Loosing your faith-For the wrong reason

[Bikewer]

Yesterday, NPR ran one of those little "personal commentary" segments. The correspondent related how he had lost and then regained his "faith".

Seems he was a devout Catholic, raised in that religion. Apparently became disillusioned over the child sex-abuse scandals that became prominent among Catholic priests, and also the Catholic hierarchy's reaction to same. (coverups, lies, buyouts, etc.)
As a result, the fellow quit going to church, and felt that he had "lost his faith".

Then, the birth of his first child, afflicted with Down's syndrome. In addition to that condition, the child had a congenital heart defect that required a number of risky surgeries.
Lacking any other means of helping, the guy resorts to prayer. In due course, the surgeries are successful, and the child may lead whatever life is normal to a Down's sufferer.
As a result of his apparently-answered prayers, his faith is regained, and now he's back at church....

Do we see a rigorous intellectual examination of Christian theology here? No, just an emotional reaction. The guy is disgusted by the sex scandal and the church hierarchy, but does not question the basic tenets of the religion, nor the evidence for or against.
Then, while medical professionals apply their skills and knowledge to the case of his daughter, he prays to God, and assumes her recovery is due to God, rather than the medical team and the accumulated knowledge of Western medicine.
I wonder what percentage of "believers" would behave in similar fashion?
Most, I'd think.

[Dark Jaguar]

The only problem I have is a pedantic semantics issue in using the term "western" medicine. Modern yes, but it's not just western any more, it's global.

Other than that, I'd agree. I didn't "lose the faith" because I became "mad at god" or was "disgusted" with certain things. That came later after reviewing what I used to hold true under a humanistic light. I lost the faith due to a detailed analysis of what exactly I believed in and why exactly I believed in it. As a result, emergencies don't make me suddenly pray for a solution, as I know there's no point. Further, so long as I maintain a reasonable outlook, I doubt I'll ever "go back" to the faith. The only thing that would make me believe would be evidence, and that wouldn't really be faith would it?

As I've come to conclude, the issue wasn't so much losing faith in that specific religion so much as coming to lose faith in faith itself. The rest follows.

I'll say I've known a few people who lost the faith only due to emotional reasons and nothing really logical. They all tend to just move on to whatever new set of nonsense suits them, like Wicca or astrology or psychic friends. The actual issue was never actually addressed, and to be honest it's all the same to me, just with different details. I understand that Dawkins is writing a book on that particular subject next. At least, I remember hearing him state as such in some interview I saw on TV, or the interweb.

[Tricky]

It sounds to me like the nonbelievers you describe had never actually stopped believing, but that they had just changed what they thought God was like. Instead of being the good shepherd, He was the uncaring lout. His holy priests were nothing more than self-serving minions.

But through it all, they never really lost some sort of belief in the existence of God. They were, some only briefly, the rarest of creatures, antitheists, whose philosophy might be summed up as, "God exists, and He is a jucking ferk!"

All they need is to be convinced that they had misappraised God to become theists again.

[The Atheist]

...snip... I didn't "lose the faith" because I became "mad at god" or was "disgusted" with certain things...snip...Amazing how many christians automatically ask that question - as though becoming an atheist is only possible if you got mad at their god first.

Which emphasises the blind in blind faith.

[Foster Zygote]

I didn't "lose the faith" because I became "mad at god" or was "disgusted" with certain things.

Sadly, that's a wildly popular straw man. I've met several people who, upon learning that I am an atheist, assume that I am wounded and angry. They want to know if someone in the church hurt me or if something happened that I blamed God for.

[Dark Jaguar]

The funny thing is, at first after "giving up the faith" I basically was of the opinion that I had no reason to believe in god, but it sure would be nice IF he existed. I've since changed my mind on that having reappraised the god of the bible, but that basically throws the "angry at god" thing out the window. At first, I still wanted it to be true but no longer could reasonably believe. It was only later that I stopped wanting it to be true.

[Bikewer]

I must say that in my case I didn't "loose my faith" in this sense of the phrase; I just became disinterested. I didn't begin to seriously study atheism/rationalism and such until years after I had ceased participating in religion.

[Ryan O'Dine]

I think there’s a deeper problem invoked by the indecency of Church officials than just the emotional repugnancy issues.

