I dont want to talk about the varies definitions of atheism, agnostic, and theism. If you KNOW god does not exist, I have a question(s) for you. If you Believe god does not exist, I dont share the same "faith" so it wouldnt be a same-faith conversation. Also, I wanted to put this were those who know god doesnt exist can reply without the thread going off course on definitions.
Those who KNOW god does Not exist and used to be christian (if not mainstream even better), muslim, jewish, bahai, so have you who are atheist, when you believed in a creator, how did you personally define him or her?
Not sure if I qualify for this thread, since I have ever been an atheist far as I recall.
Still, people around me kept assuming me to somehow believe in some form of deity in my first 20 years or so. So much so that they seemed to never see a need to actually ask me, going so far as to put me through Catholic Eucharisty without asking me whether I wanted to.
Come to think of it, to a large extent that is what shaped my conception of the Christian God. I hardly ever thought of him as something for people to believe in. Were it to be believed in, people would actually
want to know whether we do, would they not?
As it turned out, the average Christian-styled deity just wasn't a natural fit for the role of subject of belief. Out of the top of my mind, I can't recall any deities that are.
People are expected to believe in their ability to deal with specific challenges and goals, not in supernatural entities. Those entities (deities) are essentially mental clay for the expectations and values of people to shape into form. Deities are literally creatures from fable, meant to say and express contents about the tale teller, not about themselves.
Writing this I now understand that it is a manifestation of the strong egocentrism of early age, when everything that I witness will of course exist because of me and for my own perception. Just as there was no difference between my wanting to see someone and that person wanting to see me, likewise the matter of whether those fabulous entities actually existed was simply not something to consider or even to conceive.
For most of my young age I simply assumed that everyone else thought likewise and that "God" and "Jesus" were, in effect, just the names of two particularly popular mythical entities. Of course I believed in them, just like I believe in any other fictional character while I am telling its tale. All the same, I would of course tell you that they did not exist if you thought to ask me.
The very idea that someone might think of gods or even saints or prophets as "real" was just weird and actually cheapened the concept considerably. Mythical entities are supposed to be inspiring, not "real". That is their whole point. If anything, we are supposed to lend them existence, if existence even fits their nature at all.
So, in a nutshell, I guess I just found it odd that so many people mishandled the mythical concepts by attempting to decree them "real" - an action which, of course, would only serve to emphasize that they are hardly meant to be real in the first place. I even seem have a vague memory of finding it sad that no one around me seemed to "get" deities correctly enough to tell engaging fables and tales featuring those deities with any regularity.
I did not quite realize that at the time, but I was starting to develop an urging to correct them, to teach them to use their myths for inspiring tales, not for pointless claims of "reality".
Thanks, Carlita. I had not quite consolidated those splinters of recalling up until now.
