Why am I an atheist?

For any one to be a real atheist they must know everything that is possible everywhere.

Now lets ponder for a moment that all you atheist only know half of what is possible, Then would it not be possible for G-d to exist in the unknown area of your lack of knowledge.

But hey I will still pray for you all as I should as the Bible says to, just think if I am wrong I have only tried to live my life as the Bible said to, but if you are wrong oh well I will not state the obvious to you again.

May the heavenly Father bless all those that do not believe with visions and dreams of what is to come soon, In Jesus name I pray Amen

Would anyone else like to share their opinions of the reasons for myself or others being atheists? I'd like to see as many opinions on here as possible as to people ideas as to why I, and others like me, are atheists.

I don't know about you but i'm an atheist because:
1)I haven't found anything to prove that there is a god.
2)I don't like the "believe in me or you will go to hell" message of love.
3)If god does exist and he created humans it's a proof that he is not perfect.
4)he is not the loving father the religions are trying to present.
5)i don't understand the need to believe that there is an invisible guy in the sky,that i must worship and do horrible things in his name,that watches me 24/7.Where is free will when you must be afraid all the time not to sin?

And finally
I consider myself smart

I could go on forever.My mother is very,very religious and we have this conversation all the time.Why am i an atheist?She is trying to persuade me to start believing.The thing is that as long as i remember myself i never believed in god.Since i was a child i didn't like the whole religion thing.So maybe there is more to this than the realisation of the "god does not exist".

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


I don't know. For me the biggest reason is that there's no solid evidence supporting the existence of god(s). In fact the more we learn about the Universe the less room there is to stick a deity. So that would be my guess, the lack of evidence, perhaps coupled with logical arguments against religious claims, would be the reason you are an atheist.

Alrighty then. You are an atheist because you haven't had experiences and if you have had a few you don't know what to make up them and you really don't see a reason in the first place why you should even make the attempt to connect them to a God-head of any type. Any old way you slice & dice it is a total failure of communication.

All the ancient texts are built upon experiences. With you, I'm not quite sure if you are more bothered by yourself not having experiences or if it bugs you that others do. Likewise, why should I give a flying flip at what you believe or why you believe, but for sure, you keep starting threads and I keep reading them. My personal impression is that there are three camps of people; believers, non-believers and fence-sitters.

I'm thinking you are a fence-sitter because you have had some experiences and you want to understand the bigger picture - if it is possible.

So what do you think? Am I even close?

...i was born this way...

...heard all the white/christian stories before i was 10... found some value in some of the stories but never the hocus pocus stuff for the same reason i never believed that coyote really lassoed the moon or that santa claus was real...

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul

Why do you think I'm an atheist?

Because once you reach the state of mental maturity and experience that is the only logical conclusion to reach?

FTR I'm an eclectic pagan with agnostic tendencies and am very skeptical of even the material I look up. In fact that label is probably a misnomer. Though I do tend to think that being an atheist is the reasonable conclusion to reach logically (or at least being agnostic).

I despise religion in government which dictates all sorts of absurdity, so my championing of those who actually critically think is much more ardent than ever before.

Well, there's actually been a greater amount of diversity of opinion on here than I was expecting, and some ideas may have actually pointed out exactly why I am an atheist. But I would like to hear more ideas.

1)They perceive God isn't doing anything to help humanity, so he does not exist.
2)Historical evils and hypocrisy in organized religion.
3)Belief in Evolution.
4)Non-belief in the bible.
5)The attitude of I don't want to be accountable to a higher power (God)
6)Witnessed atrocities.
7)Apathy

reply to post by kinglizard

If I had to guess why madness is the way he is... I would guess he feels God let him down in some way...or "didn't show" at some point or situation in his life.

I think you are wrong about madness. But I am that sort of atheist.

Why I am an atheist

I am an atheist because I cannot bear the thought of a God who

• allows evil, death and suffering to exist when, in His omnipotence, he need never have allowed them into the world at all;
  
  
• punishes human beings for things He knew they would do before He created them;
  
  
• levies eternal punishments for temporal offences; and
  
  
• has an ego so fragile He demands worship from His inferiors and damns those who will not grovel

I was born Christian and grew up believing. When I grew mature enought to understand that the God I believed in was guilty of the above charges if He existed--and that none of the extenuating arguments put forward for Him by his believers was worth a damn--I promptly became an atheist. That such a God should exist was not only morally repugnant to me, it just wasn't plausible.

So, yes, God let me down. More accurately, the concept of God let me down. The clay feet became too obvious to ignore.

Philosophy and science have been helpful in providing intellectual support for my atheism, but were not the cause of it. That honour goes to my rejection of the moral absurdity inherent in the idea of God.

reply to post by truthiron

I suppose your user name says something but not for me to interpret. But are you really an Atheist? I worked with one several months and every day he would press the subject to get my views on God and then his denouncing God. Well one day I came up on him unnoticed and a tree limb of a tree he was cutting up sprung back and whacked him a terrible blow in the family jewels and he cursed up an unholy storm. I was about to walk on up but stopped because he had dropped to his knees and praying for God to forgive him for using His name in vain. Well I slipped away and never let him know I over heard. He was a naturalist and worked to stay in very good health and that was very good. That occurance always made me wonder and does to this day.

This story has the unmistakable flavour of a religious tract. Frankly, I don't believe a word of it.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


How about this, it is a copy & paste but covers all aspects of atheism. (I think)

1) What is an atheist?
An atheist is someone who does not think there is a God.
Atheism has no set of common beliefs. But prominent secular thinkers generally agree on pursuing the common good on the basis of compassion, and the advancement of science to increase our knowledge about the world.

