters whether that person really exists. If God exists, reason should support that. When I was a Christian, I thought I had good reasons to believe in God.

So I wouldn't say it's about liking reason more than God. Reason is how to know if what you are doing makes sense. I loved God, but if I'm loving a fictional character, then it doesn't matter how much I love that character... there's no reason to believe in that character.

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Whatever was your experience with God, something overcame it to turn you away from it. Your experience with God was fictional to you then, or it turned that way. What were the good reasons that you thought were sufficient then when you believed in God? Why then did they not become sufficient reasons? Something changed then when those reasons did not become sufficient anymore. When you were a Christian, had you not been exposed to worldly reason and logic?

I would imagine that if one did not depend on God entirely for their fulfillment, to crave nothing more than to know and be with Him, that it isn't too difficult for preachers of worldly reason and logic to tear away someone's belief in God, if God does not sustain it. It is what had happened to me. I wanted to believe in God, but I didn't know Him; I didn't want to know Him. The theology that my family was into sounded neat and interesting, but after a while I got really bored of reading the Bible. Philosophy and logical thinking seemed way more interesting to me, and made a lot more sense too!

Paradoxum said:

I didn't reject God for something else. I just stopped believing in God. Religious experiences could just be psychological... so if someone understands that, they could stop believing the experiences prove God.

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That's true--they could stop believing, unless God sustains their belief. It reminds me of a Bible verse where it says that even the elect would be deceived if it were possible. Of all the talk of end times, that is the only thing that makes me wonder sometimes if this is it. From my limited understanding of psychology and what I know of religious experiences, it does seem very possible that that is all it could be, or rather that a person who does not know God would see it as definitely a matter of a person's psychological disposition.

Yet then it all comes down to trust and how much one wants to believe in God--and of course, if He will sustain their belief. To me, it just doesn't matter, the idea that it could be something psychological. What will it gain for me to throw God out of my life because well, it could just be something psychological? It will gain me nothing and I will lose everything. This world has nothing in it that is attractive to me. I have lost my life by gaining it. Why would I throw away the thing that I have gained so that then I will have nothing?

In what will seem like no time at all, we will all be at the time when our lives are ending. No one of us is going to know what is going to happen to us when we die, though many think they have a good idea. At that time, I will--if God sustains my faith--have no regrets for not dispensing with my faith and going back into the world again. If it were up to me, I would have nothing to do with the world at all, but God's plan is for us not to live in isolation; I must suffer through the trials of this life for the glory that is Him. And at the end, my dying thought will (hopefully) be that I will finally rest with my Saviour, that I am "nearly there". What does it matter if, as the atheist believes, it never happens? Am I the worse off at the end for it? I don't see how it is except for some explanation along the lines of "Well, you might have been able to do or have so many things if you weren't a Christian". Well, those things have no interest for me, they are nothing but empty promises and transient pleasures. The only pleasure I have is of knowing God which is His promise to us for eternity. That is the only motivation I have to continue living.

ObamaChristian said:

The doctrine of irresistible grace was very appealing to me.
It felt somewhat like at the view of universalism, while at the sometime not quite.

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Heh. I find the doctrine to be so horrendous that I (currently a Christian), would spit on such a god if it existed. Or, more likely, choose to think such a god couldn't exist...and then spit on such a god in the after if I proved to be wrong.

I started out as an existentialist. Trying to authenticate and validate my existence through experience and living life to the fullest.

I almost killed myself from suicidal depression based on that.

dhh712 said:

Because that is what is written in the Bible (that it was written by God). I don't think there are contradictions; we may just not be understanding them correctly, so therefore they appear to be contradictions. I'm not biblically literate enough to explain all the apparent contradictions though. Mainly it is a matter of trust to me.

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A book saying that it is written by God isn't a good reason to think it is written by God.

You don't think there are contradictions, I do, so I guess we'll just have to disagree.

I do want to believe, like I had mentioned--I want to believe very much. There was a time when I was an atheist (or rather, I had thought I was a Christian) and wanted to, but there was nothing there beyond a feeling. Nothing was at the foundation of my faith except what I was doing to try to maintain it; therefore, it went away. Now something has changed to where it, though it can't be described as hardly more than a feeling (similar to before), is so much more than that though only I can understand it that way.

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Fair enough.

