How Many Athiest if any Have "Moments of Doubt"

[Somkid]

I think an atheist that doubts would have to be put in the agnostic group. I never doubt if anything everyday I am more convinced there is no god.

 

[fantome profane]

Im just curious..I have moments of doubt..They are usually brief..But sometimes for days..Then I always go back to being convinced and 100% positive there is a God.

Do Athiest do this in reverse?..Wonder if they are wrong?..And if so does it frighten you?..Because it frightens me when I feel unsure..

Blessings

Dallas

Absolutely. I have moments of doubt all the time. In fact if I have not had a moment of doubt in a while I will schedule it in and plan for it. I will seek out the best theistic arguments, or moving personal experiences and really try to consider them. And even if the doubt doesn’t really lead me anywhere I believe that doubt itself can be beneficial.

But as of yet I have not been able to sustain and significant degree of doubt concerning the existence of a personal deity.

 

[Booko]

So you have noticed that too? More believers going athiest..Than the other way around?...Maybe we shouldnt force things on our children..One way or the other.

Well, it's one thing to demand that kids do things with the family, but shoving things down their throat often gets an equal and opposite reaction.

The truth is, when kids grow up they are gonna do what they're gonna do anyway. You can give them what information and wisdom you have, but they have to decide if they're going to use any of it.

I was raised Calvinist myself, and pretty strict, and mum wasn't too forceful much of the time, but it didn't stop me from becoming an atheist.

I mean, you have to see a reason to have faith, and no one can ever just give that to you be telling you they have some? It's very much a personal journey, that.

 

[Yerda]

I doubt I'll ever be certain, but I can't be sure.

 

[Charity]

I have believed in God and Jesus since I was small....I can truthfully say that there has never been a moment in my life that I have doubted that. When I was about 7, I would set my dolls up and pretend I was teaching them about the Bible....It was just something I knew in my heart and my spirit. I lay down and sleep with the knowledge that to be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord.

Ever person has the same measure of faith, whether you use it or not

As long as each person is happy with their choice that is fine with me. I don't condemn anyone. I just know what is right for me....

I respect everyone's right to choose what they want for their life.
Atheist's moment's of doubt, we may never know

 

[kai]

i always have my doubts thats why i am often wondering about god and religion and why i came to RF to understand other peoples points of view.

to have no doubts that god doesnt exist would be foolish as you could not possibly know that.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

There are plenty of religious and theistic people who I know and respect, and I do tend to think to myself "hmm... if they think that maybe there's something to it." This has led me to mull over everything from Catholicism to pacificism to libertarianism to tattoos.

I think an atheist that doubts would have to be put in the agnostic group. I never doubt if anything everyday I am more convinced there is no god.

Would you say that a person who doesn't seriously believe in ghosts, but still sometimes gets a bit spooked out in a dark basement is "agnostic" when it comes to spirits?

 

[Autodidact]

Well...I'm always considering. Generally the more I study and discuss, the more certain I become. At the same time, I'm always open to the possibility that I'm wrong. After all, I've been wrong about a lot of things in my life, including some that I believed quite fervently at one time. Heck, at one time I was a theist, so you have to be open to the possibility and constantly examine. Else you might as well be dead.

 

[+Xausted]

at the end of my first year of my degree, a very well respected (he was super intelligent) lad approached me from my course. he asked after a year, had i changed my beliefs on God...as in did i now think there really was a God. my answer was simply "no, the only change is i am developing the skills in which to express my lack of belief, the course has actually reaffirmed to me that religion is a load of fooie". poor guy walked away a bit disheartened i think.
so no, i never doubt.

 

[logician]

I think once you have come to disbelieve the major religions - like Christianity or Islam, that postulate very specific people that existed and events that happenened, there is almost no turning back. Pantheistic religious that are more nonspecific may gain some support from previous atheists, due to their nature.

 

[Fluffy]

For those who say that they become "more certain", do you mean that you are not certain but get closer to certainty or that you are certainty and you believe that your certainty gets stronger?

 

[Dirty Penguin]

For me, and I can only speak for me, I don't believe in gods nor do I think they exist. Am I "certain"? Well, that's something I don't think about. I doubt the existence of God or gods. Do I have moments of doubts where I ponder their existence.....(Nope)....

Do I have other doubts about other things.....(Yep)....

The moment I begin to doubt (religiously speaking) I am no longer an atheist....I'll be an agnostic.

 

[Magic Man]

I just doubt almost everything. One of the few things I'm sure of is that Christianity, Judaism and Islam as organized religions have it wrong. Is there any possibility that all of the dogma that goes into those religions is the truth? In my mind, there is no chance.

