QUESTION: What made you become an atheist? Were you always one or at some point you just stopped believing in the existence of God? I'm just curious to know how people get to that conclusion.
was always one for the most part. Since I wasn't raised in a religion, I saw it just as another fairy tale/myth akin to greek and norse mythology. Morality does not come from religion, nor do humans come from God.
I never believed in any gods from birth, since my whole community is not big on religion (they are not really atheist, they just don't talk about it, so throughout my life I never had a conversation about religion with an adult until I become an adult myself). Initially I don't believe in god(s) because lack of evidence and conflicting views of deities from different religions. Them I thought about it for a while: 1, If Jesus (or his dad) is god AND he (they) exist AND have supernatural powers AND want people to worship him, he would have used his power to destroy the other religions. 2, Similarly, if the god(s) from other religions exist and has awesome power, they would have destroyed Christians and all other religions. 3, But multiple religions exist in the world. 4, Therefore, either these god(s) don't exist, or they are not powerful enough, or they don't bother to get people worshiping them. 5, If they don't exist then I won't worship them. Alternatively they are not powerful, so they are not worthy for me to worship. Or they don't want me to worship them so why should I. 6, Plus most religions contain superstitious elements contradictory to mainstream science that I believe in. For me, mathematical axioms and theorems and logic are the closest things to gods. 7, Or maybe gods exist after all? If this world is a computer simulation like the matrix movie, it would make the programmers gods. In another way, I am god to those people living inside the program I wrote for CS assignment?
TLDR: Gods may or may not exist but I don't care since I don't worship them anyways.
I was brought up to decide by myself. My parents are not too religious, they never go to church, but they do believe. Religion just didn't make sense to me. I don't want to say that there is definitely no creator or god, just that I have no scientific evidence that would prove one way or the other.
Hmm correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we can scientifically disprove the existence of God.
As for existence, according to the Big Bang, almost 14 billion years ago, there was a singularity. That singularity began to expand, everything developed and now we're here. And scientists say that the universe continues to expand. But before that singularity, before the big bang there was nothing. Something popped out of nothing. That's crazy! For something to be created from nothing, there had to be something of infinite power that made it possible--the first cause, which is God. Idk to me, saying that there is no creator would mean that everything happened through chance/accident. If someone said that out of nowhere, an elephant appeared out of thin air as they were walking to class, I would not be able to believe it. But the universe and all the organisms are so complex and ordered. A lot of people believe that the universe and the world and everything in it came to be without a creator, which means it just happened randomly. But how can I possibly believe that if I would not even be able to wrap my head around random objects appearing out of thin air without a cause?
I'm somewhat confused with your logic. If you're finding it difficult to believe that such a complex universe could just suddenly exist, why is it more believable that an incredibly complex creator could similarly just suddenly exist?
@3b: I guess because every effect must have cause. Like for for example, the clothes I'm wearing right now didn't just suddenly exist. Someone or a machine turned a simple fabric into a clothing material. Whatever it is that caused the effect is more complex than the effect itself. Or think of dominoes and the domino effect. Before you can have that domino effect, your finger had to first push the first domino.
3c you are an idiot, if every effect must have a cause then what caused this "God" to exist. Let me guess you think he always existed. Just like others think the Universe always existed. Retard. Why couldn't this effect have been a physical occurrence within the laws of reality AS WE SEE IN EVERY FUCKING THING WE HAVE OBSERVED EVER.
Wow why are you so angry 3d? Please don't use "retard" as an insult. It's offensive and demeaning to those who actually have mental retardation. The deserve to be respected just as much as everyone else.
3e I'm sorry I shouldn't have used retard but the reason I am so angry is that where I come from, and in many many places around the world, religious people make life hell for non-believers and even jail/kill them for it. I do not want Canada to become the same.
