Former Atheists, What Made You Turn to God?

former atheists of reddit what made you turn to religion not me a friend of my parents he suffered a minor heart attack during a business trip and the moment he arrived at the hospital he got a massive heart attack he was clinically dead for about two minutes before he was brought back he hasn't told anyone what he saw and whenever someone asks he just says i really don't want to talk about it but from that day on not asunder goes by that he doesn't show up for mass i read this as athletes rather than atheists and spent embarrassingly long trying to find the connection between athletes and religion ah athletes the arch nemesis to religion my great uncle was a lifelong atheist till his wife of 50 years died she was always begging him to go to church and he would never go with her when she died he was so devastated he started going to church to feel closer to her that naturally resulted in him converting he loved and missed her so much that he was willing to believe anything that would reunite them he was a tough man but her death broke him he always gave me crap for not going to church and it annoyed me but i respected how deeply he loved my aunt on occasion i would go with him and he was grateful i humored him my father did this exact same thing after my mom passed for the first 31 years of my life the man never went to church my mom on the other hand went every week and was a very active volunteer for them helping with all of their community events and fundraisers after she passed my dad started going every week my life hit rock bottom i was constantly anxious constantly searching for peace i took up meditation and found myself praying eventually a co-worker invited me to their weekly church dinner and over many months i found myself a regular member for those thinking i joined the westboro baptist church or something i am a member of an independent church that broke off from the methodist church specifically over the conservative policies they instituted i was raised atheist and became a christian at 19. i met a group of people through friends who seemed genuinely to care about others they volunteered with elderly and for the homeless but also the kind of people who would sit quietly with you while you're going through a tough time or drop off food to someone grieving or buy a used van for a struggling single dad i could write an essay on all the ways they helped me and other people feel nothing in return except friendship they didn't even collect tithes at their church encouraging people to donate their tithe to bigger initiatives that could help more people i was so impacted by the way they lived in service to others that i began exploring christianity the thought of being part of a group that tries to make others lives better seemed way more meaningful than how i had been living i learned about christianity god in an environment that encouraged hard questions debate studying for yourself and showing care for everyone it disturbs me deeply that many people use christianity as an excuse for doing terrible things i feel like this is how jesus would want christianity to be i was on a year's long depression and hopelessness spiral in my late twenties that i couldn't seem to dig myself out of decided i had nothing to lose by sincerely praying to god and jesus by extension so i did within days i had a renewed internal strength and motivation that coupled with some random things falling into place helped me dig out of it and start moving to a much better place now i don't give a crap that i'm generally very logical and a big believer in the scientific method god had my back when i needed him even though i probably didn't deserve it so i will always have his i just take the stance that our understanding of him is still pretty primitive and science is a tool for understanding his works not something at odds with it to be honest because i separated the how and the why i accept science explaining the house evolution big bang etc but they never explained the wise for me and as an objective tool science was never intended to explain it regardless religion and science answer different questions and both are incredibly fulfilling to me we struggled with infertility for a couple years i was at my breaking point i had tried every supplement wives tale even fertility crystals we were of course consulting with doctors and taking meds trying to find it in our budget to pay for the expensive fertility treatments i decided i had nothing left to lose and i prayed i told my husband the next day how dumb i felt for it and he told me he had also been praying for pregnancy over the past few days we went in for a fertility treatment and missed my ovulation by one day we were crushed until a few weeks later when i got a positive pregnancy test turns out we had conceived naturally that month and saved the money on the expensive treatment to really seal my non-believer coffin we learned we were pregnant with twins but in the process of miscarrying one i prayed every single day for that baby to survive and i am currently in the hospital getting ready to deliver two healthy baby girls wow that's amazing congratulations not particularly religious but one thing that gave me a new respect for religion was an essay written by a close friend of mine excuse me for butchering this but he basically showed how communities that integrate religion tend to be more family-like i believe this has shown to help with closing the gap between sociological inequality in other words church provides opportunities for different classes of people to collaborate i also remember him being quite critical of mega churches because it encourages a sprawling anti-social nature when your church gets too big and too fancy it disconnects you from the human aspect of church and reinforces the growing egocentric approach to religion that we often see there's a lot of christians who cringe at mega churches my church growing up had sundays where there were literally 15 of us in some ways it's sad because you want a couple more people there but that tight sense of community can't be replicated my sister became born again later in life i had always believed in god but didn't really have a relationship with him she became so pushy and changed so much it turned me off to the whole idea of christianity she had a son who i was very close with and for a few years after he turned 13 lived with my family unfortunately at 17 he got into drugs and ran away for months we didn't hear from him then one day he popped up at my sister's house pretty much completely worn down he looked and smelled terrible on my way out to my sister's eye was at