Atheists, when/why did you stop believing in god?

It is only within the past two years that I've even opened myself up to the idea that the concept of a larger force on a higher plane of existence isn't inherently laughable, largely due to joining the church choir in college to make some extra cash and keeping up with it as a hobby after graduation because the music is so awesome. I still don't consider myself Christian but I'm not really an atheist anymore, either. Conversely, both of my parents are very Christian but neither has been a regular churchgoer since I was 7.

This pretty much describes my upbringing. My parents made a couple of halfhearted stabs at churchgoing when my brother and I were kids, but it was traumatic for us and didn't last long. Now that my parents are in their 70s, I guess they're hedging their bets on eternity, because they've joined a Baptist congregation down the road from their house. I would call myself an agnostic rather than an atheist — nobody's ever given me a reason to make that leap of faith, and it's certainly not necessary to believe to try to live a good life.

A Nairn scares me.

when they cancelled Small Wonder.

I didn't stop believing in a god because I never did. I can remember believing in Santa but not any gods.

I can remember being 4 and going to preps assembly and being made to sing hymns/say prayers and thinking "wtf"

Personally, I never went, but I've always found it interesting that that's so often the case. From what I'm told it's just the strictness that turned so many people off. I guess a lot of people just get to a certain point and say, "you know what? fuck this."

I think the seriousness of transubstantiation during Mass in Catholic school did it for me. I was an outsider and the whole thing seemed so over the top and brainwashing. I can remember a voice in my head going "THIS IS FAKE... THIS IS FAKE...". I think then my little head applied Occam's razor and cut the whole thing apart.

I had been reading a lot of physics textbooks that year. Now if there was a religion that found Gnostic truth in the properties of subatomic interactions and such things, I might sign up.

When I was about 14, my parents (my dad a former catholic, my mom some kind of protestant) finally found a church and tried to get me to go. I was in an adolescent stage where I felt the need to tell them how stupid church is and how god doesn't exist, etc. I still didn't think about it too hard, but that's when I really became an atheist. My dad was pretty bummed, I can remember one car ride with him where he asked me, "What do you think happens to you when you die?" and I said "Um, nothing, you go in the ground." Then he asked, "Well, what if there was a nuclear bomb, and nothing was left of you?" and I replied, "Well, I guess that's it then." We really didn't discuss it anymore after that, he gave up.

Now that I've thought about it some, I'm still an atheist, but I think god does exist in people's heads because it's something they've grown up with or something they think they need. It's just unfortunate that some of these people try to use it for political gain and stuff. My parents still go to church, but their church is really liberal and pro-gay (?) and not all that bad.

http://www.ucclcri.org

i've noticed that a lot of catholic school alumni have not only abandoned the religion but are really into things the catholic church would totally hate, e.g., bondage, butt sex, being gay. maybe catholic schools are secretly bondage training centers!

If I may elaborate on that...

I don't see people who believe in a god as stupid. If the belief is massively strong I'll most likely doubt their sanity, unless they've had a specific experience that's givem them cause to believe in a god [visitation etc], but even then it's probably a bit of a leap to think they weren't dreaming/hallucinating.

The fall from grace was more a 0.0001% downward tilt towards grace..

One time, I played the song "Jesus Loves Amerika" by The Shamen in the car with my grandmother, and she (after the 20th time I've played it in later high school in the house in my room, loudly, and lyrically audible), she told me how upset she was with the lyrics... the rift opened and I went one way, and my family stayed the religious course... and still do to this day.

That said, I'm more pissed off at the all-boys part and the lack of social skills thereof than the Catholic part. My maternal family is Presbyterian... so the "college-prep" part was the key why I was there.)

I attended a Christian school for sixth grade, but found it sort of creepy and the only parts of the Bible that interested me were the blood 'n' guts parts of the OT. Then I got asked not to return for various reasons and my ambivalence became irrelevant to a degree.

I'm extremely distrustful of true believers (of any stripe) - I can't comprehend how someone can really believe in God and heaven and hell and all that, my instinct is to assume they're faking to fit in with the populace or have some kind of ulterior motive.

Even if I could kind of believe in a higher being or spiritual plane, I don't see how it would effect my outlook - I couldn't follow a cruel/heartless God who allows so much suffering and pain and demands strict obedience or else. It's just not compatible with any of my other beliefs to take orders from him. I kind of follow Orwell's embittered atheist - 'I don't so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike him'.

I find that I'm fascinated by religious art, because it lacks an overriding ego, there's something pure about Byzantine/E. Orthodox medieval art and Northern European Renaissance paintings in the way that the artist channeled something greater.

My mom (another catholic school example) lost her faith when she was told that unbaptized babies went to Limbo, decided that was fucked up and never believed again. My father bailed on religion when his parents abandoned him as a child. So there's probably something to be said for the traumatic experience angle...

BTW, Dan, as someone who was around for it, you weathered the storm better than anyone could be expected to. Love to you as always, sir.

I feel like that was uncharacteristically pleasant. Should I make a dick joke or something to make up for it?

this almost exactly describes my experience too. i was in year 11, it was around the time we were doing russian history at school, and i remember being a bit disgusted at the way that the russian church encouraged people to put up with horrible lives pending the wonderful afterlife... then it dawned on me that was exactly what the catholic church had done through the ages too! i remember going home from my catholic boarding school for the term holiday and telling my mum that i wasn't going to mass ever again as i thought all the rituals and whatnot was total 'hocus pocus' and i disapproved of the use of guilt to control the congregation's behaviour and values and the way women continued to be held in such low esteem by the catholic church. she didn't speak to me for 3 weeks and i don't think she has ever forgiven me for the words 'hocus pocus'. i've never been to mass again either, except for weddings and funerals.

interestingly even though i am now a proclaimed atheist, and i have my own little code of behaviour which just involves being as good a person as i can, i find myself constantly feeling guilty. i fear i always will, 16 years of catholic upbringing is unavoidable no matter whether i believe in god or the virgin mary or not.

I went from believing in god (small, non-Christian "g") but not believing in organized religion to being agnostic to being sort of pagan to being "spiritual" to being a nonspiritual cynical agnostic to, a few years back, being a straight up atheist because religion just doesn't make any damn sense to me when I look at it logically. Everything I read about religion just strengthens my conviction.

for me it was a gradual process. i don't consider myself an atheist, but i consider myself to be completely separated from any religion whatsoever. even if i was actively religious, i'm would stay far away from organized religion.

I think this is the reason why my dad, age 65, is attending church again after not having done so for most of his life. He sees the grim reaper waiting for him up ahead on the road and would probably whirl like a dervish if he thought it would put him in good stead with The Creator. Xianity has the edge on being the focus of his fears due to its status in American society.

Why/when did I stop? I've never had the opportunity to start! I'm completely devoid of spirituality, was raised without any notion of it in my life. My first brush with it was from my cousin, whose parents are very religious, and the notion just seemed senseless to me. I'm glad that I've gone without it.

i stopped going to church at age 18, my mom protested quite loudly. i didnt give in, i just couldnt fake it anymore.

I feel like that was uncharacteristically pleasant. Should I make a dick joke or something to make up for it?

Hahaha have you been reading my old posts, John?)

I was brought up around religious people but always with a measure of dry skepticism, had a brief dalliance with actual "faith" in my mid teens and then realised it was all crap when they started laying the weird guilt shit on young teens and not being logical about ANYTHING. Also, going to a church easter camp and having to have a DEBREIFING at the end because "you'll get back out to the real world and be depressed because not everyone's like we are, you might be angry for a while" was just scary and a bit messed up.

i don't remember any big blowout with my parents but i know i told them that i didn't believe, and my unbelief was very important to me. i didn't want to go and sing and take communion when i thought it was all hollow and false. it's funny though, i can still feel the remnants of Lutheranism in the deep tissue of my decision: i had no choice but to follow the dictates of my individual reason and conscience, and i still feel a duty to come to some kind of conclusion about This Stuff —i think feel-good agnostic limbo is pretty lame, frankly. maybe when i get a little more free time.

some people are just into this shit, but i'm with Freud: "It is a feeling which [my friend] would like to call a sensation of 'eternity', a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded—as it were, 'oceanic' [...] I cannot discover this 'oceanic' feeling in myself"

I'm about to go off on a tangent about the vagaries of high school cliques and social patterns; I think this means I should go to bed.

God, depending on how you look at it, is a concept either so useful for explaining stuff that no other theory is neccesary, or is so completely useless for explaining stuff that it has no place in the effort to understand the way things work.

Religion doesn't offer any of that: it offers morals and stories. Which have their uses, of course, but shouldn't be mistaken for any of the things that science brings to the table.

by the time of adolesence and punk rock, there wasn't any turning back, but it was still fun to go to church sometimes because there were a couple friends of mine going through the same thing. we'd sit in sunday school and spend more time talking about whatever show or 7" or whatever more than anything else. it fulfilled a good social factor, for sure. but not much more. pretty often i remember sitting in church during service and just wanting to pull off something "shocking" a la the situationist prank at notre dame, but it always seemed sorta pointless plus why put old ladies through so much grief?

went back to church for the first time in probably ten years this past xmas for a midnight mass. dug the community spirit and comraderie, and the good feeling that it obviously engenders in people, but it ain't for me. we're just carbon and water and i'll be dust at some point and that's fine. anything more i may need is in people, not so much in abstractions.

type a atheists don't believe in god because they are devoted to science to a degree that God has no place in their concept of the universe.

type 1 atheists don't believe in god because they have endured some irreconcilable crisis of faith that turned them away from religion.

Then I went off to university.

