I want to believe

[keemo7]

I have a burning question. I am a 57 year old woman, and I have tried my best to find hope somewhere in life. I have been addicted to narcotics for the past four decades. The only drug that has ever helped me is methadone. I have been diagnosed as bipolar, but most of my bi-time is spent in the down direction.

It's worse than depression. It's a general and all-encompassing feeling of hopelessness that I have had since I can remember. I'm certain that watching my mentally ill and alcohol-fueled mother and her family act out was not the best environment to start a life. Though my father was a good and decent man, when he wasn't working he was too busy fending off my mothers attacks to have much time for his kids.

My parents fought constantly, and my mother was the general antagonist. I was taken to catholic church on Sundays and had to do the Sunday school bit. I didn't buy into or understand any of it back then. I have come to the conclusion that having some type of spiritual belief in something greater then oneself is what keeps people functioning every day in a state of contentment and/or hope.

I have asked "believers" how they do it. This turns out to be a complicated question for them to answer. I don't understand why that is, because it seems to me to be a very rudimentary question. One man told me that if I read the bible, I would understand. The bible was written by men...how can this make a person believe in a god? How does a rational, albeit drug addicted, middle aged, hopelessly lost person force themselves to believe in something that absolutely no one has true evidence of? How does one force themselves to believe?

To me, it appears that these believers are living in a fantasy world. Shouldn't there be proof of something to verify it's existence? Where is the proof? It is not in the bible. It has not been illustrated anywhere. I do believe there was a man named Christ. He obviously had powerful visions and expressed them well enough to create a group of followers. Somehow, we are expected to believe that his mother never had sex. That she got pregnant by some unexplainable and mysterious force?

Doesn't everyone know this makes zero sense, and that it is not physically possible? NO...it happened this one single time to this particular woman. This makes her kid special. And god is the kid's father? How can anyone believe this story? If it did happen, we would expect that it would happen again on occasion, this could make it slightly more believable. One young man told me that when good things happen, they happen because of god. What about the bad stuff I asked. He said the bad stuff happens because of people.

OK then...a god makes all the good stuff happen, and this god made us, and we make tons of bad stuff happen. But if we were created by this god, and he/she/it is so good, why would a god create a group of creatures so capable of cruel and destructive behavior? If there is a god, this thing must either be ignoring us completely or watching us for amusement. I asked if god created humans, is god viewing our dreadful deeds from someplace out in the universe. Or did god just do this creating thing and then just walk/fly/float/drift away? If we are being observed, what is the point of this type of existence? Shouldn't there be a purpose somewhere, if someone is actually controlling the planet and everything that happens on it?

Now we get to the question of heaven. How is that possible? Where is it? Only believers are allowed, and everyone else goes to hell correct? This entire concept, which is responsible for so much brutality seems so utterly ridiculous. People kill each other based on their perceptions of god. If there is a god, why would it let this horrible stuff happen? If god is love, then why are people killing each other? Why doesn't this lovely and brilliant being make the world a better place for everyone? I want to now how to believe. Why didn't I receive this gift? Are some people like myself just born to live in a state of constant hopelessness? What is there to believe in? Can I have some evidence of some kind please?

 

[pro re nata]

. Wow, well that had to feel good! Welcome to bluelight.

 

[keemo7]

Actually no...it feels crappy and leaves me feeling left out of the lucky groups of happy believers. I know there are many outcasts out there, and it's not just me. Does this make us a group of nonbelievers...is this our spirituality? I guess this is why I am here. I would like to feel as though I am a part of something, anything...just not so horribly alone

 

[pasha]

welcome to the community.

homeless -> the dark side

 

[neversickanymore]

Hey Keemo and welcome to Bluelight. Religion was made by humans. If you want to believe in god.. travel to a dark place away from city lights on a clear night and look up at the stars.

 

[Maya]

I'm not entirely sure if this is going to help you with finding answers to your questions, but I will try to give you my opinion.

