Atheists, did it require courage for you to realize or admit to yourself that you don't believe?

Question

As some of you know I have recently started asking a lot of questions about religion and God. I have not gotten very satisfactory answers from the believers. It is hard not to side with the atheists on almost every question for me lately. This is a very scary feeling. Was it hard for you to realize you didn't believe?

Answer 1

Rebel, to bear faith is to hold water & never let it go. It bleeds out slowly but you must grasp with all your might.

Answer 2

The difficult thing for me was actually realizing I had not had accurate information for the majority of my life. Having a one-sided view of anything is not good in anyway, but taking the step to look further made me afraid of what I would find. It took much thought and consideration and wasn't a decision I made over night. I can honestly say that now I truly feel at peace with my decision and am a happier person in all aspects of my life. I feel like I finally know the truth!

Answer 3

Not so much. I had the benefit of having been raised without religion in my house. I didn't have that intensive programming from an early age that I had to overcome. So, as a young man, I was able to make a rational decision about what I believe and don't believe without guilt or fear. The hardest part for me was peer pressure from my friends when I was in grade school. But one trip to Sunday school at the local Baptist church cured me of that. It was just like real school only with lame fairy tales instead of math and reading. And the church was old and musty and it felt heavy, oppressive and vaguely sinister. And the grown ups were kind of creepy. I still get that feeling when I walk into a church.
But anyway, I have an enormous amount of respect for people who are able to overcome a Christian upbringing to think for themselves in later life. When guilt about original sin and fear of Hell are pounded into a child's impressionable mind for years, it's got to be incredibly difficult to de-program in later life. But then, I suppose that's the whole point.

Answer 4

No not really,I love life and if I could extend it for more years then I would but just wishing that there was a big guy somewhere that would fix things and look after us all is a nice but childish concept.I try to have fun and not hurt others because I think this is all we have.I can understand very poor people and other groups wishing that they will get their "time in the sun" as it were but again it's just wishful thinking.By the way being alive for eternity is more scary than being dead for eternity.

Answer 5

It is difficult, and somewhat frightening.

If you really want to retain your belief in God, you might consider the honest middle ground: acknowledge that there is no evidence for the existence of any gods, but choose to openly believe solely on the basis of faith.

Now, I'd think you were making an incorrect decision, as I don't believe that there are any gods, but you'd be making it on an honest basis, using the faith that is supposed to be (but only rarely is) the core of religious belief. Besides, we're all mistaken about many things - what would give me the right to get down on you for being wrong on this one, as long as you're honest about it?

I chose to accept the nonexistence of gods back when I was about 21. It felt like jumping off of a cliff, but my world is far far richer and more satisfying than it was when I believed in simple answers and excuses for my behavior.

Excellent question, and I see you've gotten excellent answers.

Answer 6

Linz,

Do not give up asking questions. As I have stated many times before, intelligent reasons to believe are out there, they must be sought out. I think Lewis paints a thought provoking view of atheism:

"Not many years ago when I was an atheist, if anyone had asked me, 'Why do you not believe in God?' my reply would have run something like this: 'Look at the universe we live in. By far the greatest part of it consists of empty space, completely dark and unimaginably cold. The bodies which move in this space are so few and so small in comparison with the space itself that even if every one of them were known to be crowded as full as it could hold with perfectly happy creatures, it would still be difficult to believe that life and happiness were more than a byproduct to the power that made the universe. As it is, however, the scientists think it likely that very few of the suns of space -- perhaps none of them except our own -- have any planets; and in our own system it is improbable that any planet except the Earth sustains life. And Earth herself existed without life for millions of years and may exist for millions more when life has left her. And what is it like while it lasts? It is so arranged that all the forms of it can live only by preying upon one another. In the lower forms this process entails only death, but in the higher there appears a new quality called consciousness which enables it to be attended with pain. The creatures cause pain by being born, and live by inflicting pain, and in pain they mostly die. In the most complex of all the creatures, Man, yet another quality appears, which we call reason, whereby he is enabled to foresee his own pain which henceforth is preceded with acute mental suffering, and to foresee his own death while keenly desiring permanence. It also enables men by a hundred ingenious contrivances to inflict a great deal more pain than they otherwise could have done on one another and on the irrational creatures. This power they have exploited to the full. Their history is largely a record of crime, war, disease, and terror, with just sufficient happiness interposed to give them, while it lasts, an agonised apprehension of losing it, and, when it is lost, the poignant misery of remembering. Every now and then they improve their condition a little and what we call a civilisation appears. But all civilisations pass away and, even while they remain, inflict peculiar sufferings of their own probably sufficient to outweigh what alleviations they may have brought to the normal pains of man. That our own civilisation has done so, no one will dispute; that it will pass away like all its predecessors is surely probable. Even if it should not, what then? The race is doomed. Every race that comes into being in any part of the universe is doomed; for the universe, they tell us, is running down, and will sometime be a uniform infinity of homogeneous matter at a low temperature. All stories will come to nothing: all life will turn out in the end to have been a transitory and senseless contortion upon the idiotic face of infinite matter." - C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.

Answer 7

Hard, especially with so much baggage from family, peers and the community pressuring you. I'm Agnostic in that I feel the question on the existance of a "Highest Being" has neither been proven or disproven yet. The religions built around the concept though are demonstrably incomplete/misleading/violent though, and it just boiled down one day to me not being able to convince myself that they held some kind of truth.

Answer 8

I always knew I didn't believe. It was shocking to me when I realized that other people actually did. I was relieved when I first learned the words "atheist" and "agnostic," because I finally knew that there were other people who lacked any belief in religion. My family and I always went to church when I was a kid, and I assumed everyone else around me thought it was fairy tales too, so when I figured out they actually thought it all happened, I had a serious little breakdown.

Answer 9

Yes, it was hard. I had been taught all of my life that God was love. I used to hide in the comfort of Agnosticism. In the end, I had to follow reason where it lead.

Now it is a comfort for me, to know I am not going to hide from the truth. Sometimes it is scary to be so alone, as we all really are, but we are all alone together.

Answer 10

It wasn't hard to realize, it wasn't even hard to admit to my Mom. The hard part was convincing my wife that I'm not "rebelling against god." We've discussed it several times, but she hold on to the belief that her god will make me see the light. I let her believe that, as I consider it harmless as long as she doesn't try to force the issue.

Answer 11

Yes. A history or religious on both sides of my family, incorporated into a "church family" from a very young age, and opposing doctrine that threatens those who do so.

After the rocky path of fear, concern, anger from family, etc...I have to say it's turned out well.