Atheist!!!?

Question

What point in your life did you become Atheist and my most burning question is, what is behind the actual belief in Atheism? Well, what I am trying to ask is what do you guys beileve in? And Also is it a religion,cult, or what? Thanks

Aww, ok I see. So I understand that it is a Lack of belief.

A lot of christians abide by the stories itself in the Bible, but I think that this is just our problem, the stories are not to live by, but to help us realize our mistakes in life and to correct ourselves. A lot of christians misinterpret the Bible itself and cause it to be a big problem. We seem to twist the meanings.

Answer 1

I lack belief in gods. That's atheism. Nothing else.

Atheism is not a religion. I don't meet with fellow atheists to discuss doctrines, or pay reverence to any particular figure or ritual. We're a disparate group.

I became an atheist in my first year of college after reading Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World.

There is no unified belief, but many atheists are secular humanists or skeptics as a philosophy.

I simply enjoy to learn about things and to enjoy existence. This is my only life, so I'd better make the most of it. Death doesn't scare me as much as it used to.

Sometimes I find scale of the universe mind-boggling, and far more complex than most religions claim. I also don't see faith as a way to understand truth. Here's a simulation of 20 million galaxies in our universe. I can't follow a religion that places human beings at the center of the universe after seeing if from a perspective like this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=W35SYkfdGtw

Cheers!

Answer 2

"Atheism" = "a" + "theism" = "without" + "belief in deity".

So "atheism" means "no belief in deity".

That's ALL the term means!

All the term can tell you for sure of where the person stands on the issue of deity belief. Atheism itself is not a religion, for the same reason things like "theism" or "pacifism" or "vegetarianism" aren't religions: you need much more detail than that to define a religion (religions are full belief systems that incorporate ceremony, dogma, answers to other questions, etc).

I see some people here claiming that atheism additionally means a rejection of all religion, which isn't necessarily true. There are indeed non-theistic religions out there.

Here is a great introduction on the subject:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/intro.html

As for me, there wasn't any particular event that made me an atheist. I just found myself needing the notion of deity less and less, until I found myself no longer thinking about it. I don't need to bring gods into the picture to explain the physical world around me, why humans behave the way they do, a sense of purpose, morality, etc. In fact, I find that trying to bring in the notion of deity just further complicates things.

Answer 3

Atheism is the rejection of the concept of supernatural gods. Anything else is not a necessary part of atheism. It's not a religion because there is no doctrine, no charismatic leader, no prophet. It's not a cult because atheism isn't something one does with other people. It's a solitary intellectual undertaking. In fact, until I discovered R&S a few months ago, I had met very few other atheists. Mostly we keep our mouths shut and our heads down, especially when we're surrounded by fundamentalist Christians.

The need for atheism came about because western civilization, including Christianity, got off to an erroneous start. Plato's Idealism and Aristotle's Solipsism were two unverified philosophical viewpoints which turned out to be dead wrong. Thinking does not require a telepathic communication with the gods, nor does a person's subjective (perceptual) experiences form the basis of reality. The scientific revolution began because it was discovered by Galileo and confirmed by Newton that the physical realm was absolutely real. This totally contridicted Solipsism and caused free-thinkers to question ancient Greek "wisdom" -- much of which could easily be proved in error with simple physical experiments. The scientific revolution was required so that humanity's conceptions of what is real can be consistent with how objective (physical) reality actually operates. The Dark Ages were devoid of technological progress because the Church misled humanity into erroneously believing that the physical realm is an imaginary creation of the mind, and also that every person's subjective perceptual experience is actually real. Modern people have the advantage of knowing that both their mind and everything perceived by their mind is actually an illusion created by their own living brain. The physical realm contains all of the matter and energy in the universe -- this is what objective reality actually is -- everything real. What we see in our mind's eye is but a graphical representation of what our brain thinks it perceives, based on the extremely limited information provided by our five senses.

