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Athiests- when and why? (1 Viewer)

Well I never really believed in god, always had to go to church, was forced to go to a private christian school until 6th grade. I never considered myself atheist either until a year ago when I actually sat down and thought about it :2wave:
 
Ever since Sunday School as a kid I had questions that were never satisfactorily answered. In my teens my church got all beaurocratic and wanted my family to fill out a form with our income so they could track our tithings. This pushed me towards an attitude against organized religion. I became spiritual. When I was 18 I had a bad car accident and spent a few years believing that God spared me for some purpose.

Being spiritual is easy. There is no dogma. There is no deep introspection required (though you can and still be spiritual). As years went on I would think about contradictions in the Bible. I would think about how the stories and religious holidays weren't original and more of a co-opted marketing ploy. I had read Dianetics (I am no scientologist) and it had some useful ideas about the power of self and just simply having the confidence to do something was always there. You just had to unlock it, yourself. I didn't think too much about God until 9/11/2001. That is when I really gave it some serious thought. I came to the conclusion that religion was the first form of science and government. It wasn't because of the terrorist attacks that I became an atheist, but it caused me to comtemplate spirituality. All through my mother's life she was very religious. She was never happy though. She hoped and prayed yet never used logic to solve problems. This had an effect too.
 
Ever since church as a little kid. I'd look around and think, "You guys really believe this ****?"
 
I was a Christian for about 17-18 years, I even considered entering the ministry for a short time and then, through intense study of the Bible and Christianity, realized what a crock it all was and rejected it over the course of a number of years. I've written about it in detail a couple of times.
 
When: At some point between 4th grade and 6th grade I started becoming "anti-theist" but I didn't become a real atheist until some time in my mid to late twenties.

Why: Being a typical 4th grade boy, I was really big time interested in Dinosaurs. Being an unsual 4th grade boy, I actually read voraciously, and at a very high level so I actually new about Evolution to a degree. My 4th grade teacher, an elderly nun named Sister Dolerene, made the mistake of telling us that evolution was a myth and that Dinosaurs never really existed.

I was not a very "good" kid in the sense that even in Kindergarten I got in trouble for talking back to teacher when I thought what they said was stupid (another story for another time, but my mother got a call home about this behavior on my very first day of kindergarten). So anyways, this comment just struck me as totally stupid, even at that age, and I didn't try to hide my disdain for it. In the end, I got sent to the Principal's office over the "debate".

From that day forward, I had begun questioning the comments revolving around religion. I really became a problem in religion class to the point where I was getting sent to the Principal almost daily.

I lasted another year in Catholic school before my parents were forced to take me out and place me in public school in order to prevent even more issues. By 6th grade, now in public schools, I was sure that I did not believe in the God that I had been taught about. I flat out refused to go to CCD classes even though my parents wanted to get me confirmed.

In other words, I was very anti-theist. I could not fathom why people believed in what I considered nonsense. This lasted until sometime in my twenties. During that time, I set out to "disprove" religion logically and read religious texts simply to have more ammo to use against religion.

At some point in my twenties, I started to realize that what I was doing was asinine. In reality, what I was doing was trying to reaffirm my lack of belief by tearing down other people's beliefs. In a way, this was mostly due to my own insecurity in my beliefs/non-beliefs.

In reality, during this time I was actually an agnostic who wanted to become an atheist, which is why I qualify the difference here.

So, once I realized what I was doing, I went back and looked into various religions a bit more objectively than before. I didn't read the text looking for flaws right off the bat, but instead I read them with more of an open-mind. After doing this, I came to the conclusion that I still didn't believe, but now I had a better understanding of the value of religion to society and to an individual.

That's when I truly became and atheist and why. I simply cannot make the teachings of religion work with me and according to the way I think.
 
I was told by my family, religious friends and my church that my God was nothing but loving and caring for all his children...and that included all living human beings.

When I found out that my Muslim, Jewish, Atheist, Agnostic, etc friends would all burn in hell because they didn't adhere to my particular faith, I started getting suspicious. When I fully realized that had I been growing up in their particular families I'd have not been a Christian either, so with enough studying of the Bible and obvious common sense I decided to leave the faith.

And thank "God" I did...
 
i am not an athiest i left christainity becuase the idea of an insecure all powerfull diety creating the universe sending people to hell are delusions
 
The churches are like the tobacco companies -- hook people on their destructive products when they're kids, while their tiny little minds are too weak to resist.
 
I still believed in god when I got married in 1998. On 9/11/01, I saw the horror that occurred that day and began questioning whether god existed. I just could not fathom how god could let something like this happen (whether I thought he could prevent that from happening is another question, but that didn't occur to me). From that time onward, I began doubting that there was a god. I cannot remember exactly when I went from being agnostic to atheist, but since I declared myself an atheist, I have been much, much happier.

For me, I don't need the scare of hell, or pergatory, etc., to behave in a moral manner. I didn't suddenly think, "Oh, it's okay to steal. It's okay to cheat on my spouse. It's okay to kill someone else." My declaring myself as an atheist has had no negative impact on my behavior--I'm just happier knowing that the fear thing is just a complete joke.
 
From another post I made on the subject:


My parents were not very religious, but going to church was "the norm" for other kids, so I sought it out myself. They did not make me go, but they never once hindered me from going or questioned my doing so. I didn't even know my mom was an atheist until long into my adult years. She was "born into" the church and knew the bible VERY well, so I often used her to answer my questions when the authority figures at church refused to. I went to church regularly, by myself. I went to church camps.

