Why are you an atheist?

When I considered myself a Christian, my biblical interpretation was too liberal. I interpreted the book of Genesis loosely and I was more than forgiving on issues relating to sin. Instead of conforming to men's interpretation, I made my own liberal alternative. I'm a black and white person so I take things literally, but I kept coming up with second excuses with the Bible that I eventually decided it's not worth my time anymore. The only reliable alternative was atheism so I decided to be become an atheist.

You?

Well... I'm not. :P

But I must admit I've never understood the implicit statement I've heard so many times that you basically have a choice either between literalist Christianity and atheism... that doesn't exactly seem to logically follow.

Well... I'm not. :P

But I must admit I've never understood the implicit statement I've heard so many times that you basically have a choice either between literalist Christianity and atheism... that doesn't exactly seem to logically follow.

GabuEx

I didn't say that those were the only two choices.

From my perspective, I was raised a Christian so I thought there might have been some truth to Christianity. When I became a liberal interpretist of the religion, I decided to abandon it, and thus thought that the default position was atheism. Agnosticism was too wishy-washy (although I was an agnostic for a brief stint many months ago).

Well... I'm not. :P

But I must admit I've never understood the implicit statement I've heard so many times that you basically have a choice either between literalist Christianity and atheism... that doesn't exactly seem to logically follow.

GabuEx

Gabu, I understand where your coming from but that's a central reason that I'm an Atheist. I was heavily involved in the Church growing up, and the Bible was the literal word of God.  When, in my mind I saw holes in the Bible, it in turn made me question God.  One thing led to another and here I am.  My mind works in a way that I must be 100% behind something for me to believe in it.

I didn't say that those were the only two choices.

Genetic_Code

Sorry, it sounded like you were saying that if you couldn't take the Bible literally, your only other option was atheism.

From my perspective, I was raised a Christian so I thought there might have been some truth to Christianity. When I became a liberal interpretist of the religion, I decided to abandon it, and thus thought that the default position was atheism. Agnosticism was too wishy-washy (although I was an agnostic for a brief stint many months ago).

Genetic_Code

Well the default position is basically no position on the existence of God altogether, and there isn't really that much difference between that and agnosticism, is there?  Unless you're talking about strong atheism (the belief that there is no god, rather than just the lack of belief in a god), then both basically just say that you don't know if there's a god.

Gabu, I understand where your coming from but that's a central reason that I'm an Atheist. I was heavily involved in the Church growing up, and the Bible was the literal word of God.  When, in my mind I saw holes in the Bible, it in turn made me question God.  One thing led to another and here I am.  My mind works in a way that I must be 100% behind something for me to believe in it.

btaylor2404

But that's basically what I mean: questioning the Bible isn't questioning God, because the Abrahamic God is not necessarily the only god that could possibly exist (and even then there are tons of impressions people have of the Abrahamic God, anyway).  If that was the only possible god, then there wouldn't be like a dozen religions out there.  You can arrive at a belief in God even without any religious influence whatsoever, too.

I'm not saying that everyone should believe in God or whatnot, only that an inability to accept a literalist interpretation of the Bible should not exactly make someone unable to believe in God.  I understand where it comes from - I myself went through the same thing - which is largely why I just want to make people fully understand and appreciate all of the options out there.

I wouldn't call myself a stong atheist but still the word "atheist" best describes my moral standpoint.

Where I come from most people are religious. My family is one of the more secular ones out there, which I always find a little absurd. My parents did, for some reason, encourage me to take some interest in religion but never really took things to the point where they force anything on me and I'm thankful for that. So it didn't take me a lot of hard work to find my way to atheism...

I grew up with agnostic parents. At a later age I was exposed to Christianity and a host of other religions. Viewing them through a veil of logic as I always do, they simply were not plausible beliefs to me. I couldn't give myself over to anything without some concrete proof.

So I dismissed the wild collection of fantastic beasts, epic adventures, and mythical super beings known as religion completely. And here I am, content as a atheistic-skeptic :).

Gabu, I understand where your coming from but that's a central reason that I'm an Atheist. I was heavily involved in the Church growing up, and the Bible was the literal word of God.  When, in my mind I saw holes in the Bible, it in turn made me question God.  One thing led to another and here I am.  My mind works in a way that I must be 100% behind something for me to believe in it.

btaylor2404

But that's basically what I mean: questioning the Bible isn't questioning God, because the Abrahamic God is not necessarily the only god that could possibly exist (and even then there are tons of impressions people have of the Abrahamic God, anyway).  If that was the only possible god, then there wouldn't be like a dozen religions out there.  You can arrive at a belief in God even without any religious influence whatsoever, too.

