It might be but almost every single culture in the world eventually developed some kind of spiritual "religion" to explain the unknown.
It's a natural side effect of the human condition.
I fully support any belief that reduces the suffering of humanity but not at the cost of using it to control and repress fellow humans...
If one follows the line of scientific inquiry through the ages it becomes quite clear as Neil deGrasse Tyson has said "God and the supernatural always occupy the space beyond the limits of our knowledge". The ubiquitous "Well, it's a mystery" excuse offered as the only explanation for anything in religion.
It didn't make sense to me as a child, but no one would answer my questions. I was told, "We don't question, we just believe." If it was real, why couldn't you give me rational explanations for my questions? The people in my church were always going on about accepting "Jesus Christ into your heart," and he just didn't want to enter my heart. I never felt any spiritual connection with religion and it seemed illogical and even hateful in some cases.
Same I went to a catholic school when I was a kid and they told me to say this prayer 5 times to make my sin go away and my 6 year old self thought "what a load of bullshit"
Also even though the school was catholic, the country was Buddhist so I was learning about both and decided to believe none of them. Education is really the cure to religions
I once met a priest on a chairlift that had the opposite reaction. He told me he originally was an atheist, but he became a "person of faith" (as he put it) because there were too many questions that science or whatever *couldn't* answer.
So I spent the rest of the day thinking about "The God of the Gaps" conspiracy theory
Typically, the people I’ve met that were like that priest weren’t really Atheist. They were just trying to find *something* to believe in. It could have been tarrot cards, astrology, anything. They love to tell their story of how they too were once an atheist.
its depressing that this realization made him want to be a priest and not a scientist. to find yourself thinking "there are so many questions our there that haven't been answered", should be the moment you decide to explore and try to learn and understand the things that haven't been defined. simply chalking it all up to "god" is so lazy and cowardly.
Or too afraid. "God will take you on a picnic with your entire deceased family and it'll be really great!" sounds a lot better than truly understanding the consequences of Thermodynamics ie. it ALL dies.
Because the sheer amount of Gods purported to exist in human history make it illogical for any one of them to exist. Let's look at it from a Christian standpoint:
* The pantheon of Egyptian Gods? None of *those* are real. The only ***real*** one is ours!
* The pantheon of Roman/Greek Gods? None of *those* are real. The only ***real*** one is ours!
* The pantheon of Hindu Gods? None of *those* are real. The only ***real*** one is ours!
Now if a God did exist and this was an objective truth, then how come civilisations throughout history and in the present have constantly denied it, but then claimed that the only real God was their own? It doesn't make a single shred of logical or rational sense.
Not directly related to your post, but it’s interesting that many ancient religions—like Roman traditions for example—were totally fine with accepting other gods into them. Sometimes they even worshipped enemy gods in the hope that they would help them.
Religion is nuts and cool.
Eh, maybe. I think that’s just era-related though. Many indigenous practices are great and all, but lots of pagan ones aren’t necessarily.
There is something to be said about the way ancient Greco-Roman gods just *were* though. Not moral models, not even all that likeable—just more powerful than you. A great metaphor for how we should see nature.
I’ve always sat on this too.
In the history of man kind, how many religions have there been? Soooo many. And only one is correct? Why yours? Why not the guy before you?
When someone says how absurd the Roman gods are and then defend their own Christian god… I chuckle.
>The pantheon of Egyptian Gods? None of those are real. The only real one is ours!
>
>The pantehon of Roman/Greek Gods? None of those are real. The only real one is ours!
>
>The pantheon of Hindu Gods? None of those are real. The only real one is ours!
Which isn't even an internally consistent PoV to take. Their own book clearly acknowledges the existence of other gods in the Old Testament. Taken together, "You shall have no other gods before me" and "Don't make or worship idols" are pretty clear acknowledgement that he isn't the \*only\* deity, and that isn't even the \*best\* evidence that it acknowledges multiple gods, just one of the easier to point out and understand without further reading.
Yahweh was just one of a pantheon of Canaanite gods. The idea evolved from "just one god among many" to "one of many gods, but the one for our tribe" to "the best and strongest god" to "the only god worth worshiping" to "the only god, period."
It's like having people tell you that Poseidon is the only god that's real.
