A Question For Atheists.

[DioneTheDiabolist]

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

P.S. I do not think that they are either unintelligent or lying. I think they are trying very hard actually.

Have you ever known anyone of faith who is not trying to fit in with their peers? For example people who have converted from one religion to another or who suddenly acquires faith?

This doesn't seem like a debate, just one person asking increasingly tiresome questions. No wonder people think you are writing an article.

What do you think OP?

What is your personal thought on this?

My MIL converted to catholicism when she married my FIL and her parents were very unhappy about it. But I think that was about rebelling against fitting in with her parents, and be able to fit in with her new husband and his family.
Other than that I don't know anyone who has either switched or suddenly found a new faith, but I would assume anyone who does comes into a new 'community' of people that enable that switch or new faith.

Mapal, that was how I felt at the age of 14 or so. I'd got in with a very happy clappy Baptist chapel who all looked serene and beauteous and said they had the Lord in their heart. I tried to have the Lord in my heart as well, even though I didn't feel any different after I'd asked him in. All along there was a little nagging voice saying "This is probably all made up." I heard someone talking in "tongues" once - I just stared at hum, unwillingly thinking, he's making it up as he goes along! And when I was 15, after me praying hard every night that she would recover and believing that he would save her, my friend died of cancer, in agony. She was 13 years old. I knew deep down then, there was no god, but even so, it took me until my late twenties to admit it. Belief is based just on fear and superstition.

Dione, I was 4. Father Christmas, Tooth Fairy, God. None made sense at that age.

I was brought up in a church-attending Christian family, so I was introduced to the bible, prayer etc. I don't recall ever actually believing any of it but it was interesting and quite enjoyable.
However when I was 5yo my younger sister died and the church and it's members treated my parents terribly in a time they needed support. As a result my mother completely lost her faith and we stopped our involvement with the church. So from that stage I had no external 'encouragement' to believe.
Since then, I have seen and heard nothing which leads me to believe that there is anything to believe in. There are however, any number of reasons to be very wary of influence on organised religion. So I try and steer clear.

I'm not sure I can answer exactly. I'm not sure I ever really believed. I can remember becoming a bit sceptical at around 10 or 11 - before that, I'd just been told and 'accepted' (as a young child does) the primary school teachings of a kindly god, with a big white beard sitting on a cloud in heaven.

Throughout teenage years I became very sceptical - it just seemed to me a very 'convenient' answer to all the questions we human beings couldn't answer - but that scientific discovery was making clearer to us. The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed to me that there was one all-powerful creator - and this was the one true god whereas Thor, Zeus etc weren't (anymore).

I suppose really in late teen years/university years it was various different things - I recognise faith as a comfort to other people, but I just didn't get it. I can appreciate the wonders of nature, the universe, love, etc without needing to believe in a deity.

I remember a friend of mine once saying "is it more likely that god created man or that man created god?" and that says it all to me.

OP did you ask because you genuinely want to know?

Whatever article or paper you need to write - at least be honest about it.

I could believe in "God" if it was just a name people give to creation, to nature, or just a metaphor, if you like, for some creative act of the collective human imagination. But that isn't what 99% of the Christians I have met would want me to believe in. I'm afraid when we get into things like prayer being answered I just eventually lose my patience and have to point them towards theories of confirmation bias and so on.

Plus, even if I could be made to believe in this thing called "god" - a huge mountain to climb - why on earth would I want to "worship" it? Why would I be bothered enough to get up early on Sunday and go to a draughty building and listen to a lot of tedious stuff and smile and shake hands with a lot of old ladies in hats, rather than stay in bed with DW and eat breakfast and read the paper, or go to the park with DS? It just says nothing to me about my life. It's a bit like golf - I cannot imagine for the life of me why anybody would want to do it, and would need to be made to do it at gunpoint. (But golf does at least exist, and the world isn't full of golf evangelists telling me my soul will be saved if I take it up...)

I never did. Parents went to church as it was socially expected in those days but I remember being very small (5ish) and thinking that it was all a story. It was actually before I worked out that Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy weren't real either (sorry folks, but it's true).

Gosh Hester how very sad about your friend.

The way you describe feeling at church is how I reckon loads more people feel than actually admit it.

