Converting from one religion to another .

[Pandora]

(Yaay, first thread about religion~ forgive me if there's already a thread like this. I've looked .)

So the purpose of this thread is to discuss if you've ever changed your religion - whether it was once, or twice, or a dozen times. Or maybe you've stuck to your beliefs all of your life, yet you have given thought to other believes in the system. Whether if you were Agnostic and went Atheist 3 years later, you were Catholic and went Buddhist 1 week later, or if you were Taoist and became a Unitarian Universalist (I don't know what either of those are) 2 days later. I'm curious to know. I've been a Christian Scientist most of my life, and I've honestly have felt some pangs of agnostic feelings now and then, but considering my life wouldn't feel any different whether I switched or not, I decided to stick with Christian Science since it really hasn't done any harm to me, and if "no one really knows what happened" then we should be free to think ourselves what really happened, as long as it doesn't cause conflict with other people. But that's me.
I've had a few friends that have been thinking about a change in beliefs a couple of times or actually have converted (one whom just didn't know what to believe as he was this one time, this another time, and then back to this after that, and then something else another time.), and some haven't changed at all if they have, some changed a lot if they have.
But have you ever converted, whether if it was by yourself or with the help of another person? What are your thoughts ?
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[Sum1sgruj]

I haven't switched religions in absolution, but I have questioned my predominant beliefs.
Overall, my faith is more agnostic than certain. Though I would like to think science and nature runs supreme, I know that that's a fools logic.
There are many things within the Bible that make much sense, and other things that don't. Science would have you believe in staggering, impossible coincidences to explain any number of mysteries within our universe. The Bible gives it's own explanation, where the probability is mathematically higher than the exasperation of science. It's funny, I know. You can't argue with the data, as any scientist will say.

Anyways, to the point>>

Christianity used to be the main theistic squeeze for me, but then I started to notice the pitfalls of the New Testament in it's entirety. Not only did the prophesy fail to unfold as it said, but Judaism, the original religion of God, does not speak of the same Messiah as Christians.
The Christian capitol of the world is America, which is practically the new Babylon. Catholicism is practically sho-biz.
The way I see it, Jewish and Islamic beliefs are the only ones that stay true to the original workings of the Bible. The New Testament has only paved way to a fear of infinite hell that I think nobody deserves, whether you're a murderer or terrorist. After a 100,000 years in hell, you would have forgotten who you are or where you came from, what you did, etc.

It's outrageous. So I have, recently, started to feel bitter towards Christianity. Yet, I feel contradiction in the Old Testament. This is where my agnostic side kicks in.
I believe in the Judaic/Original God, and no longer the absurdity in religion today. Whether he is what he's proclaimed to be is beyond me, I just know the difference between words of a god and words of man that strike fear and manipulation.

 

[Alpha Spirit]

I was a strong muslim all my life. Was going to prayers very often, to Islam school and was even educated by a fundamentalist.
... but in the past year I turned into a strong atheist(I live in Europe). I don't know how, but I started thinking about life and the universe. In my mind God has no place.
Weird, don't you think? From a strong muslim to a strong atheist.

 

[Kei]

I used to be a Muslim (I live in Jordan), I have a good idea on Islam, I know almost everything about it and the history of it, but I've always doubted religion, I just couldn't get the idea of a god, like where did he come from? So I believe there's no god until that question is answered. Also, I never liked the idea of being restricted by religion's rules and what not.

 

[Sir Fratley]

I was born, baptized and raised as a Roman Catholic. However, throughout most of my religious life, while I was faithful in many respects, there were certain truths that made no sense to me. The first was in the general attitude of the people I knew and how they treated certain individuals, namely Wiccans and Pagans. For all that Jesus said 'Love thy neighbor' and 'Love thy enemy', it seems that, for a good number of catholics, these rules only apply if said others accept Jesus as their lord and savoir.

But more than that, several other things didn't seem to make much sense. The majority of the Old Testament is full of 'God says kill them', while the New Testament gives us a completely different, more merciful and loving God. Next is the whole Adam and Eve story. I find myself asking 'why punish tens of thousands of generations for the actions of two people?'.

Then there came the cover-ups with the small handful of pedo priests. Listening to the radio, hearing evangelists start bashing on non-believers left and right, and even regular believers turning people away because they aren't christian.

Then I went to Iraq as an Army medic. That was when I discovered Sekhmet. She led me to do some soul searching, as well as information searching. By chance, or perhaps by Her guidance, I found the Kemetic Orthodoxy, a religion which pays homage to the Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt.

