Am I an athiest?

[Chris OConnor]

If hair is for protecting us from particles in the air why isn't hair all over our bodies in the same density as it is at the top of our heads, in our arm pits and in our nether regions? Come on, Katelyn. You're making stuff up in every post OR you have been taught complete nonsense.

[Chris OConnor]

If the earth was millions of billions years old, why hasn't it crumbled?

This would have been a hilarious question if Katelyn wasn't actually being serious here.

This is like saying, "If we came from monkeys why aren't we all in the zoo right now? Hmm? Thought so."

[(author) Katelyn]

@R. LeBeaux, No. I do not want anyone in hell, but that's THEIR choice. Not mine. Yeah, I'm not backing down from a fight. That is not the way Southern women work. Not in North Carolina, at least. I may have been born in OK, but I was raised in NC, which is considered South since we signed that document during the Civil War. Out here we speak our minds, and let our opinions known. There is a saying, "Southern women have backbone's like steel, and skin like mangolia's." Now, The skin part is not true for me, but the backbone part, I am working up to it. God has given y'all some really great minds, now onlly if you used it right. Can you imagine the world if people used their mind's for God, instead of filling them with wicked? I have heard people sing. Really sing. Pouring their soul's and heart's into the song. If only they would do that for Christian music. You all probably think I think that all y'all are souls, and I'm gonna save you. Yeah right. If only I had that ability. But I don't. Y'all do have souls, but I can't save you. I can't make you see. I can only try to tell you. Whether you listen or, as you have done this whole time, not. But I'm not stopping. I won't quit. Not until I'm dead or Jesus comes back. I will not have your blood on my hands. I will do my best. I am going to tell y'all about some athiest's who prayed. Ha, got you on that one.

[(author) Katelyn]

Apparently they do not want anyone to know Dawson prayed, along with a few others. I have heard the quotes, He said something about God, I pray- and thats like all I remember. But someone said something about feeling the flames (Hell). Yeah, y'all won't believe me, but its true. Just not on Google. It's okay. In Heaven I'll ask God. Or if you get saved, you could ask God yourself.

[Interbane]

Why do you think it's wicked to not believe something?

[(author) Katelyn]

Why do you not believe in God? Don't you think it's wicked? Of course not. Not to you. To you, there is no God. I did not say it is wicked to believe in everything. Just what IS WICKED. Like magic, beer and wine (though real, it is wrong and against the Bible), and many, many more things. I am curious now. Why are you an athiest? What made you decide there was not a God? I don't want to hear that you just came up with that, or if there was a God, He didn't care. No, I want the truth. That is all I care to hear. I'll tell you why I became a Christian. I always knew there was a God. He always took care of us. My life, my mom's life had been shattered. My bio dad was abusive when I was a infant and baby. He was probably on drugs. I don't know. I think my mom said he threatened to kill her a few times. He dropped me down basement stairs and landed on me. Cement. Hundred-something weighing dude. On top of me, a very small only 6 pounds when I was born infant. Though, there were no injuries. I was fine, not even bruised. Maybe I'll tell you the story of a house we had lived at later. My mom found a way to leave Indy (though we had started at OK, where I was born) and ran to NC, where her mother, my grandma, had left OK to go. My aunt was also there. My mother was only 17. We were homeless, we stayed in a shelter. My grandmother was on drugs, though I don't know if it was then or earlier, but she was tough. Me and my mother went through so much, but we were always safe. My bio dad tried to run my mother over with a car, while she was holding me. We were fine. My grandma settled down, and we moved in with her. My aunt was around 14-16 when she got saved. Everyone thought she was brain-washed. They thought she had lost it. But then, a year later, My grandma got saved. A year after that, My mom got saved. And a year after that, I got saved. My mom met the guy she is currently with, and they have had 4 kids together, and another on the way. That equals 7 kids, b/c my mom had me, and then my bio dad and her had another kid. Life isn't easy. But just b/c something doesn't look right in your life, doesn't mean that you should give up on God. He is the ONLY One that gets me through. Yeah, I've seen my bio dad like three years ago. He came to my 10th B-day party and told me he would never leave, even if things got tough. I thought that he was telling the truth. Guess what? He wasn't. He left 2 weeks after. I now had trust issues. You shoulld see my druggie granny now. No drugs. No drinking (beer and wine-wise). She's clean. Has been for 10 years, I think. My point is, just b/c things are tough or grim, don't give up on God and blame Him. Don't say there is no God. There is. He's the Great I Am. He's everything. God bless.

