Respectfully to the Atheists, I would like to know what most influenced your choice?

Question

I want to say this is NOT a debate, I am trying to get a good understanding of the dynamics of choice regarding Atheism. I would appreciate that everyone respect the answers and not thumbs down every one's answer. I would like to know was it a poor experience with a church? A person of religion? Was it something that happened personally? Did you convert from a religion to Atheism? Tell me more about your journey and what lead you their. THIS is not an us verses them post. I need this for some research work.

okay people I am fully dressed, there are pictures of peoples butts on here, I would like some insight into the decision to not practice any religion. I am an agnostic...I dont know if GOD exists or not, in some ways it would be nice if he did, but I do know the Bible contains inconsistent statements. I have read it.

okay lets go one more...DID Jesus as a person (not as a GOD) exist? IN your opinions? I feel like historically HE probably DID exist, and he did raise some eyebrows, and he probably was cruifixed and then died, the deal I can't resolve is that he rose again. AND now he saves us all and each day in this country children who are innocent die, and yet Jesus does nothing? I usually have this conversation over a beer. BUT KWIM when historically many people have rose up against the establishment and died for their beliefs. So how is it the story has been kept alive for 200 years?

solo that is interesting because I have a friend who is the mother of a teen gay son, and she finally left church because she got sick of hearing the anti gay message because she said IF GOD made everyone where did her son fit in? And how could she deny him because of what a man in a suit at the church was saying? KWIM?

Bush man, I didn't think it was typical at all...I use to attend a large church because at the time it was the "thing to do" and they kept asking for money, and when my husband lost his job we asked for help and although we had given hundreds to the church we had to go on welfare to feed our kids, SO I would call that a bad experience. IF you will read, just like my friend and her gay son, she also called that a disillusion with religion.

Lets face it outta here mainstream america follows some religion even loosely. So, it is a choice. TO not participate in "organized religion" is to me a choice. WHEN we left the church they called and called and called and we said: "at this time we are choosing to not attend church". I am in a conservative republican area, church and the golf course is pretty much where people connect, and even do business. I know alcoholics that are at the bar on Saturday and stumble into the non denom. church on Sunday. I am trying to reconcile this in my mind. Is it better to pretend?

yes I meant 2000 years...man he has been dead awhile..when is he gonna come back and fix all this? He promised you know!

Answer 1

You know what? For me it wasn't so much a choice as it was seeing what was right in front of me.

In theory religion/christianity would be something I would LIKE to believe in, however I am unable to do so. I was raised a christian and all of my family are christians. It is not for lack of trying on anyone's part.

I did have bad experiences with churches though when I moved to a new city. I went by myself since my husband really did not believe nor did he want to and I was told that I could stay for that day at each of them and I should feel free to make a tithe, but I was basically unwelcome to come back unless I brought my entire family.
(4 different churches I tried)

Like I said, though. That wasn't the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. I just can't make myself believe. I don't think I really ever did. It was all just a story, and that story had some funny parts, some sad parts, some stupid parts...just like any other. It was also a big part of being accepted in society.
In recent years, I have come to appreciate myself more and now do not seek to be "accepted" by anyone.

There you have it.



EDIT: Yes, I think Jesus was an actual person. I think he may have done some great things, but I do not think that he was anything more than a man.

Answer 2

Respectfully, I tell you that Mom's father was a pastor, and I could read some at age 2, so I read the Bible every day. I also read science books. I soon saw that there were differences between the Bible and science. By age 7, I saw errors in the Bible. It has so many contradictions and so much ignorance about reality that an omniscient deity could not possibly have written it. It was easy to see that ignorant men, who claimed to speak for a god Moses copied from the pharoah Ikhanton's Aton, wrote it. You see, it is a matter of logic, reason, objectivity and thinking, not some traumatic emotional experience, as so may believers try to say. There is no proof that any gods exist, but holy books are proof that they do not exist. i studied the major world religions, and I took Bible History in college. I have very good reasons to be an atheist, and i have seen none to be religious, whether one is Hindu, jainist, Buddhist, taoist, etc.

Answer 3

My spiritual journey started after I left the Church. I was born into a faith, but thought my way out. Little questions grew into big ones, as no answers were forthcoming over time. I believed less and less, till one day I realized the word for my views on religion was not agnostic, but atheist.

Since then I have spent a lot of time reading about, discussing, and pondering how and why. It was all done buffet style, a little Plato and Socrates, a little Lock and Kant, and some Tzu and Tsu. I have found some peace, a little purpose, and what I feel is my ever changing place in this word.

Feel free to look at my blog if you like, A lot of what I honestly feel is in there.

Answer 4

It isn't a "choice" like - chosing to become a Catholic or a Baptist.

For most atheists, the whole concept of some magical, mystical being existing "somewhere" in some heaven someplace is ludicrous.