I'm not saying that everyone should believe in God or whatnot, only that an inability to accept a literalist interpretation of the Bible should not exactly make someone unable to believe in God.  I understand where it comes from - I myself went through the same thing - which is largely why I just want to make people fully understand and appreciate all of the options out there.

I know, and I've studied the others, I think my mind is just rooted too much in Christianity.  And I have the problem I talked about.  Actually the more and more religions I read into or become aware of, the more likely in my head that they are all wrong.  Doesn't make much sense, but...

I don't believe in God because there has never been a reason good enough to believe in him. Every argument for his existence has always struck me as deeply flawed in one way or another and thus I have never accepted him.

As for why I believe that God does not exist, well I'll let Siggy explain

It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be.Freud

I know, and I've studied the others, I think my mind is just rooted too much in Christianity. And I have the problem I talked about. Actually the more and more religions I read into or become aware of, the more likely in my head that they are all wrong. Doesn't make much sense, but...

btaylor2404

Well even if every religion in the world is wrong, that still doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. Which is something that I think many miss.

My video on the topic: My Journey to Atheism

 But in shorter form: My moment of realization came when I was in Catholic Jr. High (8th grade I believe), and I had 3 period Religion and a 4th period English. About halfway through the semester in English we started studying Mythology. That was probably the deathblow right there. I couldn't understand why we thought one was true and the other was false. It just kinda mushroomed from there.

When I considered myself a Christian, my biblical interpretation was too liberal. I interpreted the book of Genesis loosely and I was more than forgiving on issues relating to sin. Instead of conforming to men's interpretation, I made my own liberal alternative. I'm a black and white person so I take things literally, but I kept coming up with second excuses with the Bible that I eventually decided it's not worth my time anymore. The only reliable alternative was atheism so I decided to be become an atheist.

You?

Genetic_Code

I see this pattern occur often. You interpret one thing liberally, then you interpret another bit liberally and then another and another, until there's just no point. You've made God's Word into your own. You've put more trust in yourself than you have in God.

I see this pattern occur often. You interpret one thing liberally, then you interpret another bit liberally and then another and another, until there's just no point. You've made God's Word into your own. You've put more trust in yourself than you have in God.

Lansdowne5

I see this pattern occur often. You interpret one thing liberally, then you interpret another bit liberally and then another and another, until there's just no point. You've made God's Word into your own. You've put more trust in yourself than you have in God.

Lansdowne5

People who leave Christianity tend to do so because they see only fundamentalist Christianity and non-Christianity, and feel that if they cannot stomach fundamentalist Christianity then there is nothing to do but abandoning Christianity. Which is, really, terribly regrettable. This is not the result of some sort of slippery slope where you diverge from the fundamentalist view in one respect and then you do so elsewhere and then you eventually just decide that you aren't a Christian; it is far more common for people to not even realize that they are "allowed", so to speak, to be a Christian and yet disagree with the fundamentalists. I ought to know; I'm one of the people who was alienated by Christianity by fundamentalists and then brought back once I finally recognized that fundamentalism does not have a monopoly on Jesus.

The bottom line is that if you are interested in the truth, you go with what seems to be most likely the truth. That's how rational human beings operate. :P To think something to be true but to tell yourself "no, these people told me otherwise, I can't think that" is to basically fundamentally give up your God-given ability to think and to basically let human beings decide for you what you ought to think in life. And it is people telling you things and interpreting the Bible for you, not God himself - at the end of the day, all we have are our human facilities that we use to interpret the world around us. I believe that God has shown me information, but can I prove it to anyone else or even myself? No. But that's what faith is about, really. People can tell me all they want that I'm going to burn in hell for eternity unless I believe what they're telling me, but it's not going to have effect, and the reason is precisely because I've done what we are told to do in that verse in Psalm so popular to fundamentalist Christians - I trust in God and what I believe he has revealed to me to a great enough extent that I am willing to risk my eternal destiny to prove as much.

I've always been an atheist. It seems ridiculously egotistical to me to believe that we as a species are the entire point of the universe. The universe is huge, and we will be around for a tiny fraction of it's existence. I don't believe in a non-personal God because I see no need for one.

Also, I dislike the idea that there is sopme part of reality that does not have an explanation.

I am an atheist because I have not seen or heard anything that would convince me otherwise. I too think that the arguments for God are not good enough. Furthermore, the evidential problem of evil, the ultimate beings contradictory nature all push me towards atheism. Im not a fan of absolutism either. 