Apology accepted 3g :). I'm sorry to hear about your negative experience with religious people. There's no denying that it happens and it's very sad and unfortunate. I think though, that even without the belief that there's a creator or religion, people are still going to find ways to hurt each other. In a perfect atheist world, we would still be humans, and still kill each other and destroy civilization. I'm in no way trying to convince anyone that God exists...all of us have brains and we should all use it to come to our own conclusions. I know that people commit atrocities, and at times in the name of religion but I just don't think that those acts are proof that God doesn't exist. I can't defend other religions because I don't know too much about them but my religion only taught me about love. That there is a God who loves us so much that he's willing to sacrifice himself to prove his love for us. But does that mean people who identify with my religion are perfect and would never hurt anyone? Of course not. I'm also guilty of not treating everyone the way he/she deserves to be treated because I'm only human and I make mistakes. I'm taught to love everyone but it's not always easy. My religion doesn't teach me to make life hell for non-believers but to treat them with love and kindness because whether they believe or not, they are still children of God. It's not my place to judge. Sometimes people wonder, if there is a God, then why doesn't he just make everything perfect and make himself clearly known so everyone will worship him? Why does he let us do bad things? Because he doesn't take our ability to choose. To take away our freewill to make everything perfect is not a sign of love. It's a form of coercion. You can't force someone to love you, because if you did, then it wouldn't be love. And that's why we're not supposed to make life hell for non-believers. I know people do it anyway and I'd like to apologize if you've had bad experiences with people who identify with my religion. I wish everyone lived what they preach but I understand that it's not always easy.
I am an Agnostic born into a family with a Catholic father, a Jewish mother, an Atheist brother and a Buddhist brother. Both of my brothers and I were raised to believe whatever we felt made sense to us, and to do research in order to come to our own conclusions. As a child, I went to church a few times per year, synagogue a few times per year, and celebrated both Catholic and Jewish traditions. I used to pray before going to sleep every night even though nobody else in my family did. While I don't really know what to believe and am therefore Agnostic, I came to that conclusion in high school when I realised just how much more to the world there was than what I knew and could possibly know.
I know I'm not Atheist, but I think it's an interesting family.
I know it's false equivalence but believing in a god is like believing in a unicorn. Magic man hiding somewhere and creating things as he/she pleases sounds ridiculous. I know we can't ever prove/disprove the existence of god much less our own existence but the concept of God seems so self-absorbed.
Man all you Atheists make me sad..So many people just say "Oh yeah I am atheist (or agnostic)" or "I am not religious, just spiritual" (whatever the hell that means) like its a fad or something without having actually sat down and thought about it...Western society has made you into stupid sheep just following whatever the general crowd says...
You may THINK your sense of morality magically comes from your own intuition (which you cannot explain using any logical or scientific methods) or that it comes from some twisted sense of humanistic science but really it comes from your God-given innate conscience.
Yeah you are probably rolling your eyes but I know for a fact that there will be a day when you will fall into trouble and just have a low and hopeless point in your life. At the point you may not WHO you're calling out to but you WILL call out to God.
a) Just because people don't explicitly describe every little reason and train of thought that led to them believing what they believe, it does not mean their beliefs and values are based on non-complex and shallow foundations. Maybe they just don't want to tell people like you, who are more than ready to judge them.
b) You "know for a fact", huh? I did reach that low and hopeless point. I called out to God. I called for many, many years. There was no answer.
Man all you Atheists make me sad..So many people just say "Oh yeah I am atheist (or agnostic)" or "I am not religious, just spiritual" (whatever the hell that means) like its a fad or something without having actually sat down and thought about it...Western society has made you into stupid sheep just following whatever the general crowd says...
You may THINK your sense of morality magically comes from your own intuition (which you cannot explain using any logical or scientific methods) or that it comes from some twisted sense of humanistic science but really it comes from your Zeus-given innate conscience.
Yeah you are probably rolling your eyes but I know for a fact that there will be a day when you will fall into trouble and just have a low and hopeless point in your life. At the point you may not WHO you're calling out to but you WILL call out to Zeus.
Your conscience is actually from the devil. Do you really think God would let humans think for themselves? The whole story of hell being a place of eternal pain and torture made up. No one has returned from hell for a reason, it is awesome there. I don't want to go to heaven, where solar radiation will give me a halo shaped brain tumor, die, and be forced to walk the Earth trying to get people to go to heaven so I can afford the cure.
