Atheists, were you drawn to atheism because of non-conformity? At what age did you decide you were an atheist

Question

Was there someone that drew you to the idea of atheism? I am just curious. Please no assumption answers from non-atheists. I just want to hear their life events.

Answer 1

Atheism was predicted int he End Times as on the rise..
Atheists are just fullfilling Biblical Prophecy...

Answer 2

Non-conformity had nothing to do with it.

What drew me to atheism was skepticism--the philosophy that we should verify what we hear before we believe it. ("Skeptics are from Missouri"; "Show me.") Ultimately, i found that there was nothing about the universe that indicated that a god was at work anywhere. God was an unnecessary hypothesis, a violation of Occam's razor.

The one place i could see for a supernatural force was in our self-awareness, but all the evidence that we have--ALL of it--indicates a purely materialistic origin for consciousness, even though we don't yet know how it happens. What i thought was the domain of the spiritual was just another god-of-the-gaps.

I was 42. It not a decision, but a realization that i no longer bought Christian story. The claims of the Bible, especially of the dead coming back to life, just don't happen in real life, and there's nothing to indicate that the world was any different 2000 years ago. I became unconvinced. The only decision on my part was whether to *admit* to myself and to others that my faith was gone--a scary prospect when you've been taught less-than-complementary things about atheists.

Answer 3

I became an atheist around age fifteen after rationally looking at the evidence supporting the idea of a God and deciding that, overall, it was a very poor explanation for the existance of the natural world. Most everyone in my family were Southern Baptists when I started 'losing faith', as it were, and several of them still are, although my brother has also become an atheist since then. In fact, very few of them even know I'm an atheist, as I've never told them, although they probably suspect something due to my lack of interest in attending church functions.

I essentially became an atheist after studying evolutionary theory for a few months, and realizing that this model of the world was much more logical and satisfying than any 'God hypothesis'. I didn't read any atheist literature or speak to any other atheists for quite some time, until a friend of mine 'came out' about not believing, and told me about Richard Dawkins' book 'The God Delusion'.

Answer 4

Atheism is not phenomen of abhorrence. Every element of the universe of based on discovered or undiscovered scientific formulas. The continuous inter-actions of all elements of fire, water and air the creater, generator and destructor of the things of the universe. The emotional pursuits for easy achievements subjects a person to believe in the existence of GOD. I am personally researcher since childhood. Normally all right thinking gurus, prophets, saints were internally atheism. Atheism is belief that propogate extreme humanity, which also resides in each creature of the universe. Even ferocious animals do behave like human beings.

Answer 5

I was a teenager. The age when you start forming your own mind. It was science that offered much more logical explanations. Firstly, I stopped believing in religion, after that I became an agnostic, followed quickly by atheism.

It was not out of non conformism. It was difficult to stay in the church bench for the first time during a family wedding when all the others went to do their communion. It also made me notice my uncle didn't go, which surprised me.

Answer 6

My family is Jewish and I was raised in the Jewish faith, but when I was 7 years old and in Jewish school, I asked the teacher how could there be someone in the sky who can't be seen and how could it be that this God is loving and merciful when I knew already about what happened to my family in the Holocaust? I asked how could that be considered loving and merciful? I was never able to just accept things because someone said so and it made no sense to me. Now I'm 59 years old and I have never felt any other way. Don't get me wrong; I'm Jewish in heritage and culture, but I just don't accept the idea of an all-powerful, loving and merciful God when I see no evidence for that. I might accept the idea of a God who is petulant, demands blind worship, plays with his creatures arbitrarily, created a thing like Satan just to test people, cannot "save" people by himself but needs to have a woman bear a child and have that person eventually horribly murdered only so that people can be "saved" from I don't know what. Why couldn't we be saved by our good works, and our devotion to goodness and truth? Why would a loving God say that it doesn't matter what one does on earth--one could be a rapist, murderer or even Hitler--one can enter heaven just by saying "I accept you Jesus." But the 6,000,000 Jews killed in the Holocaust or the Buddhists that were brutally murdered by the Chinese are in hell now because it doesn't matter what one does on earth. This is NOT my definition of loving or all-merciful or all-powerful.

Answer 7

Theism just doesn't make sense to me at all. I'm not going to go into it any further than that right now. As far back as i can remember I've been an atheist. I went through bouts of belief throughout my live but when i inspected the reasons why i believed at the time i realized how weak they really were. As I've grown older and smarter my atheism has solidified because i can identify all of the flaws of theism.

Answer 8

Well, first, I came from a long line of atheists, (I know, bad reason), but I was raised in the belief that human can do anything, that there is nothing out there but us, and that if we are here, it's because some strange odds made this world be as it is. Then, my grandparent suffered two wars, some people in my family have died, and I live in a country were poverty is absurd, where violence is irrational. Let's just say that I have never seen neither the need of a god, or the presence of one. If the world is like this, it is because we make mistakes....mistakes we need to fix.

Answer 9

I was drawn to atheism before I even understood the term, perhaps around the ages of nine or ten. It wasn't a person, so much as it was the collected efforts of courageous people throughout history to overcome mysticism.

I was raised in a serious Christian Catholic household, but from the start I always found the concept of worship demeaning. I couldn't see the logic in thanking an invisible entity for things people simply "claimed" it did. I wanted to see the proof. I felt everything had to have a logical, rational, NATURAL cause.

I never understood the assertion that people were inherently flawed/evil/sinful. I never felt this way, and I found it disgusting and presumptuous that people who had never even met me had the audacity to tell me this is how I was.

I've always viewed the world logically, as a scientist does. I saw weather as a natural feature of the environment, and food grew because of the soil and rain and farmers labor, not because god "blessed us with his bounty."

I never felt calmed, or comforted, or protected, or loved by an abstract, invisible entity. I never felt spiritual or blessed, or felt "his presence" in church, or at funerals. I found the recitation of prayers to be moronic and useless.

As I studied history, science, sociology, and the history of the various religions, I started to recognize the social control mechanisms at work. I came to despise the various efforts religion used to oppress and control people, to suppress knowledge, to promote its own agenda, and to avoid avoid taking responsibility for atrocities like the inquisitions, the witch hunts, and the conquest of the indigenous American cultures.

I found the explanations theists used to answer my questions to be at best defensive and illogical, and at worst, childish and silly.

By the age of 14 or so, despite having been baptized, received communion, and confirmed, I was internally convinced of my atheism. I didn't voice my feelings until I was in my late teens, simply to avoid confrontation with my mother, who was (and still is) very religious. To this day, I think she believes my soul is lost. I don't even believe I have this ridiculous thing, and another person is convinced I am damned for it.

Sad, huh?

Answer 10

I was supposed to believe in god because my parents told me there is a god. They believed in god because their parents told them there is a god (and so on). As a child, I asked questions but when they didn't answer, I started doubting their intellect. When I was 13, I came across the atheist hour radio show and realized then I was an atheist. It has nothing to do with being a non-conformist. Being a nonconformist means not agreeing with others with regards to established customs, attitudes, or ideas. There are actually quite a of number of atheists around. We have established atheists groups and share similar attitudes.

Answer 11

There wasn't some earth shattering moment. I look at the inconsistences of religion, how it seems to lead to violence and has for centuries and decided it is a method of supression, not freedom. True spirituality takes guts and thought. Most religions don't require that, they require submission and lack of thought because actually thinking about something presented in a religious tome or house of worship that you might not agree with is deeply disturbing to the rest of the tribe and they will outcast you.