Neversickanymore already mentioned that humans made religion. To me, there is no God. The world was made because of the natural phenomena that happened before called the big bang theory I think you have read about this too.

Humans are humans, just like how their are classifications of animals, the humans are also animals but with a more complex life form specifically how our brains are made of. We are born due to sexual reproduction. God did not make us, we occurred naturally due to natural causes.

Your question about heaven, none of the living can answer that, but what I believe is that when we die, we die, we don't go to either heaven or hell. The bright light that some people account for which they think is the afterlife or seeing their body whenever they go into a coma is the subconscious of the brain, the electrical activity in the brain. Once you completely die, all of these are gone.

 

[paranoid android]

I grew up in a Irish Catholic neighborhood and up until i was maybe 10 years old i went to a Catholic school because it was not until then that the schools here finally became non sectarian. Even after that though our education was tinged with backwards Catholic beliefs and we where told that Catholicism was the only true religion. That along with the lovely sex ed courses where we where taught that homosexuality was evil, masturbation was evil, sex outside marriage was evil and basically any form of sex that didn't result in babies was evil made me realize it was all bullshit fairly early on. I think i pretty much realized god was not real around the same time i stopped believing in fairies, Banshees and ghosts. But i have only been a outright atheist since my mid teens as i don't think i really put much thought into it before then. Thank fuck those "good ol days" are gone because as religious as this place was you would now be pretty lonely in a church here on sunday. The kids nowadays here look at you like your from mars if you tell them about when Catholics could not go to Protestant schools and vice versa and even if you had only 1 parent of a different religion it was somehow a big deal. Hell there was one guy i knew in school who's mom was Anglican but he was raised Catholic and that was damn near a scandal back then ffs. Talk about backwards

I quickly realized that god was nothing more then a invention by man to not only keep people in line (you couldn't very well have the peasants having loads of sex and eating meat on Fridays now could they 8) ) but also act as a sort of father figure to give the most desperate of people a false promise of a afterlife as a sort of reward for their often hellish existence. Marx was right when he called religion the Opium of the masses as those most unhappy are the ones who find some joy in it. Man created god in his own image not the other way around and anything else is simply idealism of the worst kind. In order for a person to believe in religion in the first place they must either not develop or stomp out critical thinking altogether otherwise it's going to create a fuckload of cognitive dissonance.

I know this is probably not helpful but in my opinion neither is religion. Believe in yourself not some mystical spirit.

 

[sarcophagus.heels]

Actually no...it feels crappy and leaves me feeling left out of the lucky groups of happy believers. I know there are many outcasts out there, and it's not just me. Does this make us a group of nonbelievers...is this our spirituality? I guess this is why I am here. I would like to feel as though I am a part of something, anything...just not so horribly alone

I used to envy people with faith, but I've long since gotten over it. You can't force religious belief - in fact, trying to do so is likely to just confuse you because even if you go through the motions, there would always be a part of you that didn't quite buy it. I've had my fair share of mental issues mixed with drug problems, and spent a few years desperately trying to find SOME religion which would offer me some comfort and serenity. It honestly did more harm than good, because I was in a constant identity crisis. Once I accepted that I didn't believe there was a god or an afterlife, and that's okay, I actually felt a lot better. I still haven't resolved my problems, but at least I wasn't trying to force myself to believe in something that ran completely contrary to my reason.

I do agree that feeling like you're part of a community offers a lot of solace - in fact, there's a bit of sociological theory which says that religion came about as a means of uniting people and organizing society. We all want to feel like we "belong" to something. For the non-religious, you just have to find a different sort of community, whether it's friends, family, or an online community like this one. The bottom line is, you don't need religion to be happy. Denmark and Sweden are full of nonbelievers, and they seem to be doing well for themselves x)

Anyway, good luck, dear! I'm much younger than you, but I am also struggling with bipolar and intermittent drug abuse problems. There's hope, but I know that it can be hard to see it sometimes.

