A Challenge for Atheists!

[tGette]

Atheists/Agnostics, I offer you this!

Pray!

You have nothing to lose but maybe a minute of your day.

Put prayer to the test and see if God reveals Himself to you.

Just ask God that if He truly is out there to come into your life in a way for you to be able to believe. Not necessarily according to a specific religious belief, but to just have the understanding that there is a God.

Each day look at the wonders of the world around you and ask God to reveal Himself to you.

Just say:
“God, are you really real? Are you there? If you are, then show me how to believe. Show me what to believe.”

Freestyle a conversation if you must, do it in private. I offer this challenge for you. Do not do it once, but at least for 2 months. Ponder His existence more and see what happens.

I wish the best for you!

 

[tGette]

If you are even more willing, attend a couple different churches or speak with the pastors and/or priests of differnet churches; go to a mosque and a synagogue to get different perspectives.

Also, do not be afraid to read the Bible. Get your hands on Jewish scripture and even check out the Quran. There is no doubt these books have a major influence on the world. Even if you do not believe, it only makes sense to have a better understanding of what they say. This is especially true even if you do not want to continue believing because then you will have knowledge to back up why you refute certain beliefs. Plus, from a literary stand-point there is some pretty interesting things in these books.

 

[Mirdath]

Give us a little credit. Many of us have tried praying and studying, for weeks, months, even years. I’ve taken dares like this before, right here – ‘pray every day for at least three weeks’, ‘act as if a benevolent God exists (at least with regard to other people) for a week’. The first dare saw me alternately excoriating and pleading with an invisible brick wall; the second didn’t change jack from how I usually act. Neither wager had any measurable effect, unless I happen to be wrong and the heavenly air turned blue for a while – but I have no way of knowing if it did or not!

Many of us are also quite well-read in various scriptures and commentaries. I’ve slacked off a little when it comes to non-western religions, but can still chapter-and-verse my way through discussions of Christianity with ease and have at least a passing familiarity with several other belief systems. Nowhere have I found anything more than an interesting, or even sometimes inspiring, story.

How long will your God, the all-loving, the all-merciful, keep those who might love him in return waiting? How long until he finally remembers to get around to us? Is the good shepherd asleep at last, or on vacation? How loud must we shriek to awaken him? Are we to rend our garments and cut ourselves like the priests of Baal in their bet with Elijah?

If this is God’s love, I think I will keep my blindness. None may look on the face of God and live, the Bible says; perhaps it is not because of its majesty, but because of its horror.

Keep your challenge. You make it easily, but would you try the opposite for two months yourself? Why not act as if God doesn’t exist for eight weeks, think for yourself about what is right and wrong, reach for your goals yourself instead of trying to ride to heaven on a two-thousand-years-dead man’s coattails? Why not give up faith and worship for Lent – what greater sacrifice could you make?

Can you bring yourself to do this? Put yourself in our shoes for a while, and you’ll find out it isn’t so nice and easy as you’d like to think.

 

[AnAtheist]

Pray!
You have nothing to lose but maybe a minute of your day.
Put prayer to the test and see if God reveals Himself to you

I did that, doesn’t work.

If you are even more willing, attend a couple different churches or speak with the pastors and/or priests of differnet churches; go to a mosque and a synagogue to get different perspectives.

I did that, not the mosque and synagogue but quite some church. I visited various Sninto shrines, Buddhist temples and took part in a lot of neopagan rituals. From that experience I am not quite sure whether Asatru or Zen would be the best religion for me.

Also, do not be afraid to read the Bible.

I did that. But that offered me two options:

1. I don’t believe a major part of it, which makes Christianity a somewhat bad choice.
2. I do believe a major part of it, which makes the god described there not the one I would want to worship, which makes Christianity a bad choice either.
   (The parts I will not believe, btw, are the contradicting, logically impossible and empirically falsified ones.)

There is no doubt these books have a major influence on the world.

No doubt.

 

[cheddarsox]

I did just what you suggested, and that is how I came to understand pantheism. I won’t say I “converted” because I think what actually happened was that I realized that it was what I knew, and what was revealed to me my entire life, while I kept struggling to wrap my mind around “God”. It is more like I shed the pretense of the faith I was raised in, and began to practice my true faith.

Prayer and meditation are a great thing…but they don’t always lead to where one might expect. My faith was definitely deepened, but not in that which I originally expected.

 

[Exalt]

Atheists/Agnostics, I offer you this!

Pray!

You have nothing to lose but maybe a minute of your day.

I agree with others on this point - we gave it a shot. God didn’t answer. At least, not in a way that could be distinguishable from my own imagination.

Also, do not be afraid to read the Bible.

It was, in part, the Bible that drove me away from Christianity.