I am an atheist because there is no reliable evidence to support the existence of even one of mankind's thousands of gods, within objective reality. There's plenty of evidence which suggests God exists in the subjective perceptual or imaginary experiences of believers, but nothing that God exists in what humanity now calls reality. Of course nothing's really changed. God still exists where He always has, in the perceptions of those who believe. God still does not exist where He never has, in objective physical reality. What the scientific revolution really accomplished was to transform humanity's definition of reality from subjective experience, to the physical realm. This redefinition of reality is why science actually works -- it's also why millions of scientists are eventually forced to become atheists in an effort to avoid becoming scientific hypocrites.

Answer 4

I was 14 when I saw that religion was a human institution, not a divine one. At this point I'd describe myself as an agnostic, with slight deist tendencies (the universe, from some perspective, may be intelligent). But I'm definitely a non-theist, as I don't believe in any sort of personal god who makes rules and needs to be sucked up to.

As everyone else has pointed out, atheists are just non-believers - there is no dogma, organization, or even agreement as to what constitutes truth. Some are hard-core materialists. Some (like me) allow that consciousness and existence may go deeper than we can currently see.

Answer 5

There is no belief behind atheism. It's a lack of belief in a god or gods. It's not a religion or a cult. It's just a lack of belief. That's it.

REALLY.

The point is to live. We're incredibly lucky to be alive. So many different combinations of reproductive material could have become something more, but they never get the chance. We're the lucky ones in that we were actually "created" (as in egg met sperm and we came to be, not that God popped us into being).

Answer 6

I started on the slide toward atheism at about 5 or 6 when in Sunday school I colored a picture of Jesus with dark hair. the teacher corrected me and said Jesus had blond hair. I said she was wrong, there was a picture in the hall and he had dark hair. So you see, I was just a little s**t at a very early age.

The more I heard, the more I disagreed with. My interpretation of the Bible didn't match the preacher's. The Bible contradicted itself and it contradicted reason. And it was full of murder, slavery, blood and it didn't value women.

So I finally came to the conclusion that religion was not for me. I was deist for a while, then even that didn't make any sense any more. There's just no God out there for me. No Hell either. Just one life and I intend to live it to the fullest. I actually appreciate my life more now than when I tried to believe in a God.

Answer 7

I'm amazed by the ignorance of your question, but I see you've been set straight that atheism is not a belief, and it's surely not a cult--a word that would quite accurately describe most mainstream religions.
I believe in knowledge, I believe in finding answers, and I'm OK with NOT knowing something for sure. I'm not OK with falling back on a mythical being to explain things I can't understand. I was raised Catholic, but the more I read, the more I learned about the world, the less I believed in any kind of a god.
Phishpish: there's nothing "not nice" about the word "atheist." It's simply the opposite of theist, one who believes in a god.

Answer 8

Became an atheist at sixteen. But I prefer the term humanist to atheist. Says more about what I am than what I'm not. Humanism is a philosophy of life inspired by humanity and guided by reason. It provides the basis for a fulfilling and ethical life without religion.

Humanists make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values.
Humanists see no convincing evidence for gods, the supernatural, or life after death.
Humanists believe that moral values are properly founded on human empathy and scientific understanding.
Humanists believe we must live this life on the basis that it is the only life we'll have -- that, therefore, we must make the most of it for ourselves, each other, and our world.
Humanist philosophies have arisen separately in many different cultures over many thousands of years. Whether or not they use the term humanism, tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of people around the world agree with the humanist philosophy of living a happy and productive life based on reason and compassion.

Answer 9

We believe in lots of things. Democracy, capitalism, our family's wellbeing, human rights, that vanilla is nicer than lemon... We all DON'T believe there is any god. That's about all that we necessarily have in common.

It's not a religion. If you want to categorize it in the way religions are categorized, you might call it an ideology or belief system. It simply isn't rigid enough to qualify as a religion, much less as a cult.

I first questioned religion when I first heard about it, when I was five and at school. I probably called myself an atheist in earnest from the age of about fourteen. But I don't come from a religious upbringing. I encountered a teacher who was very religious and pressed it upon her children and I just thought, "You're out of your mind!"

Thank you for spelling atheist correctly. When addressing a number larger than one, though, the plurality rule applies.

Answer 10

If anything, atheism is a lack of belief. It's possible to look at life without believing anything at all, but rather considering points on the basis of evidence and the extrapolation thereof. Belief in this context is irrelevant.