A Question For Atheists.

[DioneTheDiabolist]

When and how did you decide that you didn't believe in god?

Aw Techno, I was really looking forward to finding out the results of what babies think in MRI scanners. You are such a tease. You are also mixing up knowledge with belief or assumption.

I never liked organised religion; too many wars fought on behalf of them, too restrictive, unfair to and intolerant of certain demographics. What kind of a God would allow that? My believing mum's answer was that humans made a mess of it, not God. So I concluded that personal faith might still be a good thing, offering hope and comfort and an incentive to do good, but the institutionalisation into catholics/protestants/moslims/jewish/etc sucked. I was about 14 or so and didn't want to go to church anymore.

Then I heard how the bible came to be assembled, that there are stories that didn't make it into the final version. That nailed it for me. The bible is a completely arbitrary collection of stories, not the word of God at all. I was about 18.

Dione

I posted a genuine scientific theory with my suggestion for how my theory might be tested.

It is quite easy to take my "belief" and turn it into "fact" using the scientific method (and some expensive kit).

If the results were contrary to my theory I would adjust the theory to suit and continue testing until I have a theory which was repeatably provable via test.

This is unlike a religious belief in all regards, since a belief wouldn't be changed despite the evidence proving contrary to the belief.

I really wanted to believe.

i could see how faith gave some people that extra boost in life & got them through hard times. When I had a breakdown at 17 (after years of bullying) I tried really hard to 'get into it' but the more I tried the more it seemed so unlikely to be true.

Life is too random & quite obviously just a sequence of events. Anything not 'random' is just luck & coincidence.

Also, it comes across as a book to scare people into being 'good' by using the fear of hell/purgatory.

Anyway, I read the God Delusion when I was about 20 and that was the nail in the coffin!

Some time in my RC schools. It was quite gradual for me. We didn't go to church often and I was shocked to find out some people go every week.

It was as if we were role playing, I just thought it was what you did like putting a stocking up for santa when you are 20 and everyone pretends.

I'm another that wanted to believe. I was brought up C of E (high church) and both my parents are heavily involved in the church. When I was a child I really believed. As a teenager I sort of dipped in and out of it.

In my early twenties I really tried to get back into it but I had so many questions. All the suffering in the world- if god is omnipotent then why doesn't he intervene? If he isn't omnipotent then why bother worshipping him? If some parts of the bible are metaphors (the creation story being one) then how do you know which parts are literal and which parts are metaphorical? Why are some parts ignored completely and others emphasised?

There are only two possible answers to all my questions: 'god works in mysterious ways' or 'none of it's true'. I went with the latter. It felt like that moment in the morning when you first put your glasses on, everything suddenly went into focus.

I don't see myself as 'lacking faith', I don't think I'm missing out on anything. I feel like I'm finally satisfied with the way life works and how I view the world. The only down side is that I'm slightly in the closet, my family would be gutted if they found out I'm an atheist. I don't pretend to be religious and I don't go to church, we just don't talk about it.

^ also, realizing I could get through things by having faith in myself, rather than a god/gods helped cement my views.

I also have a very internal locus of control (so I believe that I'm in control of my own destiny, pretty much) which makes it quite hard to follow a religion of any sort.

I think if you have an external locus of control it had to be easier to believe , as it fits in with your general outlook on life much more neatly.

Like so many others on here, I never believed. The whole God & religion package always sounded stupid. Some of my earliest memories are of asking people why they think there is a God and marvelling at their lack of proper answers.

I also think that too much is bad is done in the name of god(s), which is beyond wrong when it's not even something we can prove.

Yes, it does some good but at the end of the day that's the cold truth about it.

Also the belief that " There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents " .

I think several things,

I realised prayer did nothing, reading the god delusion, my brothers death, sitting In church listening to teaching I was dead against (turning the other cheak wft) the zombie like brain washing of it all, the historical contradictions of earths history.

so many things, the bible (or any other holy book) to me is to keep people in check to behave. non of this points to the existance of god.

I just don't believe that grown up intelligent people really believe. I think they all just want to believe. And I think they're all thinking they are the only ones who don't really believe and are trying to be like the others in their community when really deep down everyone just feels the same.
And I think the atheists are just the ones brave enough to be honest about what deep down, everyone knows is true.

Sorry that just doesn't answer your question at all I'm in a strange mood this morning.

Anyway, I don't think people decide they don't believe in god. I think the normal state is not believing in god, then people get taught about god at some point in their life and then decide they believe in god. They may then decide later on that actually they don't believe in god, these are folk who could answer your question properly I suppose.

