Why are you not religious?

Question

I will select the best answer based on the most informative, personally BIOGRAPHICAL, and well-written response on your acquisition of your current views; please tell us your story and revelation. Atheists, agnostics, secularists, and similar are welcome (religious and spiritual persons; I have a separate question for you, please answer that one).
Please do not answer with one-liners such as, "Because it makes sense" or "Because compassion is a universal virtue", please do not preach, please do not flood with scientific (or any other) citations, poems, and quotations, and please be attentive to your language and grammar.

Answer 1

I was raised Catholic, went to a Catholic grade school, high school, and university. At each level of religious instruction, they more or less told you that what you were taught at the previous level wasn't exactly accurate. In grade school, everything in the bible is true, heaven and hell are real places, angels and demons are real. At the univeristy level, everything in bible is allegory and stories to be considered in context of time they were written, where they were written, and the audience they were intended for. Of course, the local parish priests don't operate at the University level, they continue to preach at the grade school level which makes the mass a frustrating experience for anyone with higher level of theological education. It just makes me too angry to deal with so I avoid it. There's also the issue that my participation in Catholic church exposed me to no less than 3 pedophiles who had direct authority over me while still a minor. While I was never a victim, it angers me that others around me were and that it easily could have been me.

While I still believe in God, I don't believe any major Religion's version of God. They all reek of obvious human artifacts. God being God would have to be the most enlightened being in the universe. Yet the version of God/Human relationship offered by major religions does not point to a Good God or enlightened being at all. Within the very near future, it will be possible for us to engineer a sub-species of human beings that have free will and problem solving skills, but have limited intelligence and lifespans. They would be worker class to do our will and clean our bathrooms. Being their superior beings and creators, we would also demand that they worship us and lay down a series of laws that, if violated, will lead to their torture and destruction. Somehow, that seems just plain wrong to me on a cosmic level. Yet, this is the very God concept offered to us by many religions. If God created us, then he/she/it knowingly created an inferior race of beings, and, if the bible is to be believed, will destroy us for not worshiping he/she/it and secumbing to the innate weaknesses that he/she/itself imparted by design. The whole worshiping thing as well as reward/punishment is obviously a human projection on God.

The reality is that nobody knows and that is okay with me. I'd rather live with not knowing than believe something that is wrong.

Our ancestors got just about everything wrong in the human journey to understand the world around us. Why people are so willing to accept ideas developed thousands of years ago by folks with little knowledge of physical reality or education is beyond me.

Answer 2

Growing up, I went to catholic school all my life. After many years of being pumped full of christian dogma, I became a bit skeptical, so I started reading about other religions. I read the Tao Te Ching in high school, followed by the Koran and the works of Confucious. I read the poetry of Kahlil Gibran as well as the Zohar. I even the read the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and the Bhagavad Gita. It was after this mental journey that I began to see the world with new eyes.

I started to realize that religion is a control method just like any other. While it is a form of positive control, it has the effect of narrowing the views of the believer, making original and unique thought difficult. By abandoning religion and focusing on the human condition, I've transformed my life into my own positive vision. I now have an understanding beyond one secular teaching and I truly believe that if we all take this journey, we can develop understanding between all peoples on Earth.

There is no wrong religion, any more than there is one right religion. By abandoning religion and focusing on humanism, we can build a better, more accepting world. One that will break down the barriers of worship and build the steps toward universal peace and understanding. All we need to do is jump outside of the box we've been raised in and take a look over the walls we've created.

Answer 3

I am atheist. I don't see how God could've created everything, and how was he created, then? I fully believe in evolution, and that we evolved from Homo Erectus and such. Also, if God created everything at once, then wouldn't Adam and Eve had to have been infected with every single disease, known and unkown to man? Also, I believe that if God was real, he'd be kind, sweet, caring, understanding, and all-around good. But churches, which represents God, have a history of opressing people, trying to force their religion on others, taking away natural pleasures, and other things that I don't consider very good, whatsoever.

Sometimes I'd love to believe in God. Wouldn't that make the loss of my dad easier? I could blame it all on a wrathful God! But I just can't. For some reason, I can't believe that God is out there. Maybe there's higher beings, but not one single Creator. In fact, I think one fantasy book might just have gotten it right: Read the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, and, more importantly, "The Amber Spyglass", by Philip Pullman. I don't know, that book just seems to make perfect sense to me.

