A lesson in atheism... (priests, Creator, contradiction, Buddhist)

[weatherologist]

Now that I have your attention...

I was wondering if the atheists in the forum would do me the privilege of hearing your views/story/whatever. I have become very perplexed since I joined this forum. Prior to now, I don't know that I have ever given atheism much thought. I truly think that I believe/d that every person that I met was a Christian or a person with some religious faith. OK, call me naive. I just always believed in God (sometimes my faith was up and sometimes is was down) and silly me, although I knew there were other faiths, I never thought that I personally knew anyone who did not believe in a creator. (I know that you are all saying, "come on, can she really be that dumb?") What I am trying to say is, I know that there are atheists out there, I just don't think that I personally have met them. Much less, been friends with any. Now please don't take this as an insult, actually it is meant to be quite the opposite. I feel that I have gotten to know some of you through your posts and MOST of you seem like very genuine, nice, loyal, upstanding people. My question to you is, how did you become atheist? Were you once a believer and through your study of logic/science/whatever, decided that the whole idea of a creator was a bunch of phooey. Or was there something else that turned you away from faith? Or, were you never a believer?

Again, this is a question for the atheists. I would highly appreciate it if the Christians in the forum could refrain from trying to use this thread as a place to convert the atheist. Absolutely no Bible quotes! I just want to get to know the atheists on the forum a little better and hopefully learn an appreciation for their beliefs.

Thank you in advance.

With respect,
Weather...

[Sage of Sagle]

Weather,

I applaud your desire to have open discussion on the matter, and assure you that the mods will help keep this thread from degrading. (Hoosier_Guy & jco are the regular mods here, the rest of us just help if we are notified of an issue)

For Christians who may read this thread....be advised that you may hear things that would otherwise be offensive to you about God or the Bible. Don't come unglued. It will be someone's personal view of something that they have been invited to express and NOT an attack on all you hold dear, so DO NOT post up about it unless you have a directly relevant QUESTION for atheists that furthers the discussion.

[Humanoid]

I was raised christian and went to church as a kid, but when I become a teenager the whole thing started to seem very odd. I went from being christian to just being a non-religious theist to then finally being an atheist during my teenage years.

Anyhow I'm an atheist because I have absolutely no reason to believe there is a god, let alone a "personal" god as seen in the bible. I'm not christian because the bible seems little different than hundreds of religions we now consider mythology. In short in both cases I've found nothing that justifies them.

[Miss Blue]

Before I sit back and read and enjoy. Just want to mention the "share your athiest testimomy" thread started way back by hop on pop..It was a very good learning thread until...well..you know

[stretch00]

I have posted some of this info before, so my apologies if you have read it.

I started out as a believer. I was a very devout catholic kid, with some very devout protestant friends. Their church/pastor was always on the verge of declaring catholics to be non-christian, occasionally using the word 'cult'.

This prompted me to start looking into why there where different denominations, and what the differences were. Which led me to study the bible, church fathers, modern day apologetics, philosophy, logic, etc. I spoke with protestant ministers and catholic priests, plus a few buddhists.

This went on for a few years, and the deeper that I looked, the fewer solid facts I found behind christianity. In fact, I found no facts that pointed to the existence of any type of divine being.

I called myself an agnostic for many years, continuing to read on the subject of religion and philosophy. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the christian god simply did not make sense, and could not exist as depicted in the bible. That pretty much disposed of christianity.

I looked briefly at a few other religions, but did not feel a draw, or in fact, any sort of need for a religion. They all struck me as a collection of nice, heartwarming, but ultimately silly stories.

There certainly was a period of loss. Facing the fact that I would one day die, and that there would be nothing after that, was initially depressing. But it also freed my thoughts to explore other issues.

Overall, I am happier as an atheist than I ever was as a theist. This may be simply due to age, life experience, or whatever. But I do not miss the concept of god, or the afterlife.

So, in a nutshell, I became an atheist due to the lack of evidence for christianity, and the lack of a need for a god.

[GregW]

A very bitter alcoholic that hated the god he had believed in raised me. He claimed to be an atheist and not believe in any god but he must have because of the depth of his hatred. This was very confusing to me because I could not figure out how he could be so emotionally involved with something he proclaimed did not exist. This attitude combines with other things led me to believe that he had no idea what he was talking about. This conclusion applied to lots of other things as well.

I though about religion and eventually realized that the central question of any religion is “How was the universe created?” Having learned the scientific method I applied this method to this question. Science is based on observation, experiment and evaluation of the experimental results from which a theory can be derived and tested. As the question of the origin of the universe cannot be either observed or subject to experiment I cannot know, with any certainty, that the universe was created by a super (super = outside) natural being called God. I do not know how the universe was created and therefore do not know if God exists.