I was never taught to believe in god so have never believed. It's as simple as that. I wasn't christened, we never went to church, I knew the most famous stories (ie Christmas!) as stories, was never told they were true. And reading the God Delusion just made me brave enough to put the name of atheist to it. It's a shame that in these modern times it is only just becoming OK to call yourself an atheist!! We have been oppressed for so many years!

Oh dear, told you I was in a strange mood.

The other thing that helped my atheism was more and more exposure to other religions. I didn't grow up in a very multicultural are or go to a multicultural uni so if have been 21 before I had a lot if exposure to Islam Hinduism and Judaism and then travelled to India and Sikkim and Buddhist areas then japan and shintoism. The more I saw the more I couldn't possibly pick one religion and they can't all be right!

I started to see god and religion as a thing cultures preform to bind them together into communities and I saw my own upbringing in that light too.

Techno, a thought or hypothesis which has not been tested is not a genuine scientific theory, no matter how much you wish it to be.

I too was brought up in a Sunday school culture and went every week for many years. It never had any resonance for me. I did not decide that I did not believe in God, I just found none of it convincing and therefore my default of non-belief continues.

To those of you who say that learning about evolution lead to your becoming atheists, were you taught creationism as scientific fact?

That question is backwards for me, too - I didn't stop believing, I never believed in the first place. I come from an atheist family, and the best efforts of the school system did nothing to change my mind.

I would say I don't believe in a Christian god for the same reason that I don't believe in Zeus, Thor, Diana the Huntress or any other god.

TBH I wouldn't even bother calling myself an atheist - its a bit like saying 'I'm not a believer in Valhalla' - religion has just never played any part in my life.

I think that in practice a very large proportion of the UK population is with me on this one, and its why there is so little outcry about compulsory CofE religion in schools, people just see it as a bit like fairy tales. So even if they do think 'oh yeah, they've got a point' when someone complains, they don't care enough to do anything about it.

I wouldn't call myself an atheist because I believe that there is so
something.

However, I do not believe that there is the God who exists in Christian, or other monotheistic religions. This is because things happen that should not happen - awful things. If this God is truly benevolent, they wouldn't happen. God wouldn't test people in this way. If this was the case, God would be at best uncaring, at worst cruel.

God is. God does. (I think that God is a force which I am calling God here for ease of convenience.)

There is no consciousness to it. No reason. It doesn't ask for anything. God is the cosmos. God is nature.

I grew up with a non-conformist mother and a Jewish father who converted to Catholicism. It gave me a great interest in religion but certainly no faith - even as a small child it was obvious that they couldn't all be true. I could never be a brownie because i wouldn't swear the oath to god (or to the queen for that matter!). I did try to embrace catholicism later on when i was having a difficult time but it was quite apparent i was just looking for emotional support rather than having any real faith. Even my priest agreed that it probably wasn't for me.

From my early teens i identified as a pagan, but within a short space of time i stopped seeing gods and goddesses as literal entities and saw them instead as aspects of nature and ourselves. After this all the rituals seemed a bit silly and pointless. I think i probably fully embraced atheism while studying A level RE. I still identify as pagan as i do believe that there is an interconectedness between all living things, but i don't believe there is any supernatural deity behind it.

I was brought up in a Catholic family but remember clearly working out before I went to school that it was less coherently put together than many of the story books I read (I was a scarily precocious child). Of my many, many siblings I think only one now still attends a church of any kind and that may have more to do with the fact her FIL is the pastor than any real belief.

It would be nice to have belief. I can see how a sense of certainty can be comforting and less scary than feeling adrift in a world where you have to work it all out for yourself. However, I studied Religions at university and the more I studied the more the patterns of social control across all religions became clear. And then I discovered neuro psychology and, once I learned how the human brain can be artificially stimulated to create a religious experience, there no longer seemed to me to be any vestige of an excuse for hanging onto religion as a social construct.

Slug what age are you talking about? 3-4 years old or 10-11 years old?

Mapal, are you saying that you think believers aren't intelligent or that they're lying?

I think that they think that their religious peers all have faith & believe etc, but I think that they themselves don't really and are just following along & trying to be part of it because they want to be like that too. But deep down I think they feel it's all pretend but don't want to feel like that.
So, I think EVERYONE feels like that, but the individual thinks it's just them.

I know how this sounds, it's awful of me I'll admit it. But it's what I think, apologies if you don't like it and I understand if lots disagree. I still think I'm right though.