Christianity is a religion which claims to make the adherent a better person. It’s supposed to lead you up a spiritual ladder at the top of which stands Jesus and perfection. One would think that church officials should generally be higher up this ladder than most layfolk. They’ve had some kind of formalized training in many cases, have devoted a larger bulk of their lives to practicing their beliefs, and they’re purpose is to be the standard bearers of the faith.

Now, one or two bad eggs in such a group is one thing. But a systemic problem on the apparent scale of these sex scandals ought to speak to a very deep flaw in the beliefs themselves.

Does Christianity make you a better person? It’s a fair question, and it seems to me the scandals are a fair piece of evidence against.

[Bikewer]

I imagine that if you polled the population of the average US prison, you'd find a large majority of the inmates were at least nominally Christian...

I wonder about the professed "faith" of some of the subjects of the high-profile scandals of the last few years? DeLay, Skilling, sundry other congresspersons and buisness leaders?
Or that nice fellow with the 90,000 in his freezer....

[slingblade]

It bothers me when the whole "Aren't you just mad at God?" issue comes up, and is discussed as if it's not a legitimate reason for breaking away from magical thinking.

Religion is emotion-based. (And I am He-Man, Master of the Obvious.) It often takes an emotional crisis to initiate a change from emotion-based responses, but that doesn't have to be where it ends. In fact, if that is where it ends, the emotions will simply be channeled into something else that's emotion-based, and the person will likely be no better off.

I'm looking at what The Atheist and Foster said in posts #4 and #5.

For some of us, breaking away from religion IS only possible by getting mad at God first. And I would venture to presume that it's especially difficult for Fundies, whatever the religion. For me, God was once as real as any of you are. And he was a lot more powerful than any of you, and much more to be feared.

Those of us who are caught in a cycle of abuse usually blame only ourselves for it. "If I were a better person, a better Christian, God would take better care of me. God is perfect, after all, so this pain I'm enduring can't be God's fault. It must be me."

It's like breaking away from an abusive spouse, which I've also done. Abused spouses often blame themselves for the abuse, too. "If I were a better person, a better wife, my husband wouldn't hit me."

To get away from that mind-set (and try getting away from both of them at the same time!) takes great courage, and a desire to not only do better, but to know better. Think about it: why would you decide to stop believing in God if you are happy with God, and if you believe God is real, and if you believe you will suffer eternal torment, and if you will lose most or all of your religious friends, and if your family is likely to reject you, and....

Uh-huh. Sometimes, first, you just have to get pissed.

I see it as a growth process. I took a lot of abuse, and blamed myself. Then I realized it wasn't all my fault. Then I realized that, being aware of this now, if I stayed in it, it would be my fault. Then I began to re-train my mind--a mind which had been carefully trained in religion and abuse for some 30 years. Then I sought more education. Then I learned about logic, reason, and what magical, wishful thinking was. Then I did a careful analysis and realized that God = Santa Claus = fairies = Harry Potter = ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

I knew I had truly broken free and re-trained my mind the first time I realized that I'd just had a serious problem and instead of thinking: "I need to bring this to the Lord, in prayer," or even "Gee, I wish I still believed in God so I could pray about this," I instead thought: "Now, what options are available to me, and how am I going to solve this?"

So tell me: does it really matter how I got here, or that I got here, at last? Sometimes it's the journey, but sometimes it really is the destination.

[Zygar]

I didn't "lose the faith" because I became "mad at god" or was "disgusted" with certain things. That came later after reviewing what I used to hold true under a humanistic light. I lost the faith due to a detailed analysis of what exactly I believed in and why exactly I believed in it.

Ditto (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2192377#post2192377).

[Kochanski]

I think that calling it "loosing your faith" is wrong.

Loosing something implies that you can find it again. Like it is something that you stuck in a drawer in your mind and it got pushed behind some assorted junk and you just forgot it was there. Or you put it aside because it was inconvenient and then forgot where you left it. That somehow, some time you can go back and find it.

It is really an awakening of reason. A realization that so much does not make sense. That there are so many contradictions. It is a realization that faith is something that can be thrown away. It is not pushed behind anything, it is looked at closely and found to be lacking and thrown in the trash not to clutter up space in your head.

Religious leaders love to invoke the notion of "lose of faith" because it means that they have one more way to pull back the strays. It gives people an excuse for their doubt and a way for religious leaders to get them back into the fold.

Unfortunately, that means that the "faithful" are likely to think we are mad at god, that we can somehow be brought back into the "faith" by being shown "god's love". They have a hard time understanding that we have determined that god is a meaningless concept and an unnecessary one.