Welcome to Gaia! ::

Very strange, I went through, and I'm still going through it. I started out a catholic, believing what my mom told me about how life worked, but I never went to church, so I never gained a strong devotion to it. Eventually I started going to a Christian Church, though it never really drew me in. Eventually I couldn't go do to reasons I'm not going to post in a forum. In school we started to go over how religion has branched off over the years. We did a little project where we made our own "religion", with our own belief system and everything. It got me to thinking on how anybody could have made any religion, and slowly convinced others that it was the truth. To prove my idea, I convinced someone to join my "religion" just by telling him about the simple ideas of it. I ended up becoming agnostic by the end of the of it all.

So yeah, you have choice, it just depends on how you go about using it.

I did! <3
I was never raised entirely Christian to begin with. I mean, occasionally my parents would drag me to church, but I never knew why and I always felt bored.
And we celebrated Christmas and Easter, but with very little stress on Christianity.
So when I was probably only about twelve or thirteen years of age I started thinking it out, logically and rationally.
Before I was out of junior high school I believe I had mostly abandoned my old beliefs that Christianity was true... I do think I had some subconscious fear of Hell though for a long time.
And it wasn't until the past couple of years that I used my new found abilities to think and debate myself on different levels to come up with really sophisticated reasoning for why I so completely disagree with it today.
And I am and always will be a product of my constantly-changing thoughts and opinions.
I don't, however, think that I'll ever be a hardcore theist. Or at least, I don't see myself following any major organized religions. It seems something that you almost have to be born into in my opinion...

For me it has never been about choice, but rather about being convinced of something. The other thing I will never get is how some people simply make up what they believe.

I must say that I have had similar circumstances with brainnsoup and rurounizakku... I remember going to church once when I was very young and not having any idea what was going on for instance I thought that when the offering plate wa going around that they were offering us the money ect... I vaguely knew who Jesus was and celebrated the Christmas and Easter concentrating more on the Easter Bunny and Santa. I never thought about my soul or spirit or anything like that. When I was about ten my parents got divorced and my dad remained the same involving religion, leaving it in all it's vagueness while still being Christian (sometimes its hard to tell that he is because he is not attuned with religion at all and he beleives in Atlantis and all other manner of things in which contridicts with his Judeo-Christian beliefs) My mother however threw herself into her southern baptist roots (shes pentacostal or something like that now I think but she may have changed to something else) I got saved and all that and trid to follow god, not because I really believed but mainly out of fear of hell. I continued on that path of trying to get close to the Christian god for many years but it never clicked... then I read a book called "The Dragon Queen" first in a series by Alice Borchardt that I found amongst my fathers books (I was in 11th grade at the time) and even though it was a very fictional story it stirred something in me. I knew there were religions that were very close to the beliefs of the characters in the book (not the magic and all that but the beliefs that seem to be common with many forms of pagan) I began trying to learn about the various religions that were not in the main, focusing on what was oldest because a part of me thought that the earlier it came along the closer to truth it was (much like when playing the telephone game where a group of people try to whisper the same thing over and over in each others ears and by the end it is jumbled beyond recognition so that the first one asked the second "remember to say please" and the last person hears "Suzie has ticks".... Of course now that is only half of my beliefs, the other being the search of enlightenment and other important things in life.... I'm sorry for being so long winded and so will stop my religious path there and get my point across... I don't believe religion is a choice because no matter how hard I tried for many many years before that year and a couple after to believe in Christianity I could not.... I think it is that there is a certain religion out there for everyone.... they just have to find it...

I believe we choose every thing that we do, who we are, our belief, sexuality, etc. Though I don't rule out the possibility that culture, environment, parents, friends, etc. can influence us, but ultimately the choice lies on our shoulders.

Sure, but whether or not flying is possible for a human is another story.

I think you can choose to try to believe you can fly and you might eventually convince yourself depending on how gullible or convincing you are....

edit: in fact I am in the process of trying to convince myself that I am unable to die in order to conduct an experiment. This is going to sound crazy but it struck a cord in me and I did not come up with this by myself but what if the only reason people die is because they lose their will to live and this includes those old spinsters who cling to life in order to spite their descendants... what if the only reason they finally let go is because they believe they will die.