To the atheist.I am just curious?

Question

Did you all always have no belief in God or did you have religion forced on you...and it just made you go another way? If you don't believe in God,do u also not believe in the Devil either? Also do you all worship anything ...or do you just believe things are the way they just because it is? I would just really like some incite into...your beliefs..not judging..honestly curious..Please no disrespectful comments against anyone elses religion.thank you

My correction...insight...didn't even notice that..thanks

Also, I have noticed that people are saying they don't believe in supernatural things...not even like ghost or haunted things..the reason why I ask is because the christians I know say that this is evil..as well...I am sorry if I am offending anyone but I just really would like to know ..thank you

Answer 1

A few years before I went to prison, I rejected religion. ( I have since changed my mind). It lasted about 5 years. Once you reject religion, you reject all of it...God, Jesus, Buddah, Ra, Mary, Mohammad, Satan...all of it. No...I did not worship anything. No sun God or anything like that. I just began believing that when we die, there is nothing else. Lights out. I thought that we are simply organisms, not anything different than fish wandering around in the ocean, we are just wandering around on land. Things to me were just they way they were. Things interested me like how rock formations on the earth etc. were formed...but I am/was not a naturalist or tree hugger.

I was raised as a christian. I got irritated with the hypocracy of organized religion, specifically how they pick and choose what they want to believe out of the bible and how they are obtuse when you try to conversate about religion. I was further frustrated because each christian 'sect' believes to the bitter end that they are the right-est of the christian beilefs. When my grandfather died is when I finally rejected religion completely. I watched him die. I guess I was expecting something to happen...but nothing did. I was pissed off. I was hurt...and there was nothing but a body. Thusly the final rejection.


I have finally made internal peace with everything. My personal beliefs are christian based, but it does not follow any particular organized faith with in christianity. It is personal to me, I don't want to push my beliefs on anyone...and I don't want to hear how wrong my beliefs are. I pray to God for things like watching out for the troops in harms way, I give thanks for all that I have, I don't ask for much but happiness and being a good daddy.

I can tell you what keeps me away from organized religion, but that is a whole different question.

Answer 2

No. I did not always have no belief in god.

I was raised Presbyterian and I did not feel it forced upon me (although there were Sundays when I would have preferred to do something other than Sunday school and church). I was even ordained as an elder in the church (many years ago - I was a younger elder).

I drifted away from god gradually. What eventually crystallized my feelings was probably the indifference god seemed to have with the suffering of his servants. For every prayer answered there seemed to be millions ignored. Furthermore, it didn't seem to matter what god you prayed to or even if you prayed to god. Ultimately it was far easier to deny the existence of god than to believe he was so capricious with his creation. It certainly helped that the scientific explanation for nature made much more sense than the biblical explanation.

I don't believe in any supernatural beings. No gods (christian or otherwise), no devils, no ghosts, no spirits, no angels, et cetera. I don't worship anything and I don't see the need to worship anything. I always wondered about that even as a christian. Why would god care where I spent Sunday morning? Wouldn't he care more how I lived the rest of the week?

I think things are the way they are because that is what happened. If the Chicxulub asteroid had missed Earth we might all be some evolved form of dinosaur. If the Shoemaker-Levy comet had hit Earth instead of Jupiter we might not be here at all. In either case, or in our current situation, the universe goes on.

I have tried to give you an honest answer, I hope you will take the time to read all of the respectful answers you receive and to think about them. We're always willing to welcome new members.

Answer 3

I use to be Christian. I was raised in the south so religion is everywhere. I became atheist because religion has no real answers. It has only rewritten rehashed myths and legends.

No, the devil or satan doesn't exist.

No, I worship nothing. I just live my life, and yes I believe that things are just the way they are.

There is really nothing more to know about what atheism is about apart from a lack of belief in any gods. We do all the same things that everyone else does minus the religious/god parts.

Answer 4

In my case, I was raised in a liberal religious home. None of the articles of faith ever really impressed me. When I started learning about other faths, I was frequently apalled at some of the ludicrous things that people accepted as true without question (dancing is evil, worldwide flood without a trace, surviving three days in the belly of a fish or whale, the sun standing still in the sky, talking animals, etc...).

I was an atheist when I was born, and I just never became a theist. In fact, the more my mind matured the more I came to understand the many flaws and paradoxes of religious dogma...and saw it more as a tool of control rather than as some sort of boon.

BTW: If soneone is an atheist, then by definition they do not believe in the existence of a devil either. The entire concept of the devil is a Christian one and does not exist outside the Abrahamic faiths. Since an atheist rejects religious claims, they reject your devil right along with them.

Answer 5

No, I've never believed in God. My parents were (initially) Christians. One Catholic, one Protestant. I went to Sunday School and a Church of England school, but it never did anything for me.

I saw that it made a difference to other's lives, but ultimately, the Christian God made no more sense than the gods of Olympus that I learnt about in Classics classes.

And later when I studied other religions I saw how Christianity was similar to other earlier religions, such as Mithraism. I saw how the Romans 'adopted' foreign gods as their own. I saw how Christmas and Easter were similar to 'pagan' celebrations. And I decided that there is no more evidence for Christianity being the 'truth' than any other religion. And with no God, no Devil.

