Were You an Atheist™ before You became a Theist?

[Heyo]

Just to put out some balance.

Are there any believers who are former atheists? And to be clear about the meaning of atheist in this OP: I don't mean ignorant atheist as we all were those when we were children. I also don't mean apathetic atheists who just didn't care enough. I mean someone who has looked into the arguments for atheism or agnosticism, believed and defended them for a while and later came to a different conclusion. I have never met such a person but maybe there is some here?

 

[Eddi]

I have never met such a person but maybe there is some here?

Yes, there is...

Hello

 

[Heyo]

Yes, there is...

Hello

Are you the one? (You didn't explicitly say so.)
But if you are, I'd like to ask some questions, especially about the logical steps you went through. What were the most compelling arguments against theism for you when you were still an atheist?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Often.

 

[syo]

Just to put out some balance.

Are there any believers who are former atheists? And to be clear about the meaning of atheist in this OP: I don't mean ignorant atheist as we all were those when we were children. I also don't mean apathetic atheists who just didn't care enough. I mean someone who has looked into the arguments for atheism or agnosticism, believed and defended them for a while and later came to a different conclusion. I have never met such a person but maybe there is some here?

At school i was taught christianity. christianity is a huge fairytale. i was destined to become an atheist, to negate christianity. when i got rid of christianity, i saw that atheism isn't quite right. i wasn't happy. one day i was playing videogames. in the videogame there were imaginary gods, polytheism. polytheism. and a new travel begins for me with polytheism.

 

[Eddi]

Yes, I'm the one

This is my story:

At one point in my life (when I was a devout and sophisticated atheist) I grew dissatisfied with the atheist world view. I felt as though I knew there was more to life. I felt this as a nagging gut feeling. For a while I became intrigued by social insects (bees but especially ants) to whom humanity and culture are entirely ineffable, beyond their comprehension - and yet this ignorance did not hinder their sociability. And didn't alter the fact that humans exist!

But what tipped the balance was when I had a psychotic nervous breakdown and sensed the influence of some kind of higher being in my life who was messing with me - but not necessarily God. I was not sure what it was. The illuminati? The Matrix? Looking back, probably just psychosis...

I then started attending a non-Christian church as I wanted fellowship and to grow spiritually and become more enlightened. I came to see the higher being that intruded into my life as the being people call God - my symptoms then affirmed this to me.

This prompted me to look into the various standard arguments that there are for God, which I accepted as being reasonable

But I no longer pay attention to or believe what my symptoms say, my belief in God is independent of my mental illness.The madness has gone, but I maintain a belief in God.

Today, as I am sat writing this I am not influenced by any mental illness and I accept the arguments for God.

Simply put, to me the world makes more sense with God than without God

I eventually came to believe in the Christian God, and became a Christian. My Christianity is based on two things: faith and reason. If you want to understand the latter of these, see here: Existence of God - Wikipedia

 

[Rival]

Yes. I also took Philosophy classes and we discussed this kind of thing. I listened to the best atheist arguments from various speakers; watched debates, read articles etc.

 

[Quintessence]

As I said in the other thread, I suppose one could look at it that way. But as I said in the other thread, it's important to consider how ignorant I was about theology until I was in college.

Yes, technically, my folks attempted to raise me Catholic (so one could say I started off as "theist"). However, it stuck so badly I was out of that before I was even double-digits in age (so one could say I started off as "atheist" too, especially because I was more passionate about going on about how stupid "theism" and "religion" were than I ever had been about the Christian god). But then I learned I was simply ignorant, and that I'd had my gods all along but recognizing them as such an impossibility because I was thinking in the classical monotheist god-box (so one could say I became "theist" or had simply always been a theist).

So really, the story can be spun however you want to spin it. I think the real lesson here is that "theist" and "atheist" are garbage terms. As I mentioned in the other thread, they mean less than nothing when "god" can literally be anything. They only mean something within a specific context or when discussing a specific god-concept.

 

[Heyo]

Yes. I also took Philosophy classes and we discussed this kind of thing. I listened to the best atheist arguments from various speakers; watched debates, read articles etc.

What were "the best atheist arguments" that convinced you then? And how did you refute them later?

 

[Rival]

What were "the best atheist arguments" that convinced you then? And how did you refute them later?

