(Starting off a little off track here, but it ties into the main topic)
quote:
We all choose what we want to believe.
People are always telling me this, but I really don't think it's true. I never chose what I believe, and even if I went to church for the rest of my life and tried to act as a Christian I couldn't force myself to believe in something - just want to believe in it. External causes (such as new data or evidence) or internal uncontrolled causes (such as what I call my epiphany moments, those moments when suddenly everything makes sense but seem to come randomly) can change my beliefs, but I can't choose them actively. Perhaps my thought process is simply different from most, but I cannot simply say, "I want to believe this" and cause myself to believe it.
Therefore, in response to the original post:
quote:
How can one not belive in something greater than himself? How can one go through life's difficulties and be unable to always know that at least one person loves you? At times, it is my only comfort knowing that God loves me, and I cannot understand how one can go through life without belief in something. Can anyone give me a good reason on why they do not belive in any omnipotent being or diety?
(Of course, it's already been covered, but I do believe in greater things than myself - just that God isn't one of them) I don't believe in God because I can't believe in God. At least, not the God of the Bible - the supposed contradictions in what God is supposed to be and what He does, the history behind the Bible and how it was written, and to a lesser extent, science - all of these play a part in this belief. At the same time, I have irrational beliefs, and I recognize them as such, but I still can't force myself to believe differently - I'm logic-oriented, but not logic-based. I suppose you could say I am to a stereotypical logic-based atheist what a biblical non-literalist is to a fundamentalist.
I get the sense, though, that your question was more directed at how one can exist without the hope of a guiding being, rather than how one can not believe in it (since your questions, last one aside, had more to do with the comfort religion brings than the basis of one's belief). This question seems especially appropriate to me right now; I just recently reached a very lonely place, relatively, in my life, and at times I truly wish there were some greater being I could place my troubles upon. But when it comes down to it, all I
really need to move forward is the idea that at some point, things will get better. As time passes, eventually things will right themselves - with an effort on my part, of course. Not fate, as it might seem (I don't believe in that, either), but simple hope. And it's really not that different from yours, from your God.
We both derive our comfort from hope; the only difference is what form the hope takes.