Ok for JUST a moment I ask you to not go into the Atheist-hate-troll-I-am-right-you-are-wrong mentality....just for a moment
Notice I don't do any name calling. I am trying to be civil. If you find faults in my arguments, attack those. No need to spew hatred against me.
@8d: How about we use some logic instead of satire to discuss the issue?
@8b: Just because God didn't answer your "call" doesn't mean he doesn't exist. Life isn't suppose to be easy (at least not all the time). It is a test. You can fall into despair or you can rise up beyond it and have some hope.
I have been in a situation of despair many times but I have experienced enough in my life to know that God exists. I have seen the good in human beings that you CAN'T explain with science. Justice, courage, hope and love. These things can't be measured because their source is ultimately due to the mercy of God. We humans are not some biological accident due to evolution. We have a purpose and you really need to sit down and ponder on this.
Of course I haven't reached that 100% point of certainty (won't happen until death) where I can say I KNOW God exists but I am not going to just give up say "Oh, God didn't answer me therefore He doesn't exist".
I'm not an atheist but I'm agnostic, which I think would have similar background stories.
My parents believed in religion and they raised us with it. I used to believe in it too because I never really thought there was any reason to question my parents because, why would they either lie to me or pretend they knew something when there was no proof?
I noticed that I started believing in religion less once I started learning more about it. At first, I just believed in it without really reading any holy books or praying, but one day I got my period and had *really* bad cramps before I took an advil and it was the worst physical pain I had ever felt and I thought that if hell was worse than that, it was very important for me to be as religious as possible to avoid going there at all. So, I started learning more about religion and becoming super religious. At the same time, a bunch of different things came together to make me question whether my parents actually knew what they were talking about:
1) I started making some friends (I had very few friends before) that were not religious and it made no sense to me that they had no chance of getting into heaven because their family was not religious 2) I took a psychology course and it confused me that people would go to hell when the only reason anyone did anything bad was because there was a problem with them. Humans lock up other humans because we are not omnipotent so we may not have the resources to help people fix problems of criminals, but why would god punish instead of help balance out the problems? There seemed to be a reason behind all misbehaviour where people were just trying to get their needs met in the wrong ways, whereas before, I just labelled misbehaving people as "bad" and deserving of punishment (this is probably the main reason I don't believe in religion). 3) A lot of inconsistencies with certain scientific beliefs that are based on evidence. I don't necessarily believe that science is always right but it seemed odd that we would go with religion over science when science seemed to be more strict about why it thought certain things were true. 4) I learned about many people who didn't believe in religion and their reasons why. Again, like point #1, I thought it was weird that they'd go to hell just because their logic was flawed and they didn't realize that god actually did exist. I had always learned that it was okay for people to have differing opinions and to respect them, so why would they be punished if they had the wrong opinion on this particular issue? 5) There were a lot of rituals and traditions that seemed to be based off of how things were in the past that I was never able to find explanations for yet they were required. 6) Even if I believed in the big picture, which I didn't, there were a lot of little rules that I couldn't really agree with and I couldn't find any good arguments to help me agree with them even if I tried. 7. I learned more in school about different mythologies and gods from different times and places and I didn't understand how my religion was different. 8. I learned about other conflicting religions and I didn't find any reason why one religion's stories were true while another's were not.
So, basically, once I started to dive into religion to become a more religious person, I started to question it. I asked God to give me permission to explore this question because I wanted to make sure that I didn't follow blindly. I asked him to not punish me if I died while on the fence about his existence because I truly wanted to believe in him but I wanted to do my research just to make sure but unfortunately, I couldn't find any reason to continue believing.
I started dating someone with a different religion than I, and my dad flipped out. Since then I have lost all respect for religions and I believe if a God existed he wouldn't allow people to be as ignorant as they are.
Wouldn't consider myself a true atheist. Born and raised Christian, and would now identify myself and non-theistic christian. I don't believe in an omnipotent creator that's playing a role in everything, but a set of moral beliefs in the "Treat others as you would have them treat you" mold.