such a loss on what to do that i prayed out loud to god to help guide me i decided to find a worship station and there was a sermon playing that felt like it was directed right at me everything that preacher said felt like he was talking to me a commercial came on and as an impatient person i looked at the station number and decided to go back in a few minutes i went back and that station was nothing but static no music no sermon it just didn't exist i tried going up and down thinking i mixed up a number but still nothing i know have a much closer relationship with god not a full-fledged every sunday at church relationship but a good one overwhelming anxiety and fear of death turning to religion helped to cope with these feelings even if i don't believe in it a hundred percent i also became a theist in a part of my life where i was extremely unhappy and an unpleasant person to be around and while that was not necessarily because of my atheism it certainly didn't help after i finally got help and began improving myself i found my beliefs just didn't line up with it anymore and continuing to be an atheist just reminded me of unhappy times i have no hate towards the atheist community nor do i dislike anyone who is it's just not my way of life anymore i'm starting to realize that it might be actually incredibly good for humans to believe that everything will be okay like in general having a purpose and believing that there is a point produces positive brain chemicals i'm getting into a specific religion now including aspects that i don't necessarily believe are true but take prayer for example it doesn't matter if there's a beard he did in the clouds taking notes it's not a point regularly contemplating community and loved ones is a good thing to do if you need to frame it as talking to a fella in the sky well then do it to it to me faith is more about believing that living a certain way is the best way to live whether it's true or not is besides the point that being said religion is not an excuse to treat others poorly if someone uses their religion to treat other people poorly i still look at them the way i look at anyone that treats people poorly relating to your last paragraph recently heard an interpretation of don't take my name in vain not meaning don't say oh my god but instead don't use my name to justify your hatred bigotry violence really like that take i wouldn't say religion but i turned to spirituality after this experience my mother died pretty unexpectedly and i was devastated the same night i could only cry on the bed no sleep possible but then suddenly she was there beside me and sat on the bed i even felt her weight on the bed and side of my body as she leaned on my legs rubbing them and comforting me she told me she was okay and i told her i loved her over and over trying to be sure she knew i didn't get to say goodbye she told me she had to go and floated up and disappeared and i just kept repeating i love you the weight on the bed left at the same time and i kind of gasped and sat up some people might think it was a dream but it was way too vivid and realistic from then on i knew there was something more in life than what we can see or explain it changed everything my son died unexpectedly a couple months ago and i also turned to spirituality as a way of coping but some days are better than others we talked to a spirit artist after he died and some weird things came up that tell me there's something more to life than earth i was raised christian became an atheist in college and was atheist for more than a decade but became a christian again about three months ago i fought a war against everything i hated most about myself and lost when i had lost all hope of ever being able to overcome depression and addiction i tried praying and to my great surprise i received an answer in that moment i surrendered my life to god i will never be able to explain my experience i don't have scientifically conclusive evidence but i will never doubt that god is real after what i experienced i have overcome my addiction and depression and while i still have a long way to go i'm doing much better than i ever dreamed possible reddit is so negative against christians lol good to hear that your life is better atoms that can only be created in dying stars somehow formed evolved died recycled and became me a piece of the universe made out of the universe i am the universe observing itself and that's beautiful i don't think i'm religious but i'm more than just meat on a rock spinning around a star my family has never participated in any religious institutions i am 28 and an atheist or at least i thought i was until about four years ago when my views began to change i can remember the exact moment i began to question my atheism my parents divorced and subsequently my father spiraled into depression and my family tore itself apart witnessing my father attempted taking his own life and many other traumatic experiences and self-revelations forced me to look within myself far more than i had ever done my atheist mentality offered me no relief or methodology to deal with the suffering that life had dealt me it made me bitter angry and violent at times and i dealt with the emotional stress through the same methods i had learned from my father substance abuse until i stumbled upon stories of a biblical nature and origin that offered me alternative ways to deal with the situation i was in could secular stories had the same effect maybe for others but i found biblical stories spoke to me on a far deeper and meaningful manner that alone grew my respect that was previously non-existent for religious teachings and institutions with all of the flaws that religions hold i began to see the value within them that is often overlooked fast forward to now i am engaged to a greek woman who is of orthodox faith i will be baptized to be married and i am so excited about it all and my relationship with my family is as good as it has ever been with improvement still to be had of course to those who may be wondering do i believe in god it's complicated but essentially yes as a metaphysical thing as a real tangible personal thing not so much but i certainly will strive to live my life as though as god is as real as the keyboard i'm typing on simply because i think there is no harm in that the harm usually arises when people think they know what god wants and decide it's their job to force those beliefs and values on others so there can be harm but that's an outgrowth of pride really as long as religion is a personal exercise in growth it can certainly benefit the individual the best wishes i don't feel i have turned back to any religion but back to