Atheists: regarding matters of religion and God...?

Question

As an atheist, would you say that your non-belief in God is the basis for your atheism, and that distaste for religion follows from that?
(I understand that not all atheists hate religion, so this is primarily directed at those who reject religion in addition to non-belief)
Or would you say that it was non-acceptance/ disagreement with religion which came first, and that non-belief in God followed from that?

Naturally, I presume that you're intelligent and have possibly studied philosophy, science, theology, myths, etc.
I'm not particularly concerned with those things, as I have studied each quite extensively myself. If discussing those helps provide a context for your answer though, fine. However, I'm mostly interested in whether the connection between rejecting God and rejecting religion is a necessary connection.

looking forward to some insightful responses!

-Rob

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AsqeGESJXQGDt6SXdATnJmTsy6IX?qid=20070327165928AA3Xj3k

non-belief in God would definitely be fundamental to peoples' atheism. Please read the rest of the sentence in order to properly discern what I'm asking though.

-Rob

Answer 1

THANK YOU ROB! you are one of the few christian people ive seen on Y!Answers that seem to accept athiests as normal people...
To tell you the truth, I actually used to be slightly christian once, but now I am a moderate athiest.
The reason why I personally choose athiesm is because, I looked at the world and realized, there is a massive amount of people, not everyone has the same beliefs, if every religion started hating on others, then chaos would ensue. After thinking about the religious issue for a while, i decided, "god... once you think about it, christianity is only one of many ways of thinking, and religion was a leap in human culture that allowed people to coexist back since before history, so... once you look at it, people actually have common sense now, they will almost never kill others or hate others for trivial reasons, so there is not much of a use for extreme religion, and also i did not want to be brainwashed by some extremeist and serve his causes..." well... thats just part of how I thought. Also, there might be a pattern but it seems that highly inteligent people have a higher chance of being athiest... at least that is my observation. And theres the fact that it seemed pretty... well... not to be insulting or anything, but religion seemed to me as an outdated invention, much like how vaccum tubes are today... back then they were essential to computers, now, we dont need them at all...

if you want me to sum it up... "I dont hate any religious people, exept ones that try to impose thier beliefs on others of different beliefs." I believe that most athiests dont have a hate twards religion, and the ones that do are provoked into hating them by some random ignorant dude that had a superiority complex with thier beliefs. We athiests are mostly just normal people that just dont believe that there is a god or power in charge of the world. And I beleive that most intelligent athiests came to their decision to become athiests by thinking the situation through and saying to themselves, "if the world is so diverse, then there is no point in believing in a religion since there is no one 'right' way."

Answer 2

In the past I've compared my realisation that I was an atheist to a marriage getting annulled. It wasn't so much that I thought about it and decided I was an atheist; I realised that I had never particularly believed any of it. I had always been an atheist.

I had gotten shot down a few times when I had tried to talk about it - family members who were usually very indulgent of my weird questions would suddenly become pretty intolerant and angry (while sober - that was the scary thing. I've been around angry drunks all my life. Angry sober people have always scared me.) The only time I asked a less popular question at a family gathering was when I asked why everyone always voted Republican.

But I was still a member of my mother's household, and had to keep going to church. I found a private solution that worked quite well: I volunteered in the church nursery, helping an overtaxed woman ride herd on three to ten or so infants. It was perfect. No sermon, no endless droning, and especially no communion (a ritual that I always found empty and bizarre). Best of all, I got to play with a bunch of little kids.

(I found out later that about a year after I left for college, they installed a speaker in the nursery and the toddler room so that the volunteers could hear the sermon. Dodged a bullet there.)

So my atheism has always been quite private, until recently. It was born out of a conviction that, if a higher power exists, it's nothing like the Christian God. You might say I was a strong atheist on the topic of the Christian God and a weaker one on the topic of other versions of a supreme deity.

The church I grew up in is a liberal Methodist church. It's not much on the fire and brimstone, or really much on any theology. It's kind of an overgrown social club - rich people saying, "What can we do to improve the church/community/world?" Many people there were very serious about church, but not many were all that serious about God.