[Suzanne]

I am sorry you and your Mom suffered such horrible abuse. You have really had it hard. I have seen many women who have had the life that your mother suffered as an abused woman turn away from God asking, “Why would God let this happen”. They don’t stop believing in God, they are angry and they turn away. These women find themselves feeling even more worthless and even more abused. So, if turning to God helped your mother cope with her circumstances, and was able to build a meaningful life for herself and for you, this is a situation where a belief in God can be useful. There are many other roads your life, and your mother’s life could have taken. I am truly happy to hear you say that you are safe.

I am curious now. Why are you an athiest? What made you decide there was not a God? I don't want to hear that you just came up with that, or if there was a God, He didn't care. No, I want the truth. That is all I care to hear

I also have to say Katelyn,that I find your last post to be a little different that many of your others. Asking why, being curious, asking people to open up and discuss their feelings are good things. Don’t be afraid of what people say and don’t be so quick to call them wicked, just listen. You have opened up, and now I know you a little bit better. This is a good thing, this is where good conversation starts. No one expects you to turn away from God, or turn away from your beliefs. You may not agree with the opinions of others, but you may learn something. Your question sounds very sincere.

[realiz]

Why are you an athiest? What made you decide there was not a God?

I am not an athiest. I would decribe myself as an agnostic, perhaps leaning toward a theist agnostic. I do not know if there is a god on an analytical basis, in fact on that basis I'd probably lean more toward athiest agnostic, but on an emotional one I feel a little differently. I don't feel that I have ever turned away from God nor embraced any particular religious doctrine and been 'saved'. I have always been questioning.

I do not believe that the Christian bible is factual. I do not believe that there is any group or any individual in the world who has it 'right', who has the one and only 'truth'. I have always been surprised that anyone could believe in a literal bible.

I understand why you would believe in something that appears to have helped your family and given you happiness and inner strength. What you are really believing in is something inside yourself (which could be called God). Which in itself, is not a problem. When it becomes a problem is when you believe that anything outside the beliefs taught by the group you have found this belonging with, is wrong and evil, when you feel guilty for questioning anything other than this exact dogma, and when you feel that to learn and grow means to turn your back on your loved ones. Believing in the God you feel inside does not mean you have to believe every far-fetched thing you are told.

I do not think that beer and wine are evil. It is only using things in excess that is bad for your health and potentially dangerous. This is true of many things, food, prescription drugs, exercise, work and play. There is nothing inherently evil in anything. The more knowlege you have of your body and the effects of the use or overuse of activities or substances the better and more informed choices you'll be able to make.

[VMLM]

Thank you Katelyn for telling us about yourself! That lastpost is probably more valuable than the rest of this entire thread put together, simply because it's honest and direct and curious...

As to this:

Why do you not believe in God?