Whatever was your experience with God, something overcame it to turn you away from it. Your experience with God was fictional to you then, or it turned that way. What were the good reasons that you thought were sufficient then when you believed in God? Why then did they not become sufficient reasons? Something changed then when those reasons did not become sufficient anymore. When you were a Christian, had you not been exposed to worldly reason and logic?

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I used to think arguments for God (cosmological, moral, design) were good argument for God. The historical argument for the resurrection. Healings, religious experiences, etc, were good reasons to believe in God.

They became not good reasons because I thought about them more, and came to the conclusion that they didn't actually prove God. The only reason I thought they did in the first place was because I wanted them to prove God.

I used reason to prove God, and I used reason to see that my reasons weren't good.

I would imagine that if one did not depend on God entirely for their fulfillment, to crave nothing more than to know and be with Him, that it isn't too difficult for preachers of worldly reason and logic to tear away someone's belief in God, if God does not sustain it. It is what had happened to me. I wanted to believe in God, but I didn't know Him; I didn't want to know Him. The theology that my family was into sounded neat and interesting, but after a while I got really bored of reading the Bible. Philosophy and logical thinking seemed way more interesting to me, and made a lot more sense too!

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I wanted to believe. I cried in bed many times for God to save my faith.

Yet then it all comes down to trust and how much one wants to believe in God--and of course, if He will sustain their belief. To me, it just doesn't matter, the idea that it could be something psychological. What will it gain for me to throw God out of my life because well, it could just be something psychological? It will gain me nothing and I will lose everything. This world has nothing in it that is attractive to me. I have lost my life by gaining it. Why would I throw away the thing that I have gained so that then I will have nothing?

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Because you care about truth, and believing in things you have good reason to believe in?

If you just want to believe, then fair enough, especially if you don't force your beliefs on others by law.

In what will seem like no time at all, we will all be at the time when our lives are ending. No one of us is going to know what is going to happen to us when we die, though many think they have a good idea. At that time, I will--if God sustains my faith--have no regrets for not dispensing with my faith and going back into the world again. If it were up to me, I would have nothing to do with the world at all, but God's plan is for us not to live in isolation; I must suffer through the trials of this life for the glory that is Him. And at the end, my dying thought will (hopefully) be that I will finally rest with my Saviour, that I am "nearly there". What does it matter if, as the atheist believes, it never happens? Am I the worse off at the end for it? I don't see how it is except for some explanation along the lines of "Well, you might have been able to do or have so many things if you weren't a Christian". Well, those things have no interest for me, they are nothing but empty promises and transient pleasures. The only pleasure I have is of knowing God which is His promise to us for eternity. That is the only motivation I have to continue living.

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I disagree, but fair enough, you want to believe.

ObamaChristian said:

So in my opinion it would be
Most reasonable: Agnostic
Then: Belief in some sort of God
Then: Belief in no God

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I'm not sure about any kind of greater or less reasonable things... But I will say that I think of athiesm as quite unreasonable... Life comes from life as everything in our experience and existence shows us. To say life comes from non-life is to make a scientifically fallacious statement. I don't have enough blind faith to believe something like that. I suppose I would have fit in quite nicely with all them Greek pagans back in the day. I do have a number of athiest friends that I respect a great deal. At the end of the day, we both believe and follow, truthfully, what we believe to best represent the world around us. And we respect each other for that despite our differences of opinion.

childofdust said:

I'm not sure about any kind of greater or less reasonable things... But I will say that I think of athiesm as quite unreasonable... Life comes from life as everything in our experience and existence shows us.

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To be more precise: Everything in our experience and existence shows us that physical life comes from physical life.

I am still not sure - why Calvinism?

Paradoxum said:

A book saying that it is written by God isn't a good reason to think it is written by God.

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It's circular reasoning, yet it is good enough for me (there are other reasons I have as well such as how perfectly the word of God describes the human condition, how much sense it all makes; yet the main reason is the one I have given). To me, the atheist using evidence from the world to state things about the world is circular reasoning as well just in a broader sense (and to state things about God from the world is just completely nonsensical because God can't be known from the world, only from what He has written).

Paradoxum said:

I used to think arguments for God (cosmological, moral, design) were good argument for God. The historical argument for the resurrection. Healings, religious experiences, etc, were good reasons to believe in God.

They became not good reasons because I thought about them more, and came to the conclusion that they didn't actually prove God. The only reason I thought they did in the first place was because I wanted them to prove God.

I used reason to prove God, and I used reason to see that my reasons weren't good.