I don't think you should have to the have the promise of paradise/ threat of hell to be a good person, or that if there was an all powerful being he would care if Timmy was fucking Lucy without being married, or that Ricky and Fred happened to love each other.
I also don't think I'm a particularly good person, but I do try not be a fuck
never believed in god ever. never cared. i only start caring when people start trying to shove creationism down people's throats and the fact that it's actually taught in some schools because fuck that bullshit
Was raised in a non-religious family so never really thought much about deities or religion in general. I'm not even sure I'd call myself an atheist. I concern myself so little with religion that I think I'm more of an apatheist (Oooh, see what I did there!?).
my feelings are that "is there a god?" isn't a valid question. I have never understood the need some people have for a more profound spiritual foundation to life, as if cause and effect are not profound enough, and as if nature is not wonderful and curious enough as it is.
Also I would like to point out that anyone who thinks science is "not always right" fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of science. It is not dogma. It is ever-changing. The whole point is that revolutions can take place and theories can be overturned in the presence of ideas that better fit the observations.
I just think it's presumptuous to think we can ask such an outrageous question as the one about a God. We can ask questions about electricity and gravity and physiology, though, so I think we're better off starting there.
I don't think I ever really *believed* in God. I mean, I heard about him in Sunday school until we stopped going because I'd share too many family secrets with the pastor but I don't think there was any belief there (just boredom). It was more of a transition from not knowing or caring to not believing or caring.
I agree that religious fucktards have no place here, but I believe that fucktards in gerneral have no place here. I don't care if you are religious, just don't be a fucktard
was always one for the most part. Since I wasn't raised in a religion, I saw it just as another fairy tale/myth akin to greek and norse mythology. Morality does not come from religion, nor do humans come from God.
ReplyDeleteSame thing, was always one. Never saw a reason to pick one religion over the other.
DeleteI never believed in any gods from birth, since my whole community is not big on religion (they are not really atheist, they just don't talk about it, so throughout my life I never had a conversation about religion with an adult until I become an adult myself).
ReplyDeleteInitially I don't believe in god(s) because lack of evidence and conflicting views of deities from different religions.
Them I thought about it for a while:
1, If Jesus (or his dad) is god AND he (they) exist AND have supernatural powers AND want people to worship him, he would have used his power to destroy the other religions.
2, Similarly, if the god(s) from other religions exist and has awesome power, they would have destroyed Christians and all other religions.
3, But multiple religions exist in the world.
4, Therefore, either these god(s) don't exist, or they are not powerful enough, or they don't bother to get people worshiping them.
5, If they don't exist then I won't worship them. Alternatively they are not powerful, so they are not worthy for me to worship. Or they don't want me to worship them so why should I.
6, Plus most religions contain superstitious elements contradictory to mainstream science that I believe in. For me, mathematical axioms and theorems and logic are the closest things to gods.
7, Or maybe gods exist after all? If this world is a computer simulation like the matrix movie, it would make the programmers gods. In another way, I am god to those people living inside the program I wrote for CS assignment?
TLDR: Gods may or may not exist but I don't care since I don't worship them anyways.
I was brought up to decide by myself. My parents are not too religious, they never go to church, but they do believe. Religion just didn't make sense to me. I don't want to say that there is definitely no creator or god, just that I have no scientific evidence that would prove one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteHmm correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we can scientifically disprove the existence of God.
DeleteAs for existence, according to the Big Bang, almost 14 billion years ago, there was a singularity. That singularity began to expand, everything developed and now we're here. And scientists say that the universe continues to expand. But before that singularity, before the big bang there was nothing. Something popped out of nothing. That's crazy! For something to be created from nothing, there had to be something of infinite power that made it possible--the first cause, which is God. Idk to me, saying that there is no creator would mean that everything happened through chance/accident. If someone said that out of nowhere, an elephant appeared out of thin air as they were walking to class, I would not be able to believe it. But the universe and all the organisms are so complex and ordered. A lot of people believe that the universe and the world and everything in it came to be without a creator, which means it just happened randomly. But how can I possibly believe that if I would not even be able to wrap my head around random objects appearing out of thin air without a cause?
