Religion is a tricky subject to try and rationalize since it's based entirely on the premise of faith. Frankly I've never been much a fan of practiced religion or the "institution" that it has become. It someone finds comfort in the belief if a higher power and treats that as their guiding star throughout their life to do right by others and themselves in order to sustain a sense of righteousness and worthiness, then I see no harm whatsoever in that way of thinking. You can look at one religion and cross-reference it with another, find similarities and products that are entirely different to one another. Each different interpretations of a power seemingly beyond comprehension, only capable of being referred to as "omnipotence."^ Thread title, let me explain
Basically when I was a kid up until I'd say about 12 years old I was 'taught' that Christianity was the right religion, and slowly I guess I drifted away from that thinking as I grew older and myself and my family moved from Florida to New York and subsequently we stopped going to church for whatever reason.
Thing is I never really understood anything that was going on in church, as I was too young to really, and all I ever knew was that not believing was a ticket to hell and bad things would happen to you, yada yada.
So I kind of just fell off from it I guess, because I figured that I cant force myself to believe in anything I just don't, and I still never had anything repeated to me about it other than, "if you don't follow this teaching you'll go to hell". It was just a way to force me to, I guess, say I believe in Jesus and Christianity, because its the right thing to do and anyone who doesn't follow in the churches footsteps are wicked or somethin.
I think what I'm called now is an "Agnostic Theist", which is just a way of saying I believe in a "God" but I don't really follow any religion or any specific god. But thats of my own choice, and is just something I feel myself without having to be told of any muddy consequences to not follow certain rules or believe in anything different.
There's a saying that suggests that the Bible is history's greatest best selling fictional novel. There's a part of me that wants to say "don't be silly, you don't know it's fiction, all about having faith." But that's not necessarily true if you really think about it. The Bible and similar texts all throughout the world have a similarity of being governed by the will and testament of a living "Prophet" whom claimed to know the will of "God." These Prophets were not God themselves, and no one ever saw or heard the same message they did supposedly. So who's to say it wasn't all made up, an episode of heat stroke, maybe they were just really good at pretending something was real that they fooled themselves into believe it too? Who really knows? It's all a matter of interpretation and whether or not you believe that to be actually possible.
So to really summarize the point, you can't "make" yourself believe in religion. You can follow it, pick and choose lessons of it to follow or even all together disregard it; maybe even make your life goal the achievement of debunking it like some people do. It all boils down to your own individual faith. You can entirely believe in God but not practice Christianity or any other religion, that's entirely possible and -contrary to popular belief- not something that would necessarily be wrong. I've heard a saying that each of us have our own relationship with God, so it'd be silly to suggest "if you don't live in the same house as him, then you can't be friends." You can ask the question and wonder to yourself about it without believing and still be able to go about living a life indifferent to the conclusion. Whatever makes you feel more comfortable and helps you view the world and the many intricacies it has.