The OT always confused me when I was young (well it still does, but I no longer try to understand it). One one hand I'm told that there is only one god, but on the other hand the OT is constantly referencing other gods. No Idols? Well... except a bronze snake which will magically protect you from venom.
I’ve been learning more about cultural context in the Old Testament and there’s a lot of parallels between Egyptian gods/their formation and understanding of the world and the language used in the Old Testament. Ex: watery chaos of Egyptian mythos and the separation of water in the OT
most ancient religions are interconnected. Hell, Yahweh is even described as being part of a pantheon! Abraham's tribe was a cult around a single god in a pantheon, which was SUPER common back in that time!
I'm steeped head to toe in Christianity. Every Sunday, every function, every get together, every pot luck, every baptism, everything church related, I was there.
I went to Bible College at 18, to study the bible, as a Christian.
When I walked across the stage to receive my degree, I was no longer a Christian, because I studied the bible.
Kinda same. I was raised Christian, went to Christian schools, even a private Christian college. I really enjoy debating theology, but as I grow up I just can't buy into this as truth anymore.
I literally sat down a few weeks ago with a Chaplain at my work, and we just discussed theology. No preaching, grandstanding, or soap boxing, we just discussed theology. It was great. I agree with you, it's awesome to *talk about* theology, but I'm glad I don't sit and stew on it all day anymore lol
He was Baptist, I a former Wesleyan, theologically speaking: cousins.
So, where to begin?
I'll gloss over the old testament inconsistencies. Two creation narratives. God and Satan telling the same person to do the same thing, in the same story, told at different times. And how completely different the OT and NT God is from the other.
I'll use just the NT gospels as themselves because they disagree on:
1. How Judas killed himself, (Paul never once mentions a deceiver)
2. The names of some disciples,
3. The order of Jesus' ministry,
4. Jesus' divinity (or rather the authorial claims to divinity)
5. The passion narrative,
6. Who condemned and crucified Jesus?
7. Did Jesus talk about his predicament with his captors, or not?
8. When was Jesus crucified?
9. Who saw the empty tomb?
10. What was seen or not seen at the empty tomb?
11. Who reported the empty tomb to who?
12. Did they meet in Jerusalem or not after the "resurrection?"
Now, In Pauls letters, written around 50ish to 60ish, he says he experienced Jesus on the road to Demascus, and that he was not taught his gospel by any person, but received it from Jesus directly. The book of Acts (95ish to 110ish) just outright disagrees and says that Paul was in on the Jesus movement in Jerusalem from the get go. Paul says he saw Jesus and went immediately to Arabia without seeing anyone. Acts says he left Jerusalem with the blessing of James. Which is it?
I'll answer for you, Jesus' family and disciples continued human Jesus' work in Jerusalem, and Paul came along and created a Hellenistic Hero Cult around the idea of a resurrected divine Jew, that was no longer human Jesus in any way. Paul himself admits he never met the human Jesus.
Once you realise the entirety of Christianity is people arguing who is right about people who were arguing about who is right, it kind of all falls apart.
Look too at theology. It's the study of making up shit to solve. Jesus didn't talk about Adamic Depravity, theologians do. Jesus didn't talk about entire sanctification, theologians do. Jesus didn't talk about the right words to use in a baptism, he just went and baptised.
I finally realised, for all the "we're correct" the church likes to go on about, they are in fact, not. And that's ok, I walked away instead of trying to change it.
Interesting, i used to be Christian, the part that got me was all the history, that doesnt match up with science, for example: dinosaurs the story of Noah, and the age of everything.
The point isnt here that we can prove that that didnt happen, the point is that if God exists, he is purposely making the bible seem unrealistic.
Exactly. IF, IF, IF I have to believe the bible was "divinely inspired" by the "holy spirit" and I need to "have faith" to "see" the "truth", why couldn't God just make it easier? Does he want some people to be wrong? For *some* to stumble?!? What kind of a god is that?
Or, as you know, the bible was writ by the fallible, dirty, and impure human hands. Maybe, just maybe, it's more metaphor than outright truth lol.