I tried to keep it up. I joined a varsity Christian group, but it was boring and so I quit. Sunday mornings became really useful for catching up on sleep, so I gradually stopped attending church. I could write a book on it, but the long and short of it is that my faith just sort of faded with time. I guess I sort of realized I didn’t need to lean on a supernatural being in order to get by (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

xpost 2 - whenever someone tosses out the Einstein as believer card, toss out the Einstein was a socialist card and see if they're ready to sign up for the Revolution.

i finally realized i did not believe in any of it shortly after i was confirmed in eighth grade. i think the whole process finally made me realize how insane organized religion was. around tenth grade, my parents decided i would be grounded if i did not participate in some church-related activity (youth group, choir, being a lector, etc.), which was what brought me to admit to them i no longer believed in any of it. they thought i was going through a phase, and that i needed to have some kind of involvement in the church to be a "good person" and threatened to make me quit my job if i refused and that kind of sealed the deal for me. i decided i did not need god or religion to make myself feel like i was an inherently decent person, and that all the people who thought so were weak and needed that crutch (now, i don't think they are all weak, worthless animals, i just don't need that reinforcement). why not just be a good person for the sake of being a good person, without that promise of reward?! i think that's pretty selfish. i remember my mother once talking about a dr. friend of hers who was an atheist, uttering, "i just don't see how a man of his intelligence, so smart and successful, can't believe in god!" and i wanted to scream, "because he is intelligent!! doctors believe in science!!!!!"

also, growing up in the bible belt didn't help matters much. people in my town (for example, most of our neighbors) would hardly associate with you if you didn't belong to their church/elite social circle. i saw tons of abuses of "religion" and "god" and people were generally assholes to me and/or thought they needed to save me. ugh. saying, "well, i know where i'm going when i die!" does NOT give you an excuse to be an asshole to those who might think differently than you!!! i remember getting VERY upset once because my ccd teacher told me that anyone who had the opportunity to welcome jesus as their savior and chose not to was going to hell. i interpreted this as her telling me my best friend (who was jewish) was going to hell. is that really something to teach young children?! even my ubercatholic mom was upset, and reported her anonymously to the coordinators!

i actually went to church for 4 years in college because i got paid to sing in the choir and cantor. the church where i sang was very liberal and welcoming, and i actually found going to the services kind of therapeutic, but not in a "i've been moved by the spirit!" kind of way. it was more a nice, relaxing break from school, and the parishoners were amazingly nice. it was a completely different kind of community/family than any other church i've been to, aside from a congregational church we sang at on tour once... the host families were very welcoming, liberal, etc. i think, for me, that sense of community is nice, i just don't feel the need to put the GOD label on it to make it officially acceptable to the masses.

that's how it was for me, too. i had a sponsor, and we talked about all that stuff, but i ended up feeling like a fraud because i thought i had to tell them what they wanted to hear, and the whole process kind of scared me.

-- milozauckerman

Hahaha. That's great for talking to American Xtians and such, but personally it only makes me want to listen to him more!

With two hands and a bucket.

there were a lot of baritones in my studio at school and i was always jealous of their rep

the qui sedes was my standby oratorio selection for 4 years!

i've got a worthless degree that says i did!

good question. you can probably apply your art to more areas, i'm guessing. i'm also bitter and biased. so far, the only thing my degree has gotten me is 50 cents more an hour at my job, and that's not my music degree, it would be the case with any college degree.

nothing could be more worthless than my american studies degree.

this is at least a ba or bs, right? no one has ever even heard of a bm!

*boggles at the straight line*

Then the mother of a close friend, a devout Hindu, and a wonderful woman, was killed when a lorry driver fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into the back of her Skoda. The funeral was mostly in Hindi(?) but a short passage in English dealt with the doctrine of reincarnation. I didn’t buy that, but realised I no longer believed in Christianity or God either.

The rant Yossarian goes off on in Catch 22 about what a complete bungler god must be, if he exists, has always been rather a favorite of mine. How anyone can possibly believe in a benevolent god figure, with all the horrible shit that goes on in life, has always boggled my mind.

Besides, with how vast the universe is, how arrogant is it to believe that some all-powerful being created and cares so much for us? We're less than a grain of sand in an infinity of beaches.

And Trayce..science attempts to rationally explain observed phenomenon. Sure, we can't prove some things 100%, but we may have a pretty good idea of how they work. If a theory is proved to be nonsense, science is happy to toss it out, and as such is ever changing as humanity learns more about the world and universe around us.

Science very much encourages the challenging of ideas..see how far you get doing the same thing with any major religion.

Aliens, when/why did you stop believing in god?

My parents were both raised by their parents as a strict atheists. However, I can remember vaguely in my early childhood when my mum "found" religion. So for me, the question should be more of "when did you *discover* the concept of god/religion?"

I wouldn't call myself an atheist, though. Religion was a phase I went through as a child, like being a full-on Atheist was a phase I went through as an adolescent. I've grown out of both into a state of trying to be tolerant.

But I can happily be in commplete awe of the universe and go "woah how the FUCK is this stuff coming about?" and wonder what amazing chaos and complexity is behind it all. But that isnt "god", it just... "is". Not sure what that makes me tho. Not an athiest I dont imagine.

PS the science dig was a bit of a stir, I dont equate string theory with rampant xianty or anything ;)

i moved to south carolina at age 9. as someone raised catholic it was a real eye-opener for me. the insanity of the whole southern baptist thing (plus the fact they were stupidly informed to think catholics didn't believe in Jesus) made me realize the arbitrary nature of most religion. one time i got into a debate with a babysitter about evolution (she claimed the dinosaurs just happened to miss noah's ark!) and realised that it was just hopeless.

another major factor was the realisation that christianity boiled down to 'accepting christ or burning'. that infuriated me more than anything. i still despise evangelical christianity because of its emphasis on this aspect.

i wasn't exactly enthralled with catholicism, either. by age 11 i was refusing to go to church. i think it really confused and upset my dad, a devout catholic. but eventually he understood, i think.

over the years i veered back and forth from outright hardcore atheism and new age quasi-eastern pantheism. eventually i've come to consider myself a 'non-theist' (to those who it isn't possible to explain the distinction i just say atheist because as far as they're concerned that's what i am). i don't think there's any reason to think theres an entity or someone 'running the show'. however, i've always held the possibility of, as gypsy mothra put it about his parents beliefs,

"More like a sense that there were, I don't know, worlds or states or existence or something that overlapped with this one, and that everything was sort of the same thing. No deity, just a general sense of an interconnected universe"

which is why i've always had a respect for buddhist and taoist philosophy. it makes more sense to me as a way of viewing things than either theism/monotheism or 'standard' atheism.

This is the one thing which I'd like to think is true, though sadly I believe it's never going to happen.

I can vividly remember reading the bible as a young boy (7/8) and I remember arguing with class mates ,as an atheist, when I was in my early teens but the transition must have been painless as I can't remember when I abandoned religion.

My son aged 7 told me he doesn't believe in god which surprised me as it's something we never got around to discussing until that moment. He still believes in Father Christmas though.

I like to think that even if there is a god in the Christian conception, he wouldn't hold it against atheists that they don't believe, because, ya know, how can you blame people for not buying it?

I think the west makes a mistake classifying a lot of eastern systems like confucianism/buddhism/etc as religions. Though often very spiritual, they're just based in a whole different mindset than western religions, and not very similar imho.

tehresa, you're from greenville right?

I've always thought that when Catholics lapse, they LAPSE big time (but the danger of returning to the fold in later years is still quite high), whereas an Anglican upbringing is pretty much stage one in a gradual, easy, non-traumatic slide into vague atheism.

I was nominally brought up Anglican but my parents had very very strong Catholic leanings (I still know the Hail fucking Mary off by heart) so it was kind of the worst of both worlds. I had a very devout stage when I was around 8 or 9, it lasted for about 6 months. Realising I was an atheist was kind of like realising I was gay - I'd realised what those feelings were quite a while before I realised what the appropriate label was.

My dad appears to be agnostic - religion simply isn't a concern to him, unlike steam trains and gardening. If pushed he might say that he was a protestant (I think we're technically protestant, but I don't know for sure as I can never remember - it really never was a big deal at all when I was a kid) but would more likely just dismiss it as irrelevent.

My mum claims to believe in God and goes to church once a year around Christmas time to a carol service with her friend. When I was a kid my mum put a lot of emphasis on being bright and doing well academically. Now I actually have a degree and work in a university and write and make films and stuff she seems disappointed sometimes, as if I am trying to get above myself. I was chastised for using the word "demographic" ina conversation with her the other day. She is in her early 60s and seems to be growing more and more into a small-minded conservative old lady, sadly. I'm not sure what this has to do with her religion but they seem to tally in my mind.

Neither of my elder brothers have ever believed - I think both would profess to being athiests, JR (the eldest) most vehemently so, while Jim would leave some space for possibility.

I think I always assumed that other people who believed in God had some sort of contact or experience with or of God that gave them some foundation for their belief - that anyone would simply accept something so odd as the idea of a man with a beard (or, even odder, a non-tangible omnipotent and omnipresent entity with no form whatsoever that can't be detected or sensed) creating the world in seven days seemed ludicrous to me even as a wee nipper, to the extent that I assumed that no one else really believed either. Of course not many people (in the UK) believe in the creation myth as read, I'd wager (and hope), but even discounting that it's still a fanciful concoction of stories.

I always loved arguing about religion at school. I particularly remember one time in the sixth form a group of bible students coming to give us a talk, and four or five of us all stayed well after they'd finished debating with them, and no matter what arguments you used or how you countered what they said they could never and would never acknowledge that you had a point regarding the inherant silliness of their faith; they'd reach a certain level and then you'd hit a wall that could not be breached by ethics or physics or the various ontological etc conundrums that people like Mackie use to refure theism, and that bare-faced denial seemed to me to be either insanity, stupidity, or lying, and I wasn't sure which was worse.

I wouldn't call myself an agnostic. I'm a definite athiest. I am convinced that there is nothing, no god, no soul, no afterlife, nothing. Just us, here, now.

My grandmother and her surrounding family are strongly catholic, whereas my mother and father aren't really anything (i think my mum believes in god but probably doesn't put herself in any religous set if you catch my drift, whereas my dad doesn't care)

My two closest friends are also catholic but not really devoted as such from what I can gather. Most of my other friends are like me and veer towards the scientific rather than the spiritual side of understanding life.

I avoid arguments on the subject if I can, everyone just becomes angry and frustrated.

However, in my experience, I have found that Atheists are often just as dogmatic and inflexible and intolerant as the "fundamentalists" that they are always decrying. And that is just not acceptible to me.

That said, I can understand why people would believe in some higher power. they look around, see all the beauty in nature, and think how could all this have just evolved - it cant be down to chance there must be some grand design here - and *poof* a god springs into existence. What I have trouble in understanding is why people follow religions, if their belief in god(s) came about in the way i just described, everyone's god should be different like trying to draw a horse from memory it comes out differently for everyone. It's not that everyone's idea of god should be different, the problem I have is how can someone follow a religion when it clearly carries so much baggage from how past leaders have changed it to fit in with what they want to achieve. So I guess my attitiude to religion is you want to have faith - fine but do you really need a religion?