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I don't think those are good reasons to believe in God. I think they are better than having no belief at all, yet I don't think that someone will be able to sustain their belief off that, especially when they run into reasoning and logic [as long as they are laymen at that as I am--I think I mentioned before that some logisticians can prove God by reason (as I see you mentioned that you had done) and even this I don't think is sustainable]. I think the only good reason for believing in God is if one has an actual encounter with God so that He has established a relationship with them. Someone isn't going to be able to provide objective evidence of it, but as long as it is real to them that is all that matters. God will sustain it if He wills it to be that way. The other reasons He can sustain as well, it's just that the person on their own will never be able to sustain that kind of reasoning for believing in God (unless they isolate themselves from certain kinds of advanced education or are incapable of understanding such things).

Mainly I think it comes to does one really want to believe in God, or is there something more attractive in the world; or is God not attractive enough, since I've met unbelievers like my brother who say that they are not happy in the world. These are the people that I wish God will intervene in their lives the most since they claim they don't have happiness in the world anyway. Yet I can't make God appear attractive to them if they've never met Him (and they might not recognize they need Him because they think they need something else). I only worry that such people may turn to God expecting Him to make their lives here on earth very attractive and that is just not what is always going to happen.

Paradoxum said:

I wanted to believe. I cried in bed many times for God to save my faith.

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I'm sorry to hear that. I don't know why He has willed it to be this way, yet there is still time for you while you're still alive. Maybe He has just willed that you go for a time in the wilderness and at some time He will draw you back to Him again. For me, I wasn't searching for God when He found me. I was well established in my atheistic beliefs and hadn't known of any need for God in my life. Things were going along perfectly for me without Him (from my perspective). If God wills you to be His, you will be. I can't tell anyone who is satisfied with their life to look for God since I don't know that they will have any reason for searching for Him (and for those who aren't, they might not recognize God as what they need because they might think they need something else). If someone had told me, before God intervened in my life that I needed Him and should search for Him, I would have disregarded their advice as so much nonsense (and mainly a waste of my time).

Paradoxum said:

Because you care about truth, and believing in things you have good reason to believe in?

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If that is your answer, then you must see how you have placed that quest for truth above knowing God. It is too bad because He is the truth, yet He has not given it for all to see that now. One day it will be clear and I hope He will find you before that, but the atheist has no reason to think that that is nothing more than nonsense since I have given no objective evidence for why what I have stated is true.

Paradoxum said:

I disagree, but fair enough, you want to believe.

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What is it that you disagree with?

Objective evidence does exist though. We have the entire Bible at our disposal. One needs only to go through the process of exegesis to gain a more historical understanding of it. I can't post link yet but reclaimingthemind.org offers all sorts of classes on different topics and all of which are taught by seminary grads. Everything in history leaves a footprint. Often times these footprint are erased by time. The history of Christianity has not been.

Faith Unites said:

Objective evidence does exist though. We have the entire Bible at our disposal. One needs only to go through the process of exegesis to gain a more historical understanding of it. I can't post link yet but reclaimingthemind.org offers all sorts of classes on different topics and all of which are taught by seminary grads. Everything in history leaves a footprint. Often times these footprint are erased by time. The history of Christianity has not been.

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Seminary grads? Not the best place to get an objective analysis of the bible.

If one wants to get an objective view of the book, read the work of credible scholars and historians. I focused on the NT and read tons of scholarly and historical works on the same. It is one of the reasons I left Christianity, because the NT is on shakier footing then I could have ever imagined.

bhsmte said:

Seminary grads? Not the best place to get an objective analysis of the bible.

If one wants to get an objective view of the book, read the work of credible scholars and historians. I focused on the NT and read tons of scholarly and historical works on the same. It is one of the reasons I left Christianity, because the NT is on shakier footing then I could have ever imagined.

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Who would those be?

Scipio said:

Who would those be?

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Google will help you out, tons of information available for those who choose to seek it.

I have read the works of; evangelical scholars, moderate scholars and liberal scholars and historians. Different opinions on many things, but there is significant agreement as well.

Here is what the majority of NT scholars and historians agree on regarding the NT:

-Jesus was a real person
-Jesus was baptized
-Jesus had a following
-Jesus was crucified

Beyond that, it is up for grabs and the historical credibility of the NT in regards to anything else is in serious question. Most objective historians would agree, the bible is not a book of historical accuracy (although bits and pieces are likely accurate), it is instead, a book of theology.