When Did You Become a Non-Believer?

[rojse]

When I was 11, a couple of years after I'd stopped believing in Santa Claus, the famous five and Hogwarts...

The Famous Five doesn't exist?!

 

[McBell]

I stopped believing in my mothers deity of choice back about age 9.
I stopped believing in my fathers deity of choice back about age 12.

 

[Buttercup]

I was a very slow learner. I didn't become deity-less until after getting married and having children....wait a minute, maybe that's why I no longer believe in God.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I didn't fully and accurately describe myself as an atheist until 22 or 23, but, technically, I was always a non-believer.

The trick is figuring out that there are alternatives to what you're being told and then figuring out how to integrate them yourself, since, unless your very lucky, nobody teaches you how to be a skeptic.

 

[rojse]

I didn't fully and accurately describe myself as an atheist until 22 or 23, but, technically, I was always a non-believer.

The trick is figuring out that there are alternatives to what you're being told and then figuring out how to integrate them yourself, since, unless your very lucky, nobody teaches you how to be a skeptic.

On the contrary, life teaches you to be a skeptic.

 

[DarkVamp]

Tender age of 17, I promptly got drunk and never looked back

 

[Grey]

Being still in my teens, I wouldn't dare claim to have the life experience of previous posters, but I stopped believing at a very young age (around 8 or 9) after coming across the classic 'problem of evil' and developing an interest in philosophy.

My father was (and is) an atheist, though my mother possessed a vauge 'fuzzy belief' in a higher being, until several years of interesting discussion with both myself and my (atheist) sister eroded it away.

A (continuing) fascination and study of philosophy, (Christian) Church history, marxism and contemporary religious/political issues has only cemented my (dis/non?) belief over time.

 

[Diederick]

Being still in my teens, I wouldn't dare claim to have the life experience of previous posters, but I stopped believing at a very young age (around 8 or 9) after coming across the classic 'problem of evil' and developing an interest in philosophy.

My father was (and is) an atheist, though my mother possessed a vauge 'fuzzy belief' in a higher being, until several years of interesting discussion with both myself and my (atheist) sister eroded it away.

A (continuing) fascination and study of philosophy, (Christian) Church history, marxism and contemporary religious/political issues has only cemented my (dis/non?) belief over time.

This sounds so familiar. My parents have the same share in religious or anti-religious thinking; my dad opposes religion and my mom faguely believes in something. My dad is the intelligent one anyway.

I also started off here (well "also"... I'm just 20 now) very early, which was a bumpy ride, I can tell you that.

 

[stacey bo bacey]

It happened last year. And, man, am I glad it did.

 

[Lilbeth]

I have never been one...I was born to parents who were non-belivers, so it was natural for me to follow......I don't think I would have been a believer, even if I had parents who were.....but that of course, is pure speculation.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Almost 30 years old in my case before I jumped off the Christian boat. Based from what was said, claimed, and expressed in the church over the years compared to what was really actually happening lead to some serious head scratching.

 

[invisible chzbrgr]

I stopped believing in god when I was in eighth grade, so I would have been 13. Prior to that though, I never went to church or read the bible. My parents and relatives would always just casually mention god and those such things, and I therefore accepted them as true, since all of the grown ups talked about it just like it was truth.

^^This is an accurate description of me as well. It was around junior high, early high school (around 13-14) I became agnostic.

My mother would jokingly say, in reference to my sister's and my total apathy toward church, that she wished she had sent us to Sunday school. lol. But she hated it as a child, she'd rather be outside on a Sunday playing football with her brothers. So my mom's tomboy nature made me an agnostic? Hehehe.

Experimented with paganism for a few years in my 20s, because it had some beautiful ideas. (At least, my version of paganism did!) Somewhere along the line I realized it was wishful thinking, and dropped it.

Agnostic until last year, about age 33 (haha! checkmate, Jesus!) when I read Dawkins' book and embraced my atheism. That book, though I know it's been criticized as unscholarly and incomplete, did happen to spark my interest in science, logic, debate, and epistemology. So neeners to the Dawkins detractors! :bounce

 

[Willamena]

Guess it depends on what it is you're "non-believing".

 

[Lilbeth]

I am not believing in a white bearded man in the sky, who could look like anyone's grandfather......as depicted in MANY illustrations just as Martians are depicted as little green men......Why is everything such a riddle? I am tired of people talking waaaaay over my head and trying to make me feel dumb, as I don't understand what the heck they are talking about......Is this a way to make people feel stupid......so oh, you have to be right....You are smarter than I, is the response....? It does not wash that way for me.......case in point....too...The Bible....well, what did that mean....Uh....well, to one person's interpretation it meant this...another it meant that...Come on....sorry , I needed to vent that.

