For those of you that believe in a higher being, have you ever lost your faith?

No,I haven’t.:)

Yes, when I was about 15. It started when I was about 7 and realized the Noah’s Ark story could not possibly be true, grew as I could not reconcile animal suffering with a just God, and culminated when I read works like Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian.

No, I never got it back and I am without faith and religion – with no regrets.

I haven’t lost my faith in believing in God it’s just I have lost the need for church since the death of my father. My father was really into going and was a deacon in our church, we went ever Sunday and still died at 40. I found it difficult to deal with his death and the fact that he was such a believer in attending church. It didn’t however take away my faith totally and I still believe, I just don’t believe I need to go to church in order to pray and believe in God.

I had a rudimentary belief in the xian god up until around 12 years old. I was brought up catholic. My belief really just consisted of a general fear that I was being watched. I recall finding a porno when I was about 10 and suddenly wondering if I would go to hell for looking at this topless woman.

Around 11 or 12, I started asking questions. My final question (and sunday school/ccd lesson) was when I approached a priest and asked him why god was hiding. The priest was furious, and in front of everyone told me that I was evil for questioning god. “You just don’t question those things.”

That was it. He had revealed how it worked, and I could see that it only worked when you suspended disbelief, didn’t question, and abandoned logic (which I was just fine tuning at that point).
That was 27 years ago. Still an atheist.

I was baptized Catholic, but have explored other faiths and ways of thinking. I just can’t accept that I’m living in a state of mortal sin because, for example, I choose to attend my son’s play instead of Mass. If I were to return to the Catholic Church I would never be able to take Communion because I don’t plan on changing. I disagree with the Church’s stance on contraception and other issues as well. I would be willing to accept Catholicism, but they are unreasonable on a few key areas IMO.

I have always had faith in a higher being..

In my early 20s, I finally admitted to myself that my “faith” really just amounted to a sustained effort to convince myself that I believed stuff that couldn’t stand up to close examination. To maintain it, I had had to refrain from digging too deep, asking hard questions, considering evidence, trusting my intuition. The pathetic result was that my own mind had come to feel like the enemy of my faith. That became unsupportable to me.

I am still religious, but in a very different way. My current faith (I hesitate to use the word because it has such a different meaning to me now) thoroughly embraces mind, welcomes intense scrutiny and questioning, puts intuition in a place of honor, and doesn’t tell me what I have to believe.

I’ve never lost my faith, but then it’s never been defined by any organized religious tenets. I don’t believe in “god” as described by most religions, so I can’t be disappointed by a deity that I think should be watching over and protecting us. My concept is way different from all that.

I’ve never lost my faith, even at my lowest points.

I believe in a higher being, but I lost my faith in drink-the-koolaid, party-line religion.

Once upon a time I believed in a higher being, and went to the extent of being baptized, but them I listened to the growing doubt I had and completely turned my back on religion and am stuck with nihilism.

I regained my faith as an adult when I realized that talking snakes and Noah’s Ark were never meant to be true historical stories. Only stupid people understand it literally.

It’s wavered a bit but never gone completely.

Yes I did lose my faith. I think I truly lost it when I was 5 years old after a specific incident but I got caught up in it again and then at the age of 18 I was more self-aware when I re-lost it.

Many times, over many years. I went back and forth between believing in the Christian God, being agnostic, being a deist, questioning, being an agnostic with atheistic leanings, and finally ended up an atheist.

I lost what nascent faith I had during my CofE confirmation lessons, aged 14, as the massive amounts of wishful thinking scaffolding the sheer improbability of the god hypothesis, struck home. I went through with the confirmation because I didn’t want to disappoint my mum, and had my first few communions, but have been a non theist ever since.

I believed as a child. I lost it at age 12 and it has never been a part of me since then. Is your’s wavering a little chyna?

@Adirondackwannabe Perhaps a little. A friend of mine is going through a very hard time and I think his may be wavering, very understandably.

@chyna That’s a tough situation. It’s not easy living without any faith. It doesn’t give you much to fall back on.

@chyna Faith in God is also faith in what He’s doing. I hope your friend’s situation gets better soon

@Adirondackwannabe He and his wife lost a baby during child birth early last year and just 3 weeks ago had twin boys. One of them is now critically ill.

@Facade Thank you. That is what we keep telling ourselves. I know my friend is praying as hard as he can and is very scared for his boy.

@chyna I understand why he’s wavering some. That’s got to be about the most painful thing to go through. Even though I’m not a believer I still have a little prayer I use. I’ll say it for your friend.