Although my immediate family are agnostic (one set of grandparents a mixed marriage between a lapsed Lutheran and a lapsed Catholic; the other a more secular pair descended from Episcopalians and Huguenots), I went to church, mass and temple with my friends as an interested but sceptical observer, accompanied them to youth groups and Sunday school when I was 11 or so. Something was always said at worship which offended my sensibilities, whether in relation to science or the concept of personal responsibility and free will. Or some old biddy would say that someone not in the church was going to Hell. There was also the news: Catholics versus Protestants in Ireland, and religious conservatives in the US and the Middle East playing to the gallery to rationalise behaviour carried out with guns and coercion.

When I was 12, my grandmother died. I had no idea that in 1950, she'd had a severe nervous breakdown and had been lobotomised and hospitalised for three years. As this was before the advent of social services as we know them, church groups refused to help my grandfather on the basis that he was not a church member and had their eyes on adopting out my mom and her siblings. Instead, for three years the motherless family pretended to be Jehovah's Witnesses, because the JWs offered home help for $15/week. As a result, some clapped out old Witness helicoptered in to do her eulogy and sharpened my cynicism into something which became atheism by the time I was in college. My mom's kind of horrified, actually, because agnosticism is her way of life and allows her to believe in something without joining up to people obsessed with the fine print.

A *lot* of people get baptised/confirmed/barmitzvahed at the relevant age and that is the last religious observance they do other than weddings and funerals. My cousin's like that.

The transition happens in their mid teens for most Catholics. It did for me, I'd got to a stage where my questions weren't receiving satisfactory answers.

I wasn't raised religious at all though, haven't been christened and only went to church with school or cub scouts. No-one in my immediate family is religious at all. My grandma's sister is a nutjob Jehovah's Witness though! She has some other relatives who are Plymouth Brethren (I think) who won't let you in their house if you're not "one of them".

I have a friend who is a Christian and I remember reading somewhere on the net (some kind of blog thing I think) where he was saying he doesn't understand non-believers because not believing in god must be really depressing (no afterlife, etc). Which implies he only "believes" because he doesn't like the alternative, rather than because he has real faith. I shouldn't presume things about this though, I have no idea how much faith he really has and how much is bullshit, and it's none of my business anyway.

I always think (wrongly?) that atheism is not as prevalent in the US as it is here. It sometimes feels as though in the US it's not about *if* you believe, but in what you believe. But I could be wrong of course. Even so, I don't know many *older* people who are atheists, aside from my grandparents (father's side) which resulted in my father beng atheist and my aunt and uncle as well. I don't think I ever really believed in God. I just remember thinking Catholicism didn't really do much for me when I was about 8/9 or maybe 10? I loved the stories as a child and even loved Catholicism in high school. Got the highest marks, funnily enough. I find it fascinating but I just don't believe. My mother was shocked when I told her and said it was an affront, as though I was mocking her.

there's a clear category error in contrasting religious belief with science, stemming from a misunderstanding of the claims of science, central to which is the question of verifiablility. 'science' is not a dogma, in that it is subject to radical change. religion is always dogmatic.

-- latebloomer: the Clonus Horror

yep... the town with churches on every corner and wednesday night rush hour!

But now that I'm starting to actually click with the Bible and Christianity as a philosophy, I can more comfortably say that there is no supreme "being". There are larger forces than I can comprehend, sure. But those forces are not a "being" with humanlike thought processes. Religion is about self. I am God.

I shall now accept all of your posessions.

This is the analogy that keeps coming up for me lately. Religion, as it's taught to children, cannot hold up to a thinking adult. So most thinking people abandon it at some point, and rightly so. I've only recently found a new perspective on it, and it's SO contrary to what I learned as a kid in Sunday school.

Dave OTM actually!

i can understand why somebody might think we're loony. i've had the thought over and over again growing up. and there's plenty of great apologetic rhetoric for just about anything you can come up with. it's sort of the inverse version. like a yin-yang balance. so it's easy to sometimes feel like the difference between me and some of you guys is more of a faith checkbox. i know plenty of super moral and ethical atheists. hell, some of the atheists i know are the most morally-minded people i've ever met. related aside: hell for them? why? is that justice? mercy, huh? [insert kindly rhetoric here]

i wish i could relate the JOY. but i'm probably genetically predisposed to have a chemical imbalance i could commonly confuse with religious euphoria. ultimately i know that love demands freewill which demands faith which means that there will never be direct, obvious proof of a God. (well until some sort of apocolypse if that ever happens.) if your seeking direct, reproducable intervention, if you're searching for an easy explanation for suffering, you won't find it.

that said, i can totally sympathize with everybody on this thread even if i've leaned out in a different direction.

interesting thread...
m.

Despite the fact that I was chrystened, I decided when I was 8 that I wanted to be baptized. So I went up front during a summer revival at the church when the pastor, who was a close family friend, was saying things like, "Listen! Do you hear that??! It's Jesus! Open up your heart and let him in!" So I went up front and told the pastor I wanted to "lay my life into the lord's hands." It was a very intense moment in my childhood. I felt like the holy ghost was coursing through my veins.

I was quite the fundamentalist little kid to the point of being a supreme bitch. I looked down on basically anyone who didn't go to my church. Smokers were going to hell. Drinkers were going to hell (even wine). Jews and jehovah's witnesses were going to hell. And don't get me STARTED on catholics. Obviously, they worshiped gold cows like the evil people in the old testament. And if someone asked me how I spelled my name, I thought they must be evil (because everyone KNOWS that the Sarah in the bible had an H). And when the nurse asked me if I needed an apron before my x-ray/ if I could be pregnant, I remember saying, "No! I AM A CHRISTIAN!"

This changed when my parents divorced. I was 11. My uncle told my little cousins that my sisters and I would be going to hell no matter what because of what our parents did to us. They cried and cried. That's when I decided I didn't want to have anything to do with any of it any more.

xpost

Dan, No matter how many times people say that, people still refer to God as Him and believe that "He" is a guy with a really big train set, as one ILXer put it recently. Bugs the shit outta me.

Some do. Others think Jesus is Lord and he's just a hippie-lookin' dude, not some ineffable force. I meet a lot of this type, but then, I live in Texas.

that is absolutely horrific. that's not even remotely biblical either. atheist. theist. whatever. that's just wrong to tell kids their going to burn. nobody has any business telling kids that sort of thing. that's depressing in any context.
m.

Actually, if you think about it, how many artistic renditions of God are actually out there and how many of them are actaully of angels, cherubim, seraphim and Jesus with no hint of God Himself? The only one I can actually think of right now is the ceiling of the Cistene Chapel and IIRC that caused a gigantic scandal when it was painted because of the inherent hubris of trying to give The Unknowable human form (that isn't Jesus).

Also people seem to be missing the point of Jesus, which is that he was a man. According to the New Testament he's also the Son of God and part of the Holy Trinity but he is the earthly part (which makes the entire ascetic cult that's sprung up around his life really bizarre and wrong).

These are the same relatives who said I must not be a real christian if I didn't believe in vampyres because god says you have to know your enemies...

xpost. I know what you're saying, Dan. But the truth is that the churches I was involved with growing up were so Jesus-centric that everything was about this very busy MAN in heaven with a beard. I always thought of god/jesus as the same thing.

HA!

Religion gives spirituality such a bad name ....

Yeah, I think the Christian idea tends to reduce in popular conception to Big Stern Father In The Sky. It's all well and good to say that they've got it wrong, but that's the dominant impression.

(slightly off-topic, but they just reran the South Park where Pat Robertson is raising money on the air to buy a spaceship and laser to spread the joyous word. classic.)

I've talked about this a million times on ILX, haven't I? Sorry.

All speculations about the existence and nature of the divine--including atheism--are equally speculative and therefore equally suspect. They're all on equally shaky ground, epistemologically speaking.

Of course, if you interpret the "a" in "atheism" as more like "refraining from theism", or "failing to assert theism,"--opposed to "denying theism" or "refuting theism"--then I can get behind it.

Otherwise, you can't prove a negative, so I think that asserting that there is no god is just as problematic as asserting that god is a dude with a beard in the sky, or a blue chick with forty arms, or Jimi Hendrix.

-- latebloomer: the Clonus Horror

yep... the town with churches on every corner and wednesday night rush hour!

-- tehresa (boringstandardaddres...), July 12th, 2005.

Greenville: maker of unbelievers!

WTF

Another interpretation is the ism of a solid belief that there is no god. Not denying other people's belief in god, but having your own belief/religion about there not being a god. e.g a religion baseed on a natural ecosystem.

This may have been covered, I haven't read the entire thread, but just wanted to point out that while theoretical physicists may not be able to prove all their theories at the moment with today's technology, people are working hard to change that. Experimental physicists make their careers by figuring out how to dis/prove these theories. Cf. clergy. Not that I think you were equating them, Trayce. Just saying.

i had some kids' bible story books and stuff, and some of the stories were cool (but not as cool as the one nobody else can remember about the people who accidentally pulled the plug out of the bottom of the canal! i think that was actually an allegory about chucking the baby out with the bathwater wrt religious faith, haha, but i just liked the idea of canals having plugs) but it all seemed a bit far-fetched and unnecessary (i had no problem at all believing in ghosties and magicke and other worlds and all that sort of thing. still do, in a lot of it. perhaps not the magicke). i went to sunday school for a while when i was about 8-10 but that was cos my best friend went. churches invariably make my nose run, although yes they are often very beautiful and peaceful and testament to the power, skill, drive and imagination of human beings. i like being in them (apart from the nose running thing) and don't feel this is at all at odds with not believing in god.

when i started thinking about why i didn't believe (prob 9/10yo?) i think it crystallised as something like (to steal from one of the kitchhiker's guide books), isn't it enough to see that the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it? i never needed to believe in any god, though i can see how people who are born into crappy lives they can't possibly escape would need to believe in something after this world, to hold on to some hope and not go completely batshit. obv other people can believe whatever they like - if that's what it takes to get you through the night, then whatever, you hang on to it - in actual discussions i have a v hard time not losing my cool with anyone with a reasonable amount of brain power and a relatively nice life insisting that they believe, and i *never* don't lose my cool when they give me that condescending "oh, you're missing out on *so* *much* you poor lost soul if only you would let jesus into your life" look: screw you, no i am fucking not missing out because of that, i get every bit of spiritual reassurance/succour i could possibly need to come from outside myself - and bucketloads more, i'm fucking drowning in it - from other people, from the music, books, films and art created by other people, and from the naturally occurring breathtaking indescribable beauty and wonder of this planet, beauty and wonder that many of those in power who declare themselves christian seem intent on destroying forever.

