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Why are you an atheist?

ellemennop

Freshman Member
I grew up in a mildly religious family. I was baptised as a baby, went to
Sunday school through elementary school, and I had a fairly steady belief in God (as much as one can have at that age). I wouldn't say that I was a devoted Christian, but being an obedient child, I tried my best to follow what my church leaders told me.

At the age of nine, things started going wrong. One day while brushing my teeth before bed, I realized that I was going to die. It wasn't a fear that I was going perish immediately, but the knowledge that someday in the future I wasn't going to exist anymore-- and it scared me stiff. After that night, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't think about anything else but dying. My Sunday school teacher told me not to worry, that if I lived a good life I would go to heaven. When asked how she knew heaven was real, she replied that the Bible said it existed so it must exist. She also said that if I prayed, God would help me not be afraid.

My parents took me to a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which caused me to obsess over the things that made me anxious (in my case, the unknown). Every night I prayed and prayed for God to give me some reassurance that everything would be alright, but I was still afraid. I couldn't find proof of heaven so the question remained unanswered. It seemed as if every day I sank deeper and deeper into this chasm of doubt and fear. I lost weight, started doing badly in school, and had a lot of trouble interacting with kids my age because of the constant anxiety.lI wondered why God, as good and loving as people told me he was, would let a nine-year-old girl suffer like this if the answer was as simple as "all good people go to heaven".

Over a period of about four years, my belief in God deteriorated as I learned about evolution and the Big Bang theory. Scientific explanation of the universe made more sense to me than a belief based on a book of mythology written by humans. I remember a teacher lecturing about the Greek gods and goddesses and how they were created to . In short, I stopped believing because religion just didn't make sense to me anymore. Once I no longer believed, I began to look introspectively to relieve my anxieties. By drawing the strength from within myself, I was given a personal sense of accomplishment whenever I slept through the night or went a few hours without thinking of death because I knew it was a reflection of my own efforts and not the intervention of a divine power solving my problems for me. I dragged myself out of that darkness once I saw that it was my own problem to fix.

Losing faith in God has positively impacted my life. It has given me the opportunity to have faith in myself, to know that I have the power to shape my own destiny.

So my question to you is: why are you an atheist? I'm curious to see the comparison between people who were led to atheism by disappointment, etc. in religion and those who have always thought this way.
 

Willamena

Just me
Premium Member
I believed in "god" as a child because children believe what they are told is so. Similar to you, I stopped believing in "God" when religious symbols lacked sense. I started believing again when they gained sense.

I'm an atheist because I understand symbols.
 
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Caladan

Agnostic Pantheist
I grew up in a secular family, and religion was never forced on me. however I always had a keen interest in world religions and eccentric spiritual ideas.
a great deal of growing up for me was having a secular identity, and the belief I did have in certain periods of my life, was not of an organized religion, but my brand of panentheism. years and many dramatic experience later, I guess in a way I put my spiritual conquests on hold, and arrived at what I'll call naturalistic atheism, I certainly cannot relate to major anthropomorphic god concepts that are rampart with many people, however I also realize that there are many people of the same religions who believe in a transcendental God. I'm not closed to the concept of having an intelligent force behind reality, something universal, who's attributes are supernovas and the birth of stars, rather than wrath and jealousy, but my default personal belief system, is atheism; the universe is here, its spectacular, seems to be infinite, and crusading my life for a god is simply not on the menu, this universe is enough to explore for the time being. ;)
 
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Nepenthe

Tu Stultus Es
My atheism has nothing to do with my love of science, my religious or non-religious history, or any negative experiences in church. My atheism has nothing to do with choosing to believe or to not believe. I am an atheist because the philosophical arguments supporting the existence of God(s) are ill reasoned, the logical arguments have nothing substantial to offer, and there is no evidence that anything beyond the physical universe exists.

That and it allows me access to all those non-theist perks we get when we flash the secret sign.
 

whereismynotecard

Treasure Hunter
My parents didn't ever make me go to church or read the bible or anything, but they did talk about god as though it was a real thing. They casually mentioned heaven, hell, Jesus and all of those things just as if they were talking about the sun and George Washington. I had no reason to think they were lying to me, because they knew everything.

I actually never thought about religion much. No one ever mentioned the idea that there might not be a god; everyone around me spoke of it like a proven truth. Saturn exists, God exists, Heaven exists, China exists. I had never seen any of those things, but if mom and dad said they existed, why shouldn't I believe them? But then in middle school I was watching the X-Files and noticed that Mulder didn't believe in god. And I thought "I didn't know that was an option..." so I started thinking about it and I decided that it made more sense that there wasn't a god than that there was. So I stopped believing in it.

Since then, I've heard theories of how the earth came into being, and read about proof of evolution and my belief that there is no god has been vastly strengthened.
 