Getoeuf I never intended for this thread to be a debate. I wanted to start a discussion about atheism. It followed some posts on another thread from atheists who didn't post in this section as they didn't like the way atheism was often just used to bash people of faith, as opposed to just being what it was.

As for me, I never really believed as a child. I tried, but it wasn't there so when I was about 12 I stopped pretending. My school were fine about my lack of faith although RE was compulsory, my dad didn't believe but agreed with my mum that I should attend church, or at least leave the house and be in the vicinity of a church until I was 16. Then I stopped going. I got faith in my late 20s. One minute it wasn't there, the next it was. It was a shock I can tell you. But it wasn't religion.

So that's my story. No paper to write, no desire to convert anyone, or start a is no god better than a god bunfight, just an interest. I also thought it would be nice to have a conversation with atheists that was not just about their reaction to people of faith.

BTW I have noticed some mistrust and suspicion regarding my motives starting this thread. Do you think that perhaps this comes about because when atheists start threads here, many if them do so in order to rubbish the beliefs of others?

I don't see learning RE as being incompatible with having no faith. I did RE until GCSE as an agnostic.

Atheists never start threads here, Dione.

Nor do I Hester, but I went to Catholic school (and it was many quite a few years ago) where all the girls were baptized etc. Strangely, or maybe not, out of 100+ girls in my year, only two finished school with their faith in tact. The rest became Athiest or agnostic.

What do you mean DadonIce?

What faith did you get Dione [intrigued]

I was brought up being told my Dad would burn in hell and struggled with the concept of deity from then onwards. In my teens I had a broken family life and had a lot of mental health issues which led to me getting sucked into an evangelical church that had split away from the church I was raised in and that did a lot of jolly music etc (music is my passion). It was basically escapism and a feeling of needing a surrogate 'family'.

It was when people started telling me that being gay was sinful etc that I came to my senses and realised I was there for reasons other than actually believing in god.

Since then I've become an outspoken atheist and I feel very strongly that I should speak out against teaching children 'facts' with no scientific or evidential basis whatsoever, because many children will just grow up to believe what their parents impress upon them, no matter how far fetched.

My religious friends constantly question how I can 'live without hope and morality', which I just find a crazy notion. I wish human nature could be such that we don't require a deity to have hope or live in a moral way - that to me would be true freedom.

I got my faith Narmada. I keep typing that sentence, get no further, delete it, re-read your post and re-type that sentence. Which is annoying. The only thing I can compare that moment to is when you look at phosphorescent rocks and then black light comes on. Everything is the same, it's just that you see something you didn't see before. I didn't start believing in creationism. I didn't become anti-choice regarding abortion. I didn't rush to church. I did go to the library. It triggered a million questions in me and I wanted answers.

I'm sorry I can't be clearer.

Leniwhite, I would find that so difficult. In what way are these people your friends?

I have always been an atheist. I can remember being very young - maybe four or five and being told about heaven at school. I spent ages trying to fathom out how a heaven could work - how would it be segregated? How could family members find each other if just their souls are up there? Where is it? I thought of the size it must be to hold every person how had ever died.

I thought about this for ages and eventually came to the conclusion that it can't possibly work so can't be real.

I believed in Father Christmas for longer than I believed in God

I've seen Derren Brown do tricks on atheists that make them suddenly believe in a higher power, (and then undo them again).

I remember when I was about 15 reading a Paul McKenna book about hypnosis, and how hypnotism was getting someone into a mental state where they are more suggestible. He went through the usual techniques and described how one of the quickest and flashiest ways to achieve this state was to push someone over onto their back. The sudden altered perception from being on the floor looking up made some people more suggestible.

Then I was watching a programme, Louis Theroux perhaps where he was at one of those high powered evangelist style churches. The preacher was 'infusing people with the holy spirit' by knocking them over onto their backs. They were already in a suggestible state from the highly charged atmosphere and genuinely believed they felt the Holy Spirit enter them.

When Derren was converting his atheists, I noted that for some of them, he also knocked them over.

I think this sort of hypnotic suggestion comes into religious experiences a lot. I don't think people are pretending to feel these things, I think they genuinely do. I just think they are very mistaken as to the source.