Or are you just lying again?

Oh, wait, I forgot that you are actually just a lying coward.

I like when that happens. When you make those crazy claims and back them up with lies so obvious that a child would point and laugh at you, believers who might agree with your point may react by having more doubt. Your lies make our case stronger and your weaker, and the fact that you repeatedly and habitually lie in this manner is a fabulous thing to watch. Your efforts here play a major role in deconverting other people who are slightly less insane than you are. Good job, you lying coward.

Again, you have said something that is patently false. Utterly ridiculous. You will not defend it, you will not clarify, you will just leave that lie out there and pretend it is the truth. This shows people a great deal about how you really feal about the truth: you can and will lie about your beliefs in order to witness to them. You use lies to defend your beliefs, while claiming to believe the complete truth handed down by the invisible man in the sky.

You are a liar, a coward, and out of your mind.

He’s the maker of everything, right? He knows everything, right? He’s all-powerful, right?

Of course, He isn’t ’cause He ain’t there, or at least acts as such.

I would say take your hatred of your father out on your father or better try therapy to rid you of his firm clutch! Your strategy is transparent and obviously self-defeating!

Yours is a good description of mankinds dilemma. The problem lies in our unwillingness to believe the Solution which has been provided for us. I say things like “God is love” because that has been my experience upon believing, trusting, following for a quarter century now. This is not a conclusion I arrived at casually, but intensely, experientially, etc.
You’re assuming I am unwilling to believe. That is not the case, JC. For a long time I have wished to believe. For a long time I’ve tried to understand what people seem to believe so effortlessly. I live in a very religious country, JC. There is a reason why I seek these types of forums – because it is so much harder to do over here. Trust me, JC, I wished to.

When I say things like “listen to your heart, its the nearest aspect of you to God, its trustworthy”, etc I mean just that. We have lost touch with what (and Who) matters, we dis-believe His very existance, believe we have been essentially orphaned and dont believe that if there is a God, a Father that He is for us, loves us with an everlasting love, etc. These are all positions in opposition to the Truth, and opposing the Truth is a great vanity, futility.
Maybe I am vain, maybe I am futile, but I am not sorry, JC. I can only work from what I know (with my unreliable, “adamic” senses) and what I feel. What I feel is no faith, no presence, no extraneous love. I have spent countless nights begging for God or Gods to talk to me and show me the way, to open my heart and my mind to what other people see and I don’t. I sensed nothing. I never did.

I was six when I started to realize that maybe something was wrong. I see my mother pray for me and nothing change outside the realm of science. I saw it then and I wondered.

I still sometimes test it, JC. I’m not such a staunch atheist that I never question myself. I do. I think, “what if I am wrong?” I even tried other religions, other faiths. I’ve tried to be pagan. I’ve tried to be Buddhist. I’ve tried so many things, JC, and I’m only twenty four. I questioned and I begged and I cried, and all I got was silence.

If I was vain, I was vain even as a child. That’s when I started to deny your ineffable, unknowable Truth.

So, many will ridicule what I am about to say (heck what have I got lose now, ha), but here goes. Think of me as a “spiritual scientist”. I have tried, examined, proofed, tested, failed, succeeded, observed the many “promises” of God and have found Him to be utterly trustworthy, to be Love, to be for us, not against us.
I won’t ridicule you. I’ve seen so many believers who have the utmost reason to believe what they do. Do I think they are deluded? Yes. I think they are seeing patterns where patterns do not exist. Spiritual pareidolia, if you will.

So I ask, which promises? Which promises that you had answered, as I have not?

I don’t have a story of deconversion to tell – I have a story of one who failed to be converted at all. Let me tell you a story: I was eight months old when I had a painful, crippling, incurable illness. I have a very religious mother who believes in miracles (but, thankfully, believes they work through science and doctors). I prayed; I prayed as a child prays. Do you know what I asked for? I began thanking the God of my mother, the Christian god, for everything (even if everything meant a crippling, incurable illness). Do you know what I asked next? For little children in Africa who had lives so much worse than mine. I swear to you I asked such a thing. Why not? I always heard God can do anything. He’s limitless. He loves his creations, yet he leaves them to die and be tortured for one particular event that we, the children, are powerless to alter.

I asked for my mother’s health, for my sister’s health, for my father’s health, I asked for my own cure. Then I gave up trying to force myself to pray. I felt nothing when I did; I had no prayers answered. There was no consolation. Nothing.

I have spent most of my (adult) life in pursuit of Truth. He is who He says He is and in that one thing, His unwavering, trustworthy Character (of Love) is our only hope. But He is “above” our natural mind and limited ways, His ways being “higher’ than ours. The only way we get to come up, to see, to fellowship is, ironically in the paradoxical ways of God is to humble ourselves, give in, be childlike, trust Him…just like Jesus said.

I dont know how I can say it any plainer than that. Its like we want “the way” to be academic, methodical but this King is childlike Himself, in His innocence, Oneness, etc.
I was not childlike even as a child, then. I did not believe Santa, I did not have imaginary friends, I did not trust the unknown – I never did – I questioned even my own shadow’s existence! I have tried to humble myself, I have tried to given in, yet I felt and heard nothing. Maybe I have not done it enough. But I did so honestly, sincerely, and nothing changed. If I am doing it wrong, how can I know? To me, I was honest. To me, I cried. Yet nothing happened. Nothing. I can no more force myself to believe than I can force my own heart to stop beating. I cannot force myself to love something I have no reason – none – to even know exists, let alone love. I cannot force myself to trust something that was never there for me in the first place, at least not in any way I could recognize. If I cannot trust my own perceptions and feelings, what then? What? Do you see? There isn’t a hope. You can’t trust even your own perceptions. Maybe you feel you know yours, but what makes you so sure you’re not as deluded as I am? My reality feels real. Yours does too. Who is right?

Just today I went to the bookstore and sat in an old leather chair. The Lord began to speak to my heart about how He takes one who isnt a child of God and makes them a people of God. I saw for two hours the process that He initiates, conforms and completes, it was beautiful. The problem is this damned thing called religion, its not representative of Him and we must divorce ourselves from any association with it. Anyway, I’m off on another tangent now…but thanks for the comments, I appreciate you, all of you.
You’ve seen something beautiful. Kudos to you.

It saddens me that people of faith need spirits to see beauty. I’m quite happy with my fallen adamic nature, if that’s what it is. I have seen beauty there. They were there when your mythic hero was not. Maybe I will burn for it, and you know what? I don’t care. Fine. It’s what he wanted, isn’t it? Even as a child I did not believe. I could not. I cannot. If He made me, He made me this way – skeptical, atheistic.

You can have your truth, you can have your mystical love. Fine. You’re happy. I’m glad you are. I will keep my own flawed understanding and my own falsehood, if that’s what it is. I refuse to throw myself against a metaphysical brick wall out of fear and a desperate hope. If that makes me proud, so be it. If that makes me sinful, so be it. Your God made me that way. It’s His problem. I tried and He didn’t meet me halfway. I tried with all that I have and had no answer. I don’t know what else to do but think He isn’t there at all or, if He is, He doesn’t give one iota about me (or the little children in Africa I prayed for), only his chosen happy friends.

Sorry it’s long. Sorry it’s emotional. Maybe your God made me do it.

From all the dissections I’ve carried out I’ve never seen a “god organ”. Where in the body does this being dwell? The brain? Perhaps the cecum?