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I always doubted, even when I was very little and couldn't really put my thoughts into words. It all just didn't make sense but I didn't know why and because everyone around me believed and didn't doubt (or at least they never said they did), I felt like something was wrong with me, it took years before I could openly talk about it all and figure out why and what I did and didn't believe.
I am 65 years old and I have never believed in God.
I was raised in a household that was totally lacking in religion. My parents thought religion had helped a lot of people but never discussed God with me at all. As I got older, the idea of some kind of supreme being never occured to me.
When I look out onto this beautiful and fascinating universe, I do not see any overall design. I just see things behaving according to some natural principles we humans barely understand, but that is good enough for me. I am simply glad to be alive.
Are you a lifelong atheist like me or were you once religious and decided to change? If so, why did you change?
I was raised in a similar environment. I think my parents may have had a vague belief in a supreme being, but this was rarely discussed. I was never exposed to religion, and never saw any evidence to believe. Growing up, I suppose there were times when it was a little hard as far as being excluded from something that virtually all of the other kids my age were at least to some extent involved in, but it wasn't too bad (I grew up on Long Island, NY, so there was a diversity of beliefs and no one overriding religion - maybe this helped).
Now, as I've seen and read about others struggling to overcome the lifelong brainwashing that is religion, I'm very thankful for my upbringing. I honestly don't know if I would have been able to free my mind from religion if I had been raised with it, and I salute those of you who have.
I was raised religiously. Roman Catholic in my case, and I was pretty devout until my mid-teens. I was also interested in science and philosophy. In my late teens I tried to reconcile the basics, such as creation with what we know of physics, an omnipotent god with the problem of evil, etc.
None of it could be reconciled to my satisfaction, and a couple of years later I considered myself an agnostic, and shortly after that I just realized that I was an atheist. 20+ years later I am still firmly an atheist.
During my youth I think I was open to the idea of a god, and both side of my family were doing their best to expose me to their idea of their god. By the time I was a young teen I had already rejected the religious stories as myths, and rejected the idea of the Christian and Hebrew gods. I rejected the rest by my mid teens, and by the time I was in the armed forces had no religion stamped on my dog tags. I have never turned back, and now work with Atheist organizations to expose the truth about religion.
I became a hardcore Christian, super-excited about Christianity when I was 14. I always went to church (3 times a week), helped with anything & everything, taught SS, went on mission trips, read my Bible everyday and prayed multiple times a day. It wasn't something I faked.
In church over the years I remember people within the church fighting over money or landscaping, missionaries arguing over supplies for "their families", pastors cheating on their wives or abandoning their kids, Christian educators ridiculing children or changing grades so their pet students were on top, and church members fighting over whether or not to panhandle in front of Wal-Mart. However, there are two circumstances/incidents that made me seriously question Christianity.
The first was spending time in NYC. For the first time in my life, I was friends with openly gay people, Wiccans and Jews, agnostics and atheists. I watched how they treated each other and me. I saw them perform in fundraisers and cancer marathons. I saw how accepting and loving they were, and they weren't Christians, at least not like any I ever saw. They actually treated people with respect. I started asking myself: "If nonChristians show more love, compassion and acceptance to me than Christians, is there really anything to Christianity? I mean, Jesus isn't changing those people (Christians) so maybe He's not real." I spent about two years chewing on that.
The next incident happened after we moved to the south. We drove up to a slot at Sonic and on the speaker was a sticker "God hates Gays!" in big bold letters and underneath was a statement about HIV being God's punishment for homosexuality. You can imagine how I felt seeing that after the 2 years of questioning God's existence or power in part because of my gay friends in NYC. I told my husband, "Take that down!" He ripped it off, and we talked about new question: "If there is a God, why does he allow his people treat other people like trash?" That's not very Christ-like.
It sat like that for another 18 months, and I started reading. I read about science, philosophy, and the history of Christianity. In a nutshell, I became convinced that there is too much the church has not been honest about - from the Council of Nicaea to today. Once I discovered more about the history of Christianity, leaving it became a very natural and easy transition. There is very little likelihood that I will ever return to that faith or any faith.
I do believe in God. I do not believe in people. And in not believing in people, i am 100% against any type of religion. I did however once believe in Christianity and went to church when I was in my teens. A very miserable time in my life.
After seeing all the corrupt, contradictory, greedy & overly judging people of that church I evolved into atheism. I stayed that way for years until finally coming to my own conclusion that there must be intelligent design in my opinion. I am still steadfast against religion. Having been apart of it early in my life, it does give me more clarification as to the ignorance & greed that is rampant in the religion. Great question.
That's interesting. I have to admit that Intelligent Design seems to be a very compelling argument. I think it a false one and mainly due to a lack of understanding of how natural forces could well be a valid explanation.
Neverless, it convinced Anthony Flew and it convinces a lot of other people and the zones of comfort argument is an argument which takes a bit of countering.
That said, it is also significant that you have no time for organized religion. As I have said before, that is actually what atheists are so strongly against - man made religion and invented personal gods. A sorta pantheist intelligent universe is not something to quarrel over.
The danger is that 'sortagod' can be used by theists to make a leap of faith to Biblegod or one or the others, using the 'contact with Its (which mysterioiusly acquires the term 'His' en route on the leap) creation' argument and next thing you know the Bible (or Quran) is being quoted as the contact message.
The other problem is that buying into intelligent design as sortagod being behind it (that is, doing all the bits we haven't explained yet) is perhaps ok, but not if it is used to dismiss natural selection and rubbish evolution and teach Intelligent Design as a science subject. Because, as I say, it is actually not sound science. It really isn't.
That said, I can be sympathetically agnostic about a deistgod being behind the natural processes.
I'm a lifetime atheist by the way.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 12-19-2010 at 08:29 AM..
Are you a lifelong atheist like me or were you once religious and decided to change? If so, why did you change?
Yes, I used to believe in a god.
I also was not brought up in a religious household. My mom went to a non denominational church and took me but never really drilled it in me. I also had many friends who went to church and would tell me about God and Jesus and the bible and all. So I believed out of fear of going to hell but I always had doubts and many questions and things never totally added up for me.
I was in my early 20's when I realized I really had too many doubts but I truly thought I was the only one. Or that I was of a tiny portion of the world that had doubts. Then after someone sent me a "Jesus Love You" email chain, I get fed up and started Googling my doubts and came across many sites for non-believers and found out about agnostism.
It was light a light went off in my head. I never felt the need to try and believe again. It was so refreshing!
Thanks Miss Crabcakes both for the mention of the light going off in the head and the refreshing feeling (Yep, that is exactly what you get when you realise that you don't need to believe that stuff anymore) and the hungry feeling I get whenever I see your name and I just have to make some crabcakes. With sweet corn.
No, but I tried to. I was required to attend church on Sundays and Bible school in the summers as I was growing up. I just could never convince myself that it was real.
I didn't choose to not believe. I'm incapable of believing.
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Did you used to believe in God?