But if there's no God, then church is a hustle. It's somebody putting somebody else (or themselves) on. It's a lie; maybe the no-that-dress-looks-great kind of lie, but a lie nevertheless. So my distaste for religion stems from that. (Such as it is; just because I think something is stupid doesn't give me the right to be intolerant.)

Answer 3

Here is an insightful response:

If you were taught from a young age that fruit didn't grow on trees but was laid by fruit chickens, and that the reason you never saw any of these fruit chickens was because they lived on remote islands thousands of miles away, you'd probably believe this "religion." That is, until you were old enough to communicate with other children who would probably make fun of you and tell you that you were crazy, or until you saw someone pick a peach off a tree and realized where fruit came from, or until you read a book on biology and learned about the differences between plants and animals.

I wasn't born with a belief in god, I was taught about god by people who, essentially, believed in fruit chickens. Around the same time a child questions irrational things like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, I began to question god. Nobody could prove or provide evidence for any of the fairy tale characters, and to me, god was just another character in a fairytale called the bible. You could say I do not believe in god for the same reason I don't believe in fruit chickens: the concept is totally lacking in evidence, and utterly ridiculous to me.

Once I was able to reason logically, I found far too many discrepancies, logical fallacies and contradictions in the various religious systems of mankind to ever buy into them. At the same time, I recognized all the earmarks of social control systems in religion, so I connected the dots, and concluded that religion (and hence god) were inventions of smart men to control the weak minded masses.

Now, the fact that I don't know where the universe came from, why we are here, or what happens when we die doesn't prevent me from enjoying or living a moral life. A person born in Alaska may never see an orange tree or a chicken, but they can figure out that oranges aren't laid by chickens simply by reading books about basic biology, and they can even enjoy eating oranges without knowing anything more than that they taste good. They may not even care where oranges or chickens come from.

What theists don't seem to understand is that there is no rule that says you NEED god or religion for anything in life. As an atheist, I can do ANYTHING a theist does, and live just as effective, happy, rewarding and moral a life as they do. The only difference is that the theist FEARS some unseen entity and believes that they are somehow risking something important by disobeying this entity, or gaining something important by obeying it. I do not believe in such an entity, or an "after" life, so I do not share their fears. In my view that results in a far more liberated, unbiased, affective and accepting life.

Answer 4

For a long time I had a strong dislike for hypocrites. There are a lot of them out there. But I did not like most religious groups because they are mostly interested in who can build the biggest best church. I found a group that was not like that and if one believes the bible they were the closest.
Since I have become an Atheist I am more aware of the divisions that religion causes in the world. As individuals I don't hate christians. Some of my family are christians. But as a group they are very scarry

Answer 5

An insightful question. It's a leading question that might allow a person to look beyond the foul nature of religions and look again here and now at what may be observed. One can only hope they won't use the information to form a religion.

Answer 6

Hi Rob .... it may be good to know those who rejected the god does not mean he/she reject religions too.

If you had studied extensively in philosophy and religions as you had claimed, you perhaps should know there are some religions without gods.

Hence, rejecting gods and rejecting religions are two different things and of no connection at all.

Answer 7

It is certianly the basis

Hard to tell rather that gave me the distaste or not. I figured out that I was an atheist pretty young. It is tough to separate it now They are certainly related, but I can't tell the cause. My distaste for religion has built over time, but started when I read the Bible.

Answer 8

My non-belief is based on logic and reason. My distaste for religion stems both from my distaste of stupidity, and the horrible effects religion has on the human mind. Religion is a hate machine.

Non-belief and disgust were concurrent.

Answer 9

I wanted very desperately to believe in God, and go to heaven, and live there forever with all my family and former pets. I found that I could not believe in God, because there is no justification for doing so. When I finally gave up trying, I realized that religion reinforces belief in a lie, and I find that distasteful.

Answer 10

As far as I am concerned one is the same as the other. How can you reject one without rejecting the other. Without God there is no basis for religion. However I'm not one who has a hate for for religion so I assume you are not asking me, so I will leave it at that.