The people were, and still are, very friendly, and many things seem to make more sense. No, I do not believe the sun is a God. I believe it is a representation of His power because of the fact that without the sun, there would be very little to no life on this planet. I also believe that the Divine is an Entity of Duality, much like construction and destruction. It makes more sense that all of the Gods and Goddesses are actually the same Divine Being expressing itself to us in forms we can relate to. It explains why so many religions from around the world and throughout history share values that are very similar as far as morality, even those that have had no contact with one another (the Egyptians and the Lakota Native Americans for example).

After going through the beginners course and being declared a friend of the faith (Remetj), I did a bit more soul searching to confirm what it was that felt truly right to me, and then I decided to become a true member of the faith (Semshu). To this day, I have not regretted my decision, and I have a closer, more personal relationship with the Aspects of the Divine. In particular, with Sekhmet, Het-hert Anubis, Amun, Djehuty and Wepwawet.

 

[Sepalcure]

Haha religion and I had a very strong love-hate relationship for most of my life. Let's see I was baptized as a Methodist in a little Methodist church about a block or two away from my mom's little brownstone rent-out house. When we moved to New Jersey and I stayed in Jamaica at 9 years old, I attended an Anglican Church because my grandparents had been confirmed into the congregation. They'd wanted me to be confirmed too but I opted to not live in JA and come back to the states. Yeah and then when I was around 12 my mom decided to have myself and my cousin go with her to a Baptist Church which fell through when we realized how much damn tithes the pastor was trying to swindle out of the congregation. We didn't attend for a full year, just a mere month or so.

As a kid I remember being a very devout religious person. I think for me, my need for religion stemmed from how very little of it I'd actually been exposed to. My baby sitter (funny, right?) was the first person to personally invest in getting me a Bible for my birthday when I was around seven. I was an evil kid . . . I would shout at people, disrespect everyone that wasn't my mother, I smacked a 4 year old once for "misbehaving". I was especially mean to my baby sitter, I would never listen to her, I was an arrogant, spoiled, unforgiving and unrelenting kid so she gave me a Bible to save me.

She passed away when I was in Jamaica and that's when I went really deep into faith. I felt like I needed to save myself . . . at 9. Eventually I became more open minded when I left Jamaica. I no longer felt the need to put down someone who didn't follow a Christian doctrine. After I talked to people: Christians, Atheists, Agnostic-Theists, Muslims, etc. I started to formulate my own opinions.

I learned that no religion was any different from the other, they all essentially pledged the same thing, particularly monotheistic ones. I then became an Agnostic-Theist, I think the personal tragedies that I saw my family mourn and struggle through both in terms of death and financial struggle and drug abuse (recently) just kind of . . . pushed me further away from adamantly pledging my allegiance to a religious book and a priest.

To be more specific I started to see that a 'God' could not save what my family went through and struggled through, they had to do it themselves. Their belief in faith was something they drew comfort from not strength, that's the way I saw it. It was also seeing my mother draw away from her faith when I was quite young, when she drew my cousin and I away from that Church that helped to foster my growing separation from organized monotheism.

Still, I have great respect for people of all denominations and faiths however personally, religion is both a dark place and light place for me. So I sit in an in-between one. I feel now that there is a different between being faithful and being spiritual. I tell people that I'm a spiritual Agnostic-Theist, I was faithful long ago to 'God'. Do I think there is a God? I'm not sure, I know that there's a certain unexplained energy in the universe and I'm not even confident that we'll ever understand that Oneness, that central force that ties us to the plants, grass, animals, and rivers, and oceans, and the vastness of the Earth.

What is out there is beyond us, Science, man-made inventions, animals, beyond a demi God or a God or even Earth. It just is.

 

[DeusExLumina]

I'm a complete atheist. I belived in Santa Claus longer than I believed in God. The concept has always seemed silly to me. I've tried Buddhism, but that didn't feel right either. There just seems to be no place for religion in my life, and I'm okay with that.

 

[Chivalry Augustus]

I used to be an atheist, but I wouldn't really describe atheism as a religion, more a denial of religion. Now, I guess I'm in a similar boat in that I'm an agnostic. I believe quite strongly in the possibility of god, and I am open to the potential for there being all kinds of things, beyond the veil so to speak, that we are incapable of rationalising. I think my views changed when I stopped seeing our Universe as all that existed. There is the potential for other things, other Universes, other plains of existence. What we can see and sense is not necessarily everything that is. I think I would like to find true religion though. However, I think that is more because it would mean that I had had a life-changing and undeniable experience of god.

 

[Noize]

Well, i use to be open about religions, and go to different churches ect every week. A guy invited me and a few friends from school around to his place. Little did we know, that he'd try hitting on my female friend (We were like... 10 years old.)

Thanks to that experience, i've gorwn to despise christianty and turned to borderline Satanism (The belief of the devil) but mostly just Atheism..

Sounds like a childish excuse for converting, i know, but at the time i found out what the guy tried to do, it wasn't really funny.