Hello I am starting this thread for people to tell their stories of faith and doubt and/or unbelief. Everyone is welcome to share.
I will start.
I am a Christian. I believed on Jesus at a young age. I have gone through ups and downs and my faith. Questions, doubts and fears plus panic attacks. I have come a long way in dealing with anxiety. The are times and days where it is hard for me to trust God. I am learning to trust and step out of my comfort zone to face my fears.
Born an raised in a Christian country, however it have never played a role in my life, besides having to go to church when people got married, Christmas (sometimes, because my mom like the songs) or funerals. Anyway some years ago, I really got interested in knowledge and trying to examine things which interested me. So started watching lectures and debates online about pretty much anything, such as societies, neuroscience, evolution, space, genetics you name it. And the more I watched the more question I had/have so new topics constantly comes up.
At this point in time, all the terrorism were at its peak, which got me really interested in beliefs and why people believe in whatever they do. At first it had little to do with religion, but just beliefs in general.
Before this, I had absolutely no interest in religion, I knew all the basic stuff from the bible, like who Jesus were, Moses, Adam and Eve etc. But besides that I were pretty blank.
But knowing that religions had a lot to do with beliefs and many people believe them to be true, I thought it would be interesting to examine it for myself, as I could pretty much do it on my own and actually wanted to do it on my own, so I wouldn't get influenced by other people. So I decided to grab the bible and start reading it and decided to do it with an open mind, if it would make me a Christian, I was fine with that. Anyway a few pages later, I were pretty convinced that I were an atheist, but decided to keep reading it, because, again I was interested in why people believe in it.
Lucky for me, it just happened, that almost right after I started to read it, a JW rang my door, which I thought were an excellent opportunity to ask questions to one that truly believe. So we had a nice chat going back and forth for a couple of years. And at that point, my interest in religion had grown on me, so I actually spend a lot more time on it, than I would have ever thought.
In the end or during this time, having spend so much time on beliefs, I sort of went through a process, of my own beliefs and started questioning them. And as part of this, I decided to set some "rules" for myself, which is basically to follow wherever the evidence lead me. I want to be honest with myself, sceptical of everything and be as good at critical thinking as possible. As I see these as the absolutely best tools in regards to not believing false things. Which also meant that I was spending a lot more time, looking at stuff that disagreed with me, as I wanted to find flaws in own beliefs.
So basically not a lot have changed since that, I still spend by far the most time trying to find arguments, lectures or evidence against what I currently believe. And also Im still very interested in beliefs in general and how people arrive at them etc.