when did you become a nonbeliever?

[Saint Frankenstein]

Forgive my naiveté and I also apologize because I don't mean to derail the thread. I just want to learn. How can one be an Atheist and a Satanist at the same time?

By viewing the character of Satan as a favorable role model and not has a literal being. We are our own Satan. It's like asking a Buddhist how they can be atheists at the same time. There are Theistic Satanists, of course. I've tried that and it didn't end up working for me.

 

[bobhikes]

Since most people are raised by parents who are believers to some extent or another, that makes it likely that most people who are now secular types were at once at least nominally religious. So let me ask you, if you were in such a situation, at what point did you know that you were no longer such and such religion but were agnostic/atheist? Was there a definitive moment? Was there a transition period? Was there a period of time you oscillated?

The psychology of this interests me. I find religion and the religious experience fascinating having been indulging and struggling with it, in terms of human experience and the quirks of the human brain. I want to understand my own immediate craziness this way.

I have run the guantlet. At one point I wished to be a Priest. The one constant was I always had questions. As I got older they got harder to answer. At about 16 I got fed up with the non-answers I was getting and started looking elsewhere. The search for answers eventually led me to atheism. Which at first I took upon strongly but I always ask questions. My answers led me away from atheism to agnostism. It is here that I currently rest in peace. I still have questions but the answers always fall neatly under agnostism.

 

[TheGunShoj]

By viewing the character of Satan as a favorable role model and not has a literal being. We are our own Satan. It's like asking a Buddhist how they can be atheists at the same time. There are Theistic Satanists, of course. I've tried that and it didn't end up working for me.

Thank you for the clarification.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Thank you for the clarification.

No problem. LaVeyan Satanism is the closest to my beliefs but I still don't agree with them on everything: LaVeyan Satanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Nymphs]

Herb must be a very persuasive guy!

Oh, he/she/it was!

 

[TheGunShoj]

Herb must be a very persuasive guy!

I lol'd. Would give a fruby if I could.

 

[Fromper]

I was raised Jewish, but my family was never very religious. And I went to Hebrew school at a reform synagogue, where they even taught us that some of the stories in the Torah were metaphors. I specifically remember that I learned more about the big bang in Hebrew school than in my science classes in public school, because they felt the need to explain that the 7 days of creation were actually metaphors for much longer periods of time, so Jewish belief doesn't contradict science.

I don't think I ever really believed in God. I'm not sure how many of my relatives do, either. I have some who are definitely believers, but I think most are probably like me - going along with the cultural traditions without ever really believing in the religious stuff. It's only in the last couple of years that I've finally stopped self-identifying as Jewish and embraced the atheist label, though.

 

[metis]

I was raised Jewish, but my family was never very religious. And I went to Hebrew school at a reform synagogue, where they even taught us that some of the stories in the Torah were metaphors. I specifically remember that I learned more about the big bang in Hebrew school than in my science classes in public school, because they felt the need to explain that the 7 days of creation were actually metaphors for much longer periods of time, so Jewish belief doesn't contradict science.

I don't think I ever really believed in God. I'm not sure how many of my relatives do, either. I have some who are definitely believers, but I think most are probably like me - going along with the cultural traditions without ever really believing in the religious stuff. It's only in the last couple of years that I've finally stopped self-identifying as Jewish and embraced the atheist label, though.

As with yourself, I struggled with this for many years. My resolve is a bit different than yours, which is not to suggest that yours is in any way incorrect.

As I found my more conventional theism waning about 10 years ago (it always was a struggle for me anyway), by coincidence I started to intensely study Buddhism and Hinduism (I used to teach comparative religions, so this area has long interested me), and this really helped me a lot. What they did was to provide me with a sense of morality without being theistic in the more conventional Abrahamic way. I'm sorta in-between Spinoza and the non-theistic Buddhist approach, and the best way to understand where I'm coming from is in my oft stated phrase "Whatever caused this universe/multiverse I'll call 'God', and pretty much leave it at that".

However, I have chosen to still identify as being Jewish, and am very active in my Reform/Renewal synagogue, including teaching our Lunch & Lean program and some seminars. I use services mostly for meditation purposes versus conventional prayer.