I'm somewhat confused with your logic. If you're finding it difficult to believe that such a complex universe could just suddenly exist, why is it more believable that an incredibly complex creator could similarly just suddenly exist?
Delete@3b: I guess because every effect must have cause. Like for for example, the clothes I'm wearing right now didn't just suddenly exist. Someone or a machine turned a simple fabric into a clothing material. Whatever it is that caused the effect is more complex than the effect itself. Or think of dominoes and the domino effect. Before you can have that domino effect, your finger had to first push the first domino.
Delete3c you are an idiot, if every effect must have a cause then what caused this "God" to exist. Let me guess you think he always existed. Just like others think the Universe always existed. Retard. Why couldn't this effect have been a physical occurrence within the laws of reality AS WE SEE IN EVERY FUCKING THING WE HAVE OBSERVED EVER.
DeleteWow why are you so angry 3d? Please don't use "retard" as an insult. It's offensive and demeaning to those who actually have mental retardation. The deserve to be respected just as much as everyone else.
Delete3.a that is a God of the gaps fallacy, please try again.
Delete3e I'm sorry I shouldn't have used retard but the reason I am so angry is that where I come from, and in many many places around the world, religious people make life hell for non-believers and even jail/kill them for it. I do not want Canada to become the same.
DeleteApology accepted 3g :). I'm sorry to hear about your negative experience with religious people. There's no denying that it happens and it's very sad and unfortunate. I think though, that even without the belief that there's a creator or religion, people are still going to find ways to hurt each other. In a perfect atheist world, we would still be humans, and still kill each other and destroy civilization.
DeleteI'm in no way trying to convince anyone that God exists...all of us have brains and we should all use it to come to our own conclusions. I know that people commit atrocities, and at times in the name of religion but I just don't think that those acts are proof that God doesn't exist.
I can't defend other religions because I don't know too much about them but my religion only taught me about love. That there is a God who loves us so much that he's willing to sacrifice himself to prove his love for us. But does that mean people who identify with my religion are perfect and would never hurt anyone? Of course not. I'm also guilty of not treating everyone the way he/she deserves to be treated because I'm only human and I make mistakes. I'm taught to love everyone but it's not always easy. My religion doesn't teach me to make life hell for non-believers but to treat them with love and kindness because whether they believe or not, they are still children of God. It's not my place to judge. Sometimes people wonder, if there is a God, then why doesn't he just make everything perfect and make himself clearly known so everyone will worship him? Why does he let us do bad things? Because he doesn't take our ability to choose. To take away our freewill to make everything perfect is not a sign of love. It's a form of coercion. You can't force someone to love you, because if you did, then it wouldn't be love. And that's why we're not supposed to make life hell for non-believers. I know people do it anyway and I'd like to apologize if you've had bad experiences with people who identify with my religion. I wish everyone lived what they preach but I understand that it's not always easy.
Just never really connected with any religion. Later learned that I didn't need to.
ReplyDeleteBorn atheist
ReplyDeleteI am an Agnostic born into a family with a Catholic father, a Jewish mother, an Atheist brother and a Buddhist brother. Both of my brothers and I were raised to believe whatever we felt made sense to us, and to do research in order to come to our own conclusions. As a child, I went to church a few times per year, synagogue a few times per year, and celebrated both Catholic and Jewish traditions. I used to pray before going to sleep every night even though nobody else in my family did. While I don't really know what to believe and am therefore Agnostic, I came to that conclusion in high school when I realised just how much more to the world there was than what I knew and could possibly know.
ReplyDeleteI know I'm not Atheist, but I think it's an interesting family.
I like your family!
DeleteI know it's false equivalence but believing in a god is like believing in a unicorn. Magic man hiding somewhere and creating things as he/she pleases sounds ridiculous. I know we can't ever prove/disprove the existence of god much less our own existence but the concept of God seems so self-absorbed.
ReplyDeleteMan all you Atheists make me sad..So many people just say "Oh yeah I am atheist (or agnostic)" or "I am not religious, just spiritual" (whatever the hell that means) like its a fad or something without having actually sat down and thought about it...Western society has made you into stupid sheep just following whatever the general crowd says...
