How does one become an a-theist without bitterness and resentments from his past experiences?

Question

I mean, without bitter experiences to 'bolster' inner reasonings, how can one make such an important decision?
I don't mean the rote reasoning, that he/she tells everyone else, I mean the one that's brewing underground.

What, if any other reason is there?

Down to Catherine E, You all did very well in answering my question. Thanks for taking your time to explain to me.
Bland, I don't quite understand what's up with that.

Answer 1

how does one become a "believer" without bitterness and resentments from his past experiences?

you may think that is a completely different question, or better yet, doesn't apply, but humor me for a moment

couldn't it be possible that the reason you believe in heaven (or reincarnation or whatever your faith says comes after death) is because early on you decided there had to be something better than the anguish you experienced for you to even survive? couldn't choosing to have this hope of something better, of someone watching over you and guiding you be a coping method?

please understand that my intention is not to insult or destroy anyone's faith - believe what you will, i just like to remind people to turn questions on themselves as well

take care :)
.

Answer 2

I can only speak from personal experience, but bitter experience played no role in my not believing in any gods.

up until about age 11, I didn't think about it much but sort of figured I believed in God. Then I started not taking it for granted, I decided that since there were people who didn't believe in God, I should see what the arguments were. The argument that started tipping the scales for me was the old favorite "Theist: The universe had to have a beginning, so God must have made it. Atheist: Who made God. Theist: God didn't need to have a beginning." I soon realized that there weren't any good arguments for believing in any gods, so I decided that I'd continue listening but until such time as I heard one I shouldn't, and don't, believe in any gods.

Was I a chain smoking, bitter, drug addled, miserable little cuss, hating the world and looking to take it out on God? Nyet. I had a nice upbringing and wasn't motivated by anything other than wanting some good evidence to believe in order to continue believing.

Frankly, I wonder at people who have to assume that there's some psychological flaw for someone to reach a different conclusion on a question. what do you think motivates you to question others' motives that way? (By the way, reasoning is anything but rote.)

Answer 3

I'm an atheist because I know how to use my brain properly. I'm bitter and resentful about religion because my ignorant fundamentalist Christian parents utterly destroyed my childhood. The two issues are deeply connected and I have never been able to separate them.

Edit: Please understand, becoming an atheist is about logic, reason, and the fact that believers have never supported their irrational assertion that God exists with any actual evidence. The bitterness and resentment is due to the obvious damage religion continues to do to individuals (my parents) and to civilization (my country). If Christian fundamentalists get their way, they'll destroy human civilization for the sake of proving their irrational Armageddon fantasy is valid prophecy. Such people (including Islamic fundamentalists) are the enemies of humanity and a serious threat to us all.

Answer 4

I am not sure of the ground we are going to walk with this one.
perhaps the answer might hinge on this concept. Do you believe that there is a supreme "being" ( a force, a spark of intelligence, a god)? if we start with a yes here, then that leads us to your question "how to become an a-theist ....."
and the answer would be 'you don't become an a-theist, if you believe in a supreme "being"' Now if you say "no! there is no such thing as a supreme 'being'" Then, in effect you
are an a-theist.
I my particular belief system - my core-belief in the existence
of a supreme being rules out any consideration of a-theism.
I have no doubt in my intellect that there was a 'Prime Mover' that got the whole thing started - the Universe that is.
It was an intellectual force that started the process of creation. Now the word "God" (or the myriad of other words
that you might use to relate to the Prime Mover) is used by
many folks to explain their core-belief in a supreme force --
a prime mover, if you will. I have no problem with that. And if there are folks who say that there is no prime mover then the name given to those folks is "a-theist"
If it is easy for you to say " there is no place for the Prime Mover in my core-belief system" then you are an a-theist. And you will continue to a-theistic until such time as you resolve that there is a 'prime mover' in your belief system
then you will not longer be an a-theist. Simple -- but true to
your core belief.

So Be It (the old Jewish way of saying 'amen'). For the very old Jewish way (so I am told by Jews whom I trust) the word
for the Prime Mover was Yaway

Jim the Fee, Akron, OH

Answer 5

Becoming an atheist is a completely natural process. For me it happened because I learned too much about God and the Bible and Religion in general. After I got my degree, agnosticism slowly set in, but I continued to study the Bible continuously, even going so far as to write several books on Christianity and the origins of evil in the Judeo/Christian tradition.

Atheism was just a realization that came one day, like the apple fell on Isaac Newton's head. For the first time I was able to step outside the box, and see clearly, how ridiculous everything I believe actually was.

The bitterness and resentment comes later, once you realize you've wasted over half your life living a lie.

Answer 6

Some, like me, weren't raised in religious homes and never bought it in the first place.

Maybe if they were once indoctrinated to believe, the only bitterness and resentment they have is over the time they wasted... although the ones I have spoken to who used to believe, tend to view this as part of a learning curve.

So no bitterness in either case, then. I suspect some might disagree if they'd ever lived at an orphanage in Ireland, for example.

Did bitterness encourage you to become a believer? Just curious.

Answer 7

I simply started asking questions at an early age. I put the Bible on the stand, and as with any real trial, it lost due to lack of evidence.

Praying never works, everything in the universe can be explained or at least theorized rationally and I'm emotionally fine being godless.

This was after going to a private Christian school for the first 3 years of elementary school, mind you.

Answer 8

you become an atheist without resentment if logic alone lead you to atheism. If my mom and dad forced me to go to church and I hated it and became an atheist asap its likely reactionary. I was indoctrinated thruout my child hood tried to hold onto it for a while but after thinking quite a bit there was a single inescapable conclusion.
1) there is no such thing as an interventionalist god. No miracles in yrs, starving kids all over the world etc.
2) god as described in the bible is kind enough to kill his kid for me but knew I would first doubt and then reject him and he would either kill my soul or send it to hell. god cannot be omniscent
3) god cant be omnipotent because he cant make a rock he cant lift
it drags on and on theres just no evidence aside from a single book to sustain the illusion. once I grasped that this life is all I have i became very much happier no more waiting for god to return

Answer 9

I became an atheist, and I never had any bad experiences or bad feelings. I've had a good life, loving parents, lots of friends. I was raised a Christian, and I had a very strong faith growing up. I *loved* church, and was even a member of my church youth organization as a teenager. It's just that as I got older, some things just started to not make sense to me. In a nutshell, I just started to feel that the things we were taught to believe really weren't all that different than the things that the ancient Greeks were taught to believe. And they FERVENTLY believed in their gods and worshiped them for thousands of years. So I thought, well, WE'RE still bowing down and worshiping gods, even in this day and age. It started to seem sort of...I don't know...primitive to me to believe in magical, invisible beings living in the sky. It had nothing to do with anger, or bitterness. Logic just took over.

Answer 10

You mistake us badly. I'm an atheist without a single bitter motivation. I just don't have a single reason to believe in god. So I don't. Atheism is what you're left with when you've carefully considered all the possibilities and discarded the ones that are nonsense.