Why do people believe in God?

[ShazzieB]

83. What I was confirming is that talking about believing in God at DU does not feel safe.

does not feel at all safe. It really doesn't. (Sorry to reply to this so late, btw.)

As for joining the church, of course I did. Many Christian denominations baptize babies into membership, but I was a Baptist, meaning church membership was a personal decision made when I felt moved to do so. I was 10 years old at the time. I whole-heartedly believed in what I was being taught, so becoming a member was a no-brainer for me. I was baptized by full immersion (another aspect of being a Baptist), and the whole thing was a very meaningful experience for me.

Years later, I reached a point where I no longer believed all of the dogma, especially the part about how everyone who didn't believe as I did was going to hell. (That was the big deal breaker for me.) When I reached that point, I realized I no longer felt at home in that denomination, but for me, not believing in a particular set of religious teachings or belonging to a particular denomination =/= rejecting the whole idea of religion or God.

At this point in time, my personal beliefs are too amorphous to sum up easily. I haven't been a Baptist in decades, but neither am I an atheist. That's really all I can say about it.