ReplyDeleteYou may THINK your sense of morality magically comes from your own intuition (which you cannot explain using any logical or scientific methods) or that it comes from some twisted sense of humanistic science but really it comes from your God-given innate conscience.
Yeah you are probably rolling your eyes but I know for a fact that there will be a day when you will fall into trouble and just have a low and hopeless point in your life. At the point you may not WHO you're calling out to but you WILL call out to God.
you may not know*
Deletea) Just because people don't explicitly describe every little reason and train of thought that led to them believing what they believe, it does not mean their beliefs and values are based on non-complex and shallow foundations. Maybe they just don't want to tell people like you, who are more than ready to judge them.
Deleteb) You "know for a fact", huh? I did reach that low and hopeless point. I called out to God. I called for many, many years. There was no answer.
That's when I stopped believing. :)
Man all you Atheists make me sad..So many people just say "Oh yeah I am atheist (or agnostic)" or "I am not religious, just spiritual" (whatever the hell that means) like its a fad or something without having actually sat down and thought about it...Western society has made you into stupid sheep just following whatever the general crowd says...
DeleteYou may THINK your sense of morality magically comes from your own intuition (which you cannot explain using any logical or scientific methods) or that it comes from some twisted sense of humanistic science but really it comes from your Zeus-given innate conscience.
Yeah you are probably rolling your eyes but I know for a fact that there will be a day when you will fall into trouble and just have a low and hopeless point in your life. At the point you may not WHO you're calling out to but you WILL call out to Zeus.
There 8 I used your own bullet proof logic against you.
DeleteYou sound like a retard, do you know that?
Your conscience is actually from the devil. Do you really think God would let humans think for themselves? The whole story of hell being a place of eternal pain and torture made up. No one has returned from hell for a reason, it is awesome there. I don't want to go to heaven, where solar radiation will give me a halo shaped brain tumor, die, and be forced to walk the Earth trying to get people to go to heaven so I can afford the cure.
DeleteOk for JUST a moment I ask you to not go into the Atheist-hate-troll-I-am-right-you-are-wrong mentality....just for a moment
DeleteNotice I don't do any name calling. I am trying to be civil. If you find faults in my arguments, attack those. No need to spew hatred against me.
@8d: How about we use some logic instead of satire to discuss the issue?
@8b: Just because God didn't answer your "call" doesn't mean he doesn't exist. Life isn't suppose to be easy (at least not all the time). It is a test. You can fall into despair or you can rise up beyond it and have some hope.
I have been in a situation of despair many times but I have experienced enough in my life to know that God exists. I have seen the good in human beings that you CAN'T explain with science. Justice, courage, hope and love. These things can't be measured because their source is ultimately due to the mercy of God. We humans are not some biological accident due to evolution. We have a purpose and you really need to sit down and ponder on this.
Of course I haven't reached that 100% point of certainty (won't happen until death) where I can say I KNOW God exists but I am not going to just give up say "Oh, God didn't answer me therefore He doesn't exist".
Also
Delete@8e: I am really not sure if you're being serious or trolling.
"Western society has made you into stupid sheep just following whatever the general crowd says"
DeletePlease teach me your independent ways, master.
I'm not an atheist but I'm agnostic, which I think would have similar background stories.
ReplyDeleteMy parents believed in religion and they raised us with it. I used to believe in it too because I never really thought there was any reason to question my parents because, why would they either lie to me or pretend they knew something when there was no proof?
I noticed that I started believing in religion less once I started learning more about it. At first, I just believed in it without really reading any holy books or praying, but one day I got my period and had *really* bad cramps before I took an advil and it was the worst physical pain I had ever felt and I thought that if hell was worse than that, it was very important for me to be as religious as possible to avoid going there at all. So, I started learning more about religion and becoming super religious. At the same time, a bunch of different things came together to make me question whether my parents actually knew what they were talking about:
1) I started making some friends (I had very few friends before) that were not religious and it made no sense to me that they had no chance of getting into heaven because their family was not religious
2) I took a psychology course and it confused me that people would go to hell when the only reason anyone did anything bad was because there was a problem with them. Humans lock up other humans because we are not omnipotent so we may not have the resources to help people fix problems of criminals, but why would god punish instead of help balance out the problems? There seemed to be a reason behind all misbehaviour where people were just trying to get their needs met in the wrong ways, whereas before, I just labelled misbehaving people as "bad" and deserving of punishment (this is probably the main reason I don't believe in religion).
