When i was a kid (or when i was in Nepal), i used to believe in God. I did however have reservations on religion but i still believed in God. Its been a year in US now and having met people from other cultures, the existence of a supreme being doesnt make sense anymore. 

I think that believeing in GOd instills in a person faith, confidence and positivity to get through good times and be appreciative of the bad ones. I want my children to have these qualities so i dont want to tell them that GOd doesnt exist. Moreover, i cant imagine what my parents/relatives will make of me when i talk to them about this. It isnt going to be pretty. 

It does give me great discomfort to think about all this. I must admit i feel less confident and more pessimistic these days. I want to believe in God but my logic doesnt give in anymore. In fact, i get irritated when i hear things like "God COMMANDED you to.." "GOd will PUNISH you if..", "We are SERVANTS in from of Him" "(on Christianity): "Jesus died on the cross for you"(THere are many who have made a similar magnitude of sacrifice). 

I think that God and religion are ancient theories that havent been discarded yet. And it hasnt due to the fear in people of what might happen if they didnt. One of my teachers once said "if there is no god and you believe in god, there is no harm but if there is god and you dont believe in god, there is harm". i feel this and cultural and social stigmas lead people to be religious and not question their beliefs. 

I wanna know what you guys make of this.

dumb and dumber II

My thanks to Chaurey, and others for sticking to the thread. Thanks to all for sharing your experiences and ideas. They have helped me quite a bit.

Homeyji,

Looking forward to reading your full story.

Pinpoint,

You said that this thread has helped you. I know that when you first started this thread you had some concerns. How do you feel now? Has your perspective changed? How? How do you see life now compared to before? Do you feel better? Worse?

What are the doubts you still have? Where do you feel unsure?

Please share.

  Homeyji,

Pinpoint,

Thank you for your mature reply. I think it shows that you are quite a mature person to be ok with confusion. For many this is a very scary place to be.

I feel that confusion and feeling lost is a necessary transition from one healthy state to another. But just make sure that it is not a permanent state. If it becomes a permanent state, then it results in an existential crisis. And that can lead to depression.
I don't want you to suffer through that.

But I just want to say, 'my respect to you.'

In your quest for truth, you are starting with self-honesty. I have done the same. I truly believe that the search for truth starts with self-honesty. Too many times people want to argue with others about what is truth and what is not. But few take the time to be honest with themselves and ask themselves why do they believe what they believe.
Why do they not believe some things?

I feel these are more important questions to ask ourselves than to argue with others.

Not everybody who is trying to prove that they are right...is necessarily looking for the truth. So many times, they argue to be right...but not to search for the truth. So they may even win the argument, but that doesn't mean that they have found the truth.

Sometimes, you can win the battle, without realizing that you have lost the bigger war.

I believe that you don't find the truth through argument. Only through introspection.

Reality is where truth meets self-honesty.

But the above are my conclusions based on my own search. Best of luck to you on your search.

Pinpoint,

I am glad you have embraced the logical path which is not always straightforward. I must admit that I was in your shoes quite a few years ago, and the more I have distanced myself from religion, the more satisfied I have become. The natural world and the universe coupled with  human ingenuity to conquer them is much more exciting to me than to fill every void that exists with one word "God">

Pinpoint,

I am glad you have embraced the logical path which is not always straightforward. I must admit that I was in your shoes quite a few years ago, and the more I have distanced myself from religion, the more satisfied I have become. The natural world and the universe coupled with  human ingenuity to conquer them is much more exciting to me than to fill every void that exists with one word "God">

I agree with Pulsar Beats. Definitely, don't sentimentally or out of fear choose your philosophy--whether it is Theism or Secular. Do it for the right reasons. That is the most important thing.

I wanted to re-iterate something that Pulsar Beats said more strongly.

I know that many of the people advocating for athiesm are doing it to be helpful. They want their brothers to invest in something concrete and stable. They don't want to see their brothers getting lost in a world of confusion.

The most important thing in your search for truth is to have a consistent sense of reference. In many ways, that is what your self-honesty is. But whatever it is, just make sure it is consistent, concrete and that no matter how much you change your other ideas, your beliefs or whatever. Never ever lose that consisten sense of reference, otherwise you will get super lost in life. 


 

I know that most of your lives are between these two extremes. But I want you to see these extremes to understand the nature of your own life. And from this point of view I will explain to you my story.

If someone came to you when you were 13 years old and gave you the choice of taking these two paths, for your life, which path would you take and why?

Path number 1:
In one path, you will have amazing experiences. You will have out of the world experiences. You will gain a lot of confidence from these experiences. You will feel ecstatic. You will have experiences that most people will not have in their lifetime. But in the course of going through this experience, there will times when you will be extremely lost. You will strain to have a consistent sense of self. You will strain to find yourself.
Since your identity is with many places, you will suffer from confusion. But you will have gained a lot of experience and have travelled to many people. You can talk about a lot of things as your point of reference. You understand the lives and ways of thinking of many people. You can relate to many different colorful experiences and can describe these vividly.

Path number 2:
And the other choice you have is to never leave the Kathmandu valley. To go to the same school from grade class 1 to class 12. To have the same schedule everyday. To then go to college. And have a wife and a kid and have a super stable life and you will die pretty much by doing the same thing every day. You know what time you will eat dal bhat in the morning. You know what time you will eat tiffin/khaja in the afternoon. And you know what time you will eat roti tarkari at night.
You will basically live a "normal" average Nepali life like most Nepalese who have been born and died in Nepal have lived. It will be a life with all the pleasures and difficulties of being born and dying in Nepal. It will be boring in it's own Nepali way. It will be exciting in it's own Nepali way. But you will never ever get lost.
But your life will be super-predictable. You will know what to expect in your life at every turn. You will have the same friends from grade school till you're an old man. You will know the ins and outs of Nepali culture because you never travelled outside of Nepal. Your only point of reference is this culture. This is your core identity.
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So I know that most of you will not consciously choose Pathnumber1 or Pathnumber2.