 

[herbavore]

Keemo, I am very sorry for your suffering. Childhood suffering has a way of staying inside and following us around unless we can ever get right back down to it and that is hard to do. I encourage you to find ways to explore that old grief (abandonment by a mother that could not be a mother is a big deal) with a trusted person.

I once tried very hard to believe like you described. I was about 14 and lost, lost, lost. I couldn't do it. I know exactly what you mean about envying the people that just accepted what to me seemed like the written down ravings of a bunch of lunatics (I'm talking about the old testament and the Book of Mormon both of which were a source of great comfort to my relatives). At first I thought there was something wrong with my brain, then I thought there was something definitely wrong with their brains and my conclusion was finally that every single one of us goes stumbling through this life searching for love and meaning but most of all for connection. For me the sense of connection to the profound mystery of life became as powerful--and gave me as much comfort-- as my grandmothers' connection to those biblical myths. My experience came through mescaline and peyote and LSD outside in the mountains but it could have come from anything. When I was feeling so lost as a young girl I had lost my connection to everything--to my family, to my culture, to myself. In my fear I made horrible and self-destructive decisions. I think our loss of a relationship with nature robs many of us of the peace that really is available. It sounds simplistic but nature--especially being alone in nature has saved me more than once.

I am about your age, a little older. One thing that I feel now is how short this life really is and I have a heightened appreciation for the most mundane things, small little things that are nothing but seem beautiful to me. I guess it is from the way time speeds up as you age.

Welcome to Bluelight and especially to TDS. You will probably want to explore the Philosophy and Spirituality sub-forum--lots of great exploring minds over there mulling things over.

 

[Jabberwocky]

keemo, i am sorry you have had such a difficult life and are still having a hard time of it.

your post struck very close to my heart, i've often wished for the contentment that religion brings some people.

is it the community that you get from adhering to a system of beliefs that you want more, or the belief itself? i have suggestions either way.

do you live somewhere big enough to have a sceptics/humanist/atheist group. Where I live, we have atheist sunday assembilies, two skeptics groups, a humanist group, and others all meeting regularly and some people use these to achieve a similar sense of belonging without needing to regularly attend church.

i don't think its really possible to change beliefs without strong evidence/argument, the evidence for religion is always something very personal and individual. but it could be possible to derive more satisfaction from your existing beliefs by reinterpreting them. to me, there is something greater than myself, and its not god, its nature, and mans interaction with nature, which is a totality that we all contribute to, and can make the world an exciting and wonderful place, and sadly a more dangerous place. i've been really lucky in having had the opportunity to study a lot, and think i get the same sense of awe from my understanding of nature that religious people get from their understanding of god. its a much more brutal world view in some ways, your questions about suffering and heaven don't arise. argh i don't really know how to make my point so will stop rambling and hope you get it.

 

[Free]

I have asked "believers" how they do it. This turns out to be a complicated question for them to answer. I don't understand why that is, because it seems to me to be a very rudimentary question. One man told me that if I read the bible, I would understand. The bible was written by men...how can this make a person believe in a god? How does a rational, albeit drug addicted, middle aged, hopelessly lost person force themselves to believe in something that absolutely no one has true evidence of? How does one force themselves to believe?

To me, it appears that these believers are living in a fantasy world. Shouldn't there be proof of something to verify it's existence? Where is the proof? It is not in the bible. It has not been illustrated anywhere. I do believe there was a man named Christ. He obviously had powerful visions and expressed them well enough to create a group of followers. Somehow, we are expected to believe that his mother never had sex. That she got pregnant by some unexplainable and mysterious force?

Well first off - you have to recognize the fact that you are framing your quest for answers in terms of the religions you were raised with - in the framework of Christianity - but if you had been born on another continent, you would more likely be making a post about Brahman or Allah or any of the non-abrahamic deities, all complete with their own visions of afterlives, their own versions of spiritual rewards or punishments for good and bad behaviors, their own "holy books", their own priesthoods, their own believers.

