My family weren’t really religious so i had to define and understand religion and faith by myself.
I go to a Christian private school, i respect their faith but every time im in “study of religion class” i regularly reject faith “id rather not say why, just get into Atheism argument then”
I thrive on not believing, i believe it gives me an advantage over others as i see things a lot differently to those who are influenced by “depicted values”(So much to say but i know other religions dont depict values really…)
But yeah, you get my drift
“How can i see things alot differently to those who have faith?” Well i justify it from my experiences in a catholic school… Where i observe the general acts of dedicated Christians. (Not that its bad or anything)
I was raised atheist/agnostic. My mother is a Nietzschean and my father is a Campbellian. If you’d asked me what Confucianism was about growing up, I would have mumbled something about Mencius’s mother cutting his bed in half and that this somehow related to playing the violin.
So, born and raised. Because of that, I don’t really think that the other questions really apply since my position really hasn’t changed.
Well for one thing I was born without faith, so I think a better question would be to ask is why I chose not to be indoctrinated into a fallacious, devicive and intellectually lacking set of beliefs, thoughts and practices. You’re inquiries kind of imply that faith is the default position to take and that anyone who doesn’t have one needs to explain why they left it.
Yeah i know you’re just looking to make small talk about why people believe what they believe but its just funny to me how the same old questions get asked in such a way that makes it sound like faith is what’s good.
Raised as a Southern Baptist in a small town in Texas. Everyone in town was either Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, Episcopal, or Pentecostal. There were no atheists.
First began to have doubts as a college freshman taking biology 101 and studying evolution for the first time. I don’t remember the theory of evolution being mentioned in high school. Evolution alone pretty well killed the belief I had in the simplistic god of fundamentalism but psychologically I nonetheless could not become an atheist. Instead, I invented a more sophisticated, abstract version of god in which to believe. This continued on for a couple of years as I studied Augustine, Aquinas, Hume, Kant, Russell, Nietzsche, Sartre, et. al., (i.e., all the dead white guys most of us have read) comparative religion, the philosophy of religion, etc. Finally I reached the point at which, as much as I personally detested the belief, I had to admit that it is extremely improbable that a god exists.
So I’d say that about three or four years after I first began to have serious doubts, I considered myself to be a confirmed atheist and there’s been no turning back since. Virtually every good argument that I’ve read or heard about this issue since that point (be the argument historical, scientific, psychological, evolutionary, or what have you) has only served to strengthen my belief that no god exists.
I was raised Catholic and didn’t really see thru it til I was in my early 20’s. Eventually I could no longer reconcile what I knew to be true with what religion told me was true.
I can describe the exact moment when it occured to me that my religious superstitions weren’t likely to be valid: much of evolution has been proven to be factually true beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt. There are some areas of dispute, true, but I find the basic premise pretty well grounded in the facts in evidence. At any rate, it seemed pretty obvious to me that genetic drift causes mutations over time; enough mutations eventually results in speciation, the creation of a new, distinct species. Even as a child I held it to be fairly obvious that humans and modern apes descended from some common ancestor. But for this to be the fact, the first true human would have had to be born to a creature that wasn’t human. My religion held that only humans could have a soul, and therefore couldn’t be born to an animal.
Not a very original idea, perhaps, but it really shook me to the core of my beliefs. I had thought that religion and science were compatible, but in that moment I realized they could never be for me. For years I rationalized that God merely used evolution to create humans, but that was to misunderstand evolution and view the question thru a lense of anthrocentrisms. Evolution doesn’t have a goal, nor is it trying to create anything specific. It just is. Moreover, if we were the end goal then presumably evolution would stop when it reached us, wouldn’t it? But it seems to me the natural world has taken very little notice of us.
I’ve never called myself an atheist - not sure why. I guess it’s my aversion to making definite claims regarding reality. I do call myself a Buddhist, but I don’t feel that Buddhism makes definite claims. On another thread I said something about my rejection of the brand of fundamentalist Christianity I was raised with:
The key point there for me was that though I ‘rejected Christianity’, I somehow knew and understood that I had never believed what I was taught in the first place. In fact I never believed in Santa Claus either that I can remember. As I began to notice this general trend of not believing in what other people seemed to believe in, it was actually a bit difficult for a little while psychologically. I felt like I really missed out on something. I still have a tendency to not believe in what other people claim to and seem to believe in - especially when it comes to claims regarding ancient history, origins of the universe, etc.
