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Why are you an atheist?

C

cottage

Well-Known Member
Why are you an atheist?

One word: unreasoned. God belief makes no sense to me. When people speak of 'God' they are not simply describing a metaphysical creative power or a plausible scientific explanation for a First Cause. The term 'God' is taken to mean a worshipful being or an entity that has some interest in human nature and existence. At the centre of this belief is the self-regarding desire for life to have meaning beyond our three score and ten years and entity who has our best interests at heart. And from this we descend into confusion:


We believe we are not mere animals but conscious beings who exist for a purpose, though it has to be said that we cannot know for certain what this purpose might be; but we believe there is something beyond our experience, though it has to be said we do not know for certain what this extra-experiential thing might be; but we believe this something is God, who seeks a relationship with us, though it has to be said that we cannot be certain what God is, what his intentions are, or what the nature of the relationship might be. We cannot be certain of our experiences, our own purpose or God's intentions, and we cannot be certain what God is, or how the relationship with him might transpire, but we believe through faith that there is a God, although it has to be said in all truth that even in this we cannot be certain. :confused:
 
Z

Zenaphobe

New Member
I came from an nominally Catholic home and attended Catholic school from first to third grades but never really thought of myself as a Christian until I had a "born again" experience in my early twenties.

The process of de-converting from fundamentalist Christianity led to a gradual shift from belief in Yahweh to more liberal views of a deity, then to agnosticism, and finally to atheism.

There are numerous lines of thought and questions that led to my rejection of belief in supernatural beings, but the one that crops up most often is why a perfect being would bother to create anything at all? If it was to fulfill some "want", then the being wasn't perfect. To argue that the deity created for our benefit seems rather presumptuous, as billions live and die in want and abject misery. No one asked to be created, so why would a perfect being thrust existence upon us at all? Who stands to benefit? If it is the perfect being, then there was a lack and no perfection can suffer from a lack of something.

The second most prominent obstruction to my acceptance of a god belief is the observation that the world is explainable without need to make appeals to "supernatural" causes. Advances in human knowledge have led to less reliance on "super-naturalism" to explain the universe around us. I don't claim we know everything, but we seem to have progressed past the need to appeal to magic to describe the workings of our world.

You said you were interested if there was some disappointment that may have fueled the move to atheism. Nothing disappointed me, but I suppose the most troubling thing when I accepted Christianity as the path to God was that there is so much disagreement among those who claim to be led by the same Holy Spirit. It was strange to me that every Christian claims to have the same spirit of God within them, but they endlessly disagree over the way to interpret and apply the Bible.

I hope this helps you understand how I got to where I am now. :)
 
D

Doodlebug02

Active Member
I'm an Atheist for 4 reasons. Number 1 being that religion is illogical. Number 2 being that the "fruits" of religion have often been violence and/or negative in other ways as well. Number 3 being that "god" would not always "answer" my prayers (in actuality, he never answered my prayers, I just thought he did). Number 4 being that religion was proving to be detrimental to my already unstable mental health.
 
M

Malleus_de_Philosophia

Member
I'm atheistic for a few reasons. First, when there's a question of how something happened or why something happened, the theistic answer generally is a certain deity made it happen for whatever reason it wanted to. To me, that's not a suitable answer because it dances away from answering the question by formulating another unknown. In other words, the unknown is directed to another unknown and deemed to be a correct answer. I never viewed that as satisfactory and each time I'd ask more and more, the same answer kept appearing. Second, much of the theistic beliefs to me seems as though one is making the rules as they go along and is goes round and round. Third, the intentions of some of the theistic beliefs to me scream obeying someone with your life and ensuring you live your life around one's power. To me this isn't something I'm willing to do. I'm fine with having morals and living by a philosophy one establishes for themselves, but living your life thinking someone will have you suffer in some place because of a few things you did, to me seems like a mental imprisonment. It seems to constrain oneself to a point of instead of answering a question freely it's more of holding a shotgun to one's head and saying "this is the answer otherwise the wall gets redecorated from your head". Some theistic beliefs claim to "free" a person yet they result in a mental imprisonment and this imprisonment increases as the person allows it to increase, resulting in them finding more stress in factors they wouldn't have before. Lastly, we don't know everything there is to know and assuming the smartest person on Earth knows 0.1% of everything is an over-exaggeration to the extreme. Thus, saying one knows 100% is nonsense right from the start, regardless of what the actual beliefs are, the premise alone is faulty and nonsensical so the rest follows suit.
 