I am an atheist because god has turned his back on me cause I was in a serous car accident that almost costed me my life but now I can't control my movements because of it.SSBFan12

Not to be insensitive, but do you still believe in your god? If so, you're not really an atheist. To forsake your god is very different from rejecting his existence altogether.

I am an atheist because god has turned his back on me cause I was in a serous car accident that almost costed me my life but now I can't control my movements because of it.SSBFan12

Do you not think it could be the other way around, friend? :)

I was raised in a Christian family however we were never particularly devout but my friends were pretty hardcore Christians (mainly because their parents were and they had never been introduced to other ideas) so I pretty much just went with the flow. It wasn't until I was around 11 years old that I really started to question the existence of a religious god when I faced my mother's death. At first I was essentially just spiteful towards god; rebelling against religion because I blamed god for what had happened, later I realised that despite telling myself I didn't I believed in him I still did, I was just basically using god as an outlet of my anger and hate, someone to blame and someone to punish (childish idea I know but I thought by not believing in him I would get some kind of pay back). So deep down I still believed in him. Then I began to wonder why, why did I believe in god?

My progression into atheism was pretty gradual, I believe the main thing holding me back was a child like fear of death and hell that had been hammered into me when I was young and the rather hollow hope I may get to see my mother again. However a hope that these things might exist is not a very logical reason for a belief in a god, so I began to research (honestly if the internet didn't exist I would be a very different person) and so become aware of other peoples opinions and ideas on the matter, and the more I learned about religion (it is funny how very little I actually knew about it at the time) the more I found the very idea of it abhorrent to me but again my opinion on religion itself still didn't create a logical reason for the non existence of a god. So I began delving into other belief systems, I had brief affairs with many of them from Wicca to Hinduism and while I often found value in their teachings the answer to the existence of some kind of higher power simply eluded me. I was also a bit of a deist for a while there too.

It wasn't until I really started to delve into science (yes the evil science converted me :P) that I began to come to terms with the idea of the non existence of god, I found everything from the simple  vastness of the universe to the intricacies of quantum mechanics absolutely fascinating, even more so because we (and more to the point myself) still do not understand everything and the thought that we came from all this chaos simply beautiful and humbling. I saw no logical reason as to why this must come from any kind of sentient higher power or deterministic force beyond the laws and naturalistic forces that govern the universe. I accept  that I can never know for certain the existence or non existence of a god or the possibility that we may encounter a force so beyond our limited mental capacities that it could be called a god, but would that be nothing more then god label on nature?  

I still cannot claim to be resolute in my atheistic stance as I'm afraid resoluteness is personality trait I have yet to master and I will still often question my beliefs, or dissolve back into my doubts and fears concerning death, I still struggle to comprehend many aspects of the universe and even more so with the knowledge of how I perceive it is inherently flawed and subjective, but quite simply the day I feel I have found an answer is the day I stop asking questions and start deceiving myself.

Sorry for the uber long post, don't feel obliged to read, it's just my ramblings :P

[QUOTE="SSBFan12"]I am an atheist because god has turned his back on me cause I was in a serous car accident that almost costed me my life but now I can't control my movements because of it.Lansdowne5

Do you not think it could be the other way around, friend? :)

[QUOTE="Lansdowne5"]

[QUOTE="SSBFan12"]I am an atheist because god has turned his back on me cause I was in a serous car accident that almost costed me my life but now I can't control my movements because of it.THUMPTABLE

Do you not think it could be the other way around, friend? :)

It is a possibility. :)

My dad is a strong atheist and my mom is agnostic-ish (she doesn't believe in any particular god or religion, but believes in some nonspecific supernatural being or force; she also believes in karma a bit). Therefore, I was never really introduced to religion all that much. I had some religious friends (not fundamentalist though, I live in California) and housekeepers that brought up Christianity. That, and the fact that I'm one of the one in four or so people in my community that doesn't celebrate Hanukkah (sp?) led me to identify myself as a Catholic. There was a period of time when I would say that the Bible was God's word and such, but I was never all that religious and never really studied the Bible.

Eventually, I just sort of look at the (lack of) evidence around me, as well as the fact that thousands of societies around the globe have had thousands of different religions. I decided that there could be a god, but that I have no evidence to indicate, nor any reason to believe in his/her existence. So, until I'm shown otherwise or until my final conscious day on Earth, I'll live my life as I think is right and take an "I doubt it, but I guess we'll have to wait and see" stance toward the supernatural.