Well you see, my family has always jumped around a lot, mostly on account of my dad's job as a Doctor in Public Medicine. This basically means he's something like a medical programs manager, an NGO or private entity will contract him to run vaccination program in X third world country, or a population control program somewhere else... As a result I've had the good fortune of meeting a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds and religions.
So back when I was about 11 I had three best friends, one was called Sharo. She was from India and she had all these different posters of gods and demons hanging around her house. I loved Sharo's house, her mom would always make this really spicy kind of pickled... "something", along with kebabs and yogurt, and we basically lazied around playing sega, shooting the breeze... whatever.
One day, much like any other, my mom tells me about my first communion. As a kid I was reaaaaally religious, and I mean pray every night, thank god at dinner, confess my sins religious; so I'm overjoyed with the prospect of it, and one the first things I do is go tell my friends.
Cheng-Daw, he's another one of those three best friends I mention before, well he's a Buddhist to the core, and he starts bashing Catholicism (which is the religion I got) and telling me how I've got it all backwards because really god doesn't exist and Jesus learned from Buddha anyway, so this whole first communion thing is pretty stupid and I shouldn't get all excited about it. I, of course, mustered all of my 11 years experience in dialogue and confrontation management and came back with "Nu uh, you're stupid!.. And you're going to hell because god exists you don't believe in him", or something like that. And Cheng-Daws's no lame duck, he comes right back at me with something similar.
So there we were, having what would prove to be the same theological argument I'd later have over and over throughout most of my adolescence (only with some more stuck up people and some fancier words) , when I noticed that Sharo wasn't saying much of anything at all... And it came to me as a shock, though I 'd seen her house a hundred times, that she didn't believe in the same god I did (yeah, so I wasn't exactly the sharpest knife in the cupboard at 11, sue me).
Later that day, as I tried to grasp the consequences of this, I found that it just didn't make any sense to me. Sharo's mom was a perfectly nice lady, she didn't deserve to go to hell simply for not believing in god, neither did Sharo. Neither did Cheng-Daw for that matter (though having just had an argument with him I was convinced he was dumb-ass), or really any of the people I knew who didn't believe in god...
So then I read the bible, and I talked some more with Cheng-Daw about Buddha (not so heatedly), and I talked with Sharo and her Mom about her gods. Which turned out to be really awesome because Hindu mythology is incredibly complex; full of demons, gods and heroes loving and hating and doing various things to each other along those lines... And throughout this process, which must have taken maybe two years of my life (my first communion was a distant memory by then), I realized that Buddha and Vishnu and Laxmi and Ganesh and aaaaall the other gods were really just as legitimate as the one I believed in.. Yet somehow I was convinced that my own god must be the real one, but I couldn't say why, and I still hadn't come to grips with the idea that perfectly good people should go to hell for no other reason than for not believing.. it just didn't seem fair.
It's been a long time since then. I left Sharo and Cheng-Daw when I followed my dad to another third world country.. Well over a decade now. I don't belive in god anymore, I can't really. I've read too much history, seen too many people argue unflinchingly and convincingly for a hundred different gods, I've seen people pray and laugh and cry for a dozen beliefs, and I've come to realize that religion is a human, living thing. It has human roots, it exists for human reasons and it is used for a million different, human, ends. Is there something greater than ourselves? Some intangible, unfathomable truth beyond what we can hear and see and smell and touch? Maybe... Though I think it's probably as tangible and fathomable as anything else, we just haven't wrapped our heads around it yet. Is it God? No, I don't think so.

So there you have it Kate, that's my story. A rather simple story, I know.. I hope it helps .

[(author) Katelyn]

Thank you for being openly honest. Anyone else who wishes to share their story is quite welcome. I somewhat understand your reasoning. You felt you had all these friends, all different religion's. I know I'm going to get chewed for this but, none of those religions were right. There is only one way to Heaven and the Bible tells you.
John 14:6
King James Version (KJV)
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
I understand having friends that are not the same religion you are. I had friends that weren't anything. I do not agree with Catholics, Presb., FWB, Methodist, Morman, Buddism, ect. But I want to know more about your side. To understand where y'all are coming from. Maybe you should try going back to church. It couldn't hurt. If there is no God, then what's the worst that can happen? I believe you all don't want to go to church b/c you know, deep in your heart, there is a God. And your afraid if you go to church, He might open your eyes and heart. But its okay. He can't force you to get saved. He doesn't want you a robot. He wants you to have the will to do what you want, but it breaks His heart. Try it. Go to church. Any church. Look around churches, different religions. See which one makes more sense to you. If nothing, then just go back to the way you are. You have nothing to lose. Only to gain. The wine and beer thing, it is wicked. The Bible is firmly against strong beverages. It is a poison. You are paying money to kill yourself. Cigaretts as well.