Pathnumber1 is very scary because of so many unknowns. Few of you will consciously take that huge risk. The risk vs returns of this path is not proven. So few would jump into Pathnumber1 without making sure that there was enough return for your risk.

Pathnumber2 is very boring and stale life. Few of you will take that path also. The fact that most of you are in America means you are risk takers. You are trailblazers. If Pathnumber2 was so attractive, you would never have come to America.

So if I am correct, most of you in sajha have chosen the "middle path." The path between Pathnumber1 and Pathnumber2.

Many of you have requested to hear my story. I struggle to come up with the vocabulary because it is such a different experience than most of you have experienced. But I will still try to explain, since you have requested.

Pinpoint,
In many ways, my story is like this movie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Temple_of_Doom

Indiana Jones is a very curious person. He is intrigued by the mystical side of things. So he goes exploring, like I did. And in the course of his journey, he definitely discovers very amazing things. But he also explores and finds very scary things. Things that almost cause him to lose his life.
The same happened to me.

My story is also like the story about the lead character in the movie "Contact." My story would begin where the movie "Contact" ends.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(film)

Tell me PinPoint, would you ever agree to go through an experience like this consciously?

 Imagine the conflicts and contradictions that someone like Jodi Foster's character ( Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway) would suffer from for the rest of her life because she went through a unique experience that she couldn't "prove."

I'm not sure if going through a unique experience would be a gift or a curse if it was an experience that was so different from what other people considered "normal" that people would not believe it when you are trying to explain your experience to the world.

I'm not sure how many of you would want to experience what she did about any experience, including Extra-terrestrial life. But the only catch would be that we would die with that experience without being able to communicate it to a "serious audience." Would we accept to be privy to such a unique experience?

Especially for a scientist like her, that would be pretty harsh. Her reputation would go up in flames. She would lose everything, while experiencing that which she sought to prove...that there is Extra-terrestrial life. But would never be able to 'objectively' prove it to others. What emotions would they go through? How would they deal with it? How do they cope with it?

and in one movie unicorn existed and this kid had a hard time proving that it really did exist.

and in another movie Dorothy had a hard time explaining that she visited Oz and in another Alice went almost crazy after she couldn't prove that she indeed visited the wonderland.

So tell me now are you Jodie, Dorothy or Alice?

Pinpoint,

Naturally I expect you to be skeptical to what I write. If someone else was telling me this story the way I am telling you it would be very hard for me to digest if I had not gone through anything close to this experience.

What is so new about this?

There was a time when the early scientists were burned and tortured by the church for believing in science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

So through out the history of man kind, we have always ridiculed people who think differently than us and who have a different experience than us. There is nothing surprizing or amazing about this. This is how humans are.

This is why understanding what your particular paradigm is so important. Our paradigm shapes how we see the world. And generally, we see our own paradigm as being objective and other people's paradigm as being false. This is what causes us to look down upon and make fun of people whose paradigm is different from our own.

You see this in politics all the time. People who are convinced of the Liberal paradigm think that Conservatives are crazy. Those who are of the Conservative paradigm think that Liberals are lazy and crazy. The ignorant of either paradigm generally become radicals either of the political Left or the Political right. Even a country like the United States with so many educated people, is politically polarized because of people's complete refusal to see the other person's perspective.

That is why they say not to discuss religion/philosophy or politics. Both have very rigid paradigms. We generally pick our paradigm and fight from it rather than choose to study our paradigm to revise it.

@chaurey, back to the reality, they are all fictions, even if it's a  metaphor, it's bad one and nothing to do with the so-called reality we're are living in. I mean common, they are all fictions.
Everyone holds their own beliefs and they don't need to prove them all. Why would they need to do that? 
That was bad metaphor anyway.

No, it was not a bad "analogy" at all. let me explain: if Alice had a dream about being in wonderland and Dorothy had a dream about being in the land of Oz and both did not have any proof, then according to Homey ji it still is real and that they don't need to prove shit about being in those places, their experiences (dreams) should be  enough proof to make everyone else believe in what they think is real, in this case Wonderland and Oz.
Homey ji had a similar experience as Alice and Dorothy and he does not have any proof, he thinks it's godly and strongly believes it is related to god.
Get my point?

@chaurey, O I C

bottomline is there is a god. there is just one god. it's also the truth, when buddhist dies he sees buddha, when christian dies he sees jesus and so on. It's just the projections created by their conciousness. common factor, is that single higher self of our own entity which we give this name god.
Here when I wrote God, it's not like typical mind would think as worshippable one. It's just to denote the higher self of your own consciousness thats it.

however way you take it, take it.

No Chaurey,

The point is that I don't need to tell my story at all. The point is, I couldn't care less if you think my story is real or not. The point is, I don't consider you to be that important for me to me to need your validation before my story has validity. You are just not that important to me.

The only reason I am telling this story is that Pinpoint and others want me to tell this story. I am telling this story in a forum like sajha despite people like you, whom I know will make comments like the ones you do.

You are the last person in sajha that I feel I need to prove myself to. Apart from putting people down and making fun of them, what kind of proof of reality or truth have you established?

Are you an authority of any kind? Where is the proof of your authority?

oh so the dead resurrected to tell you what god they saw when they died? what would an atheist see if they die then? i suppose nothing?