by about 12 or 13yo i realised that if there is a god in the generally accepted christian omnipresent, omniscient and (crucially, obv) omnipotent model he is obviously an absolute, grade a, irredeemable FUCKWIT. christians who try to explain to me aha, but yes, you see, this is all about god having given humankind free will so of course he can't interfere in some 7 year old having leukaemia, or the spread of hiv, or earthquakes devastating huge swathes of the world, i just want to throw them off a fucking cliff. (and ANYWAY it doesn't explain the existence of worms that can come out of your ears/eyes UGH or that creature that swims up your pee if you pee in a river in brazil and goes into yr urethra and then it UMBRELLAS once it gets up there OW OW fucking OW!)

i stopped saying the lord's prayer at some point at comprehensive school but i didn't really get any shit for it, the deputy head took me aside and asked me quietly why i wasn't saying it and i quietly told him i refused to pray to something that didn't exist and he kind of sighed and gave me a "bloody wilful kid" look and it was never mentioned again.

i think i live a far more "christian" life than most christians i know (the first time i realised this prob being under the evil rule of the fascist brown owl at our brownies - brenda middleton, rot in the hell you believe exists, your soul is a vacuum), following "do as you would be done by" (yes i know this is in the bible but lots of ppl don't follow that part, just the badly interpreted parts about gays being evil or whatever) - everything follows on from that. (the second rule, if anyone cares, is "have a good time".)

i have wondered if our beloved leaders feel entitled to go around fucking things up so spectacularly because they believe that they're going to a better life, and all they have to do is repent somewhere between the stirrup and the turf and they'll be fine. somehow i think it's the absolute opposite though, and they're damn certain there is no life after this one so what's the point making sacrifices for anyone else if there's no reward at the end? let 'em suffer and die! get as much as you can in this life! woohoo!

is there something in genesis about adam and eve (and therefore all of us after) being the stewards of the animals and having to look after them and make sure they come to no harm, or is that just in the narnia version? i asked a friend who was brought up catholic the other day and she said she was pretty sure there was. if it is there, how come so many so-called christians eat meat?

religion is fascinating but a lot of the religious people i know drive me nuts with their hypocrisy and selective blindness.

I thought all the believers went up to heaven when Jesus came back. Won't it be left to us heathens to fight the bad guys?

from then on, continued sympathy for the christian church, as my mum is an active christian believer. discussions with her long into the night throughout my teenage years (more like drunken harangues from me) helped me try and understand what she was into.

but im not an atheist, so i should really answer i guess. i seemed to have arrived at this

Actually, most of my acquaintances don't know how much I'm into music. Half of them haven't seen me with headphones on, and the half that have mostly seem to think that I'm into whatever they're into. It's not that I don't let in on myself -- it's just that no-one really asks and it's difficult to make conversation about it when I'll honestly only bewilder them. As is the case with everything else I'm interested in. No wonder I feel socially impoverished.

Personally I find the notion that everyone believes in a god by default and later makes some choice to stop completely loopy.

And this thread assumes christianity is a default too, which I'm sure all the hindus and moslems and buddhists and so on would find a bit puzzling.

And Adams right - many many many people in Aus will write "prespyterian" or "CofE" on like, the census form, and thats about as far as it goes.

I can only relate my experiences as far as the people I know and the majority or them were raised with a christian background. Meanwhile, I know plenty of people who have gone on to practice Islam or Buddhism and firmly stand by their faith. Perhaps something else to ponder is why christianity seems to be the dominant faith that drives so many people away from god/the idea of one. But that's probably a whole nother thread.

I honestly just couldn't take it anymore.

i was more or less raised as an atheist

My parents seem to believe that despite having never been baptized, told of religion or taken to church, Christianity rubbed off on me by proxy.

I read the Book of Job in my senior English class and decided that it was bullshit. And that was that.

book of job'll do that to anyone

both parents atheists, so birth i guess?

i was kidnapped by my dad's parents and baptized an episcopalian

I'm not really sure. I do know that underneath my *firm* believe in his existence, I could suddenly, one day, start believing. In a way my rabid (?) atheism might just be some way to suppress my fear of what would happen if I came to believe. Or maybe I'm just lazy? Believing (in a God) seems to (wrongly, I know!) be more demanding than not believing.

Yes, I'm in doubt.

But not really.

I think I started doubting pretty early but played along with the idea out of uncertainty. Then that evolved into a kind of vague belief in a spiritual, almost metaphorical God that didn't really "exist" in the same way we usually mean, and then only in the last six or seven years I've pretty much abandoned that idea.

I was raised areligious, though not necessarily atheist. I became atheist when I was 13-15ish and first encountered the concept of atheism. It made perfect sense to me. I have since become agnostic.

I love the Book of Job.

I had been reading a lot of physics textbooks that year. Now if there was a religion that found Gnostic truth in the properties of subatomic interactions and such things, I might sign up.

-- no tech! (ex machina), Monday, July 11, 2005 4:42 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

This is my best friend's idea! He says the orderly nature and consistency of the laws of the universe prove that God exists.

i don't really think they're particularly well ordered and many constants aren't espressable as whole number ratios of other constants etc

the perfection of imperfection

the variety of it all is what amazes me. not just of the life on earth, but of all those crazy rocks flying around out there.

He says the orderly nature and consistency of the laws of the universe prove that God exists.

get one anthropic principle

I'm more an agnostic, but when I was about 8 or 9 my dad used to send me and the bros to Sunday School, in order to conveniently dispose of us while he practiced choir. It had the effect all Sunday Schools tend to have. When I went home one day and told my mum she was going to hell for being a non-believer, we had a little talk. Since then, I too have been going to hell. :(

moving to the bible belt was enough for me

He says the orderly nature and consistency of the laws of the universe prove that God exists.

but he still wears a hard hat when he visits a construction site

I had been reading a lot of physics textbooks that year. Now if there was a religion that found Gnostic truth in the properties of subatomic interactions and such things, I might sign up.

Hitchens and Sam Harris to thread.

I stopped believing altogether about 10 years -- after a Stephen Dedalus-esque Catholic revival in my teens, vows of celibacy, and penance. Sexuality had nothing to do with it; fortunately, I was a doubter long before I was gay.

Whoever said upthread that everyone he knew in his boys Catholic high school is now an unbeliever is wrong: while they may not attend church regularly and may doubt now and then, they won't look you in the eye and say they're atheists.

that is so, so OTM

when i moved flightily between the catholic and prod religion classes based on the entertainment value in school, that sure showed it.
moving to catholic ireland where is became clear that catholic australia is far more OTT, i lost direction and realised so had all of my family. now I enjoy sleeping more

This is my best friend's idea! He says the orderly nature and consistency of the laws of the universe prove that God exists.

http://www.marge.com/journal/images/rorschach-1.gif

i grew up catholic, and basically just excepted everything i was told about the religion as fact, like any other subject at school. then i think at around the age of nine or ten i realised it was all a load of cobblers. didn't bother me too much because i'd never invested that much thought in it in the first place.

i've been getting a lot of crap lately for believing in god! :/

9 years old.

Not long after I discovered Father Christmas & the Tooth Fairy didn't exist! I wasn't raised religious though, I wasn't Christened, although I did have to go church because of school.

I'm catholic and went to church every week until I was 14, I always doubted but stopped believing completely when I was eleven years old. I was on holiday in Rome, sitting on a bench eating ice cream when two young men on motorbikes crashed into each other at an intersection. One went flying across the road and got up immediately, only slightly cut and bruised. The other crashed into a nearby tree, about ten feet from where I was sitting, breaking his neck. Coincidentally friends of his happened to be walking by and ran over and wailed in Italian over his corpse. First time I ever saw someone die and it seemed to arbitrary and real for there to be any question of death not being final and there being any sort of order in the world. Not a very intellectually rigorous reasoning but I was just suddenly struck with the notion and haven't shook it since.

Nothing so dramatic, I just analysed what I was being taught at school (Which, incidentally, my Socialist parents didn't believe in AT ALL) and couldn't make any sense of why the universe should have been created as a machine for creating saved souls. What were they all for? To this day, I can't see the human mind, wonderful as it is, as being fit for anything other than running human bodies and human societies.

For a while when I was about seven and eight I went to church regularly on my own but then I stopped when I realized that all the kids in my Sunday School class were basically assholes. Then my mom got into Buddhism when I was about nine and my aunt, who was going through a real Jesusy phase, told me that my mom was going straight to hell. That was the end of my relationship with organized religion, because seriously my mom has her faults but if sitting around with some hippies and chanting is an eternally damnable offense for an otherwise totally great woman, holy shit no thanks.

I think I became a full-blown atheist in my early 20s when I read more about religion and the history thereof and realized that so much of what people who do believe in God think of as fundamental truths were made up a long, long time ago by various human dudes who stood to gain something from the whole endeavor. The more I deconstructed the idea of God in my head, the less sense it made until I came to the conclusion that the only thing that makes sense is inherent Godlessness.

I do think there is some amount of interconnectedness among matter in our known universe, but that it is unhelmed by any particular leader, and I think that one day physics will explain it all if we don't kill ourselves first.

I never started believing in god, I think. Thanks parents!

roundabout 15. then at 17 i went through a fiery relapse into right-wing evangelicalism. then that girl broke up with me and i became (and remain) an atheist.

i never started either!! EVER. even though i went to church. thank god.

Whoever said upthread that everyone he knew in his boys Catholic high school is now an unbeliever is wrong: while they may not attend church regularly and may doubt now and then, they won't look you in the eye and say they're atheists.

That was me. I didn't state that the people I was referring to had necessarily become athiests, more that they just walked away from the church itself. But you're absolutely right. I referred to my father in that context and, yeah, I'm sure he'd never paint himself into a corner by saying he was a full-on athiest. And, if pressed, he'd surely say he believed in a higher power. He just doesn't go to church anymore.

The same goes for those friends of mine. When you're brought up in a hyper-Catholic environment, it may be easier to go to church less, but it's certainly true that it's harder to say you don't believe god exists (and you better believe they'd never let their mothers hear them say that shit).

I was raised pretty much without religion (minus the Christmas church visits, which confused me as a child) and I was a hardcore atheist by elementary school. I remember having Dawkinsian arguments with people when I was like 8, telling anyone who believed in God that they were stupid.