3.14

Well-Known Member
well i went to a christ .. how do you call it lower school? (grandmother wanted me there)

and we had to pray there every day, and i was like uhm why? so instead of closing your eyes i started to toss paper airplane's back and forth with my friend ( big plus if you hit someone in the back of there head everyone has there eyes closed so no witnesses :D )

now when i was like 7 my neighbour died and i was like ....but he doesn't look diffrent(it was open casket) so i started a qeust to rid/delay my mortality, now my first idee was

homebuilder/architect: the generations after me would life in my creation, but that idee was canceled because i didn't even know who build my house

my second was inventor: but i soon relized mankind was not ready for new things it could not even control the one's it had now

my thirde was cultist/priest,
because this one needed more information i started looking at what religions there were, and found most religions were and "obey and be rewarded" type, now since most discribe there"employer" as somewhere and since he was last sighted or heard from thousends of years ago
i asked a simple qeustion: "how do you know he is still alive"
and all of the priests rabbie's started with "uhm well ....." and then i relized why bother praying to a god if he might be dead already,

so i started developing a life philosophy instead combining
values from christianity
zen from buddhism
psychology
physics
biology
shaman's respect for nature
and a couple other things

and when i became older i learned more and more about whats actualy happening in the universum and jump the fence completly

(still get postcards on my birthday from the place i was baptized)
 

Smoke

Done here.
Basically, the edifice of my faith collapsed under its own weight. Theism was just too unlikely a belief to be sustained. I was very surprised by this development, and as it's only been a few years, I still sometimes think of the fact that I no longer believe in god with wonder. At 40, I would never have though such a thing possible.
 

Fortunato

Honest
Me??? I'm an atheist because I want the discovery of what lies after death to be a surprise!;)

Actually, it was a lot more rational than that. Ever since I was little, I was interested in science and how things worked and would incessantly ask questions. How do we know we're praying to the right god? How do we know we're following the right religious doctrine? Why should good people who don't accept Jesus as their savior go to hell? Why should bad people who accept Jesus as their savior on their death beds go to heaven? If St. Thomas could doubt the divinity of Christ after seeing him perform miracles, why shouldn't I also doubt, especially as I've never seen any miracle? And many, many more. All this left me pretty areligious, but it wasn't until I decided to really figure out and define my beliefs that I became aware that I could no longer support the idea of an imaginary god and still call myself rational. That's when I became an atheist. It wasn't too hard because one of my brothers was already an atheist and I'd been an agnostic for a long time.
 

BucephalusBB

ABACABB
2 things.
When I look at religion I see everyone in search for exactly the same answers. They all tend to ask the same questions and it appears that when an answer is unknown, the answer "god" is automatically applied. When I think of God, I usually think of the questions instead. And those led me in most cases to another answer. Also, when 2 of those answers are replied with "I do not know", there is nothing wrong, but once you replace "I do not know" with a constant, suddenly the questions get connected with the same answer. I discovered that many of those questions should not be connected instead. Whenever something is unknown, the last thing you should do is give it attributes.

Second, when I look at this world I see everything working on its own. Whether we found them or not, it appears that about every force is based upon rules. If everything works on it's own, it does not need maintainance by something that exists appareantly only for the maintainance.
Then the only reason I would need God for would be the start of it all. If that's all he can do, he is not interresting at all. He is just "the start". I would have replaced "start" with "God"....useless!
 

Vile Atheist

Loud and Obnoxious
I'm an atheist because I finally started questioning the religious crap being forced on me left, right, and centre. And when I questioned myself, I found:

- There is no evidence to support religious arguments
- Religious arguments lack logic
- Religious arguments often utilize logical fallacies.
- Whenever science discovers something new that should severely damage someone's faith, the goalposts are simply moved to accomodate it
- I disagreed heavily with religious "morality"
- I found the concept of infinite punishment for finite crimes revolting
- I also found it revolting that God would punish people who might have never heard of Christianity
- Too much symbolism. And why should I take a symbol literally?
- There is nothing to fear in death. So stop freaking worrying.
- I am ultimately a happier person without being religious
- I don't have to worry that a celestial dictator is constantly peering over my shoulder, just in case I masturbate and kill a few million "potential babies".
- What a perv, anyway....
- Who watches, like seriously.....
- That's gross
- Just about every religious institution preaches peace and love and just about every religious institution is guilty of some sort of atrocity.
- I find many of these institutions to be self-serving and hypocritical.
- I don't need someone else to interpret a text for me.
- Other people interpreting texts for you is just another way for others to tell you how to think
- Think for yourself. Even if you're wrong, you still have the satisfaction of knowing you aren't a sheep. Often pastors and priests will tell you exactly what to think.
- Have an open-mind. Be skeptical, but prepared to accept new ideas. Religions tend to promote rabid dogmatism.
- Can't we all just get along?
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
My atheism has nothing to do with my love of science, my religious or non-religious history, or any negative experiences in church. My atheism has nothing to do with choosing to believe or to not believe. I am an atheist because the philosophical arguments supporting the existence of God(s) are ill reasoned, the logical arguments have nothing substantial to offer, and there is no evidence that anything beyond the physical universe exists.

That and it allows me access to all those non-theist perks we get when we flash the secret sign.
I prefer
c5_1_b.jpg
 

Tiapan

Grumpy Old Man
Went out the window with the Easter bunny and Father Christmas when I was 7.

Cheers

Was very disappointed when succubuses where found to be fictitious also.
 
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