imaginaryme

imaginaryme

Active Member
I'm an anarchist. If you agree, anarchy; if you don't agree, anarchy; and if you ignore me, anarchy. That's god-like stuff right there. :D
 
xkatz

xkatz

Well-Known Member
I consider myself an atheist for now because I don't think "god" (like the one in the Abrahamic faiths) exist and I am still trying to find a religion that best suits me.
 
dust1n

dust1n

Zindīq
Because I can not possibly imagine why someone would create an elaborate story based on the idea of God. There never was gone... when it was first mentioned, it couldn't be proved then, and it never will be. If there was a god, I wonder know, and if he was the God in most religions, I would be glad to be out of his presence forever.
 
Tor__Hershman

Tor__Hershman

Universal Toilet Cleaner
Well, I suppose I'm an Atheist 'cause I just really don't believe
in myself :)
but seriously...for the same REASON that I'm not a Flat-Earther - observational evidence.
 
NobodyYouKnow

NobodyYouKnow

Misanthropist
Since I stopped believing in god, my life has drastically changed for the better.

My prayers never got answered and I never received any satisfactory explanation as to why a 'loving god' caused all my suffering (and others to suffer) beyond 'that's just god's mysterious ways' or 'he is only testing you' or that's 'karma' which all just sounded like a huge cop-out and a pile of unmitigated crap.

Despite my beliefs, prayers and my ardent worship and penance, god has done nothing for me but made me suffer more than what was necessary - all because I believed.

I saw all the infighting and hypocrisy within each religion over doctrines and scriptures - forget about comparitive ones.

I saw all the greed and wealth amassed by these 'pious, charitable institutions'.

I just saw communities of blind people all trying to lead each other.

Since I stopped believing in god and believed more in myself, my life just keeps getting better, which led me to think that if there was really a god up/out there, he doesn't want me believing in him or he would have encouraged me, rewarded me, done something/anything but make my life a total misery up to the point where I stopped believing.

This is why I am now Atheist and very proud to be one.
 
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Cephus

Cephus

Relentlessly Rational
Because there's no evidence for the existence of any gods, of course. Why else would someone rationally be an atheist?
 
WonderWho

WonderWho

Away
In my late 40s I began to have doubts about my belief and decided to do a forensic investigation of how I obtained my beliefs.
To cut a long story short, I found that all my beliefs were either taught to me or borrowed.
I have since reverted to my natural born state of no beliefs(re:God). :)
 
I

InformedIgnorance

Do you 'know' or believe?
Symbols (or indeed symbolism rich belief systems and traditions) codify a significant number of meanings varying on context used and so forth - when one examines religious traditions from the point of view of symbolism, some of the underlying sociocultural and psychological underpinnings become more obvious - in such a way a skeptic (rather than cynic) can come to realise why some aspects of religious traditions manifest the way they do and this can lead to some significant reduction in acceptance of symbolism rich components of religious traditions ranging from specific claims to entire subsystems.

That however deals more with established religious and/or occult traditions as opposed to more abstract traditions (mysticism for example) where there is less established symbolism, however the aforementioned examination of more symbolism rich traditions does indeed instill a more skeptical examination of related concepts as well.
 
Michael Colton

Michael Colton

Member
I am an atheist simply because I see no reason to believe. It is a default position that one must be convinced to leave, not a position one must be convinced to accept.

People too often conflate criticism of specific religions with being an atheist. Being an atheist is not something you are convinced of and join. It is simply what you are if you do not believe.
 
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