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I was at work the other day and one of my young co-workers said she didn't celebrate Easter. I assumed she was Jehovah's Witness since they don't celebrate holidays and I've worked with many JWs.
When she shared that she is atheist and her family don't celebrate Christian holidays it got me thinking about why people choose to be atheist.
I've worked with many atheists who say they attended church and made the decision on their own while others grew up with atheist parents thus just as kids growing up attending church, they followed their parents belief system.
I'm curious as to what the driving force has been in "your" life to choose atheism over any type of theism?
I'm an ex Christian who realized at age 19 that god belief is nothing more than a superstition. I have seen both sides. I never met another atheist until I turned 40 so this was entirely my own thought process.
I do not hear voices and no one is controlling my mind nor this universe.
I'm an ex Christian who realized at age 19 that god belief is nothing more than a superstition. I have seen both sides. I never met another atheist until I turned 40 so this was entirely my own thought process.
I do not hear voices and no one is controlling my mind nor this universe.
If someone is controlling the universe, they are doing a ****-poor job of it.
I never "became" an atheist, it was always my unnamed assumption. I wasn't raised in any religion, although my father told me "You'd be Jewish enough if Hitler came back. I know who I am." My father was raised immigrant observant Jewish and never went to temple after he left home for the war. My mother was not mentally well and always had trouble "coping" and exorcised her trailer after she left my father for evil spirits and continued on with delusions that worsened as she got older. Once when I was an adult, I mentioned something about not knowing her beliefs, and she said, "You didn't know that I really believe in god?" I honestly had never heard the word or concept mentioned from either of them.
They didn't raise me atheist, they just sort of forgot to raise me. I am always glad there was no abuse or extreme raising of any kind, but I was sort of left to my own devices about growing up. When I was eight, I asked my parents what I should tell kids if they asked me what religion I was and she said, "Tell them 'none of your business.'"
When I was 16, I had some corrective foot surgery, and the intake nurse was writing down my info, and asked, "What religion are you?" I said, "None." She said helpfully, "You know, Catholic or Jewish, you know..." and I said, "Right, none." She asked my mother, "Is that OK?" and*my mother gave that "These kids today" shrug.
I always loved animals and nature. I had the thought when I was about eight that space travel didn't matter, because you could never go far enough to find out about life on other planets and galaxies, but when you died could just flash around and find out. I think that came from reading Madeline L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time," a major children's book by someone who became known as a Christian writer. In her book, there was "Good-Love" and "Evil-hate and no individual anything." Everything you did, good or bad, reverberated through the universe of energy. I think this was extremely formative for me, although I do sincerely consider the idea that nothing reverberates and we just should do the right thing because who likes trashy or evil behavior? (This could be from the general Jewish environment of my suburb and schoolmates. There were also a lot of Holocaust survivors in the neighborhood, my father fought in Europe, and the question of good and bad was very much in the air. Adolf Eichmann was on trial when I was eight, and there were books around the house about the Holocaust and all. My father's only explanation was that Germans were awful horrible people, but the Ukranians were worse, the Baltic states were terrible, so were the Rumanians and Hungarians and the Poles, and the French weren't much good, either. But the Danes, those were fine people. Oh, and Arabs, no good either.
I really didn't know that people honestly believe in god or the Christian words they say at funerals on TV or something. I guess that's cynical. I was actually an adult before I found out that people honestly believe these things. I became more interested in the tenets of some beliefs in 2000, when I edited a transcript for "Frontline" on PBS about George Bush's Karl Rove-inspired use of evangelicals for vote gathering. Really, that was the first time I gave any thought to actual Christian tenets.
So I didn't "become" an atheist, I recognized there was a name for what I saw as the way the world and human life works. Thanks for asking.
When I had my house built, I used to come to the site in the morning and bring coffee for the workers. The plumbers were Seventh-Day Adventists, so I brought them orange juice. They also didn't work on one day of the week- Saturday?
I found out they were doing a lot of fancy footwork around paying taxes (or not paying them) and had offshore accounts and stuff. Don't know if taxes are involved in the religion but they sure didn't drink coffee.
I was at work the other day and one of my young co-workers said she didn't celebrate Easter. I assumed she was Jehovah's Witness since they don't celebrate holidays and I've worked with many JWs.
When she shared that she is atheist and her family don't celebrate Christian holidays it got me thinking about why people choose to be atheist.
I've worked with many atheists who say they attended church and made the decision on their own while others grew up with atheist parents thus just as kids growing up attending church, they followed their parents belief system.