Then in middle school I noticed that EVERYONE around me was going to Sunday School (I lived on an army base), and so I joined the herd and tried really hard for the next two years to believe in God. But by 9th grade I specifically remember going to youth group meetings just because I thought everyone's sincerity was hilarious.

When I moved in 10th grade I swore it all off and never looked back. Ironically, my parents thought that me quitting Jesus was due to peer pressure, rather than the other way around.

I grew up huegly indoctrinated into Mormon church trying REALLY REALLY hard to believe and as it gradually came to me it was all wholly wrong, especially for me, I tore myself asunder. BUT I felt equally stressed trying to figure out what to believe IN, if anything.

For example: prayer or god or etc could be real, maybe, but any but the Mormon incarnations were incomprehensible to me. And praying always made me feel weird, like I just needed a friend or therapist and so instead I was kneeling on my bed, crying to this entity that may or may not be real that I just wanted some peace. And it was never really that cathartic or relieving.

I stressed so fucking hard, pondering really hard on all this 'is there a cosmic entity or god' thing. The idea that "God is in everything" seems to me redundant at best and totally silly at worst. I didn't like the Mormon incarnations of God/Jesus/HG, the trinity didn't make sense to me. It just seems mean that god would never give you a progress report or anything. But to say "I don't believe in God" was just terrifying, like saying "I hate my dad," just total taboo.

So then I read some stuff about "spirituality." I can't figure out what the hell it is. I guess the closest i can imagine is those chills I get when an incredible moment of music is soaked in. But that's music, not connecting to some cosmic other. I read some books on meditation and I thought most were bullshit except this one that said meditation was like laying on comfy couches and kind of staying in pre-nap states and getting places early so you can think and not be stressed, stuff I did and enjoyed already. But that didn't seem "spiritual," it was just my typical punctuality and introverted recharging alone time.

So: I decided it wasn't worth worrying about, que sera sera. That brought me peace, just deciding not even to think about it. I don't really believe in god because I don't think the whole question is worth worrying about.

Please no one try and talk me out of this bcz it's the pleasantest frame of mind I've been in and I ain't in much of a spot for a stinkfuss.

i was around 14 when i stopped believing in conventional christian definition of God but continued believing in some sort of other/higher power (inc. lolicious 'Earth = alien experiment' until around the same time the X-Files jumped shark, coincidentally enough) after that which has just faded gradually over the years to the point where it's now a tatty part of the furniture in a corner of my mind that's probably useless but harmless enough to get away with not having been thrown out along with all those old TV guides.

Jenny, you told that story above. ;-)

I don't think I ever believed, but I was around 12 when I realized this. It hadn't quite occurred to me before that that it was a question. It was like no one had ever asked.

I had a "girlfriend" in 7th grade who was very Christian and I used to freak her out by giving the sorts of obnoxious literalist proofs of the impossibility of the existence of God that overclever 12 year olds can come up with. I think I made her cry a few times.

this:

BUT I felt equally stressed trying to figure out what to believe IN, if anything.

and this:

I don't really believe in god because I don't think the whole question is worth worrying about.

the closest things I've felt to whatever spirituality is supposed to be:

1. meditating on floating in the vastness of ocean and I got a palpable somatic response like a hollow feeling in my chest or like I was being crushed and it scared the hell out of me for a minute

2. meditating on the distance between myself and the sun while lying on the deck of a ship and something weird happened that is not as easy to describe but at least it wasn't terrifying

in both cases "spirituality" is pretty existential/absurd so maybe that doesn't qualify

I don't think I ever believed in god. what ian/john justen said

I was lying in bed one night when I was 12, agonizing over whether or not to buy iron maiden's "the number of the beast," then I said "you know what this god stuff is a bunch of bullshit."

I can't remember ever particularly believing in god. My dad's an atheist and my mum's a bit of a fluffy agnostic, but the existence of god or otherwise was never discussed in my house when I was young as far as I recall. I imagine they both wanted me to make up my own mind, and good on em.

btw can i clarify that i am an atheist buddhist, and that these are not mutually exclusive.

Atheist taoist (kinda) here.

i got in an argument with my mom when i was 14 one sunday morning and stayed home from church. staying home was better than church because i wasn't bored. i gradually came up with other reasons why it was better for the next x number of weeks and emerged a nonbeliever.

altho i guess i wouldnt call myself straight-up DO NOT GODWANT atheist, but i guess am functionally atheist insofar as i have no "spiritual" life to speak of

the closest things I've felt to whatever spirituality is supposed to be:

1. meditating on floating in the vastness of ocean and I got a palpable somatic response like a hollow feeling in my chest or like I was being crushed and it scared the hell out of me for a minute

2. meditating on the distance between myself and the sun while lying on the deck of a ship and something weird happened that is not as easy to describe but at least it wasn't terrifying

in both cases "spirituality" is pretty existential/absurd so maybe that doesn't qualify

I don't think I ever believed in god. what ian/john justen said

-- El Tomboto, Wednesday, December 26, 2007 6:22 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

my "spiritual" life has been defined almost entirely by whoaaaah duuuuude moments either (a) outside or (b) listening to live music, mostly when stone-cold sober. if anything, freaking out about the fact that i can see really far from where i'm at or that that guy just did that, SHIIIIT, makes the existence of god a stupid thing to worry about. why would anyone care about a meddling old man when there are pretty sunsets and guitar solos happening RIGHT NOW

but yeah, i went to a jewish preschool, a catholic elementary school, and public high school. pretty sure i never believed in god.

I always found atheism kind of weird in that seldom does it ever offer proofs as to why God does not exist (don't get me wrong, it often does, but people too often use the inability to prove God's existence as proof of God's absence). I consider myself a pretty devout agnostic, as I think theology is just ridiculous and that we can't live in light of transcendent beliefs. What interests me is why people think there is absolutely no God, rather than think we know nothing of God, I'd be interested in hearing responses.

I suppose I'm more heavily skeptical of god's belief than outright atheist; I cannot prove there's not a god any more than believers can prove that there is one - however, I very strongly suspect that there isn't, and that if there is that He/She/It is far far weirder and more uncomprehensible and dispassionate than the traditional model of a deity would imply. So I'm perhaps not technically an atheist, but that word is probably the best short hand for how I feel. Agnostic is just a bit too weak a term.

Ha! Well, I guess I am consistent...

Agnostic is just a bit too weak a term

I guess I'd call myself 'agnostic' as I suspect we'll never know for sure the nature of ultimate reality, but I'm pretty sure that even if there is a god it has absolutely nothing to do with religion as practiced here on earth...and that's why i also agree 'agnostic' is too weak a term.

My own feeling is that the more we discover about the universe, the less a concept like 'god' will make sense. Maybe we'll discover some kind of underlying primal energy underlyng the universe - but the human concept of 'god' will a poor description, bringing with it loaded baggage of chosen people, omnipotence, omniscience, heaven & hell etc.

I stopped believing in God a while before I stopped being Christian, which might sound weird but I didn't think God was the most interesting or important thing about Christianity anyway. Most Christians I know aren't out for an explanation for how the universe was created, and neither was I, so God always seemed a bit pointless.

I stopped identifying as a Christian last March after hearing yet another person talking about how they envied religious people for getting comfort out of their beliefs. I never really felt comforted or loved by Jesus or anything like that and I just wondered what the point of carrying on with it would be. My beliefs about life are pretty much the same anyway (killing, stealing, lying = bad. Loving your neighbour = good) so nothing really changed.

killing, stealing, lying = bad. Loving your neighbour = good

These are basic societal values which religion partly evolved as a prop to enforce, IMHO. (Well, lying is not necessarily always bad for society, but that's a whole different debate).

ok hello

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiable

anybody who still thinks that there is some need to prove that god doesn't exist please read

thank you

how about: i dont believe in god because that non-belief serves a certain set of functions for me socially/culturally/intellectually

eh, poor phrasing. more like, i dont believe in god because that non-belief serves a certain set of social/cultural/intellectual needs

So then I read some stuff about "spirituality." I can't figure out what the hell it is.

It's code for "I'm an inarticulate buffoon".

I always found atheism kind of weird in that seldom does it ever offer proofs as to why God does not exist (don't get me wrong, it often does, but people too often use the inability to prove God's existence as proof of God's absence).

But you can never prove that something does not exist! You can't prove 100% sure that God doesn't exist, just like you can't prove ghosts, elfs, gnomes, or Smurfs don't exist. Does that mean you should believe in gnomes and Smurfs as well? That's why it's always the responsibility of the one who does claim something exists to prove it, and if no such proof can be found, non-existence is a given.

I don't have anything against agnostics, but intellectually it is a weak position. Of course if you don't care about such issues, it doesn't matter.

my mother and father were protestant and catholic resp'

i wasn't buying into any of it.

ok hello

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiable

I love the way someone's gone to the trouble of illustrating that article with photos of black and white swans.

I don't have anything against agnostics, but intellectually it is a weak position. Of course if you don't care about such issues, it doesn't matter.

Philosophically, that's not actually true. If you don't have intellectual certainty (proof) either way for god's existence, it's quite understandable to call yourself an agnostic.

In philosophy you don't get merit badges for the strength of your views, but for their demonstrable accuracy.

Agnosticism is not a weak position at all imho. It actually shows thought beyond emotivist 'yeay'/'boo' consideration. And as for falsifiability..it depends what your proposition is. If you look at the questions we don't know answers to then it (agnosticism) seems to be a sound contingent position to hold.

Bear in mind there's much blurring and conflation between the edges of agnosticism and atheism (and theism for that matter). I'd say I don't believe but refuse to rule out or claim my belief absolute, as I am unsure as we could ever know. Your atheism, like another's theism, has the arrogance to be absolute.

and Bob Six OTM.

Agnosticism is a weak position philosophically, because you can't prove anything to be non-existent. You can then believe that everything that hasn't proven to exist can still exist, but it is a weak position, because it basically means giving up on thinking about the issue existence, and not caring about all the empirical and other information humans have gathered throughout history. Or you can say that existence needs to be proven, and anything not proven can be considered non-existence, a view which is philosophocally more sound and also in harmony with the empirical evidence we have of the world.

"the issue of existence"

...and not caring about all the empirical and other information humans have gathered throughout history.

Maybe you mean it's culturally a weak position?

I don't personally find the use of 'strong' and 'weak' that useful in philosophy - as if by the strength of view you can somehow force it to be more 'right'.

A lot of people (both religious and non-religious) seem to pride themselves on having strong views on unknowable areas as if it's some kind of virtue in itself.