The problem of evil; god seeming to be 'too small'; god not being able to be sensed etc.; not needing god to be here; the 'religion is a fairytale for grownups' view; you've likely heard most of them so I won't go on.

I basically just realised that it was my conception of G-d that was too small. It was my own narrow-mindedness. I believed too much in literal readings of whichever scripture it was; I came to realise that the very idea of GOD is not something that can be scientific or deduced, understood and categorised; but that I'd grown in a culture that wanted, nay needed, everything to be put into boxes and able to be scrutinised and understood. I lived in a world where science and G-d were in conflict, when really these are two completely separate concepts trying to make sense of two completely separate things. I was hindered by a strict materialist worldview that couldn't even account for itself. Once I stopped seeing science and my own culture as the best most developed things ever and stopped believing that everything exists in a material, limited universe, and dropped this bizarre idea that humans could explain everything, I became open to much wider ways of thinking.

 

[shunyadragon]

No, never an atheist, but a philosophical agnostic that believes in a 'Source' some call God(s). As far as the God(s) of ancient scriptures described in anceint religions of Judaism and Christianity I found them unbelievable,

 

[Quintessence]

The problem of evil; god seeming to be 'too small'; god not being able to be sensed etc.; not needing god to be here; the 'religion is a fairytale for grownups' view; you've likely heard most of them so I won't go on.

I basically just realised that it was my conception of G-d that was too small. It was my own narrow-mindedness. I believed too much in literal readings of whichever scripture it was; I came to realise that the very idea of GOD is not something that can be scientific or deduced, understood and categorised; but that I'd grown in a culture that wanted, nay needed, everything to be put into boxes and able to be scrutinised and understood. I lived in a world where science and G-d were in conflict, when really these are two completely separate concepts trying to make sense of two completely separate things. I was hindered by a strict materialist worldview that couldn't even account for itself. Once I stopped seeing science and my own culture as the best most developed things ever and stopped believing that everything exists in a material, limited universe, and dropped this bizarre idea that humans could explain everything, I became open to much wider ways of thinking.

This isn't too different from my own experience, though I didn't come into the formal arguments against God until I was a bit older. Initially, I rejected a lot of what I was being taught in Sunday school because I was already a huge nerd as a kid and reading entirely non-fiction (natural sciences, specifically) a the time. I was patently uninterested in any sort of fiction - I wanted the facts and anything else was rubbish. Naturally, that included everything teachers were attempting to tell me in Sunday school which I perceived as boring, useless stories and fairy tales. Later on I became aware of the more formal arguments against the Christian god, like the problem of evil and the like, which just solidified my "religion is stupid, theism is stupid" angstheist attitude.

But, like you point out here, all of this was really a result of my own narrow-mindedness. When I discovered Paganism was a thing in college, theology was easily the biggest struggle. Like most in Western culture, I was in something of a mental prison where I could only think about "god" in the way that is taught within that culture. Anything else simply wasn't a "real god," which meant I ignored any serious consideration of any theology other than classical monotheism. In discovering Paganism, I started becoming dimly aware of the fact that I was thinking inside a prison. Then dim awareness became revulsion as I recognized my culture had conditioned me into this prison without my awareness. It needed to be slagged, and slag it I did. But that process took a long time.

This experience is part of why I'll remark from time to time about foundational assumptions that underpin our worldviews. We inherit a certain set of foundational assumptions from our environment - the culture we are raised in - and rarely if ever question or challenge them since we aren't consciously aware they exist. This happens routinely with ideas about what "god" means, and is especially chronic since the public education system in my country does nothing to ameliorate this. A child should not be able to go through K-12 education still thinking "god must be supernatural" or "god must be omnipotent." Yet it happens all the time because public schools refuse to teach basic competency about theology for fear of... well, 'nuff said.

 

[George-ananda]

Just to put out some balance.

Are there any believers who are former atheists? And to be clear about the meaning of atheist in this OP: I don't mean ignorant atheist as we all were those when we were children. I also don't mean apathetic atheists who just didn't care enough. I mean someone who has looked into the arguments for atheism or agnosticism, believed and defended them for a while and later came to a different conclusion. I have never met such a person but maybe there is some here?