The whole idea that everything in the universe was snapped into being by a huge, gigantic god thingie is ridiculous.

I gave up fairytales at the age of about 5 or 6...why would I accept the fairytales in the bible.

Absolutely NO evidence of any kind, in any form exists to prove the existence of such an entity and nothing to prove the bible isn't simply a collection of stories written by old men thousands of years ago.

Atheism isn't a "choice", it simply is what it is..Most don't believe a word of the whole rigamaroll......and don't understand how anyone can....

Answer 5

I was raised religious. I was very active in the church. When I was a teen I realized much of what I'd been taught didn't make any sense. I asked about it and got only one answer for all my questions. "you just have to have faith". That didn't' sit with me so I started to study. I realized all civilization from the first one on had all had religion. Different deities, same jobs. Over the years other things came into play as well. Atheism was the final conclusion.

At the end of the day, I require proof to believe something. In all my searching there was no proof at all of god(s).

Answer 6

Not a choise for me... I never believed. If I had to guess at reasons, I'd say they're rooted in my childhood; I learned to read when I was 3, and I loved to find out how things work (I used to spend hours reading encylopeadias)...

So I guess by the time religion would've become a factor in my life, I was already past the phase when it could've seemed like an good explanation to me.


As to Jesus, I'm not sure. It's not an uncommon name, and the stories seem to fit the general cult leader format... so it' possible there was a jewish cult following a man called Jesus.... or several that were combined into one story.

What gives me pause is the lack of extra-biblical references... he couldnt've been too influental or the romans, or the jews, would have mentioned him... they were pretty anal in records-keeping.

And in the age old atheist tradition... Did you mean 2000 years? :)

Answer 7

It really wasn't any one thing.
As I got older, it just started to dawn on me that actually believing the existence of omnipotent, magical, invisible, supernatural beings just seemed to be crazy to me. The same way that I stopped believing that there were monsters under my bed or ghosts in my closet. (Only it took a little longer for me to stop believing in God.)
It definitely did not have anything to do with an experience with a person or a church. I actually really liked going to church as a kid. I was even a member of my church youth group.

As for whether or not I believe Jesus even *existed*, I did when I first became atheist. It didn't really occur to me to consider that he was completely fictional, I just thought that he was probably a regular man who was given an extraordinary label. After doing a lot of research, I eventually came to the conclusion that he is fictional, or at the very least, a combination of old myths, astrological stories, and more than one man who lived in that part of the world at the time.

Answer 8

First I decided that my original religion (Hinduism) couldn't be true (and nor could any of the others I looked at) so I became a pantheistic deist (if that's a real term). Then, I decided that the universe didn't really need a creator, so I rejected the deist part. After that, I believed that the laws of nature are God.

Eventually, I realized that I was simply redefining God because I didn't want to call myself an atheist. What I called God couldn't really be considered a God according to any traditional definition of the term. Once I figured that out, I decided to just be an atheist.

Answer 9

A lack of faith, the impossibility as I grew up to believe in what I was taught and told. I met plenty of people I liked, had no bad experience, respected them but even when I tried to force myself couldn't believe. So I walked away and accepted some hard truths. It doesn't mean that I don't respect the beliefs of my friends, I just can't share them.
Don't think it is an easy thing, for it forces you to acknowledge your own mortality and that there's no comfortable afterlife where you can meet again your loved ones, that there's no benevolent entity looking after you but the cold indifference of the universe. Hard truths. But it also frees you to look at the world around you with a new eye and step outside the barriers set up by religion.

Answer 10

Hopefully very few atheists became atheists because they just didn't like a church. We like to think (rightly, I would say) that evidence persuaded us and so even if we had entirely good experiences with religious people and churches that wouldn't be enough, because it doesn't make sense to say "I don't believe that because believers were mean to me" or "I believe that because believers were nice to me." That's virtually no different from saying "I don't believe in the periodic table because my elementary school science teacher was mean to me."

Personally, I don't think I ever believed, so there was no deconversion, but was a moment of realization when I realized that I didn't believe and hadn't ever believed, if that makes sense.

I grew up in a mildly Methodist family and we went to church semi-regularly. Besides it being sometimes boring, I never had any bad experiences with church or religious folk. In fact sometimes I liked it. I never jived much with the religious elements but liked when they talked about things relevant to everyone.

I remember as a kid just thinking that the stories of the Bible were too much like make-believe stories to be true. Whenever I heard things from the Bible it never sounded different than tales of Aladdin, or Aesop's Fables. I knew these stories originated from a relatively primitive time, and people would have been more gullible because they didn't know what we knew about things (I didn't know a lot about evolution at the time, so that wasn't a factor, but I did know about dinosaurs and other prehistoric things and the Bible seemed too removed from paleontology and paleoanthropology).