I don't personally find the use of 'strong' and 'weak' that useful in philosophy - as if by the strength of view you can somehow force it to be more 'right'.

Not more "right", but better argued. Taken to the extreme, agnostic's view would mean that nothing can be proven non-existent, which would render philosophy and other rational knowledge systems sorta pointless. So the on a theoretical level the view itself can't be proven wrong, but the weakness lies in it's refusal to address the issue of existence in light of these knowledge systems. Also, I think it's a philosophically weak position, because the position that it is existence that needs to be proven and not non-existence is philosophically more simple and better in harmony with other common philosophical and scientific principles.

A lot of people (both religious and non-religious) seem to pride themselves on having strong views on unknowable areas as if it's some kind of virtue in itself.

This depends on how you define "unknowable" though. In your view, "unknowable" seem to equal with "unable to prove the existence of". However, in my view, if something can't be proven to exist, it doesn't exist in any meaningful sense of the word, and therefore its non-existence isn't really unknowable.

Agnosticism is an important position. It says to both theists and atheists that they are wrong to make definite claims for their assertions- 'I don't know and you don't know either' .

A lot of theists and atheists are probably agnostic in strict terms: they have a strong belief about the existence or non-existence of god, but they don't really objectively know for sure.

But I've been trying to tell you, you can't objectively know the non-existence of anything, therefore it's not rational to base your belief system on such non-knowledge, because the same non-knowledge applies to Smurfs, gnomes, and anything you can imagine. The world could be just a dream, who knows? Under strict criteria any "truth" is merely a "strong belief": I don't know for 100% sure whether or not God will appear to me tomorrow, even though he hasn't done so in my lifetime, and his appearance would contradict what we know about laws of physics today. Similarly, I don't know whether I might learn to fly if I jump off a cliff tomorrow, even though the laws of gravity have worked for me so far. Basing your knowledge system on the potentiality of the extraordinary, even though that extraordinary would contradict what you've observed about the world so far, is only a milder form of solipsism. The way real world operates, there's no particular point in basing your knowledge system on the potentiality of the extraordinary without any proof at all. It's just philosophical hair-splitting, refusing to have a systematical basis for your knowledge, even though almost everyone operates according to such a systematical basis anyway, even if they want to deny it philosophically.

I believe in fake Tuomas, even though you say he doesn't exist.

Ok - I hear your call to pragmatism: let's shut down any university department wasting time on "philosphical hair-splitting" around epistemology - as there's clearly a consensus on the systematic principles that people operates according to.

(sorry Tuomas - that was unnecessarily sarcastic of me...."i've been trying to tell you" reminded me of someone else and irritation kicked in)

I was raised Catholic, and remember distinctly when first communion time came around and they were telling us that the host literally BECAME the body of Christ. I, as a skeptical 8 year old knew for a fact that this was not the case.

I kept going to church and catechism classes because, hey, what else was I supposed to do, piss off my mom? I always got really frustrated when "because God made it" or "because God says so" were always offered up as the final, end-all, be-all answers to any questions I had. I thought it was a terrible cop-out.

I like to think that I'm not an atheist kind of in the same way that gravity and germs are still theories - it's probably the case, but I'm going to allow for myself to be proven wrong if some definitive proof ever appears.

Atheism and theism are weaker justified philosophical positions than agnosticism. It's not fully an epistemic judgement by any means either, it's just the logical position to hold in light of the indisputable evidence that can be uncontroversially agreed on by all sides, not the position of the extreme skeptic.

lol ur a tard

Contrary to certain assertions made above, agnosticism is the strongest philosophical position.

A well-informed agnosticism changes relative to the current state of knowledge. There are still large enough areas of human ignorance for a creator god to hide inside of, but I'd say we know enough now to rule out any god who doesn't strictly follow the known laws of physics or generally confine Himself to statistical norms.

Therefore, agnosticism does not apply to whether or not to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, or allow room for ideas such as special providence. These may be considered as disproved. What remains unknown are mostly matters where our chains of inference grow so long as to become unreliable, such as the origins of the universe.

It is much more legitimate, intellectually speaking, to recognize the limits of one's knowledge and the beginnings of ignorance than to waltz past these barriers as if they did not exist.

Biology class in 10th grade. We were studying natural selection and other evolution-related stuff and I thought "Huh, this makes sense--oh shit...."

I shouldn't have posted in this thread, because I'm not an atheist. After reading some of the posts, I think the Book of Job would be a good read for some. It's not our place to understand God. We humans are nothing more than a bunch of delusional cows. We can't even prosper in an environment that was seemingly taylor made for us, yet we think we should be able to understand everything.

I'm not saying my faith in God is the strongest, but it towers over my faith in human knowledge.

the idea of god comes from human "knowledge", tho

We can't even prosper in an environment that was seemingly taylor made for us

http://chucksconnection.com/articles/ctlogo02.jpg

btw the rest of your post is stupid as fuck

& ive read the book of job

maybe so, but what's the use of our "idea of god."

I dont understand how some of the most cynical people I know believe in god. How do you accept the concept of a god but pretty much nothing else?

maybe so, but what's the use of our "idea of god."

-- nicky lo-fi, Thursday, 27 December 2007 19:29

exactly!

xpost to me me me

meaning: how do you believe in something with no proof but need to be convinced on every detail of normal daily life?

im not hating, btw. i just dont get it.

& ive read the book of job

-- and what, Thursday, December 27, 2007 7:29 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

you lying sack of shit internet whore, you! ;~)

i find it hard to believe with any certainty in:

any political or economic system's ability to solve major problems

free will

my immediate reality (could be dreming, innit)

so how the fuck am i expected to believe in god?

http://www.chemistryland.com/CHM107/Introduction/BehindScene/LeapOfFaith.jpg

We humans are nothing more than a bunch of delusional cows.

Look, just because you can assess your own limitations and shortcomings doesn't necessarily mean that there is something else out there greater than you. THAT'S an intellectually lazy point to take.

I don't think I've stopped believing in the presence of something larger out there, but I certainly don't believe in religion on a large scale anymore. That came about when I was exposed to othere, more culturally-ingrained versions of Catholicism in college. "Should" is a BAD BAD word for me, in that it typically comes absent a "because" or a "why." And when I was hit with a lot of "shoulds" entirely outside of church, I knew I was pretty much done with paternalistic religions.

I would like to explore Taoism or other religions that acknowledge the presence of a unifying force, but do not force some form or another characterization on that force.

In another life I want to be a Sufi. Taoism seems a little too rigid in its anti-canonicalism, if that makes any sense.

In a 1997 survey in the science journal Nature, 40 percent of U.S. scientists said they believe in God—not just a creator, but a God to whom one can pray in expectation of an answer. That is the same percentage of scientists who were believers when the survey was taken 80 years earlier.
But the number may have been higher if the question had simply asked about God's existence. While many scientists seem to have no problem with deism—the belief that God set the universe in motion and then walked away—others are more troubled with the concept of an intervening God.

"Every piece of data that we have indicates that the universe operates according to unchanging, immutable laws that don't allow for the whimsy or divine choice to all of a sudden change things in a manner that those laws wouldn't have allowed to happen on their own," Greene said.

Yet recent breakthroughs in chaos theory and quantum mechanics, for example, also suggest that the workings of the universe cannot be predicted with absolute precision.

To many scientists, their discoveries may not be that different from religious revelations. Science advancements may even draw scientists closer to religion.

"Even as science progresses in its reductionist fashion, moving towards deeper, simpler, and more elegant understandings of particles and forces, there will still remain a 'why' at the end as to why the ultimate rules are the way they are," said Ted Sargent, a nanotechnology expert at the University of Toronto.

"This is where many people will find God, and the fact of having a final unanswerable 'why' will not go away, even if the 'why' gets more and more fundamental as we progress," he said.

Brian Greene believes we are taking giant strides toward understanding the deepest laws of the universe. That, he says, has strengthened his belief in the underlying harmony and order of the cosmos.

"The universe is incredibly wondrous, incredibly beautiful, and it fills me with a sense that there is some underlying explanation that we have yet to fully understand," he said. "If someone wants to place the word God on those collections of words, it's OK with me."

this is why the whole "why not believe in smurfs as well eh? hahahaha" argument is so thin - the concept of intent behind the universe we observe has some merit and can be seen as at least a beginning of a theory to explain it. no-one explains anything with smurfs.

this is why i consider myself a strong-agnostic.. i don't believe i could know (or comprehend) the nature of a force of intent behind the universe any more than i believe a bluebottle could comprehend interpretative dance.

And the intent behind that intent? Or does that "force of intent" somehow escape the ever-present "why?"?

It's turtles all the way down.

'We humans are nothing more than a bunch of delusional cows.'

"Look, just because you can assess your own limitations and shortcomings doesn't necessarily mean that there is something else out there greater than you. THAT'S an intellectually lazy point to take."

I'm sorry. I wish I could express myself better. I didn't mean to offer that as proof of anything. I'm just saying a person trying to know the existence of God intellectually is setting themselves up for failure. Less than 400 years ago most of the western world still thought the sun revolved around the earth. You see, not being as smart as we think we are is part of our charm. I wouldn't call it "limitations and shortcomings." It's just part of the human condition.

this is why the whole "why not believe in smurfs as well eh? hahahaha" argument is so thin - the concept of intent behind the universe we observe has some merit and can be seen as at least a beginning of a theory to explain it. no-one explains anything with smurfs.

It has merit because 40% of the scientists in the US (a notably religious country) believe in God? What sort of proof is that? It is just as likely that Smurfs created the universe than that god did, because there's no empirical evidence of either theory. That god is the creator might be a bigger "social fact" (because many more people believe so), but on an empirical level there's no difference - both are non-facts. And like Ledge pointed, "everything must have a creator" is no valid proof of god's existence because of two reasons:

1) There's no reason why everything needs to have a creator. This a highly human-centric view: just because humans create things doesn't mean everything must be created by someone/something. You can't generalize laws regarding the universe from human mentalities, there's no necessary correlation at all.

2) If everything must have a creator, and therefore the universe might have been created by god, who created god then? It's more simple to assume that the universe merely exists without a creator, than to assume that god created the universe, and god exists without a creator.

I think it's obvious that the universe has not been in motion for infinity. Therefore it had to have had a beginning?

Imagine how much shorter this thread would be right now if ILX enacted a minimum comprehension of logic requirement.

