Can anyone who IS an atheist tell me why they choose that route?

Question

I think I am because I do not believe in something (God,heaven,Devil,hell) I have not seen proof of..but I'd like to do more research and be able to make more of an educated guess before I call myself a atheist....NO SMART REMARKS PLEASE...or HOLY-ER THAN THOU comments!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is a serious question to me

Answer 1

Sounds like you're an agnostic (like me). If you're looking for personal experiences, here's mine:

I'm from a mostly Catholic country but my dad was Protestant. Got the whole Catholic private school education from Jesuits and kicked *** in Theology classes (Sunday bible school too). All that time, I was treating it as just another subject related to school. I've always been open to people from other cultures who had a different belief system so I made friends with Buddhists, Jews, Rastafarians, Satanists, Atheists, Agnostics, etc...

I already knew I didn't take the bible literally. I also shopped around a bit deciding what I really believed in...I was pretty content to stay nominally Christian to preserve appearances and not rock the boat until I came across some very pushy Christians who were just not making sense and generally being obnoxious. That's when I decided I didn't even want the nominal Christian tag and went full on Agnostic (because that's what I really am).

Edit: Lots of inaccurate descriptions of what agnosticism is. It's not a religion but a simple philosophy that says you shouldn't believe in anything (god, santa, tooth fairy, etc) that cannot be proven (senses being really unreliable).

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

My father is an Episcopal deacon, so I was forced to Church as a kid. One day at the age of about ten I was sitting there in church, the people around me were praying and I felt nothing. I'd felt more spiritual prescense in the back yard. I thought "These people are talking to the AIR. If I did that by myself they'd call me a looney."

I picked up a copy of Weekly World News once and was laughing about it but then thought: The crap in the Bible is MORE outrageous than this! Ok, so the Bible is just a story. DUH.

I studied other religions, and some had things in common: The five-pointed star, celebrations on solstices and equinoxes, the sun, etc. I even did rituals, both hebrew and pagan, that seemed to work. But then I studied nature and evolution, all of this made SO much more sense, was easy to follow along with, and fascinating.

If I need emotional full fillment or to ask for help it was from my fellow people, and I, in turn, helped them. I am the captain of my own ship and anything I do, including turnoing the wheel over to someone else, is MY decision and I have to take responsibility for it. Scary at first, but the FREEDOM one gets from that is boundless.

I can't say I'm solidly rooted in the tangible world, if I have a bible, it's a book called Illusions by Richard Bach. Its just a short story, but a good one. There are a lot of strange phenomena out there, and a lot that science can't explain, but that makes it all that more fascinating: There are still frontiers. But just because something is unexplained doesn;t mean I'm going to waste my time worshipping it.

I also do not want to associate myself with the destructive, biggoted group of people who call themselves religious and think its OK to impose their rules on everyone else. If you're using religion for community, hope and healing, great(though I reserve the right to think you're silly). But it ALWAYS goes farther than that, doesn't respect other cultures. Religion is the most destructive force that humans have ever seen, and I want NOTHING to do with it.

Answer 3

Odds are pretty good that everyone reading this is an atheist with respect to Zeus, Thor, Loki, and hundreds of other gods that various people believed in in the past. I'm an atheist with respect to one more god, the "God of Abraham", a.k.a. the God of the Hebrew Bible (called The Old Testament by Christians). To me, that God seems just as mythical as Zeus. I have a very hard time believing that something powerful enough to create a whole universe would be as petty as the God in the Bible. He seems like he would fit right in with those greek gods that were always fighting with each other. The creation story of Genesis also seems to have a lot in common with the creation stories of other primitive peoples. I could go on with other reasons but you get the idea.

I'm still willing to leave as an open question whether the universe was created by some supernatural being. It is pretty mind boggling that anything exists at all and it is human nature to want to attribute causes. However, saying that "God created the universe" doesn't really get us anywhere because then we are left with the question "Who created God?". Theists answer "God has always existed", but I don't see why that answer is any better than just saying "The universe has always existed."

Answer 4

Religion and god is as real as the tooth fairy....primitive man needed the 'religious experience' to survive in a hostile universe. The unknown was explained by the supernatural, the idea of an afterlife cushioned people from the grim aspects of death, in short, it was a survival mechanism developed within the temporal lobe of all human brains.

Modern man has developed rational thought and controls much of the environment, to the extent of knowing how 'things operate'. But obsolete genes do not die overnight, therefore you'll always be seeing people believing in religion, god and the supernatural.

I read about some interesting studies by scientists of the temporal lobe regions that are 'mis-firing' or giving off 'unbalanced' neuroligical signals. Some of the studies are intrigueing, they can duplicate 'religious experiences' in blind tests of humans.

It was already known that the more primitive limbic system of our brains contain the raw emotion where our religious beliefs spring forth. The development of the cerebral cortex (or the thinking and rational part of the brain) is only a recent development in humans, say the last 40,000-100,000 years.

It is also well known that the 'god-gene' (for lack of a better description) is triggered during times of duress, high anxiety, near death or starvation, and other high emotional episodes. It was our survival instinct that developed this so-called god-gene.

Answer 5

I chose Athieism when I moved out of my parent's house and went to college. I went to a Christian school from K-5 to 12th grade, so I have heard it ALL in terms of God. I never felt the pull of the Holy Spirit that all the preacher talk about. I am successful, and I do not rely on God. I truly do not feel afraid that there is a hell, and I am not happy thinking that there may be a heaven. I think that people turn to religion to give them fulfillment in life....if you are a happy person and do not need a crutch...GOOD FOR YOU! There is nothing wrong with being an athiest!

Answer 6

i was a christian when i was young. about 15 years ago i made a real commitment. I prayed studied. I believed in a loving creator. Was not afraid to ask questions. I believed God was not afraid of the truth. After much thanks to God, prayer and study, trying to be more tolerant of others, kind and loving and mature the only logical conclusion was atheism. I came out an unbeliever all by myself, well a little help from some Socrates. but mainly by own observations and keeping it real. Istill felt like I had lost my best friend when I realised the god in my mind didnt exist
I didnt call my self an atheist at first, that word still sounds a little like 'satanist' to me sometimes. But after a while I realized that the way i think and am is what is refered to as atheist.I am without belief in a God/s,and will never become religous..

Answer 7

I did not choose it, my parents are atheists also, so I basically grew up without any religious life. The way I see it is you belive or not, and it is something in the very deep that I think is very difficult to change. My suggestion is to give yourself sometime to see how you feel about the idea of God in general. After some time for reflection if you do not belive in anything more than humans then you are an atheist, if you are not sure, then you may be an agnostic, If you still belive there is something stronger than you then you are a beliver and you should give yourself the chance to recoincile with your spiritual life. good luck!

Answer 8

I didn't really choose to be an atheist, I just am. I just don't believe in a higher power. It's sort of the way that I don't believe in the Easter bunny or Santa Claus. I see too many contradictions involved with the existence of a god.

Answer 9

I've always been an atheist. I've just never believed in god. I've never seen anything that proves his existance. I just can't believe in something that I've never seen, never heard, never felt or gotten any other proof of it existing. The whole thing just doesn't seem logical to me, so I don't believe it.

Answer 10

I didn't see the basis of religion in an ancient text that sounds like the Weekly World News on steroids. So I searched all the religions and found that disbelief was the best for me.