Anyway, I don't believe in God, and I'm not quite sure why. I guess that's the best I can do to explain myself.

Answer 4

Some reasons why I am not religious:

1.I am not religious because there has never been a time in my life when I felt troubled by things that were beyond my intellectual grasp. I think many people turn to religion because they want definitive answers to some very big questions. It might bother some people not to know what happens when we die, who created the universe, and what the purpose of existence is. Having accepted that questions like these will never be answered, I never feel the need to turn to a religious authority to answer them for me. That isn't to say I'm not curious about these "big" questions, I just think there are better ways of understanding existence. I feel that my knowledge of philosophy, science, and art is vastly more useful in understanding the complexities of these questions, complexities which I feel religion often ignores.

2. I am not religious because I reject religious authority in any form. I think religions are organized on a hierarchical power structure that's more suited for governance than spiritual matters. Why should I regard any individual as having more significant insights into the nature of the world simply because he is a member of a clergy? In my opinion, the only authority members of the clergy have is over the traditions and conventions of their particular religion, authority which is useless to me as an individual who is not interested in tradition. I think many people get so involved with the ceremony of religion that they neglect the fundamental purpose of religion, which is to answer (or at last discuss) questions like the ones I've listed above.

3. I am not religious because I dislike the idea of communal religious beliefs. My opinion is that the only true beliefs one can have about religious matters are beliefs that one has come to after a period of reflection and careful consideration. As I've already stated, I reject all religious authority, so why would it be necessary for me to develop my beliefs from the opinions of others? I feel that validating ones religious views with the communal structure of organized religion codifies religious thought, and eventually stunts it entirely because the community has decided that all the necessary religious thought is already prescribed in some sacred text.

I feel that my decision not to be religious asserts my power as an individual. I would never claim to have personally discovered the answers to the big questions in life, but I feel empowered as an individual to seek out knowledge and understanding. I agree with Emerson who asks in his essay "Nature": "Why should not we enjoy an original relation to the Universe?"

Answer 5

For starters, I simply wasn't raised that way. My family did not take me to church, did not read me the bible, but we did have religious talks (with my did- my mom didn't like to go over me with that stuff) when I got old enough to wrap my brain around it. Because I didn't have any religious background, I was free to decide to do what I wanted. I simply thought the Christianity didn't click. That is to say, the scientific theory, that small changes in DNA and evolution made us what we are today, seems more accurate, because it is just like breeding and therefore obviously works.

I understand your plea for answer without sermons and completely agree. When I ask questions spesifically for atheists, it drives me nuts when christians rant at me about opening up to God. So I will spare you the countless annoyed sighs, rolled eyeballs, and deletions that I have endured.

Answer 6

I was born and raised a good, god fearing Catholic girl.

When I was 11 years old, my best friend was hit by a drunk driver and was killed. She died in my arms four days before my birthday. That was the day I began to question faith in all forms.

Why would god kill an innocent child?
- Jessica never had a chance to live. She was only 11 years old.
- Jessica never had a chance to teach anybody anything.
- Jessica never did harm to anybody.

Why would god allow a fellow 11 year old girl to watch her best friend's life extinguished in her arms?
- What would cause a girl to deserve to watch that horror?
- What would cause a girl to deserve her shirt to be soaked with her best friend's blood?
- What would cause a girl to have to hold her best friend's burnt, charred hand as she gasped and weezed for air, in obvious, agonizing pain?

Why would god allow a child to be slaughtered in such a way?
- The man got himself drunk. Why couldn't he have hit a tree and killed himself?
- If Jessica had to go, why did she have to go in such a brutal, mutilating way?
- The man tried to take off running into the desert. The man was captured unharmed. Where is the fairness in that?

Why did this man get off scotch free when a young child and her sister die because of his misfortune? How is it god's decision that a child is murdered just so s/he could be "Brought to his arms"?


Why would God allow a child to be placed on earth for 11 years, to allow people to fall in love with her, and allow a man to murder her ruthlessly?