 

[Nanda]

Dont worry..sometimes its not so comforting. :no:

So I've been told.

 

[Autodidact]

I started out as a question, moved to a tentative answer, which I've been firming up ever since.

One of the main things that has confirmed my hypothesis has been my conversations with theists on the web. I have found that every theist apologist, from the most naive to the most sophisticated, uses a circular argument. This leads me to suspect that there is no valid argument for theism.

The other hugely flawed aspect of almost every theist apologist is inconsistency. They will not apply their logic to other religions or other Gods. Again, if they can't be consistent, their logic is probably wrong.

The strongest argument is the watchmaker argument, which does have some appeal. I discuss this at length in another thread, so I won't repeat that here unless someone requests.

Many theists resort to post-modernist nihilistic no-nothingism, especially when all else fails. To me, since I'm not a po-mo nihilist, if you have to resort to saying that nobody knows anything, and we can all believe whatever we like regardless of reality, you've basically given up. You know you're wrong, and trying to advocate that wrong beliefs are as good as right ones.

Also, I find that most Christians don't know what's in the Bible, who wrote it or when, when it was translated, etc. They seem to have no curiosity about this at all, which I find bizarre. They are almost universally misinformed about it, believing for example that the gospels were written by eye-witnesses, which they almost certainly were not. Again, their lack of actual information confirms my suspicion that they do not have a good basis for their belief, which is based in a book they know very little about.

So that's the kind of thing that makes me more and more certain. I'm very empirical, though, and with empiricism you never get certainty, just less and less wrong.

One thing I have no doubt about is whether the specific religions I know about are correct. I'm 99.99% certain that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are just plain wrong. (Insofar as you can attribute a coherent set of beliefs to any of them.) Buddhism has a lot going for it. I really don't understand Hinduism.

 

[GadFly]

I dunno, DA. I've known more theists who became atheist than the other way around. Could just be an accident of who we happen to have run into.

It could be that said theists were more "raised in a religion" than were really theists because they chose it for themselves.

I have a theory that most theist who become atheist do so not from logic reasoning about the existence of God but because of some outrage in their life, maybe a serious conflict with one who claims to be Christian, a death of a close fried,etc. , prompts them to turn against God. How correct do you think that theory is?
GadFly

 

[Autodidact]

I have a theory that most theist who become atheist do so not from logic reasoning about the existence of God but because of some outrage in their life, maybe a serious conflict with one who claims to be Christian, a death of a close fried,etc. , prompts them to turn against God. How correct do you think that theory is?
GadFly

Completely wrong for me. I've never been Christian, haven't suffered any tragedy for 40 years, etc. I didn't turn against God, I decided that there is no such thing. Completely different. btw, did you see how your statement was circular, just as I described above? You're assuming what we're trying to figure out, that there is a God.

I find that people who convert to Christianity later in life usually do so out of this kind of motivation, plus fear of death. I've never met one that converted because of the evidence--for obvious reasons.

 

[Sunstone]

I have a theory atheists become atheists because they do not have sufficient belief in deity to be theists.

Of course, I could be wrong about that.

 

[Magic Man]

I have a theory that most theist who become atheist do so not from logic reasoning about the existence of God but because of some outrage in their life, maybe a serious conflict with one who claims to be Christian, a death of a close fried,etc. , prompts them to turn against God. How correct do you think that theory is?
GadFly

I'm sure that that happens, but there's got to be more to it than that. After something like that, the person has to then say not that they hate God, but that there is no God for them to be an atheist. This means they have to examine things logically. An event like that might help them answer the question of whether a benevolent God could exist when stuff like that happens. then, they have to take it further, though, before they would actually consider themselves an atheist.

It's not just "Hey, my son died in a horrible accident, God sucks, so I'm now an atheist!" That wouldn't last unless they made an effort to reflect on whether or not the concept of God they know could exist in that context.

Basically, that type of experience would just be a catalyst for their conversion, not the entire process. And that's also not the only way it happens, and probably not the most common. I did not have such an event, and never "hated God", I just came to the conclusion that such a thing doesn't exist through logic and reasoning.

 

[GadFly]

I just doubt almost everything. One of the few things I'm sure of is that Christianity, Judaism and Islam as organized religions have it wrong. Is there any possibility that all of the dogma that goes into those religions is the truth? In my mind, there is no chance.

I have found that religious dogma is the worst foundation for belief in God as could possibly be found for a person who has a history of unbelief in God. It is possible to find an experience with God through natural theology. Just reason this way: if there is a God, he is more rational than I, therefore, he can communicate with me in someway if I allow it. That worked for me.
GadFly