So, now, every culture has it's own god/gods and it's own religious beliefs, so let's forget about jesus for a second, k? Whether Christianity and the christian version of god/heavens/hells/the afterlife are true or false has no more bearing on whether there is a god or deeper meaning to life than "whether Zeus is real or not" ..it's just an irrelevant manmade religious belief system which is currently believed in by your culture, just like the other gods were before the ones that are popular now - it has nothing to do with anything real (unless you're inclined to believe otherwise, in which case enjoy) or the actual nature of the universe or the life that you are living.

You are alive and free to use your own mind to figure life out for yourself - it's a great freedom and a great opportunity to come up with your own ideas and theory about life and your place in the universe. Forget the bitterness you have towards religion and the absurd beliefs - they are no more relevant than Zeus - yes, those myths are ridiculous, but that's why they don't effect you at all. If you really think about it, what is going on here (life as human beings) is basically the equivalent of a bunch of apples growing out of a tree - in this case, the apples represent individual human beings/life forms growing out of the universe(the tree on which the individual apples hang and grow out of). The tree exists both before and after the individual apples grow on it, and the apples - though they are not conscious of it - are really FULLY expressions of the tree itself and it's true underlying nature - as those apples could not exist in the way that they are if they WEREN'T expressions of the underlying reality of the tree on which they have grown, right? Same goes for human beings, we are existing IN / totally made of / created by the universe and pieces of the universe - we are smaller life forms it is forming or growing within itself - granting them(us) the things it has inherently (life, energy, awareness, freedom to the furthest extent we are capable of both physically and mentally). When the individual apples on the tree die, the tree is still there, and the apples were just individuated units of the tree's energy and life force having individual / unique experiences ON the tree, as you are of/in/on the universe that spawned you.

The tree creates and grows the apples, the apples are shaped by the tree and given their existence based on the underlying NATURE OF the tree itself, yes? So we are experiencing the underlying nature of the universe itself as we are grown out of it (and live within it, as parts of it / individuated semi-autonomous units of life within it) as otherwise we could not exist in the ways that we are any more than the apples do. Apples don't form in the way that they are by magic, it's coded into them by the underlying realities of the trees on which they grow.

If there is a god, why would it let this horrible stuff happen? If god is love, then why are people killing each other? Why doesn't this lovely and brilliant being make the world a better place for everyone? I want to now how to believe.

Why do you need god to be a person? (whether you are "believing" or "not believing" because you're hopeless - ) Why do you need "god" to be someone who "lets things happen" or "doesn't let things happen", why do you want a god to be a big judge character up in the cosmos sitting on a throne "deciding things", doesn't that seem kind of boring to you? Would it not make more sense to think that you are given the freedom to do anything, just as the universe you are part of is free? You come from it, you have all of it's aspects, you are parts of "it"(it being the underlying life force of the universe that formed you), why would it limit itself? The freedom of expression human beings have is not limited in either direction (good or bad), why do you think a god would see it as a positive TO apply limits? Having all of these preconceived notions of deity really sets you up for bitterness and failure of your faith, or because you don't believe it and think it's ridiculous but you still give it too much credence because "other people believe X and that makes no sense".

Here you are and you're like a part of this grand thing, and you sit around seeing yourself and your existence as this small hopeless thing, looking to blame some human-esque god for the troubles you see in the world that you were born in and seeking to reduce everything to fit into such a small box - this is the reason for the hopelessness.

Why didn't I receive this gift? Are some people like myself just born to live in a state of constant hopelessness? What is there to believe in? Can I have some evidence of some kind please?

