Ok, before I get started, let it be known I am not bashing any major religion or belief system... I was raised in a christian home for the biggest part of my life. My dad a pastor of a church for years and years. We went to church almost all the time. I learned, so much, soaked up so much, it was amazing. I was so strong in my beliefs, I wouldn't even listen to what anyone else had to say, I was a rock, I couldnt be moved. As I got older and started to learn about life, and live it for that matter, I started seeing small, but, significant, flaws in this belief system. I tried to hold on to my beliefs as hard as I could, I mean this was pretty much bred into me, but the more I lived in the "real world" the more I saw things were not always as I was taught. Now as an adult, I am about 99.9% sure, I was led the wrong way. Once I started to study older civilizations, and the stories they had to tell, and how christianity borrowed from that.. Other much much older civilizations, speak and teach some of the same stories, great floods, versions of adam and eve, God in heaven that had a savior child with human women. I mean even with all that out the door, where is God for that matter? What happened to seas being parted, pillars of fire leading people, burning bushes, giving people advice.. Did God just decide to stop, are we not worthy enough now, or if he is there does he even care? I am not saying all this to get into a big debate, I am looking for answers. I mean I can see my bro right now shaking his head at me and calling me a God hater LOL.. Love u bro.. Anyway, what ever happened to "It shall be done" but babies die, or are born deformed, or when a kids puppy is dying and he gets on his knees and asks God to heal his pup, or for that matter when its a parent.. Years ago, there was a tornado in alabama, didnt do alot of damage but it had time to run over 2 chuirches full of people and wipe em out.. Seems loving to me. Now I do believe in a higher power of some sort, cause we had to start here somehow, but the God of the bible, I just dont see it.. Is it theres no one here on earth worthy enough for Gods attention, or does he care. And what of heaven and hell? Is this a preps v/s the hoods? Its like a clique, you have to be this way or you cant hang out with the cool kids? Seems like to me the most interesting people arent those in that clique.. To quote Friedrich Nietzsche "In heaven, all the interesting people are missing".. So whats the deal here? Satan has a fallout with God, God gets mad, casts him to earth, and for his punishment he is givin rule over the earth, so we might make it to heaven or we might not? I know adam and eve sinned in the garden, but why did God decide to put this on his creation he made in his own image? So great a love, he sent satan to earth to tempt them into death and hell? Doesnt make sense to me.. I love my daughter, she is a part of me, so would I send her to a crack house to stay where she could be tempted just to see if she loves me enough not to fall? Anyway, like I said before I am not bashing, only looking for answers. Feel free to beat me up on here. Thanks for reading..

Good for you for questioning. That's how you grow and learn who YOU are, not who other people want you to be.

One of the non-Christians here stumbled upon the answer in another thread. Without realizing it, but that doesn't matter...I'll explain it to you now.

2,000,000 or so people saw God as a pillar of fire. God lead the Jews through the desert. Those Jews knew that God existed. They didn't have faith that God existed, they knew it for a fact. As soon as God left their general area, they started worshipping an idol. This proved a point that God wanted to make to humanity and it explained a lot about God's plan. You can't always trust your reason. Reason can be fooled. Magicians make a good living doing just that. Faith cannot be fooled, because it is a gift from the Holy Spirit, given to those who seek God. God wants us to worship him with our hearts, out of desire to know him. Jesus has promised to make himself known to all who search for him with an open heart. That way, you carry your proof of God with you at all times. I believe that God still works in our world, but does so with a light touch, so that we can still believe in faith, rather than through reason.

Its more about purpose than believing..

Hey l3fty I'm with you. I took almost that same mental trip. I think anyone that is truly honest with themselves has to come to those conclusions. Maybe if the church didn't teach that lying is a sin then maybe I could have kept saying "oh yeah God talks to me and I see his miracles everywhere". The funny thing is the farther I get away from that lie the more amazing the world looks.

I experienced the same thing, and came to the same conclusions. I’m totally convinced that the vast majority of the Bible (especially the Old Testament) is nothing more than bogus mythology. None of those things ever happened. At least not the divine aspects associated with them. I imagine that the stories were sparked by real events, but the divine nature of them was either completely fabricated, or simply exaggerated from naturally occurring events.

The New Testament is a differnet ball game. I personally believe that Jesus was a pantheist and tried to teach people about God via the pantheistic picture. However, his words were distorted when recorded in the gospels. Unfortunately Jesus never wrote anything down. There is not one word in the Bible that was actually written by Jesus. Everything in the Bible that refers to Jesus is hearsay, written by men potentially several decades after Jesus had died. In fact, this is precisely what most scholars believe.

Those stories were written by men who believed in the stories of the Old testament, and therefore they slanted their writings about Jesus into the picture they were already familiar with.

If you become familiar with the pantheistic view of God. That God is everything. Or that the universe is a manifestation of God. Meaning that we are a manifestation of God. And you genuinely understand this picture well. Then go back and read what was written about Jesus and try to see pasted the biased views of those who actually wrote the gospels, you will see the Pantheistic view of God shine through brightly in everything that Jesus says.

This is where I am at today. I’m totally convinced that Jesus taught pantheism and was distorted by the people who wrote about his life because of what they had been brought up to believe.

In fact, I personally believe that Jesus himself may have been partially responsible for that view. He probably catered to that religious view just to make what he was attempting to teach more palatable to the people who weren’t prepared to just abandon their old beliefs. In other words, Jesus probably did allow them to believe that he was an incarnation of the God of Abraham if that worked for them. After all, if Jesus really was a pantheist then there would be nothing wrong with allowing people to believe in God in any way they like. Because the TRUE GOD is NOT a jealous God and doesn’t care how people think.

So Jesus could cater to the Biblical image of God without any problem. In fact, it’s quite possible that Jesus even SAW the pantheistic God in the old stories. After all, God is in everything, so the pantheistic God was in everything that happened throughout all of history. Whatever happened in the Bible the pantheistic God was there!!! The only question that remains is whether or not the actual stories are true or whether many of them were just fabrications or gross exaggerations.

Finally, one last thing,…

In order to believe that that Bible is 100% true, then you need to believe that the Quran is basically 100% in error.

They both stemmed from the same original folklore but eventually fell into two camps. To believe in either one requires believing that the other one is massively distorted. What’s probably more likely the truth is that they are both massively distorted from the original myths that were constantly evolving over time. Myths that may or may not have had any divine inspiration or intervention. Who knows?

But to think that any one book contains nothing but ‘gospel truth’ seems to me to be the most naïve thing anyone can be expected to believe.