Atheists, what triggered you?

Question

What triggered you to become one? Carl Sagan did it to me through his PBS series "Cosmos". What an eye-opener special that was. =)

Answer 1

Element 115x, I've wondering about this. I was a kid, 9 years old, and it was 1945. The newspapers were full of news about the German death camps--really disturbing photographs of men, women, and little kids, many of them even younger than I, dead, almost dead, tortured, used in medieval medical experiments. A curious boy I was, a cotton-mill boy in a mill village in the racist South. Something clicked, that must have been it, and as sudden as April rain, I realized in my heart and mind that the Christian god was a cruel joke, a fake, a lie. As I came of age, and especially after my move to the island of Manhattan, in 1953, at 17, it all crystallized for me. Now, at 71 and disabled, my non-belief, my unbelief, is even stronger. Sometimes here I disappoint myself with the harsh tone I assume whilst communicating my feelings, and earlier tonight my attempt at satire brought forth anger among my fellow atheists. But I'm really new to computers and all that. I'll learn. Thank you for asking.

Answer 2

My trigger was held down since birth. I never really believed or accepted the existence of a god (THEY tried to put me in sunday skool but I didn't take it serious, I just thought it was story time). As life went on I started to realize that people were taking these "stories" really serious. I didn't even understand how most things worked at a young age but I seriously just thought "must be a logical explanation to that". I didn't learn the word "atheist" until around the time I figured out that not everyone thought like I did. I realized that for many people, instead of just saying "must be an explanation behind that" it was "god". At a young age I found it easier to think I just didn't know what made certain events happen (yet) than to contemplate an omnipotent being who some how watches everyone and has absolute control of everything. I didn't get why a "god" would make people suffer for eternity just for sometime being bad in a single lifetime.Then I learned the word atheist and it's been easier from then on. There have been plenty of people who were shocked to learn that at very young ages I was an atheist. My family is secular psuedo-christian so my whole belief system was self taught and recieved no outside influence (remeber how I said I rejected sunday skool even at age five?).

I swear this is all true.

Answer 3

Well don't think this is a complete answer, because I am agnostic, not atheist, but:

Carl Sagan and other critical scientific thinkers have interesting ways of deconstructing faith-based belief systems by way of logic and "missing" information.

I can only say that learning how to question and research claims - instead of accepting "faith" statements at face value - has helped me to see holes (craters really) in religious texts and many faith-based practices and belief systems.

In the end I don't know whether or not there is a God. I think it's arrogant for some scientists (and laypeople) to state the absolute absence of a God. There is no proof for or against a god imo. So any statement that there absolutely is or isn't a god, is a faith-based statement.

Answer 4

Going to bible camp after reading the bible. I had the chance to confront "a holy leader" and ask him questions about the contradictions and issues I had with what it was saying. He was very frustrated, and after about an hour, said "you don't have to be smart to have faith, faith is believing something even if it doesn't make any sense."
So my smart *** 12 year old mouth replied "hmmmm, you think people would at least wanna understand what they are praying too. But I guess it's nice that dumb people have something to believe in"


Now I believe people are entitled to whatever they want to believe.
Do I agree with the bible? No
Have I read it? Yes, twice in fact and I am on my third tour of duty now.

Because apparently that old saying "know your enemy is true" There are some that will literally try to FORCE you to believe. So the only defense is to punch holes in their own argument since you can't use logic or reason with fundies....
bah sorry about the tangent

Answer 5

I fell in love with Carl Sagan through his PBS series "Cosmos". I've read all but one of his books.

My "trigger" was reading "Age of Reason".

Answer 6

I'm also the love-struck victim of Carl Sagan. I was skeptical of my religion from the start, but it took his movie Contact and The Demon Haunted World to open my eyes.

From there, I dove into other skeptical and science literature- Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Ann Druyan, Skeptic Magazine, James Randi, and even Penn & Teller's series on Showtime.

Answer 7

It was a little bit of many different things. Fundamentalists, both Islamic and Christian, from Osama bin Laden to Fred Phelps, religion so politicized with hatred of homosexuals, creationism vs evolution, George W. Bush and his war that "God" told him to go forth with, a falling out with my sister over religion, politics and etiquette, Reading, thinking, looking at the stars and wondering, questioning everything, including myself and what I really believe, watching the arrogance of some of the supposed Christians on this site with not a trace of shame about it, many with no more intelligence than a box of rocks. Mainly, though, it was simply stopping to think about what Christianity really is, just another mythology, and doing so with a vengeance to cut through the blindness that keeps us from questioning what we have been taught not to question. I desire honesty and truth, even if I don't like the picture I see. I would rather live with unpleasant truths than comforting fables. I would rather be called evil than be called blind and ignorant of my true self and the true nature of the universe around me.

Answer 8

I was raised catholic, and from my early years, it was simply fact for me that all other religions were false, and their practicioners were wrong even though they all thought they were right. When I was 8 years old or so (at my mother's suggestion), I read the Bible. All of it, from front to back. I also owned an encyclopedia, and read about all the other major religions I could find. I also watched Cosmos several times. After digesting all this information, I became an atheist (at the age of 9).

Answer 9

I'm not an Atheist, but I think the main thing that brought me away from Christianity was thinking something along the lines of, "Wow, God's an a**hole, I want nothing to do with that hypocrite." That went on to the realization that it's all a bunch of bull anyway.

Answer 10

The questions I had about bible stories as a child that everyone seemed reluctant to answer honestly... instead, I got "have faith and you will believe."

Further reading of the bible itself cemented by non-belief. So many inconsistencies and much more frightening than any horror novel or horror movie. I made up my mind that I just couldn't worship a being who behaved as god did in that book.