I'm curious as to what the driving force has been in "your" life to choose atheism over any type of theism?
Intellectually I am tempted to go the atheist route...but I can't because it does not make sense. It all has to do with modern pride - ego and an attempt at being more sophisticated than the next guy..this in my opinion creates atheists..
Religion is also the culprit..because it is corrupt and lies. Most intellectually figure out that the universe thinks and that the miracle we live in is a devine creation...that there is a God....Atheists are striking out against man..not God...sadly they toss the baby out with the bath water.
I never "became" an atheist, it was always my unnamed assumption. I wasn't raised in any religion, although my father told me "You'd be Jewish enough if Hitler came back. I know who I am." My father was raised immigrant observant Jewish and never went to temple after he left home for the war. My mother was not mentally well and always had trouble "coping" and exorcised her trailer after she left my father for evil spirits and continued on with delusions that worsened as she got older. Once when I was an adult, I mentioned something about not knowing her beliefs, and she said, "You didn't know that I really believe in god?" I honestly had never heard the word or concept mentioned from either of them.
They didn't raise me atheist, they just sort of forgot to raise me. I am always glad there was no abuse or extreme raising of any kind, but I was sort of left to my own devices about growing up. When I was eight, I asked my parents what I should tell kids if they asked me what religion I was and she said, "Tell them 'none of your business.'"
When I was 16, I had some corrective foot surgery, and the intake nurse was writing down my info, and asked, "What religion are you?" I said, "None." She said helpfully, "You know, Catholic or Jewish, you know..." and I said, "Right, none." She asked my mother, "Is that OK?" and*my mother gave that "These kids today" shrug.
I always loved animals and nature. I had the thought when I was about eight that space travel didn't matter, because you could never go far enough to find out about life on other planets and galaxies, but when you died could just flash around and find out. I think that came from reading Madeline L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time," a major children's book by someone who became known as a Christian writer. In her book, there was "Good-Love" and "Evil-hate and no individual anything." Everything you did, good or bad, reverberated through the universe of energy. I think this was extremely formative for me, although I do sincerely consider the idea that nothing reverberates and we just should do the right thing because who likes trashy or evil behavior? (This could be from the general Jewish environment of my suburb and schoolmates. There were also a lot of Holocaust survivors in the neighborhood, my father fought in Europe, and the question of good and bad was very much in the air. Adolf Eichmann was on trial when I was eight, and there were books around the house about the Holocaust and all. My father's only explanation was that Germans were awful horrible people, but the Ukranians were worse, the Baltic states were terrible, so were the Rumanians and Hungarians and the Poles, and the French weren't much good, either. But the Danes, those were fine people. Oh, and Arabs, no good either.
I really didn't know that people honestly believe in god or the Christian words they say at funerals on TV or something. I guess that's cynical. I was actually an adult before I found out that people honestly believe these things. I became more interested in the tenets of some beliefs in 2000, when I edited a transcript for "Frontline" on PBS about George Bush's Karl Rove-inspired use of evangelicals for vote gathering. Really, that was the first time I gave any thought to actual Christian tenets.
So I didn't "become" an atheist, I recognized there was a name for what I saw as the way the world and human life works. Thanks for asking.
Wow, thank you for such an amazing insight into your life. That is very interesting. I'm left wondering about your parents though. Was your mom in organized religion or did she just believe in God? The holocaust was such a horrific time! My grandfather was asked to be one of the judges at the Nurenburg trials. He declined due to the safety of his family (he had 8 kids).
If someone is controlling the universe, they are doing a ****-poor job of it.
WHO says that someone is controlling the universe?.....who said that God is even interested in the concept of control...? Control is a man made idea..God is not physical as we know things to be...Control is all about cause and effect...force--- physics...God is beyond wanting to control...man is not.
I am a nontheist in that I do not have a belief in god. I am an epistemological agnostic in that I do not believe we can either prove or disprove the existence of god. I am an atheist in that I estimate the probability of the existence of any type of god existing as extremely low. I am atheist not only because I believe that there is no convincing evidence of god's existence, but because I believe there is evidence that discredits many of the things typically cited as evidence for god's existence, such as the Bible, Quran, fulfilled prophecies, answered prayers, spiritual promptings, near-death experiences, visions, etc.