I do, however, greatly distrust faith and faith based religions because they have no rational concept at their core. From observation I have concluded that many religious people are very wonder caring decent human beings and that some are as despicable as it is possible to be.

The result of all this is I am an agnostic. I do not believe that god exists or not. I also do not have any faith in any religion.

[Alpha8207]

Originally Posted by stretch00

I have posted some of this info before, so my apologies if you have read it.

I started out as a believer. I was a very devout catholic kid, with some very devout protestant friends. Their church/pastor was always on the verge of declaring catholics to be non-christian, occasionally using the word 'cult'.

This prompted me to start looking into why there where different denominations, and what the differences were. Which led me to study the bible, church fathers, modern day apologetics, philosophy, logic, etc. I spoke with protestant ministers and catholic priests, plus a few buddhists.

This went on for a few years, and the deeper that I looked, the fewer solid facts I found behind christianity. In fact, I found no facts that pointed to the existence of any type of divine being.

I called myself an agnostic for many years, continuing to read on the subject of religion and philosophy. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the christian god simply did not make sense, and could not exist as depicted in the bible. That pretty much disposed of christianity.

I looked briefly at a few other religions, but did not feel a draw, or in fact, any sort of need for a religion. They all struck me as a collection of nice, heartwarming, but ultimately silly stories.

There certainly was a period of loss. Facing the fact that I would one day die, and that there would be nothing after that, was initially depressing. But it also freed my thoughts to explore other issues.

Overall, I am happier as an atheist than I ever was as a theist. This may be simply due to age, life experience, or whatever. But I do not miss the concept of god, or the afterlife.

So, in a nutshell, I became an atheist due to the lack of evidence for christianity, and the lack of a need for a god.

That's interesting, stretch, thanks for sharing.

Couple of questions:

1-You mention your age, do you mind sharing that and how you think it applies to you being happier?

and

2-Are you married? If so, did/has your lack of a belief in God played a role in that process and, if not married, would the fact that someone was a believer play a role in how far you'd let a relationship go?

Just curious.

[nvxplorer]

My story is similar to Humanoid's. As I approached the teen years, Catholicism made less and less sense.

As an adult, I've learned to keep my emotional and rational psyches separate. I've not yet had a close family member die, but when a dear pet died, I imagined seeing him again in heaven. It was a comforting thought, but my rational mind realized this was simply a manner of grief, not any indication of reality. When pondering my own death, my mind engages in other forms of wishful thinking as well, but again, I realize this is no indication of reality.

I sometimes feel a strong agnosticism, not toward knowledge of God (that would assume we already know the nature of God, which makes strong agnosticism a contradiction, IMO), but toward cosmic knowledge in general. This idea itself is somewhat of a paradox; being trapped within a human psyche, we are incapable of knowing whether a "higher form" of logic or intellect exists, although we are capable of realizing the possibility of such.

[ian6479]

Personally, I never "became an athiest". All people are born without the belief in a God.. that is taught through parents/teachers/friends etc I think that there were a few questions that always played on my mind when I was young, such as "why is there so much suffering in the world if God is so beautiful", "why do such aweful things happen to nice people", "why do natural disasters happen".

I don't think atheism is a belief, a personality, a trait, or anything. It is just a term for the sounds people make when they are in the prescence of religious convictions. Atheism lifts the guilt of "sinning" and in my opinion opens the mind to free thought and expression.

If you really want to know what it is like to be an atheist, then think about the way you dismiss Allah, Zeaus, Apollo, Dionysus, Krishna etc etc. The only difference is that I add the Christian God to my list.

[stretch00]

Originally Posted by Alpha8207

That's interesting, stretch, thanks for sharing.

Couple of questions:

1-You mention your age, do you mind sharing that and how you think it applies to you being happier?

I am 39. I mentioned the age thing mainly because I was in my late teens and early 20's when I went through my seeker phase. Those years were a time of turbulence and angst for me. Not uncommon for many. As things stand now, I am reasonably well established, secure, overall living a good life. I do not attribute all of this to my atheism of course, nor do I attribute all of my early life angst to me uncertainty as to religion.

Originally Posted by Alpha8207

and

2-Are you married? If so, did/has your lack of a belief in God played a role in that process and, if not married, would the fact that someone was a believer play a role in how far you'd let a relationship go?

Just curious.

Yes, I am married. My wife has a fuzzy belief in some sort of divinity, but no literal belief in the bible. I refer to her as a cultural christian.

I am not sure that my atheism had any significant role in my getting married, or how that happened. I was up front about it, certainly. But we all choose partners based upon a number of factors. I would not date a smoker, similarly I would not date a devout woman. Women can take me or leave me on a similar basis.