atheist, what made you decide to be such?

Answer 1

Ignorance and frustration

Answer 2

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 3

I didn't decide or choose to be an atheist. Long before I even knew what an atheist was, I had already become one. Not believing in the concept of God or the concepts stated as truth in my religion is how the word "atheist" eventually became applied to me.

I am an atheist. I was born not believing in a god. I was taught and instructed to believe in God. I tried. I chose not to believe these teachings. By default, I am an atheist. Agnosticism is a word for people who who can't logically deduct that that choosing not to believe is a rejection of belief. The light switch is either on or off. Theism/Atheism is a binary choice - you are either one or the other. Anyone else who says differently lacks understanding of formal logic.

Answer 4

Science and knowledge have helped me find out the right way.
If you had a clear mind and a good reason, you would probably do the same !

Nowadays, Internet and Yahoo! Answers can also help you find the right answer ... ;)

Answer 5

Growing up in a family that let us choose what we wanted to believe. I have never had any good from prayer, reading the bible any of that. I see what religion does to people and how it interferes with politics. I believe it takes a weak person to be religious. They are somehow mentally impaired, and therefore run to the bible and church for help, they are not going to get.

Answer 6

Science.

Answer 7

I researched and studied and read and read and it still didnt make any sense to me. Too much of the Bible seemed to be fairy tales, Islam, Buddism, and Taoism all seem kind of eerie and weird, and didnt treat women too well. All of the Indian religions with Karma etc didnt seem to real to me. I went back and studied the Bible again and once again it seemed to be all like folk tales so i decided it wasnt real any of it.

Answer 8

The clear absence of any good reason to believe in any particular god, and the equally clear incompatability between the world and the world implied by any god worth believing in.

Answer 9

I didn't DECIDE to be atheist. It's just what happens when you realize that all the gibberish about "god" is just that.....gibberish. Atheism results from the lack of any REAL gods.

Answer 10

Raw intelligence