For those of us who do not believe in god or are not sure of our faith, what is the purpose of our lives and how do we find happiness?

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

What I want out of life

I was born in a pretty small town in the Midwest to a VERY religious family. I was taught about god and to be a faithful religious person. as I got older though I started to have questions that I could not shake, like "how can I be sure that the bible is gods word?" and "what if one of the other religions have it right and the quran or some other holy book is god word?" how can we know what we are supposed to do? I cannot accept on blind faith that the bible is gods word. so I did some research on how the bible became the book we know it as today. it took a lot of research to find the answer, seems like christianity does not like to talk about that subject. the answer was not very satisfying. See Here. I prayed, and  cried, and prayed some more for answers. I went and asked my pastors and friends but no answers came. I finally concluded that the bible itself had the answer for me,  2 Thessalonians 3:2 "...for not everyone has faith."
At first I considered myself agnostic but as I got used to the idea I realized that I was really atheist. If there was a god he does not care if I worship him or not, if he did he would give me a clear sign. So I must conclude that either God does not exist or does not care about us. Now this realization caused a delima in my life, I used to have a purpose but now I did not. I had now higher power to account to. What does that mean? That I can do whatever I want? no morals? no accountability? I did not like that idea so I did some soul searching. All I really wanted out of life was to be happy.
So the question is what do I do to be happy? Can I just make myself happy? Will money make me happy? Do friends make me happy, alcohol, drugs? What do I really want out of life?

5 comments:

  1. Just tell em, oh yeah, well if god is real then how do magnets work. that will blow their puny religious minds...

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  2. It would be interesting to see religion through the eyes of someone like you.

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  3. I've thought and read a great deal about the idea of seeking happiness. A few dynamic concepts:

    1) Social integration and a lack of isolation seem to matter (so friends, yes)

    2) Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "Flow" seems to be key to people who are truly happy. Flow is when an individual gets completely lost into an activity, totally absorbed into the task at hand. People who can access flow the most often through tend to be happier. This can be done through hobbies, the right work, learning new skills, etc.

    3) Money notoriously fails in this regard. Other than avoiding extremely poverty, money is proven to be no indicator of happiness level. Indeed for many, more money equals more stress and worry about that money.

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  4. I have the same views as you on religion. So many questions never enough answers.

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  5. It doesn't matter if you're religious or not, just as long as you're a good person. There is no way a religious person who beats his kids is gonna get into heaven.

    The problem with religions today is that they're relying on texts that were written a long time ago (the bible, the koran) and many aspects don't fit into the society we've built for ourselves today. The bible had the 10 commandments, set out in simple plain language so that the people could understand (people in the past were less intelligent of course) and the Koran appears to be a war-like book because that was the nature of the people in the past (you had to convert via the sword).

    Atheism is doing a good job to dispel these ancient beliefs, but there are no religious figures (that I know of) that are writing for todays society.

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