Well, you have met your first one in me. Greetings!

I was a materialist atheist at an earlier point in my life. My 'conversion' was not caused by any type of argumentation or logic but it started with the evidence for paranormal phenomena suggesting we are not just physical machines. This could not be accounted for in my materialist-atheist outlook at the time.

As I progressively looked into spiritual wisdom traditions that attempted to make sense of this non-material phenomena I came to believe through logical consideration that Consciousness/God/Brahman is the starting point of all this. Another long story.

 

[shunyadragon]

This isn't too different from my own experience, though I didn't come into the formal arguments against God until I was a bit older. Initially, I rejected a lot of what I was being taught in Sunday school because I was already a huge nerd as a kid and reading entirely non-fiction (natural sciences, specifically) a the time. I was patently uninterested in any sort of fiction - I wanted the facts and anything else was rubbish. Naturally, that included everything teachers were attempting to tell me in Sunday school which I perceived as boring, useless stories and fairy tales. Later on I became aware of the more formal arguments against the Christian god, like the problem of evil and the like, which just solidified my "religion is stupid, theism is stupid" angstheist attitude.

But, like you point out here, all of this was really a result of my own narrow-mindedness. When I discovered Paganism was a thing in college, theology was easily the biggest struggle. Like most in Western culture, I was in something of a mental prison where I could only think about "god" in the way that is taught within that culture. Anything else simply wasn't a "real god," which meant I ignored any serious consideration of any theology other than classical monotheism. In discovering Paganism, I started becoming dimly aware of the fact that I was thinking inside a prison. Then dim awareness became revulsion as I recognized my culture had conditioned me into this prison without my awareness. It needed to be slagged, and slag it I did. But that process took a long time.

This experience is part of why I'll remark from time to time about foundational assumptions that underpin our worldviews. We inherit a certain set of foundational assumptions from our environment - the culture we are raised in - and rarely if ever question or challenge them since we aren't consciously aware they exist. This happens routinely with ideas about what "god" means, and is especially chronic since the public education system in my country does nothing to ameliorate this. A child should not be able to go through K-12 education still thinking "god must be supernatural" or "god must be omnipotent." Yet it happens all the time because public schools refuse to teach basic competency about theology for fear of... well, 'nuff said.

God by God's nature is omnipotent.

It is best not to expect public education to defend theism nor any religion.

 

[Rival]

It is best not to expect public education to defend theism nor any religion.

It's not about defending anything, but about teaching children and young people to think critically and outside the box in order to be able to look at ideas and concepts from another angle than the one they're culturally, morally or otherwise inclined towards.

 

[sun rise]

I was an apathetic atheist so the OP does not apply to me.

The Works of His Hands: A Scientist's Journey from Atheism to Faith by Sy Garte is a book by someone who was raised as a militant atheist and came to believe in God. I'm sure there are others floating around.

 

[Quintessence]

It's not about defending anything, but about teaching children and young people to think critically and outside the box in order to be able to look at ideas and concepts from another angle than the one they're culturally or morally or otherwise inclined towards.

Pretty much. I had a tendency to question the authority of adults just in general as a kid, but when I did this about religion and theology, I wasn't presented with any adequate answers or alternatives. Naturally, I just concluded it was all rubbish. With more exposure other types of theism on their own terms, I probably wouldn't have drawn that conclusion. Poor education closed doors - doors that very well could have stayed closed for a lifetime. For some, they do.

There was one book I read in particular that helped me shatter the cage. It was reading a simple question - if you could design god, what would god be like? At that moment I realized I didn't have to listen to this trash of "god has to be this" or "god has to be that." What other people said about god wasn't god. It's what other people said. I got to make up my own mind about what "god" meant. So I did.

 

[Onoma]

Personally, no. I was agnostic at best, but tbh, God didn't really cross my mind that much until I had to face my own death from terminal illness

 

[Heyo]

So, @Eddi, @Rival, @George-ananda, the secret to converting from atheism to theism is to simply ignore the logic that made you atheists?

 

[George-ananda]

So, @Eddi, @Rival, @George-ananda, the secret to converting from atheism to theism is to simply ignore the logic that made you atheists?

In my case, real world evidence (paranormal) trumped my materialist-atheist worldview.