the concepts that embody religion there's a psychological spot in our heads for the figure of an almighty being s that explains the uncertainties of life with all that entails we are blessed and cursed with causal thinking and it goes beyond logic or even conscience our minds are very symbolic when it comes to defining the world and not having anything to fall back when reason fails in the face of the randomness of reality is not helpful crisis and challenge can be overcome using the tools most old religions propose what is prayer but a form of meditation and self-awareness what is the image of the devil but a metaphor for challenge and strife what is god but a promise of another chance after you screw it up it all adds up in a philosophy that protects most of the weak spots of the human psyche and that is helpful i still don't believe in the institutional form of religions though maybe not exactly what you're looking for but i've converted from atheism to agnosticism not because i now am more open to believing in the existence in a divine power more so because i find assertion in anything that unknowable to be kind of arrogant i respect people's beliefs a lot but when it comes to assertion that any one religion or atheism is undeniably true is the line that becomes too far for me much in the same way that human knowledge of the why behind the world's creation is much too limited for most people to assert that there is one true creator god that exists i feel that asserting the opposite with equal levels of knowledge is just simply making wild claims of belief over anything with actual scientific substance and just to be clear i'm not saying religious people are arrogant to believe i'm actually incredibly tolerant and happy for individuals religions when they make positive impact in their lives in the world i'm more saying that i personally wouldn't want to assert my belief in something i simply can't prove either religion or atheism tl dr was a theist now agnostic because how can i assert something i'll never know with any real evidence it depends how you define atheism technically the definition of atheism is lack of belief in a god which would make you an atheist agnosticism is not knowing if there's a god they aren't mutually exclusive many people define themselves as an agnostic atheist i had my fair share of christian catholic masses i never paid attention nor did i really care around 17 stroke 18 i decided to become atheist as i didn't think an actual god existed no proven evidence or anything could be found the past couple years 22 24 years old i have been thinking a lot more about the universe and such kind of freaks with my head a good bit as i try to pick it apart and i want an answer but i decided i am agnostic there is definitely something out there that we do not understand yet it's not so much looking for religion as it is just accepting that something we don't understand is going on there definitely could be some higher being out there that created everything i have no idea though or we could all be in a simulation we will probably never figure it out instead of being a christian i chose to follow the teachings of christ that changed my entire opinion about religion i was an atheist throughout college my major was philosophy religion most of what i learned i used to justify my atheist beliefs the more i studied the idea of a creator became more and more intriguing the ontological perspective just makes practical sense to me oh don't think i believe the way most people believe but that's okay i'm happy with my world view and it gives me purpose and meaning it inspires me to be a better person no matter your beliefs if you are striving to do that and whatever helps you do it every day must not be so bad i started going to a catholic school in freshman year this was after an emotionally and physically abusive childhood which gave me ptsd which i only finally got diagnosed with a few months ago after i got away from my abusive father my mother did her best to raise me alone but sent to me to another mentally and physically abusive place called a really crappy public school for elementary and junior high after getting out of those two predicaments heading into high school i had undiagnosed major depressive disorder and ptsd this compounded with the stresses of first relationships and actually having to care about grades which led me to serious suicidal thoughts i had them for as long as i could remember which i thought was normal lo and behold it is not normal to think about how your mom would react if she found her son decomposing with vomit all over myself after eating an entire bottle of ibuprofen and tylenol i guess it's a good thing those were not very good for offing yourself as i attempted suicide multiple times only to wake up with diarrhoea vomiting and a horrible sense of guilt now a little more backdrop my abusive father used to quote bible verses as he would beat me which obviously led me to have a very screwed up view of christianity and religion in general funny thing is i actually did have that cringy atheist phase in middle school where i liked ben shapiro and said that trans people didn't exist and called gay people at gods and often said some racially charged expletives this is all to say i was a pissy angry and unguided kid when i entered high school i was still that dumb kid i met a girl and we had an on-and-off relationship for a couple years sometimes i hated her sometimes i loved her but she was still influencing me with her faith as she was a pious catholic eventually i started to believe only to myself at first but i did open up gradually but fast forward to now almost three years i am a junior preparing to be baptized confirmed and first eucharisted into the catholic church tomorrow i still haven't told my mom about the suicide attempts even though i have gotten therapy and medication for my mental problems but hey little steps right tl dr mostly the holy ghost and a little help from a girl helped me overcome the burdens of abuse guilt and self-harm to accept big j into my heart hey catholic jr here as well your testimony struck out to me and needless to say i'm incredibly proud of you through the pain and suffer you went through it's incredibly beautiful and inspiring to me that you were able to see the light that jesus has to offer stories like yours are another reason why i love my faith praying for you 3. i was staunch atheist who hated all religion until i had a professor also an atheist who convinced me to respect people's religion around the same time i had a lot of muslim friends and started learning about islam and came to appreciate a lot of the why behind the