to the atheists?

Question

how many of you spent time as agnostics or believers? im an agnostic and i find myself drifting closer and closer to atheism. thing is i feel little scared and i don't know why that is. but i also feel a serious amount of freedom about it. anyone give me some advice?
xtians and other religious types please waste neither my time nor yours!!!

Answer 1

You seem sincere. I will answer
I was one of "those" Christians once. I cannot bear to remember all the things I said and did in the name of religion and the father god. After I read the Bible for myself and stopped taking everyone's word for what it was saying I was on my way to "unbelieving" the worst part was the fear. I was terrified of being "struck dead" for denying god.
I was not smitten and to be honest I have never been happier with the person that I have become in the last few years.

Answer 2

I have been a believer. I am now both an agnostic and an atheist.

Please don't fall into the trap of thinking that agnosticism is a midpoint on some imaginary continuum between atheism and religion. The two things are not comparable. Atheism is about belief, or the lack thereof. Agnosticism is a position on knowledge.

The truth is, if you don't worship any gods, you're already an atheist, by definition. Nothing to be scared of, there. Its just a label.

Answer 3

I'm in a similar situation, I went from agnostic to atheist. As I get older, I get more and more attracted to logical answers. I also get more and more offended by some of the narcissism and stubbornness that often comes with the territory of major religions. The idea that the creator of the universe made us in his own image? The idea that everything was hand crafted by the ultimate all-knowing human? It just seems egotistical to me.

Existence isn't something that any of us can truly wrap our head around. Maybe someday scientists will discover what may have started life on Earth (I hear they are getting closer and closer to creating life out of non-life), but the universe itself will probably always remain a mystery. Religions and the concepts of Gods were originally created to give answers to some of life's unanswerable mysteries. Now in modern times we're starting to answer some of those mysteries for ourselves, so I think it's only a matter of time until more abstract ideologies are all that remain. Maybe a few more centuries still, but we'll get there.

Answer 4

I became, technically, an agnostic at 12 yrs old and on the verge of being an atheist. I asked my parents what religion they were and my dad said that he was a realist. A few minutes later I was an atheist.
It took three years to be able to get over the implanted fear resulting from several years of Sunday School but I finally stepped over the line and was not struck down by a god-sent thunderbolt.
It was THE best decision I ever made.
Strength of character and applied intelligence will serve you well. You are not alone.
Reality IS freedom.

Answer 5

Freedom is indeed scary, because it doesn't come with guarantees. On the other hand, it doesn't offer anything that can never be collected (e.g., "join our club and you'll get a million dollars after you're dead").

Most atheists were actually raised as believers, since most of their parents professed some religion or other. I was raised catholic, myself, but I outgrew it by the time I graduated high school, as did one of my sisters. (Our other sister is still catholic, though less pious than she used to be; and our brother is some variety of baptist.)

As for the "drift" you're experiencing, I bet a little reading would trim your sails. Try Douglas Adams "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, or anything by Richard Dawkins, or Robert A. Heinlein, or Benjamin Franklin.

Answer 6

I was raised pagan. My mother is a Gardanian witch from the 60's.( can you say hippie )

I spent most of my life as a believer. I guess I just got tired of being disappointed by the gods.

I have always been unhappy with the intolerance and hate that come hand in hand with the belief in god. I just gave up.

Sometimes it is really empty....but I now rely on myself instead of any God and I am actually making more progress in life than I ever did as a believer. My advice is to not give up on yourself. You have a core of inner strength that you probably have never even tapped while you waited for god to help you out. Now you'll find it and discover YOU.

Good luck.

Answer 7

I was raised United Methodist. I pretty much went from one to the other. Once I realized the story in Genesis about creation was BS, I was an atheist about a week later.

Scared means that you haven't totally let go yet. I was pretty scared for a couple of weeks when I first figured it out. It is tough not to be when you have been told your whole life that eternal torture is just around the corner. It is like when you are in a dark spooky place. You know it's silly, but still....

Christianity is a fear based religion. That is the first thing they say when they find out you aren't one of them. But it does really gets funny at some point. Empty threats are always funny as long as you know they are empty.

Answer 8

I grew up fundie and lived that way most of my life. I went through the 12 step program on detoxing from religion. lol I was Pagan then Agnostic and now Atheist. The taste of freedom has been sweet. I was scared out of my wits, but that is part of the brainwashing. Detoxing from that is the hardest part, but once you are through it, you're free! The fear is the paralyzer. Bust through the fear and you are free. This is all I have ever wanted. Gets better every day.

Answer 9

I completely understand your fear. I was a Muslim for years - a practising and a strict one, mind you. Yeah, yeah, just imagine how hard it was for me to get rid of those chains ~shudders~

The point is this, my dear - you have to come to terms with your mortality. There's nothing terrifying in admitting that nothing happens after we die. Quite the opposite, it will set you free and give you a chance to make the best of this one life that you have and preferably leave some kind of legacy to your children. Isn't that what matters after all? :)

I still do believe, though, that we are all connected in a way and that we affect each other's lives, but that's plain old energy, isn't it? It's certainly not worth worshipping. As for Creator and theories - well, I've come to the conclusion that in the end it really doesn't matter how we came to be. Biblical/Qur'anic God is totally out of the question in my case, and even if there was a diety of some kind - he doesn't really bother himself with our petty deeds. But then again, I'm more inclined to believe that humans invented God to sooth their mortal fears.

In the end, it's your conscience that matters. Do what you feel is right, do your best to be a good person, a productive member of this society ... and take time to be happy :) We often forget that.

Answer 10

i don't actively disbelieve in god. i am not sure what that means.

i am quite certain that no religion i know of has even an ounce of truth in it. christians, muslims, and jews all believe that the sky has a lid on it; mormons think that native americans have middle-eastern dna (and so on).

so i live my life as if there were no god.

this makes me a theoretical agnostic, but a practical atheist.