3) A lot of inconsistencies with certain scientific beliefs that are based on evidence. I don't necessarily believe that science is always right but it seemed odd that we would go with religion over science when science seemed to be more strict about why it thought certain things were true.
4) I learned about many people who didn't believe in religion and their reasons why. Again, like point #1, I thought it was weird that they'd go to hell just because their logic was flawed and they didn't realize that god actually did exist. I had always learned that it was okay for people to have differing opinions and to respect them, so why would they be punished if they had the wrong opinion on this particular issue?
5) There were a lot of rituals and traditions that seemed to be based off of how things were in the past that I was never able to find explanations for yet they were required.
6) Even if I believed in the big picture, which I didn't, there were a lot of little rules that I couldn't really agree with and I couldn't find any good arguments to help me agree with them even if I tried.
7. I learned more in school about different mythologies and gods from different times and places and I didn't understand how my religion was different.
8. I learned about other conflicting religions and I didn't find any reason why one religion's stories were true while another's were not.
So, basically, once I started to dive into religion to become a more religious person, I started to question it. I asked God to give me permission to explore this question because I wanted to make sure that I didn't follow blindly. I asked him to not punish me if I died while on the fence about his existence because I truly wanted to believe in him but I wanted to do my research just to make sure but unfortunately, I couldn't find any reason to continue believing.
Sorry, I just wrote that really quickly from the top of my head so it turned out really long and possibly nonsensical but it's too long to edit now.
DeleteI had pretty much exactly the same types of experiences and they also led me to consider myself agnostic.
DeleteI started dating someone with a different religion than I, and my dad flipped out. Since then I have lost all respect for religions and I believe if a God existed he wouldn't allow people to be as ignorant as they are.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't consider myself a true atheist. Born and raised Christian, and would now identify myself and non-theistic christian. I don't believe in an omnipotent creator that's playing a role in everything, but a set of moral beliefs in the "Treat others as you would have them treat you" mold.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you should have to the have the promise of paradise/ threat of hell to be a good person, or that if there was an all powerful being he would care if Timmy was fucking Lucy without being married, or that Ricky and Fred happened to love each other.
I also don't think I'm a particularly good person, but I do try not be a fuck
TL:DR
"Be excellent to each other".
Why not just a secular humanist? That seems to align with your ideas.
Deletenever believed in god ever. never cared. i only start caring when people start trying to shove creationism down people's throats and the fact that it's actually taught in some schools because fuck that bullshit
ReplyDeleteWas raised in a non-religious family so never really thought much about deities or religion in general. I'm not even sure I'd call myself an atheist. I concern myself so little with religion that I think I'm more of an apatheist (Oooh, see what I did there!?).
ReplyDeletemy feelings are that "is there a god?" isn't a valid question. I have never understood the need some people have for a more profound spiritual foundation to life, as if cause and effect are not profound enough, and as if nature is not wonderful and curious enough as it is.
ReplyDeleteAlso I would like to point out that anyone who thinks science is "not always right" fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of science. It is not dogma. It is ever-changing. The whole point is that revolutions can take place and theories can be overturned in the presence of ideas that better fit the observations.
I just think it's presumptuous to think we can ask such an outrageous question as the one about a God. We can ask questions about electricity and gravity and physiology, though, so I think we're better off starting there.
I don't think I ever really *believed* in God. I mean, I heard about him in Sunday school until we stopped going because I'd share too many family secrets with the pastor but I don't think there was any belief there (just boredom). It was more of a transition from not knowing or caring to not believing or caring.
ReplyDeletelol this is university mate, religious fucktards have no place here
ReplyDeleteI agree that religious fucktards have no place here, but I believe that fucktards in gerneral have no place here. I don't care if you are religious, just don't be a fucktard
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