practices i tried fasting and joined in some daily prayers and appreciated the benefits of it one day as i was joining in the prayer i realized i was praying and i felt a connection to god that i'd never felt before in my life i realized i was a believer and the rest is history i grew up religious but then became an atheist as i got older i didn't like going to church and as someone who studied math and physics initially at university it didn't make sense to me intellectually i was always curious though as to why religion was so important to other people including my father who is an incredibly smart man and has doctorate and an academic genealogy which includes nobel prize winners i dabbled in things like psychedelics and meditation and eventually found myself at a point where i understood that there are things that i can know without understanding intellectually and that although we live in a society where we think with our heads and we have these intellectual tools in place to organize and improve our society there is a part of us which is very animalistic and tribal and these things dictate much of the world that i interact with i thought even at that time that religion was a crutch for weak-minded people i slowly began to humble myself and looked at very successful very intelligent people who were religious and wondered why and settled in a place where i understood that religion has different meanings for different people but most religious teachings across all cultures focus on values that i strongly identified with such as community humility service service service service i think that ultimately religion is a tool created by humans all across history and the world to remind us of things that are so easy to forget as people who spend so much time above their shoulders while i don't think that organized religion is for everyone and i think men are religious institutions and communities can be downright unhealthy and harmful i would consider myself a religious person i commend people who find their own way to be in touch with their spiritual side such as yoga or just being outdoors and would go as far as to say that i think the lol religious people are stupid and atheists are just smarter mentally honored it is both arrogant and immature most of the time and is often rooted in a reactionary place that falls apart under even a moderate amount of honest humble introspection i was raised a combination of jewish and pagan and for a while i didn't believe in a god as an act of rebellion when i turned 20 my dad died and i hate to say it but i became very interested in both sides of my religious background i almost went to yeshiva and became a rabbi if not for my mom begging me not to because rabbis are just not really in demand i'm still very religious but in a much more general way my husband is a pagan and an aspiring jewish convert so i flick between paganism and general theism i realize that in my ancestral region of the maghrob to mazia virtually everyone identifies as muslim the idea of atheism just doesn't process in their minds therefore i converted to islam not because i believe in god but because i agree with the lifestyle i enjoy fasting for ramadan praying meditating 5x day abstaining and giving back to the community and al i can kind of relate to this in some level i'm an atheist but i still enjoy a lot of islamic customs i think i might love ramadan more than the muslims people at least in my vicinity are so much nicer in that month i was in staunch atheist but i've since converted to believing in god or a god it helps with a lot of control or anxiety i feel knowing that one way or another i'll be fine at the end of the day it was really the church that i have a problem with and how they dictate how my faith should be i wouldn't say i was atheist but i was pretty close didn't believe in god and definitely didn't believe in jesus or at least the way the christian churches generally portray them then i realize that god is just a word to describe something that humans can't comprehend and religion does its best to dumb it down for us simple-minded humans but what it's really describing is something that is as real as the laws of physics and many humans misuse the word god and the word love and the word religion a lot of times in a hateful way but then i realize those people are further from god than most atheists are once i distanced myself from those people in that thought process i discovered god in a more intimate way than i thought possible there are lots of ways to connect with god but what has worked best for me is being still and silent and doing my best to listen to the world around me without affecting it like when you go on a hike and find a nice place to sit and you don't do anything in particular when you sit just sit and observe and feel the energy around you and it can bring such powerful moments of peace of mind and bliss that's what brought me closer to god i felt like god was seeking a relationship with me despite years and years of purposefully avoiding god in any forms i was baptized a few years back and i'm super grateful it's a beautiful thing a friend deliberately overdosed on age to attempt suicide in my bathroom i didn't have narcan and she took a lot i couldn't get her to wake up i tried to wake her and tried and when i begged god out of desperation she opened her eyes that and a number of weird coincidences that just started to get ridiculous and i decided to look at it more seriously after some time here i am go figure i was brought up a muslim since childhood and almost turned to atheism since i suspect that islam is full of manipulative people who just wants to brainwashed kids so they can spread more lies and amass their numbers as luck would of it i was accepted into an islamic studies program in uni and it completely changed how i see islam as a whole the systematic and thorough analysis of the quran and hadith totally blew my mind ever since then i've been a devout believer and never once questioned god nor his messenger alhamdulillah knowledge beats ignorance if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new videos every day until then check another video [Music] so bye for now

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Keywords: atheists vs believers, atheists, atheist turned to jesus, atheist turned believer, christian, muslim, faith, #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, sub, reddit cringe, memes, comment awards, dankify, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, chill, story, stories, reddit on tap, reddit stories 2021

Id: Pj3Ek58nieI

Length: 27min 25sec (1645 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021