If you're an atheist, how did you become one?

Question

I'm not one. I'm just curious.

Answer 1

I was in the process of becoming ordained, so I was a true believer. However, I was also in the process of becoming a scientist and I have a strong background in organizational development. My area of research is a special class of rare events, events that should not occur in a lifetime or even in geologic time, but happen quite often. The answer of course is that they should occur frequently, but there has been a misunderstanding of statistics because of how we teach it at the undergraduate level.

My belief had always been on the extreme odds of us being here being so slim it was ridiculous. If you look at a normal distribution, we are so far out in the tail that we should not be attributed to chance.

Of course if you use a Cauchy distribution we are not that surprising and it is the Cauchy distribution which should be operative because of the conservation laws. Now we are not only not that unusual, we should be looking for neighbors, albeit neighbors living light years away.

Additionally, I am among the best in organizational development and I was reading the scriptures and the apostolic fathers (the people who knew and were trained by the apostles, whose writings are sometimes older than parts of the New Testament, and in Polycarp's case were key in forming the New Testament as Polycarp was one of the redactors for John's Gospel). Briefly, I stepped outside my beliefs and it suddenly dawned on me how the early Church really formed, why and I could see the alternate story that is a realistic explanation of events.

Because I am a scientist, I look for the simplest of answers. If you can discard miracles because a simple answer exists, then you do.

I see no basis for a belief in a God. If there is a God, there is no rational reason a god would be concerned with any component of the creation, especially a species whose mass, when divided by the mass of the universe is so trivial that it would be like finding a specific bacteria cell on the planet. Even if the god does concern itself with its creation, there is no rational reason to believe the god intervenes nor cares about us specifically, as opposed to the good functioning of the universe. Even if the god cares about us in specific, it is irrational for that God to look or act like any religion we have. Even if the God shepherded a particular people, there are easier ways to communicate than incarnation. Finally, would a deity actually understand anything we thought? How could such a deity hear our prayers?

Finally, an omnipotent must be omniscient, but an omniscient god goes against our observations in quantum physics. If there were an omniscient god then it would leave footprints in the data and there is no evidence of that either. Further, various known and verified laws show that the type of information such a deity would need goes against the observable laws and observable data.

Answer 2

Bible-reading.

Answer 3

I started questioning the assumptions that I had always taken for granted. I realized that there are far simpler and more likely explanations for the claims in the bible.

Answer 4

i grew up in a religious household. never missed a sunday, or wednsday service

then one day i realized what it all came down to is....according to this book refered to as a bible.....basically equals tyranny. worship ME god says. or else i will make you suffer for all eternity. thats no different than communicating threats, punishable by jail time, and a stiff fine

Answer 5

i was raised in a way where i learned how religion was important because it brought people together. so for me, religion was always more about family and community than a belief system.

i think it's important for kids to be exposed to religion because it provides answers to some tough questions, but also to be taught to think critically so that they can make up their own decisions.

Answer 6

Around the age of 15 or 16, I became afflicted with this terrible, terminal disease called rational thought.

Answer 7

God made me one... sorry that was mean...

I'm an atheist because I want to actually do things... stand up for myself... instead of praying, and begging for things to be done and forgiveness... also that bible scares me...

Answer 8

I was born one. We all are... It's just that some of us are later indoctrinated into one religion or another.
Peace

Answer 9

Study of the Bible. Then study of real things.

Answer 10

My spirit guide insisted.