By virtue of existing and being here to even ASK these questions and live this human life, you DID "receive this gift", you're free to go in whatever direction you are capable of. What is there to believe in? Why do you need belief when you have the existence that we find ourselves in all around us? It's right here in front of you and just takes some thought and logic to understand, and gaining this understanding is very satisfying and freeing. The evidence is all around you and in every example of man's nature going in either direction.



So far primitive apples(human beings) have come up with primitive explanations as to what life is which fit the systems of morality necessary for people to function together at the time(be good = reward when you die, be bad = punishment when you die, god is very human-like and has "wants" of you "gets angry" and "gets happynd " and etc.) - this doesn't mean anything other than "people use what they know to try to explain what they don't know", we try to apply what we are familiar with to what we are not familiar with, so that's what our ancestors have done with the religions. Take them for what they are worth, fun and sometimes valuable myths, stories.

The point of me typing this out is don't let yourself get caught up in the religions, you can think beyond the box when you are looking for answers. So you've used drugs for decades, so what? You're here now, that's the past, you are capable of going whichever way you want to, you're free to do nothing or change everything, it's not up to anyone else but you.

As for answers about death, why don't you ask or look to reports from people who have actually died? Read these, they might be interesting to you: -

http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Archives/NDERF_NDEs.htm

http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Archives/Exceptional Accounts.htm

(NDERF stands for Near Death Experience Research Foundation and it is headed by 2 MDs, husband/wife doctors)

I hope that you can forgive your mother for her behavior, just like you don't have a spotless record behaviorally, no one is perfect and some people are more fit than others to raise kids, and I'm glad you had a good father. Let me know if you want me to elaborate or keep talking, or if you want to talk about anything privately. You would benefit yourself by re-evaluating everything that you already think or know. You are thinking within a context given to you by a church/religion/culture that you don't even seem to believe in anyways, and seeing as you realize it makes no sense, then why do you keep trying to apply it to real life, or get resentful at real life for the ridiculous of something fictional? You just victimize yourself that way and rob yourself of the opportunity to think your own thoughts and realize your own understandings.


PS - think about the things I'm saying - I am not spouting new-age catchphrases, think about this: YOU are part of the universe, where YOU are/where YOU exist right now in spacetime is what the entirety of the universe around you is arranged around doing right now - at that particular location - the entire universe surrounding "you" is "doing" YOU. You are part of what the universe is doing with it's own energy - so am I - in a sense we are all individual parts of the same one universe talking to itself / experiencing itself through "each other"(but "each other" is in quotation marks because we are really all formed of material and energy from the same one source and we exist and interact on the same one metaphorical but literal "tree"). You, your parents, your family, me talking to you right now, we are all personified aspects of the universe we grew out of - whether you believe in a particular god or no, this is true - you grew out of the same universe that I did, the universe giving itself many ways to express itself through many forms of life and we happen to be the most advanced on this particular planet. Your negative view of things is like the universe playing a trick on itself, because obviously it can't impregnate all life-forms with the knowledge that "they are the universe", because that would kind of depreciate the value of freedom of experience.

Doesn't everyone know this makes zero sense, and that it is not physically possible? NO...it happened this one single time to this particular woman. This makes her kid special. And god is the kid's father? How can anyone believe this story? If it did happen, we would expect that it would happen again on occasion, this could make it slightly more believable. One young man told me that when good things happen, they happen because of god. What about the bad stuff I asked. He said the bad stuff happens because of people.

Yes, everyone knows it makes zero sense, it's just a story, it's one that repeats over and over and is used throughout many ancient religions to make their mythical figures seem more special (the virgin birth) and it is also an allegory. These people who believe these things are letting this religion own them - this is fine and good, but it's not different than allowing the belief in Zeus to own you and control the way you think about. life, or in Ahura Mazda (if you prefer or need a "one true god" to accept this analogy) vs. Ahriman. These are silly stories when taken literally, yes, and they aren't really sensible ways to explain life even as allegories, so just move beyond them and think about something else - free yourself from these things.


TLDR: religions have nothing to do with what life is about