For me at this point though I’m more interested in the nature of the underlying wisdom that detected falsity, than in the falsity itself. The falsity doesn’t exist in any way. That wisdom, though it doesn’t seem to exist as such (in fact my first experience of it was of a somewhat terrifying gulf where there is no comfort in delusion to prop up and soften my existence) can become a positive force. It is a misunderstanding of that basic insubstantiality that turns it into a purely negative force. I mean I’m still deluded and all obviously, but that insubstantiality is what I train in, rather than illusory hopes and comforts or conceptual negations of conceptual assertions.
Interesting points, Anon. In retrospect much of my “faith” was simply whistling past the graveyard. I continually attempted to believe, with varying degrees of success. Growing up there was no real alternative to believing, or at least pretending to. I didn’t know anyone who would publically question the validity or veracity of the Bible.
That´s a plausible charge and probably does motivate some atheists: “There nothing much greater than me, so in some senses I´ll assume God´s role by creating value and meaning for myself”.
But in many atheists´ case, it is quite the opposite: “Although I am a conscious object in this world (an obvious precondition of the statement), what else exists in this world I will judge tentatively, making no rash or grand claims about things I simply don´t understand.” This type of caution I take to be far closer to humility than arrogance.
Yet, thinking back, I´m not even sure why the first atheist must be arrogant, and not more similar to the second.
Name: Bane Born: West Coast USA Family: Son of an intelligent kind hearted Pastor (I consider my father a best friend) Family Reaction: Some know I doubt (siblings), some don’t (parents). My relationships are more important to me than helping my family see the truth (or rather untruth of religion). I am always throwing in little seeds of doubt in casual conversation. Some would say I’m a closet Atheist. Why disbelief?: I have always been a rational and introspective person seeking truth and reality. It was simply a natural progression. It started by attempting to ‘strengthen my faith’, but unlike many, I would not ignore the inconsistencies I found in religion and the concept of God. On one particular ordinary day in 2002, I realized that my belief in God and religion had completely fallen apart… I was a total disbeliever. Did it hurt?: The evening of that ordinary day… I cried. I cried and I sobbed for the longest I ever had. It wasn’t out of guilt or anything like that. If I had guilt, that would mean that I held on to some sort of belief that I was wrong in my disbelief. No… I was completely right. And I knew it through and through. I cried because of how sad and disappointing the whole thing was. The very thing that I thought defined me and indeed defined the entire universe, was not there. God was not there. He never did and never would ‘appear’ to me. (And never appeared to anyone else either!) It was clear as anything could be. I cried for the whole world that night. I cried for the hours of my life wasted in the pursuit of religions nonsense. I cried for the struggle I knew was awaiting me with Christian family and friends. The tears were partly of my new found freedom as well. It was like a giant weight was lifted. A religious experience if any was ever had!
Absolutely not. I think for most, the derigitory term for disbelievers (Atheists) implies a sort of rebellious arrogance or foolish pigheadedness. “How arrogant to question God!”
The truth is that an Atheist is simply someone who doesn’t believe in the core religious theological claims. That’s all. It isn’t a religion, it isn’t a dogma, it isn’t even a belief! It is simply disbelief, nothing more.
I find it very interesting that a number of people are mentioning the role evolution played in their journey to Atheism. I might be an exception because it honestly played a very small role, if any at all in my journey. In fact, I was still attacking it with the ferocity of a Christian fundamentalist even when I became an Atheist! HA! Imagine that!
My journey was more like a devoted onion-core-worshiper who wanted to peal away the layers of the onion to get to the core… and I succeed. I wouldn’t compromise. I was getting to the core. I was going to find God. Pealing away to the onion core was almost too easy.
I have since learned much much more about evolution. I used to claim the old, “It’s just a theory.” I understand the error and point of view in this statement. I learned that theories are much more than mere facts. But you all know this whole speech anyway, so I will skip it. My response now to those that might say this is, “Yeah, so is gravity”. I then explain to them what a scientific theory is.
I live in Australia where religion is not a very high priority so im trying to understand the social behaviors of Atheists and the attitudes against Atheists. (Mostly Americans) One major influence i see is George Bush and his “hate” for Atheists. From your responses it seems that Americans dont follow through with the same values as Bush. However, i find it hard to believe considering the amount of Christians America has.
I don’t know that George Bush “hates” atheists more than any other typical Christian “hates” atheists. In fact, he may even hate them less considering that the architect of his political success, Karl Rove, is an atheist.