Works for me.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

As a kid I believed. I was a true believer. But then when I got a little older I started realizing things with science that meant that the religion wouldn't be true.

It was like I was living in two worlds. The first world was a rational world where everything made logical sense and then this Sunday morning world in which I would blindly accept things to be true that often conflicted with other things.

I think a defining moment (at least the earliest) was a time I realized that Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago but the earth is 10k years old. That was the time I felt I had my first major inclination that, at least in part, religion was ********.

So I started to doubt but passively continued to believe but it no longer meant a lot to me. It wasn't till I was about 13 that I really fully realized that I didn't believe in god at all. Then I went back and forth (mostly due to guilt induced by my mother) about the whole thing. But by 17 I was a committed atheist and never again went back to Christianity.

But at 19 I got into Wicca and paganism but by 21-22 I was an atheist again. Though I can't say I ever actually believed it to be true but was willing to give it a shot. I think intelectually this has helped me greatly in my personal convictions. I have tried it and still come out as non-religious as the next atheist. Though it is frustrating to debate with theists who use the same logical fallacies that I used to think when I was a theist. And to know exactly why they think what they think and to know exactly why they were wrong.

This is extremely arrogant to say but I truly feel this is the truth. I feel the relation to what I view as an atheist who was once a theist and the view of a theist is much like that of an adult to a child in regards to understanding. When a child and an adult disagree its not that the Adult doesn't understand. In fact the adult may very well remember a time in which they thought like the child, but now they have grown wiser and know why they were wrong.

 

[Setepenaset]

I seem to have been blessed (or cursed depending on how you look at it) with the ability to see the logic in just about any religion or philosophy. Consequentially, I changed religions several times over the course of my life. Most recently I was a non-theistic Quaker, but I have recently decided to stop using religious labels. My belief in a personal God gradually slipped away over the years, partly due to my experience with those religions. They all make sense in their own way, but they can't all be true.
About 30 years ago I was one of several thousand homeless people that a controversial guru named Rajneesh bused to his commune in Oregon from all over the country. I was really taken by his philosophy, about there being no actual personal God, and God being an impersonal presence inherent in every person, and that everyone has the potential to become what he called "Enlightened",iow, to become a "god" in one's own right. Thirty years of reflecting on that have pretty much eliminated any ability to accept a personal God.
God is in us. We don't have to "worship" him, life itself should be a continuous act of "worship" of the divine within ourselves.

 

[jimniki]

G'day to all...
Done science at school, can never ever remember being religious, not even as a little kid...
I do not discount creationism, my objectivism won't allow me to, as we need to cater for all possibilities.... No matter how strange they may seem. What I find amusing is that so many believers feel they know god, like they are on a similar plane of existense ... This is human arrogance again at its finest.... All it is really doing is justifying their delusional self importance... On another forum, someone mentioned that being agnostic is a medical illness! Had to laugh....
Jim..

 

[samosasauce]

In about 6th or 7th grade I stopped being a Christian... I had some sort of spiritual views after, and then I was a Taoist, and now I'm simply apatheistic

 

[JennyA]

I was raised Presbyterian/Lutheran. My parents were very religious. My earliest memories involved their prayer group. But at about 7 or so I remember sitting in church ans asking myself, "why do grown-ups believe this stuff?" I did try to believe in adolescence, in my early twenties, and again in my early thirties. The more I learned the less I wanted to believe. So I don't. No evidence, no reason beyond pleasing my family and there are limits to what I will do to please my family.

 

[Skeptisch]

It would be interesting to know how many “nonbelievers” are superstitious and believe things exist outside the laws of nature.

 

[Willamena]

G'day to all...
Done science at school, can never ever remember being religious, not even as a little kid...
I do not discount creationism, my objectivism won't allow me to, as we need to cater for all possibilities.... No matter how strange they may seem. What I find amusing is that so many believers feel they know god, like they are on a similar plane of existense ... This is human arrogance again at its finest.... All it is really doing is justifying their delusional self importance...

(Psst... this is not catering to every possibility.)

 

[Sapiens]

At gametogenesis.