2) Why do atheists not believe in God?
Because there is no evidence for God. The best that can be said for the proposed evidence is that God is one possible answer among other possibilities. But mostly, the proposed evidence is speculative, insufficient, and self-contradictory.

3) Are we not supposed to have faith?
The problem with faith is one can have faith in anything. If we don't use evidence as the criteria by which we choose what to believe, then reality becomes a preference. Obviously, reality is not always what we want it to be, so faith is an invalid basis for belief.

4) How can you know there is no God?
We can't. But we can't really KNOW fairies don't exist either. That's not a reason to believe in them, is it? It's all about considering the evidence, evaluating the claims, and making the reasonable judgment.

5) Then where did the world come from?
We don't know that it came from something. And if it did, we don't know that this thing is a god or an intelligent being.
When faced with the unknown, "we don't know" is the only intellectually honest answer.

6) How could such a sophisticated world not be the result of an intelligent creator?
If a sophisticated thing requires a creator, then who or what created the sophisticated creator? If we don't need a creator for the creator, then we don't need a creator for the world. Logically, we can't have it both ways.

7) Is atheism dogmatic?
Like all people, some atheists may be dogmatic, and some are open-minded people who simply have an opinion that could be right or wrong.

8) If atheists are wrong, won't they go to hell?
And if Muslims are right, Christians go to hell. If Catholics are right, evangelicals go to hell. The idea that life is a religious test, or that someone deserves eternal punishment for believing the "wrong" things or having the "wrong" opinion, may indicate that God and hell were invented to instil fear and control people.

9) What about the Bible and the Quran?
They contain stories about Virgin births, talking snakes, flying horses, talking ants, and people getting out of their graves and walking around. There is no evidence for any of those mythical-sounding stories, and no real reason to take them seriously. Many ancient texts have similar stories, so neither Bible or Quran are unique in that respect.

10) Don't people need God to be good?
Being good out of fear of God or hell is not moral but immature. One would hope that people don't need a "commandment" from a God to refrain from killing and stealing. Historically, both believers and non-believers committed atrocities.

Thankfully there is no "Church of Atheism"

All the best.

Ok, now that there have been a lot of speculations...here's the truth.

Why I am an atheist.

I'm an atheist for a singular reason. It has nothing to do with evolution, as I accepted evolution when I was previously a theist. It has nothing to do with my thoughts of the deities that I've read about, because I still believe Hitler existed and he was quite the horrid figure. I didn't have any negative experience where I expected a deity to intercede, and I used to think that I did in fact have religious experiences.

So why am I an atheist?

Easy, there's no evidence.

It is a position known as the null position. It's just that I won't accept something until evidence is provided.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
Ok, now that there have been a lot of speculations...here's the truth.

Why I am an atheist.

I'm an atheist for a singular reason. It has nothing to do with evolution, as I accepted evolution when I was previously a theist. It has nothing to do with my thoughts of the deities that I've read about, because I still believe Hitler existed and he was quite the horrid figure. I didn't have any negative experience where I expected a deity to intercede, and I used to think that I did in fact have religious experiences.

So why am I an atheist?

Easy, there's no evidence.

It is a position known as the null position. It's just that I won't accept something until evidence is provided.

So, just to play devil's advocate (haha), when you were a theist, were you under the impression that there was evidence?

reply to post by PeasantRebellion


Nope, I actually accepted it as I wasn't even aware that there were people who didn't believe in a deity until I was about...13? I grew up in a fairly religious Catholic household in a neighborhood of Christians and Jews with a purely Catholic family. I didn't know that "none of the above" was an option.

Though when I realized for myself..,yes, I thought of atheism before I heard of other people not believing in a deity...I started trying to rationalize my belief in a deity. I even remember one very specific night in which I laid in my bed and first said aloud "There isn't a God" (or something to that effect). It was a terrifying ordeal because I had all the social pressure and family pressure and tradition and hadn't known of anything but theism for my life up to that point.

In fact, I think the thing that made me most realize that "none of the above" was the most logical choice was when I started reading up on other religions and mythology. Before that I knew a lot about mythology, but I had never connected it to religion, as I didn't want to be blasphemous. I also knew very little about other religions. I knew a lot about Judaism, but that one is a bit easier to learn when you're a Christian.

Those who are not religious are this way becasue they know lies when they hear it, maybe if the churches stopped they might be open to religion

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
So why am I an atheist?

Easy, there's no evidence.

Ha ha, so I got it right!

I'll be round to pick up my prize later, lol.

What I find disturbing in the answers of the obviously religious people in this thread, is that the word 'Evidence' is rarley mentioned in their list of what would make you or a person an Athiest.

Does evidence, and I am talking real evidence here, have no place in the mind of a thiest?

reply to post by _Highlander_

Does evidence, and I am talking real evidence here, have no place in the mind of a thiest?

Oh there is evidence I have studied it for decades, but faith trumps that anyway.
Jesus told us the true power of pure faith the size of a small seed, what it could actually accomplish.

Actually atheists do have faith, but it rests with the scientific theory on the origin of life and it's development on our planet, look what it has done for them.

reply to post by Blue_Jay33


What evidence are you talking about?

Just to pre-empt, the following is NOT real evidence, nor will it ever be ;

Faith.

The Bible or any religious text.

Subjective emotion or experience.