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Atheists, lets get real

TypicalRussian

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Lets assume at some point you were a Christian,Muslim, or Jew

Why did you switch to atheism?

Be Honest, hence why I said lets get real, no more stupid questioning, no more debating or dancing around, explain to ME why you are an atheist

I am nit trying to convert you either, all I want is for you to explain your position
 
When I wax very young, I accepted that God existed because that’s what I was raised to believe. As I grew older and read the Bible and about other religions and mythologies, it became more and more clear that there was no actual support for any God claims and many of the religious stories clearly contradicted reality. I found no reason to believe that any god or other supernatural being exists.
 

if you dont mind me asking, what evidence or proofs did you anaylze?
 

I actually took the time to study the bible.

(20 year Christian, taught Sunday School for 18 of those. Went out on neighborhood visitations, was a soloist in several choirs. I "was" the "real deal")
 
TypicalRussian said:
I am nit trying to convert you either, all I want is for you to explain your position
Click to expand...

Once they explain themselves to your satisfaction will you allow them to continue their lives without additional questions??
 
Airyaman said:
I actually took the time to study the bible.

(20 year Christian, taught Sunday School for 18 of those. Went out on neighborhood visitations, was a soloist in several choirs. I "was" the "real deal")
Click to expand...

and what did you find?
 
I've never believed anything supernatural. The Bible has many great lessons. I believe God is love, literally and exclusively. I believe Jesus was a great man (or depiction of).

I was a militant atheist, that is to say a nasty one, for many years. I learned metaphysical expression is natural (people ponder the unknown as part of the human condition) and a valuable tool of communication. Since then I've respected metaphysical expression.
 

I was raised non religiously, and I have never found a faith that appealed to me enough to want to join it, nor have I experienced any kind of personal spiritual revelation so far.
 
TypicalRussian said:
if you dont mind me asking, what evidence or proofs did you anaylze?
Click to expand...

The ontological argument
The cosmological argument
The argument from design
Pascal’s wager
Thomas Aquinas
C.S. Lewis
Several other apologetics.
The Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon, Baghava Gita, Norse, Greek, Native American, Babylonian mythologies

What it boils down to is that no one can give an objective definition of what a god would be (and how we could arrive at such a definition) and how we could determine if any particular entity met the criteria.

Nothing is convincing enough to reject the null hypothesis that gods were invented to explain the universe and give backing to societal morals and institutions.
 
I like Einstein's explanation, he was deeply religious until he was twelve, then he grew up..
 

I studied history, theology, and philosophy. Add in some science here and there and I was on my way.

Add on watching how “Christians” really conduct themselves all over the world and the case was closed.
 

Atheism is one's way of protecting oneself from the deluded concepts of others and their pathways.

We all know God exists, and even your God and the Christian God all exist, but what I don't want is you telling me how He exists, because the human will always attempt to lord it over the human, so there must be a stalwart defense, and that defense is Atheism.
 

Your misconstrued concept of the Godhead does not exist and this is not always true.
 

lets see started reading the old testament and at some point after Moses and crew left Egypt i tossed the the bible aside to much evil done in the name of a god

in my church was taught that anything sexual outside of a heterosexual marriage was the 3rd worst thing you could do

so i tried real hard to quit masturbation and to not think about sex it was hard ( ha ha ) but i managed it for weeks then i just dreamed about sex and came any way so it was pretty clear the prohibition was bull****

didn't like how my church treated gay people it was pointlessly hostile and cruel

and as i got older it was easy to see that things like the flood and the tower of babel and the creation in genesis weer myths

and that taking things on faith and accepting the judgments of others just because weer bad ideas

their did not seem to be any proof of god even though a god could make itself quite clear if it was real and i did try to ask it if it was to deafening silence
 

um i dont know any gods exist im pretty sure they dont
 

I realized there is as much evidence for the god of any religion as there is for Santa. I realized all cultures have certain mythologies, but these are just cultural mythologies. They are more important in creating a shared sense of cultural identity than anything having to do with actual truth. I couldn't understand why I necessarily thought that the particular one associated with my culture was supposed to be all that different or special. Everyone thinks they are special- that's not anything special.

We easily dismiss or laugh off the mythologies of other cultures into which we were not born and indoctrinated. But because our own culture catches and indoctrinates us at a very young and tender age, when we unquestioningly believe in the authority of the grown-ups and especially our parents whom are literally gods to us at that age, it becomes harder to dismiss them when we grow up. It takes some courage to do so.
 
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You lost or lacked faith.
 
I was raised in a pseudo-Christian society (all the ethics, none of the belief) and once I started hearing about the big bang, I let that be my explanation for all there is.
 
Airyaman said:
I actually took the time to study the bible.

(20 year Christian, taught Sunday School for 18 of those. Went out on neighborhood visitations, was a soloist in several choirs. I "was" the "real deal")
Click to expand...

Are you an atheist now?

If so, tell me what "fact" or argument did you buy into that says that Jesus Christ was not resurrected from the dead?
 
Logicman said:
Are you an atheist now?

If so, tell me what "fact" or argument did you buy into that says that Jesus Christ was not resurrected from the dead?
Click to expand...

Atheist. I was curious as to why Jews did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, so I started studying the Old Testament to try to match Jesus with whatever prophecies there were pertaining to this figure. Jesus simply came up way short. I left Christianity and considered converting to Judaism, because I still believed in Yahweh. That fell apart when I continued to study the Tanach (Old Testament) and I realized just how evil this god was portrayed. I dabbled around in a few other religions for awhile because I still felt this need to believe in something higher than humanity, but eventually gave up because all of it became obvious: gods are imaginary.
 
Logicman said:
Are you an atheist now?

If so, tell me what "fact" or argument did you buy into that says that Jesus Christ was not resurrected from the dead?
Click to expand...

Logicman said:
Are you an atheist now?

If so, tell me what "fact" or argument did you buy into that says that Jesus Christ was not resurrected from the dead?
Click to expand...

You and your constant pre-suppositionalist view that it is our job, as non-believers in your freakin religion, to prove that the supposed resurrection didn't happen. FFS grow up.
If you were a state prosecutor, you would start a trial stating that the person is guilty and can only be released if proven innocent. This is bull**** and doesn't represent western jurisprudence.

Your religious text makes many unsubstantiated claims (outside of the text itself) by unknown authors.
Your entire book is a religious claim, just like the other religion's books are their religious claim.

Your delusional question can be formulated in parallel by any other religion regarding their religious book/stories.
Using your delusional pre-sup thinking, any claim they make would also have to be believed unless 'proven' wrong. Unless you use the Special Pleading fallacy...
 
To answer the OP:

I was a protestant sent to catholic schools (irrelevant as to why). It wasn't until late high school when the curriculum included comparative religious studies.
Easy to understand that many of the religions of the world are mutually exclusive.
Therefore some are wrong, but which ones??? Maybe all of the are wrong?

Then the realization that the religions are all making pretty much the same claims about their version of doctrine, dogma, canticle, etc..
So it goes back to which is right, if any.
Think if you were a bomb disposal expert, faced with thousands of wires that could be cut, you have no guarantee that cutting any wire will diffuse the bomb. Cutting the wrong wire will explode the bomb.
Religious text are like the service manual for the bomb, each claiming 'their' wire is the right one to cut.
I walked away, wouldn't you in this situation?

Then one day you realize that you don't believe any more.
 
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