THAT is why I am an Athiest. God has proven nothing to me. The bible is chock full of lies, and religion continually brainwashes sheep into believing in a particular way, otherwise they are going to be punished. The more people they convert, the more money goes into the church coffers.


Besides, if religion is the only way to heaven, why does he allow priests to molest young boys?

What did they do to deserve it? If it was the man's fault, why do the children have to be punished in result? If the man was tainted, why is the concequence that children as well have to be scarred for life? They didn't ask for it. They didn't deserve it.



God failed me. In my eyes... he never existed.

Answer 7

I was raised christian but I don't think I have a religion anymore. I don't know if I would declare myself agnostic or atheist or whatever. I really think of myself as "neutral", I simply don't think about religion or the concept of "supernatural". If I were a betting man, I'd say when you die, it's the end of the road for you. You simply go unconscious for enternity, nothing else. But.. I'm always open to listening to new theories or ideas about life.

Answer 8

I always blame myself for my mistakes and I wish everyone would. I also give myself credit for the good things I have done and I give others credit for thier mistakes and successes. It just seems more psychologically healthy to want to do things to improve oneself and to develop ones self into a person who takes responsibility for thier strengths and weaknesses, and not give the credit to a force that has taken them over and is doing everything for them. I also don't take people at their labels' face value, because noone can possibly follow all the tenets of one religion without fail, and is therefore, at any given time, merely treading in the waters of their beliefs, and never really immersing themselves entirely.

Answer 9

I'm unsure about the existence of god, hence I'm agnostic. There are just so many things about christianity that make no sense to me and I can't bring myself to just have faith and ignore the things that make no sense. And with all the bad in the world, it's more comforting to me to think maybe there isn't a god rather than a god that just doesn't care.

Answer 10

Okay, first off, as you may have off-handedly addressed - Agnostics, such as myself, are/can be religious, we just don't associate with a particular religion.

Now, as to my story? My dad is a white American. My mother is Thai. My father was baptized French Catholic in Montreal in the same church my grandfather was baptized in - and trust me, my dad and my grandfather have the mutiple middle names to prove they're French Catholic ;) . My mother was raised Buddhist. My brother and I were taken to Thai Buddhist temples when we were really young, but since my family moved A LOT (literally, once a year), we eventually stopped going.

I remember in 7th grade my parents sat down with my brother and I a few Sundays to discuss with us the many different religions in the world and their various beliefs. They actually did it in as objective of a view as possible and I remember my dad saying "The reason we aren't pushing you two to a specific religion or belief is that we want you to be aware that there are MANY different ones out there. Each one has morals it tries to teach and ways to try and explain the unexplainable. Listen to each one's lessons and try to learn from it. If you wish to follow a specific religion that is fine, but we would rather you kept your minds open to the other viewpoints. Respect each religion - there's a lot of history to each one."

Now my personal beliefs are kind of a mesh of Buddhism, a little of Christianity, and a little of my own thoughts/pondering mixed in. I won't go into detail (it's complex). I have been to places of worship for other religions either because of accompanying friends or for my World Religions class I took in high school. I've been to a Buddhist temple (obviously), an Islamic mosque, a Hindu temple, a Jewish temple, a Baptist church, a Catholic church, and a Christian Church. I've also visited Aztec temples in Cancun. It's amazing how much symbolism exists in each place of worship, some of the symbolism obvious and others subtle but just as powerful. I've also studied (learned about, not actually followed) Wicca, Voodou, and the Native American religions that used Peyote.

By looking on the history of how all these different religions migrated and interacted with other religions, I found it amazing how fear, greed, and pride can cause so much grief to so many across the continents and centuries. The one thing that I did discover is the Golden rule exists in the five major religions of the world, and I try to live by that. I give others respect for their beliefs and continue to do that and learn about their culture/lifestyle unless if they disrespect mine and try to push their beliefs on me.

In all honesty, I feel most comfortable in a Buddhist temple (even moreso, a Thai temple). Being in another place of worship is an experience, but I do not feel that I fit in there. I don't know the Buddhist chants, but I remember the one my family used to go to, and that, like warm milk or chicken noodle soup, is the most comforting for me.