But hey guys, keep reaching for the stars, I'm sure if we all work together we can figure this one out.

http://schoolnet.gov.mt/earth_universe/images/BigBang3.jpg

Oh lord. I feel like I'm back at the college pub. Only I'm in my bedroom with no beer and no weed.

http://rampant-mac.com/dp_07/Big-Bang-Theory_alt2_1920.jpg

I think it's obvious that the universe has not been in motion for infinity. Therefore it had to have had a beginning?

Even if it had a beginning, why would it need a creator?

To consider the beginning of when anything ever started is kinda weird and confusing, but I like to think that whatever answer there is wasn't dreamed up by a load of Middle Eastern folx 2000 years ago.

if by "weird and confusing," you mean haven't a clue about, then yes. That's what I'm saying. I've got no dogma in me, jack. from what I've seen, those "big-bangers" sure do hold on tight, tho.

"Even if it had a beginning, why would it need a creator?"

however you want to slice it, is fine by me. let's just agree to call it magic. that's fair enough. whatever happened, it was magic.

Hey, I'm pretty sold on the Big Bang (hence my image-posting), but I'm talking about what there was beforehand. It's all well and good to propose an eternal Big Bang-Big Crunch cycle...but what initiated the cycle? It is a mystery.

what's that second image all about ;~)

dudehaveyoueverreallylookedatyourhandsnoseriouslybroimeanreally.jpg

It is another Big Bang representation. It is a lot prettier than most others I've seen. It is almost like there was an artist at work in its creation ^_^

that is pretty sweet. I wonder how that would look on the wall.

"But hey guys, keep reaching for the stars, I'm sure if we all work together we can figure this one out."

Dude, I can feel your pain. That's exactly how I felt about political threads, or even pop celebrity threads. I finally just had to stop opening them.

Even if it had a beginning, why would it need a creator?"

however you want to slice it, is fine by me. let's just agree to call it magic. that's fair enough. whatever happened, it was magic.

-- nicky lo-fi, 28. joulukuuta 2007 10:12 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, I'm pretty sold on the Big Bang (hence my image-posting), but I'm talking about what there was beforehand. It's all well and good to propose an eternal Big Bang-Big Crunch cycle...but what initiated the cycle? It is a mystery.

-- Just got offed, 28. joulukuuta 2007 10:14 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You're both stuck to the human-centric view I explained earlier. If the Big Bang theory is true, then before the Big Bang there wasn't anything. It wasn't caused by any outside force (god or magic or anything), it just happened. There's no reason to assume an origin or an originator for the universe - like I said, if you do that, you're generalizing from a certain human mentality, and there's no reason why universe should function according to this limited view.

Big Bang theory true = assumption of origin of universe, dude.

An origin, maybe, but not any outside originating force.

I wasn't saying there was an outside originating force. I merely said that what preceded the Big Bang is a mystery, with an air of deliberate gaucheness.

There's no reason to assume an origin or an originator for the universe - like I said, if you do that, you're generalizing from a certain human mentality, and there's no reason why universe should function according to this limited view.

better, then? xpost

But the current scientific view is: nothing preceded it. It was the beginning of time too, so nothing could have preceded it. It's not a mystery at all.

(x-post)

John, that sentence wasn't related to the Big Bang theory. We can also assume the universe has merely always existed without an origin, though I guess Big Bang seems a more likely theory based on current evidence.

Well, my "air of deliberate gaucheness" was perhaps an indicator that I'm not really au fait with my quantum mechanics.

I didn't mean literal magic. I meant magical :~)

I'm sorry, but the idea of tigers and jellyfish and the planets and the stars just appearing out of nothing seems magical.

Hey, once *anything* existed ever, there are good, rational scientific explanations for tigers, jellyfish and stars. It's how *anything* ever came to be in the first place that people have trouble getting their heads around.

hey I got a good one. what do the scientists say about venus and uranus rotating in reverse (retrograde) to the other planets. I've always been curious about this one.

correct me if I'm wrong, but nicky, you are basically working the intelligent design/watchmaker analogy angle, right? (not re:retrograde rotation necc.)

they're the 'naughty planets'

John,

I'm honestly trying to keep an open mind to anything. The biggest problem I have with big bang and then evolution is the time. For one thing all those millions of years just for human evolution. Wouldn't there just be a ton of links. Not just a missing link, but a vast variety of them?

The biggest problem I have with big bang and then evolution is the time. For one thing all those millions of years just for human evolution. Wouldn't there just be a ton of links. Not just a missing link, but a vast variety of them?

Ever heard of a thing called "fossiles"?

Tuomas -if smurfs created then universe then they would comfortably fit my concept of 'god'.

what me & nicky are getting at is that there's an incredibly high likelihood that there are things human being will never be advanced enough to understand.. you of all people should appreciate this.

I hate the breezy "hey guys I'm just saying" creationist type.

Don't mind me I'm getting a latte, but how about <outdated/misunderstood/plain wrong criticism> I just pulled of a creationist website?

Whoah got no time to read the actual science here, gotta have an open mind etc etc.

Just fuck off.

guys if we really push hard i'm sure the creationists will give in evench.

guys this thread is boring even to me and i actually argue with dally

Who's Dally?

your mom

But the current scientific view is: nothing preceded it. It was the beginning of time too, so nothing could have preceded it. It's not a mystery at all.

I thought there was some scientific theory that the big bang was an event in a multiverse, rather than a one off?

Whatever the prevailing big bang theory, the origins of the universe are pretty mysterious - even for scientists.

ilx finally completes its journey to becoming a 1994 usenet talk.science thread

When did Stephen Hawking stop believing in his own theories?

I DID A POO IN ME GRANS FLANGE AND THEN ME OTHER GRAN CAME IN AND I DID A WEE IN HER FLANGE THEN GOOD TIMES.

-- GEHOVAH G (15,000,000,000 years ago) Bookmark Link

Tombot otm

I hate the breezy "hey guys I'm just saying" creationist type.

Don't mind me I'm getting a latte, but how about <outdated/misunderstood/plain wrong criticism> I just pulled of a creationist website?

Whoah got no time to read the actual science here, gotta have an open mind etc etc.

Just fuck off.

-- Jarlrmai, Friday, December 28, 2007 1:10 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Link

I don't know what "actual science" you're talking about. I'm sure you don't either. I learned in Science 101 that the evolution of man was only a theory.

"Ever heard of a thing called "fossiles"?"

Scientists admit that the lack of transitional fossils is big problem. so far the best explaination is that sudden dranatic mutations took place to fill in the gaps.

plz to present alternative, falsifiable explanation

or "just fuck off"

PLZ TO REPEAL THREE IMAGE PER POST LIMITATION

BAN CREATIONIST TROLLS

no I want to hear what other competing falsifiable theories were discussed in nicky lo-fi's "science 101"

Still googling "falsifiable".

http://images.quizilla.com/I/Iceangel143/1074265078_turesMAGIC.JPG

http://www.ericdsnider.com/images/dinosaur.JPG

http://www.futureofthebook.org/mitchellstephens/archives/Atheist%20cartoon.gif

I want atheists team loincloth

http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s165/SpaghettiSawUs/gravity-just-a-theory.jpg

people claim that?

Oh, the world!

I've long wondered exactly where and when and why I lost this belief in a God. I've never been a Christian or Catholic or any other religious branch except for there was awhile in say '97-01 when I believed in Pete Townshend's chosen "guru" Meher Baba. Before that I always believed in a god, though it was not specific to any religion at all, and I was not brought up religious in any way all. But many times I've looked back and wondered "well when did it happen exactly that I became atheist?" Because it seemed to me it must have been one certain event in my life at one certain time but it's hard to pinpoint now. I would put it at sometime in 2001, though it was before the Sept. 11th attacks. Just certain life events led me there but I don't recall any one special "ah hah!" moment.

I can say though, that I will never go back. Bush is president and that's reason enough to be atheist in itself, I think, regardless of the more personal issues I dealt with back then that were probably more responsible for leading me to an atheistic viewpoint.

I just don't understand why it didn't all add up to this one clear *BOOM* moment when I decided that. It's very strange.

I learned in Science 101 that the evolution of man was only a theory.

The "only" here is noted. It is clear from that one word that you have not got a clue what a scientific theory really is. Here is your first hint: a theory is not a hypothesis. Please go educate yourself. kthxbye.

I have a theory that today's yuppie 'liberal' hipster is nothing more than a dogma-filled thought fascist. So I guess until someone proves that wrong, I can work with. Am I using theory correctly here? I will continue to keep an open mind, though. ;~)

Everybody else here has a hypothesis that you're an idiot and a troll. The control in this experiment will be everybody who's been smart enough to stay off this thread. The test subject is you. The results so far seem to support the hypothesis. BUSTED, PLAUSIBLE or CONFIRMED? Find out when we return.

Anybody cracked out the science/philosophy is the new religion bullshit yet?

empiricism is for pussies! Staying stupid and ignorant is cool!

I used to be pretty religious as a child. I went to church camp and tried to get saved. I started drifting away from it in my early teens and then the big break happened when I was 15. My mom had broken her ankle a few months before and was using crutches to get around. Gradually, of course, her ankle healed and she got rid of the crutches.

Then one Sunday, we go to church and for some reason my mom's using her crutches again. A typically boisterous Pentecostal service follows, everyone starts speaking in tongues (What language is "sha-la-la-la-FAH-sha-la-la-hum-lye" again? It seems to come up a lot), and my mom stands in the aisle, tosses her crutches to the side, and runs around the interior of the church! Everyone cheered! It was a miracle! Hands flew into the air, the band played louder, the drummer attempted new fills. She made a few more circles around the pews, and then sat down. Afterward everyone came up to her and talked about God's power.

Later that night I heard the muffled sounds of my parents arguing in their bedroom, presumably about the load of bullshit that had occurred earlier, but that was the last time it came up.

A similar moment of disillusion came a few years before in my Sunday school class, taught by my dad. My dad's assistant broke into a tearful story of how he had sex with a donkey in a field one day, and how you shouldn't let Satan take control of your life. Even my dad raised his eyebrows at that one. Later in the same class, probably the best single class of all time, my dad explained why God's curse on Ham justified the troubles that Africans have had throughout time, including slavery. My dad has probably never read anything on colonization, but if he did, he would probably pronounce it "colonel-zation".

I took a look at the threads started by nicky lo-fi. (S)he is a troll.

BTW, nice stories Z S.

what's a troll?

I haven't really decided what I am.

I remember as a child drawing parallels between Santa and God, but I believed mostly out of fear of being wrong. My parents did not force it on me at all.