So no, I don't worship anything. I believe that I am a small part of an amazing world. I take time to enjoy what it has to offer. I consider other life special. 'Sacred' even, though not in a religious sense. But god. No, no god.

Hope that helps.
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Answer 6

I was raised in the church. And no, it wasn't forced on me. I was religiously active through university and went to seminary after.

Basically, my definition of 'God' kept expanding to the point that it ceased to make any sense to continue to call it 'God'.

I don't believe in the devil. I don't worship anything, although I do find awe, wonder and mystery in natural phenomena.

As for how things became the way they are. That's a combination of random events and basic cause and effect. Things happen. Some of those things increase the likelihood that other things will happen. And so on.

I spent a lot of time studying and practicing religion. If you'd like to discuss more, feel free to write to me off-forum.

Answer 7

"Did you all always have no belief in God or did you have religion forced on you...and it just made you go another way?"

I was rasied catholic. I wasn't forced.

"If you don't believe in God,do u also not believe in the Devil either?"

I do not believe in ANY supernatural phenomenon, deities, spirits, etc.

"Also do you all worship anything ...or do you just believe things are the way they just because it is?"

I do not worship anything. I believe existence is nothing but the consequences of physics.


For most atheists their beliefs are based on a single easy to understand precept:

Only believe that which has the most evidence.

By this axiom, our beliefs are very flexible and dynamic. I don't know of a single atheist that wouldn't believe in god tomorrow if evidence was provided.

Answer 8

I used to be religious, it wasn't forced upon me or anything though. Then I realised that the existence of the universe could be explained without the need for a creator, so I stopped believing in god. I don't believe in the devil and I don't believe life has a purpose

Answer 9

Sorry it's so long.

I was raised as a Christian, but by no means was it forced on me. Actually, I recall my upbringing as a pleasant one.
Of course I don’t believe in the devil. I also don’t believe in angels, santa, fairies or any of that stuff. The universe is a natural one.
No I don’t worship anything, what would be the point? As far as “things being just the way they are just because”, well it’s complicated. No, there is cause and effect and no one knows what happened before the big bang.

The reason I became an atheist is because I thought it out and rationalized and realized that the Christian god is just a bunch of hooee.

Why don’t you believe in Zeus, Thor, or Shiva?

Answer 10

My parents shared their faith with me, not out of malice but because that's how they understood the world. The moral code they believed and practiced was based on practical reason as much as divine revelation. And I appreciate the experience.

My education (in religious schools) stressed the importance of verifying my assumptions and experiences and not just taking them for granted. No topic was forbidden a thorough examination, even the pronouncements of God. Although room was to be allowed for the possibility of a reality beyond our comprehension, the life we find ourselves in has to make sense.

I believed that the point of religion is to make life better, by promoting justice and peace. Yet I became increasingly aware of the unwholesome ends to which religious faith was often manipulated against people. I could allow for the consequences of human frailty but then I came to realize that the supernatural elements of my faith background, the miracles and supernatural relationships, all served principally to justify the authority of religious institutions. Some of these elements were downright ridiculous.

So I began to eliminate the more prepostrous and unnecessary metaphysical assertions, one by one, to formulate the simplest effective faith statement possible. When I got down to two, I slowed down to take a very hard look. One unexamined truth dissolved surprisingly quickly but the last one meant I would be leaving the faith I'd always had.

I already knew how people are supposed to behave in life. My religion reinforced it, but there really wasn't any other ethical option anyway. The main difference was that my religion had a list of "good" and "bad" acts, while the secular viewpoint said intention makes a difference. I realized people's consciences could be misinformed but I also knew that sometimes a "good" act could bring about a bad end, and v-v.

I concluded that faith did not make that great a difference. Some people needed a supernatural parent to tell them what to do. Some didn't. We could all identify the fruits of compassion and selfishness, justice and cruelty. The only difference was where the directive was coming from, inside or outside. I decided I didn't need permission to do good or warnings against evil. It was time to grow up.

The "devil" dropped off my list long before that point. He smacked of dualism, and one God was plenty in any universe. Too many people blamed their own sins on the devil rather than accepting resonsibility for themselves. Anyone who belives in a devil but not God are pitiful cases indeed, if they exist at all.

I still believe in love, compassion and justice, but I don't appeal to any authority for their validation. I KNOW they are right. The Golden Rule says so and it is the only "irrational" premise that makes any sense. Ultimately, I believe in responsibility. We should all be as free as practically possible, but with enough humility to recognize that we are all in this life together, and that the common welfare is my welfare.

Do I "worship" anything? The term is strange to me now. If anything, I would subjugate my own survival to the survival of humanity, simply because it is intelligent, self-aware and potentially capable of creating "meaning" in the universe. But I suppose I could say I "worship" life itself, because we stand at the top of a very large chain of being. Each creature has something to contribute to "our" continuation, individually or in aggregate. The universe has given us an incomprehensible gift, an awareness of our fragility and a hint of possibilities never quite masterable. We don't have an externally imposed direction, so we'll have to chart our own, feeling our way along, just like the amazing processes that brought us about in the first place.

There may be a god out there, but if its as perfect as we imagine it is, the created universe should unfold ideally without any intervention. And it wouldn't require creatures to "believe" in it, or reward and punish them on that basis. The very definitions that would make God "God" would rule out such a petty scenario.