I chose to go to church, and I also chose to stop. The priests could not answer my questions adequately, the bible did not make sense and promoted things I considered "bad" such as rape, murder, and genocide. The more I questioned what I was being taught, the fewer clear answers I received. I went to a few different churches, with no avail. As I became older (pre-teen for me), I realized how silly it all was... this ancient fairy tale of a big man in a sky. In fact, the stories in it seemed so remarkably familiar... ah yes, they were the SAME stories that history and mythology classes taught as well... mythology.

The more critical my thinking became, the more I questioned the book and was unable to receive answers, the more I UNDERSTOOD what the book was saying... the more it became so clear to me how much I'd have to delude myself to even attempt to believe it. It just made no sense whatsoever, no more sense than Santa and elves do to someone who has outgrown the lie, and the NEED for the lie.
 
I was about 15 and just wanted the weekends freed up. :2razz:

As for my religious upbringing, I was raised in what was techincally a cult. A "church" that made Catholic school look like a open ended roundtable discussion, by comparison. Although we did not have a "school". I was brought up through the rigors of the public education system, but was required to maintain and behave in the manner set forth by our church. I was not allowed to participate in any classroom activities that included the pagan holidays of Halloween, Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day, or Arbor Day. Ok I am kidding about Arbor Day. I also was not allowed to participate in any school activities that took place on Friday nights or Saturdays. Our "church" was a weird hodgepodge of Seventh Day Adventists, Judaism, and Christianity. Since most kids in "mainstream" religions don't fully comprehend things that are outside their experience, I was the subject of ridicule and was even beaten up on a few occassions. I had very few friends through the school years, but the ones I did have were true(and they happened to go to the same churches the kids who ridiculed me did, which has a profound impact on how I currently judge faith and religion).

Right about the early to mid-ninties, the church went through a serious transformation as the new leader(the old has passed on) reformed the church to bring it into line with mainstream evangelicalism. Thats how far out there we were, we had to move to the left, to make it to evangelical status. Anyway, those changes quickly spelled the end of our church, and we went from being about the 10th largest religion in the world(IIRC), to people clinging onto the old ways with services being held in the basements of the hangers on. When my mother remarried, she took my step dad to our dwindilling church, and he declared it to be "some real crazy ****" and told me I wouldn't have to go if I didn't want to. Being freed from its grasp, I grew distant from anything religious to the point where I am now.

Despite how bad everything was, I have no ill will towards my upbringing or religion in general. I like who I am now, and I was certainley shaped by all those things in my past. I cannot point to a certain time that I became atheist, but over time my train of thought evolved to not include a creator being as we would understand one by religious definition.
 
I was brought up in the Methodist church, pretty boring, pretty old, pretty moderate though. Anyway when I was a kid, I used to always read the bible, including the stuff I was never TOLD to read. I think I've read the bible back to back twice, maybe thrice, can't remember. In the end I knoew more about the bible than my sunday school teachers and would ask them many quesitons they did not know the answer to. I was nearly removed from Sunday school for questioning Noah's flood and Why God was killing innocent babies?.
After that it was a slow process of my faith being chipped away by the obvious, logic and reason. The more knowledge I sought, the more faith I lost. Researching Early Christainity History really sealed the deal, I have no doubt now that Christainity is the biggest load of crock And if Christainity is, all religions must be. Because they have all equal amounts of evidence - none.
Becoming an atheist has got m eoff my ass, I only have one life, I got to live it. Now I'm going for my dream, and I feel far more fufilled in life now.
 
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I just have to say that I love my fellow atheists!

:2grouphug

God, if I believed in God, bless you. ;)
 
aps said:
I just have to say that I love my fellow atheists!

:2grouphug

God, if I believed in God, bless you. ;)
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Obama bless you. :lol:
 
I became an atheist in my early teens, after talking often around that time to my step-dad about religion. He was a Catholic, and I rejected his notions of what religion and God were. In my young mind I believed he spoke for all religious people. He probably still speaks for most.

This did change later on. But that was when I became an atheist, and it lasted for about 15 years.
 
niftydrifty said:
I became an atheist in my early teens, after talking often around that time to my step-dad about religion. He was a Catholic, and I rejected his notions of what religion and God were. In my young mind I believed he spoke for all religious people. He probably still speaks for most.

This did change later on. But that was when I became an atheist, and it lasted for about 15 years.
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I thought you were a catholic? I must be thinking of a different poster. Who is the liberal on this board that is very religious? I remember a thread with Felicity talking about the Eucharist a while back...
 
RightOfCenter said:
I thought you were a catholic? I must be thinking of a different poster. Who is the liberal on this board that is very religious? I remember a thread with Felicity talking about the Eucharist a while back...
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Sounds like Southernman, She was saying that he was a poor catholic etc? That was him. He is still around but does not post very often it seems.

Moe
 
moe said:
Sounds like Southernman, She was saying that he was a poor catholic etc? That was him. He is still around but does not post very often it seems.

Moe
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No, it was before he joined. It was like a year or more ago.
 
RightOfCenter said:
I thought you were a catholic? I must be thinking of a different poster. Who is the liberal on this board that is very religious? I remember a thread with Felicity talking about the Eucharist a while back...
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I am pretty liberal and pretty religious. I'm not Catholic. Felicity is.
 
niftydrifty said:
I am pretty liberal and pretty religious. I'm not Catholic. Felicity is.
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Ok Nifty you got a good left hook here and you got me dazed :mrgreen:

You were a Catholic

You became an atheist [15 years]

Today you are not an atheist?

Or you are_______?

Moe
 
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