I am a naturalist in that I do not believe in the supernatural and believe that we are fully part of the physical universe. I am a spiritual naturalist in that I still enjoy feeling the feelings I formerly believed came from the "Spirit" which I now believe are psychologically caused. I study the rules and conditions that govern when those feelings will be present.
But, as opposed to listing all those terms as descriptors of me, I typically just say I am atheist. When someone probes deeper, I tell them that I am a spiritual naturalist.
When I found out the LDS Church wasn't true, I felt no anger towards god. I was angry at Joseph, he was the one who lied time and again and took advantage of the virtuous and trusting. I believed at the time, that if there was a god, he could not lie, so he was not the one that gave me all of those spiritual confirmations of the truthfulness of the Church and the power of the priesthood, etc. I was mistakenly led to believe by Mormons that those experiences came from god, when they could not have if god is not a liar. That got me seriously thinking about whether all the times I thought I was communicating with god were actually instances of me talking to myself and whether all of those just-in-the-knick-of-time answers to prayers would have happened anyway and others were a result of confirmation bias. One thing was for sure, no matter where those experiences come from, I could not tell which ones were true and represented reality and which ones did not and apparently neither could any other Mormon who thought god confirmed the truth of Mormonism to them, so those spiritual experiences were unreliable as a source of information, although they still felt good. To me, trying to identify what is true through spiritual experiences makes about as much sense as trying to determine the nutritional value of a food by how good it tastes.
My atheism did come about through intense study of both apologetic and critical information mainly about the Bible, Christianity, and Judaism, but then about god in general as a Creator or beneficient power, and near-death-experiences, and the psychology of religion, etc. And that is why I think my atheism sticks. I don't second guess myself because I can point at the exact evidence and arguments that convince me that the probability of a god existing is extremely low, and the probability of specific gods existing such as the Jewish god is even lower than that.
It is unfair to say that atheists do not see or acknowledge the events and evidence and arguments that can and have been used to support the idea that god exists. I certainly have and do, and I have my ways of incorporating all of that into my naturalistic (god empty) worldview. I don't understand why god is the default explanation when individuals encounter phenomenon that they do not have an explanation for. For one, the concept of god doesn't explain the unexplainable as no mechanism is ever offered on how god supposedly does these miraculous feats and without a mechanism there is no explanation. It is a double-standard. We expect naturalists to offer an explanation with a mechanism (it is not sufficient to say in response to a miracle that "nature did it"), but we are somehow satisfied with the explanation "god did it". If naturalists have to provide the mechanism, then by golly, theists do too.
Two, many things that theists want to give god credit for, we already have naturalistic explanations for that they just don't know about or understand, evolution being a big one, but also many things about mental and emotional processes.
I understand that there are people who have studied Biblical criticism and still come away from it believing in Christ. There are Mormons who read all of the true history and still believe in Mormonism. I also understand that there are people who realize the natural processes, but prefer to believe that there is something godly also happening behind the scenes. To me that seems unnecessary and most likely false, but to each his or her own. I disagree, but I can see the perspective that they are taking. I acknowledge the evidence on both sides, but I believe the naturalistic perspective has the better potential of explaining both sets of evidence than the theistic perspective, especially with the many pieces of evidence that show that which we used to trust came from god does not.
We can't falsify every experience, but we have demonstrated that enough of religion is false to make me be very skeptical of that which is unaccessible for testing. And the naturalistic model has explained many things which were previously a mystery and continues to do so, so judging by previous performance, I think the naturalistic perspective is much closer to reality than the theistic one, and in any case much more useful and predictable.
I never believed. There just didn't seem to be a god around. There were times when I was half accepting of the claims of some apologist organizations, but I stayed disbelieving when end of world predictions didn't pan out. It suppose it was reading about other religions and how they made just as much sense that finally did for the Christian claims. I looked at other religious claims and went for Karma but in the end couldn't see how it made sense.
It was quite recently that I was challenged to 'read the bible' (that is, Gospels) and I did and was astonished at how tatty the gospels were when you try to reconcile them. While I am now convinced that Christianity is a crock (though I think an original Jesus did exist and was crucified by Pilate for insurrection) I have taken the Bible on as a study - to get to what it's really all about - not the religious claims which don't stack up at all.
The recent threads on the Flood and evolution, and past ones on Exodus and the logical rationale of atheism has simply reinforced my view that the atheist view has the better case and religion (while a sortagod is possible) has precious little to go on but gaps for God.
Oleg, boy, you sound to me like a deist. Like to say where you stand on what's in the bible and on organized religion? Just curious, not looking to argue with you.
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