I decided I hated religion by the time I was 19 or so and not too long after just stopped thinking about it in general.

Do I think there could be a God? maybe...but I just don't care.

Neither do I. I don't put energy into believing in something of which there is no proof. Enough is happening in the real and tangible world.

Whether or not I believe in a god is moot anyway, because there's nothing I can do about it. Praying etc. is a risky investment.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877155,00.html

*_*

"the child should have the freedom to worship as she sees fit, and not be influenced by prospective parents who do not believe in a Supreme Being."

What about if the child wanted to be a Hindu, wouldn't she be adversely influenced by Christian parents? Fuck sake, is even elementary logic completely beyond these people?

That's the kind of person who sees muslims as 'fanatical.'

They're the same idiots who call the court system 'tyrannical' because they allow states to recognize gay marriages (and they never see the irony)

PLZ TO READ THE ARTICLE DATE OF 1970

haha totally missed that

My folks were pagan (I was raised on a goat farm) so I never had any context for God anyway.

But I did get literally kicked out of the cub scouts at age 9 because in order to progress from Wolf to Bear, you have to visit your local "church or synagogue".

I refused to visit either as I was just there for the Oreos and D&D anyway. Couldn't be bothered.

i dont remember ever believing in god. my mom used to take me to church but i think we got kicked out because i wouldnt sit, i just ran around in the back and threw this doll i had. i thought of god in the same sense as a tv show i didn't watch and the best thing i got from religion classes was a sub-mariner comic.

My school made me sit through two hour-long anglican ceremonies twice a week for 13 years. One day some girl told me off for not singing a hymn with everyone else.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/03/atheist-church-sunday-assembly-islington?commentpage=1

Am I the only one cringing at this? Surely not having to sit in a room full of dicks every week feigning kinship is one of the best things about being an atheist?

The irish catholics missed sally o'brien and the way she might look at pew

even a collection to pay for the rental of the church, during which people are invited to turn in the pews and greet those sitting beside and behind them.

omg they have found the absolute worst bits to copy.

"motto: live better, help often, wonder more"

they should get some secular paedophiles in to prove there's no need for god to be an endemic to power structures that foster abuse.

that's like a boring, despiritualised and slightly offensive version of unitarianism (which i am totally down with, and whose main london church is unsurprisingly also based in islington)

if i've not been attending unitarianist ceremonies of late, it isn't coz i've gone off it, it's because i don't like waking at 8am on a sunday

that said, complete inclusivity and tolerance are unitarianism's watchwords, so i gotta be down with this as well i guess, the smug cunts

xp

or explore new paths of psychosis and abuse, get Justin Lee Collins as a guest preacher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADDo5PT_ToI

read this on the BBC earlier, it had this quote at the end

But Bishop Harrison, a Christian preacher for 30 years, says he does not see his new neighbours as a threat, confidently predicting that their spiritual journey will eventually lead them to God.

thought the bish was probably otm there

I thought TED talks were secular equivalent of church services?

money's our new god, man

I never was religious. My parents are from New England and had horrible Catholic upbringings that led them to decide to raise us pretty free from that. So I never went to a church unless it was with some other kids. I remember the only time i ever went to Sunday School i was bored and started drawing a demon, cos i knew that was something taught in the Bible, and i wanted to fit in. I was into drawing monsters at the time, so i did a huge portrait of the face of satan. At the time i had no idea that was a dumb thing to do, so once it started upsetting them i flipped it over and drew Jesus on the back.

Only time i ever thought about belief was when i was 6 or 7 and my parents asked me if i believed in Santa Claus and by then i had enough faith in my rational circuits that i said "I believe in him as a symbol of the spirit of Christmas" or something, not exactly saying I didn't believe in him, but that i understood his purpose. I went through my teens reading books on Zen and pseudo-science and stuff. My mom was friends w some of the Subgenius people so i got heavily into that, and going to school in rural/suburban GA it was essential for rebelling against the small-town Megachurch that had everyone in a daze.

I think i was really 'atheist' during this time, in that i didn't believe in the God defined by pop culture and expressed through politics, etc. I was also severely depressed, suicidal, and manic, and every so often i would get this strange feeling like _I_ was Jesus or something. I would be in such a state that i was literally bringing tears to my eyes about how i was going to save the universe or something. There's a reason they don't prescribe accutane that much anymore.

After getting out of HS and going to college and travelling/reading/exploring/etc I just started realizing a whole other level of stuff that religions had to offer, which has led me to where i am now. I believe in God, but it's a pretty abstract concept. I could talk to a Jesus freak and completely understand every word they say in the context of this abstraction, but everything they say would to them be on a literal dogmatic level that doesn't really have anything to do w my understanding. At any rate I've accepted that there is something greater than the human experience, and that we are all part of that whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are living fully conscious lives or our bodies have long since disintegrated into the heavy elements inside an exploding star ten thousand years in the future.

I never was religious.

Yeah. When I saw this thread revival the first thing that struck me is that the question presumes that a belief in god is a shared starting point for everyone and that anyone disbelieving in god could only arrive there by losing any earlier belief. It would seem to me that infants are not born with any belief system.

Well i think to be a real atheist you need to believe in some form of God in order to believe he doesn't exist.

Age 7. Lived with grandmother who suffered progressive multiple sclerosis, attended Catholic CCE with remarkably dull teachers (you don't need a degree to poke holes in Aquina's proofs), and had figured out that Santa was another adult lie. So it was a trinity of natural "evil", adult credulity, and adult duplicity that drove me over the edge. Carl Sagan came to the rescue in by age 9 to inform me that I wasn't alone.

Atheism seems to me to be more of a political worldview, where actual belief or disbelief in God is incidental. If you agree that social policy should not actually be dictated by supernatural concerns then why isn't that enough?

Well i think to be a real atheist you need to believe in some form of God in order to believe he doesn't exist.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meinong's_jungle

XP enough?! It'd be fuckin AWESOME!

Atheism seems to me to be more of a political worldview, where actual belief or disbelief in God is incidental. If you agree that social policy should not actually be dictated by supernatural concerns then why isn't that enough?

― Philip Nunez, Monday, February 4, 2013 11:29 AM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

+1

atheism is identity politics

I don't understand that point. If atheism is true then that's a reason to try to persuade people of its truth, right? It's better to believe true things than false things.

I think you can agree that supernatural stuff should have nothing to do w worldly politics and still believe in God. Politically that would make me an atheist, tho i don't agree with most atheists on basic cosmological/philosophical concepts.

If atheists go around trying to persuade people of the truth of their viewpoint how is that any different than a Christian or Muslim or whatever doing the same?

HEY LET'S DO THIS AGAIN

Provided that they do it on fair terms, I'm fine with Christians and Muslims trying a lot harder to persuade people. That way they expose themselves to criticism and counter-persuasion.

No one likes to be pestered, scolded, threatened or shamed, whether by evangelicals or atheists. Persuasion ought to be a civilized activity. It often isn't. I think we all agree with these sentiments. If so, there's little more to be said on that head.

XTC, "Dear God", seventh grade

"If atheism is true then that's a reason to try to persuade people of its truth"
if you were to circumscribe atheism to only include people who assert the unprovable claim that there is absolutely no supernatural deity, you might not even get dawkins in that camp.

That statement isn't committed to a definition of atheism. Replace 'atheism' with 'the view that there's probably no God' and I think Dawkins is included.

HEY LET'S DO THIS AGAIN

I lol'd

'the view that there's probably no God'

uh this is not my understanding of Dawkins' position

What is your understanding? I'm thinking of this thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist_Bus_Campaign

there's no "probably"

for example

Dawkins has stated repeatedly the position "there's probably no God". Any scientist would couch their position like that: absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, and there are black swans.

Its one thing to be a skeptic in Northern Europe or Australia, where its non-belief is so common that one hardly pays attention to it. In the U.S., we've had only one openly atheist congressman in our history, and prior to the internet, there were few forums for many atheists in small towns or red states to meet. We had our books, columns in Scientific American, etc., but little in the way of community, and remained for the most discriminated against community of "belief". The situation for skeptics in highly religious developing nations is doubtless worse.

Sure I think Dawkins is strident, and playing to the choir. But its not unlike gay rights advocates chanting "We're here, we're queer, deal with it". For many of us, it reassurance that we're not alone, just as much as its a voice for secular civitas.

I guess he's walked back that certainty since 2006...? (6.9 out of 7.0 on the "scale of doubt" or something?)

i dunno have we ever had a major openly atheist (major) politician, and i'm not sure that it's all that common around europe either tpbh

and lately i've been getting chills about whether or not 'non-belief' is half as common as i'd assumed even in my peers (abortion and end-of-life cases making headlines here lately has the crazies out)

i dunno have we ever had a major openly atheist (major) politician

uh how far back and how far east are we going here

'we'

and lately i've been getting chills about whether or not 'non-belief' is half as common as i'd assumed even in my peers (abortion and end-of-life cases making headlines here lately has the crazies out)

― ben foster five (darraghmac), Monday, 4 February 2013 21:53 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I suspect it's much less common. loads of people aren't churchgoers but get quietly onto the subject and they will speak of their experience of conscience in terms like "some kind of higher power " or even "a relationship with God"

'sin'

"absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence"

It is for the Abrahamic God.

i'm in the minority among people i know in not believing in god... in fact, i haven't met many people at all who don't believe. for some reason this surprises me, i'd think hardcore materialist agnosticism would be more of a thing these days.

It is, I guess it depends on where you're from? Or your situation is anecdotal.

New York City area, experience is people from all walks of life from all over the world.

Oh yeah?? Strange, me too. Though I don't think I know what anyone I talk to believes in that sense. Never asked.

Our Prime Minister's an athiest FFs. And yet she is still dead against gay marriage. GO figure.

Also:

When I saw this thread revival the first thing that struck me is that the question presumes that a belief in god is a shared starting point for everyone and that anyone disbelieving in god could only arrive there by losing any earlier belief.

This. It struck me immediately as well, and other people commented on the thread originally. It is a curious concept that this worldview is so common on the US. It just isnt, here, in my experience. And I say that as someone who *did* grow up around churchy la femmes.

Could be directed to those who were once theists specifically.

I've met many people who grew up in non-religious households. I know a few who grew up in households where the parents were clearly agnostics or atheists. My impression is that that's sort of rare, but I don't really know. I grew up in exurban Midwestern US, so atheists were certainly a curiosity for a lot of kids.