 

[Storm]

I am not believing in a white bearded man in the sky, who could look like anyone's grandfather......as depicted in MANY illustrations just as Martians are depicted as little green men......Why is everything such a riddle? I am tired of people talking waaaaay over my head and trying to make me feel dumb, as I don't understand what the heck they are talking about......Is this a way to make people feel stupid......so oh, you have to be right....You are smarter than I, is the response....? It does not wash that way for me.......case in point....too...The Bible....well, what did that mean....Uh....well, to one person's interpretation it meant this...another it meant that...Come on....sorry , I needed to vent that.

Nobody's trying to make you feel stupid. This is an education forum, after all. If you don't understand something, ask. If anyone's an *** about it, the rest of us will probably come down on them.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I am not believing in a white bearded man in the sky, who could look like anyone's grandfather......as depicted in MANY illustrations just as Martians are depicted as little green men......Why is everything such a riddle? I am tired of people talking waaaaay over my head and trying to make me feel dumb, as I don't understand what the heck they are talking about......Is this a way to make people feel stupid......so oh, you have to be right....You are smarter than I, is the response....? It does not wash that way for me.......case in point....too...The Bible....well, what did that mean....Uh....well, to one person's interpretation it meant this...another it meant that...Come on....sorry , I needed to vent that.

You experessed truth with this post better than any religion could ever hope to teach. Don't be so hard on yourself. K? :grill:

 

[Smoke]

It happened last year. And, man, am I glad it did.

I remember calling my friend Mikey, a long-time atheist, to tell him. He was very happy for me; it was the longest phone conversation we ever had. He died the following year, and I'm very glad I woke up in time for him to know about it.

 

[Lilbeth]

You experessed truth with this post better than any religion could ever hope to teach. Don't be so hard on yourself. K? :grill:

K........:bounce

 

[Kodanshi]

It's a nit-picky point, but I'm not convinced we just "decide" what to believe. Belief is more complicated than that, and I don't think we have direct control over it. We certainly can influence it by choosing what information we expose ourselves to, but I can't simply decide to believe something I don't already without some external catalyst. When my faith crumbled, it wasn't voluntary. I wanted to continue believing, but I couldn't.

This is another reason the sola fide concept I grew up with didn't ring true. All we have to do is just believe to avoid eternal damnation, but if we can't really control our beliefs very well, it's an obviously unjust idea to hang our eternal destiny on them.

QUOTED FOR TRUTH

I agree with you absolutely there. You can fake a belief by following faithful people’s actions, but if you do not believe then you simply cannot change that no matter how much you may want to change that. Sometimes I wonder if inter–faith and theist–atheist debates serve any purpose since providing ‘facts’ won’t change the other person’s mind.

It took me a long while to grow out of my belief in Islâm. I studied other religions, mainly Abrahamic and Middle Eastern, extensively and could see pagan roots and obviously manmade elements in both Judaism and Christianity. Yet I would still support Islâm. I don’t know when exactly, but eventually I mustered up the courage to apply those same criticisms to my own religion, found it wanting, and rejected it outright.

In fact, it came at a time when I realised I didn’t believe in god — certainly not our common perception of an all–knowing, all–seeing interventionist supernatural god as described by Judao–Christian–Islâmo txts. So I couldn’t follow any such god–centred religion.

 

[jrbogie]

I went to church on a regular basis from the time I was a toddler until I was 18 and went away to college. I thought Sunday school was ok but thought church was very boring and often fell asleep during the sermons. I guess I first began to question Christianity when I couldn't figure out how dinosaurs fit into the story of genesis.

After going to college I never went to church on a regular basis but still believed in God. About 5 years ago I became interested in learning more about my religion and read parts of the Bible and other books about Christianity. All this did was make me question my beliefs even more and I slowly became a deist.

I became an agnostic after taking a college course that dealt with the philosophical arguments that claimed to prove the existence of God. During this class we read a book titled Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant by Greg Graffin and Preston Jones (I highly recommend this book). After reading it and finishing the course, I was pretty much convinced that the Christian God didn't exist. In my mind, the arguments against the existence of God were much stronger than the arguments for His existence.

So, at what point in your life did you lose your belief (if you ever had any) and what caused you to not believe?

in my teens the sciences began to fascinate me. i'd attended church with my parents every week growing up and one day, i think i was fifteen, i just told them that i could not study science and believe the bible too. though i did not completely reject god, the more science knowledge i obtained the less i thought of the plausibility of a god or the afterlife. by the time i returned from vietnam i was a full blown atheist believing that god is impossible. i have over the years concluded that atheism is not quite right either and now as an agnostic i think that gods, the afterlife and other supernatural phenomena are not knowable within the human mind.