For the Athiests: Why do you not beleive in GOd?

Question

Has it always been like this? Did you have a bad experience as a child with a religion? What made you decide?
Just curious. : )

I dont beleive in religion. I beleive in having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I have experienced it. You cant take that away!!

Answer 1

Psalm 14:1

Answer 2

I have always been skeptical of God and religion. I can remember having debates and conversations as far back as 6th/7th grade about how I felt the Bible was more like a book of fables than real stories.

When I got married, my wife was a fairly devoted Christian and I promised her I would go to church with an open mind. And I did try for a while, but it became increasingly evident to me that I didn't want to drink the kool-aid (so to speak).

Up until about 4-5 years ago I would describe myself as agnostic leaning towards atheist. But since that time I've realize I do not believe in God or religion. I don't completely dismiss the idea because we can't answer the question definitively at this time. But I feel much more comfortable putting my faith in science and it's ability to provide answers based on documented evidence - even if it can't provide all the answers right now.

If I had to choose a single event which cemented my atheist beliefs, it would be the case about "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Seeing that case go public and articulating my feelings about it, help me understand what I actually believed.

And in case you're wondering, I am completely comfortable with my beliefs. I have many questions about the universe and the origins of life, but I feel quite confident that the answers will be found with science and not religion.

Answer 3

No bad experience. I used to be Christian. Still have wonderful relationships with many Christian and otherwise religious family members and friends. I just found a lot of the claims pretty far out. I had questions without good answers. Eventually the "just believe and be saved" stuff started to sound like a cop out. I also didn't like the attitudes towards certain things just based on because the Bible say so. I started to do some research and reading on my own and learned a lot about the doubts about the accuracy of the Bible, the politics involved in Church history and the development of Christianity, the fact that much of what is written about Jesus comes from those who never knew him but had "visions". It just all got to unbelievable.

The more I studied the more I came to the conclusion it was created by humans to teach ideas but wasn't actually a literal tale that necessarily represented God if it existed. The authors of the Bible widely employed what is known as midrash in writing the stories. This was taking existing stories and myths and inserting your own heros and deities and maybe adding a twist to get your particular idea across. This is particularly striking when you look at the story of Jesus. It bears striking resemblence to many preexisting pagan deities from virgin births, to ressurection, performance of miracles, etc...

So what I find wrong is it doesn't jibe with any sense of reality. I don't think God would give us a day to day reality so different from that depicted in the Bible and no evidence of itself and yet expect us to blindly believe or it will burn us in hell. I don't believe that a deity of perfect knowledge would be so wrathful and cruel and arbitrary as it is represented in the Old Testament. I don't we would have failed prophecy, or that had to be "reinterpreted" in order to get it to not have failed if it were the handed down word of God that God expected to make sense to most people. I don't believe Christianity is representative of reality but I don't think Islam or Judaism or any other single faith system is either. I have yet to find a religion's supernatural claims to have any reasonable evidence to back them up. People just believe what they want to when it comes to religion.

Of course this is just why I don't believe Christianity. From there I studied other belief systems and found no more logical, objective evidence for their claims. Its easier to reject illogical claims with no proof that you weren't raised with. All that was left of the God concept was the "how else did we get here" argument. I know that we just don't have an answer and its not really logical to assume a conclusion when you don't have an answer yet. Especially when through history people have plugged in God for what they don't understand. Lightening was caused by Zeus. Nope actually we have a natural phenomenon there. Disease and plagues are caused by God's wrath. No its germs actually and we can cure many through research and medicine. Epilepsy is caused by demons, no again its an organic brain problem. So that is why I'm an atheist. Someday we may also have a natural explanation for how life arose and be able to explain the singularity issue. Until then there is no proof it was a supernatural creator God, we just dont know. When some other evidence arises though I'll be happy to examine it and reconsider.

Answer 4

Never believed. No bad experience that affected my view on the existence of god. What made me decide? I didn't decide, just no-one gave me a believable explanation of god or religion. Still haven't been given one. Had a few Christians talk AT me as if I was still a little child, had a few Christians try and threaten me with hellfire if I wouldn't believe, had a few Christians abuse me and call me evil and the servant of Satan, but have yet to be given a believable explanation.

Answer 5

I wasn't brought up being religious...my parents wanted me to decide which religion, if any, I wanted to be a part of.
So as I got older I learned about all the religions - and decided when I was 7/8 that there are too many religions & Gods for any to be real.
So I decided to have no religion and live by my own rules & standards.

Answer 6

For me it's all to do with Gods relationship with time.

If God is bound by time then God couldn't have created time (IE: at what time did God create time? - it doesn't work)


This I have had neatly explained as Draygombs Paradox

-----------------------------------
Definitions:

God is defined as The Conscious First Cause - ala St. Thomas Acquinas
The First Cause is That which caused Time.
Consciousness is that which lets one make a decision.
A Decision is the action of changing ones mind from undecided to decided.
Time is the measure of change.

Premises:

Something which is caused can't be required by that which causes it.

Conclusions:

Time is required for Change.
A Decision is a Change.
Decisions require Time.
Consciousness can't let one make a decision without Time.
Consciousness requires Time.
God is Conscious.
God requires Time.
God can't be the cause of Time if God requires Time.
God isn't the cause of Time.
God isn't The First Cause.
If God isn't The Conscious First Cause then God doesn't exist.
God doesn't exist
-----------------------------------------------------



If God is not bound by time *and* is omniscient he is incapable of affecting the universe because, in essence - he already has and doesn't need to do it again. This means that God is basically irrelevant from our perspective and we can simply dismiss him out of hand. Understanding this needs a little mental gymnastics in that: God must exist in Hyper-time and thus sees all of time and the universe as a single entity albeit a very complex one.

Check this out for another slightly different take on this:
http://www.ffrf.org/about/bybarker/fang.php

And a discussion I had about this on another board:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=229519

Thank you for your.... time ;-)

Answer 7

Throughout history religion homes in on the poor and ill-educated. Even today, these people make up the majority of believers. That should tell us something.

An educated person finds it extremely difficult to accept primitive man's notion of a god to explain our world when evolutionary biology and cosmology can do so far more eloquently and with more certainty.

Answer 8

i been in christian church on and off, but i started taking it more seriously from about middle school up towards end of high school.

by the end of senior year i just had high doubts on whether god is real.

maybe im not completely athetist, sometimes i think there might be a god, but sometimes not at all. One thing i know, is that i dont believe in religion, i believe that part is made up by man.

the thing that bothers me is what makes christianity right? and every other religion wrong? why is the bible pretty much based on the stars? that just sketchy to me.

Answer 9

Not enough evidence to prove it. And the whole Adam and Eve thing really cut it for me. There is no way there could be billions of people today originating from just the two people. It would take forever. Plus, how did the different races and ethnicity's come about then. So that's what basically cut it for me.

Answer 10

The same exact reason I don't believe in leprechauns.
I figured it out when I was about 10
Nope
They told me in Sunday School that Genesis said god created all the plants before the Sun and stars. I knew that was BS.

Answer 11

I used to believe, though I wasn't particularly religious, so to speak. I just never thought to take a closer look and search for answers. Once I did, well, you know what they say, the rest is history. I can't believe in something that has no substantial evidence to support it's existence.