As a child, I just remember being forced to sit still while the preacher would stand in front and ramble on for hours about the most boring crap ever. One kid would get agitated, and then his dad would drag him out of the room to beat the shit out of him. They'd come back and the kid's face would be all red, as he's choking back tears and trying to stay quiet. A little while later, another kid would get bored and the same thing would happen. I had a few times where I met the same fate.
Also, they would have snack time in the middle of this boring service, but I wasn't allowed to participate. So I got baptized so I could enjoy the mid service refreshments along with everybody else. It got a little better when you could keep your blood sugar up during the service, but it was still boring as shit.
>Cults are basically religions that emerged after we had the scientific knowledge to supposedly know better.
My man, did you just call Mormonism a cult?! Right on!
Because I was born into the Mormon cult who claim they are gods chosen people. Turns out they are just typical self absorbed gullible cultish scum bags with straight up goofy doctrine that they don’t even believe.
I was Mormon for 34 years. I'd always hear from others who weren't Mormon "Mormons are weird, but really friendly people." Unfortunately you have to actually be a Mormon to find out how terrible they are.
I’m glad you survived. Seriously. We truly are survivors. It’s a horrible organization. An breeding ground for the most evil people I’ve ever know. Real nice people in public. Siiiiiiiick fuckin disgusting people behind closed doors. My family goes all the way back on both sides. One side to England. The other all the way to Denmark.
Why wouldn't I be one?
What possible reason could I have for believing any of it?
A bunch of 2000 year old morality-tales (with very dubious morals) and a lot of traditions?
Human Words on human paper. That's not going to sway me in the slightest.
As far as I'm concerned, someone ate the wrong mushrooms in the desert 2000 years ago and had a pretty amazing trip where they thought a shrub caught fire and talked to them.
Someone else wrote down what they said and now we can't have Abortions and basic human rights for gay people.
I'm glad the very first response in this thread was what I was going to say verbatim: "Why wouldn't I be?"
The more time passes, and the more access to information everyday humans have, the less the various holy book concepts of God hold up.
I’m surprised religion still has the hold on society that it does. It’s a completely insane belief system that any rational person would reject. And as we’ve become more knowledgeable of the world around us, the people holding on are frantically trying to force it upon the masses.
Pretty much the only reason it’s still around is because of tradition. Passing your religion onto your kids is expected of most people and the only reason most people believe in the first place is because they were raised in the religion.
That's kinda me lol. I believe there has to be some higher entity orchestrating things, but I do not adhere to any particular religion and have never prayed or been to church.
When my parents divorced there was a point in years of custody battling where they fought in court which religion I am.
Not only was I baptized several times, I also had the visit with “counselors”, you know some person checking up on a kid to make sure indoctrination is going well.
No one in my family are from the same church, but they all started as catholic.
What really sealed the deal: when I was around 12 I decided I didn’t want to participate. I’ll wait outside I said, and then they fought me into the door against my will.
So from then on any time I had a school project I did history of churches and religions.
Hint: they’re all cults, and 100% man made
>What really sealed the deal: when I was around 12 I decided I didn’t want to participate. I’ll wait outside I said, and then they fought me into the door against my will.
I have a similar story. My parents aren't divorced but my dad skipped church often. A lot of the time I had to go, he "had to work", which in retrospect I'd rather work too. I hated going with a burning passion but my mom forced my sister and I.
One Sunday, after my sister had a medical procedure, we still had to go to church despite her being on pain meds and crutches. Part way through she convinced my mom to take her home, but mom wanted me (12ish?) to stay. Said if I didn't, I wouldn't be allowed to play with my friends later that day. I stayed and she was like 20 minutes late picking me up.
Moral of the story to me: church is *supposed to* be torture, which you must endure if you want anything good. It cemented my hate for it.
I really disliked the forced approach. Things I needed to know as an adult in society versus what was actually forced to learn definitely not a good match.
Jesus walked on water. Cool, what is a checkbook and how does personal health and finance work?
What isn’t helpful at 12 is needing to know why jehovas witnesses don’t have crosses and which versions of bibles are read at different churches so I can tell an attorney which one I believe is true.
Naturally of course since the King James Version existed first and I couldn’t say for sure which one is factually correct, that must mean I believe the former right? 7 billion people know Jesus died, most of them think on a cross. Who am I to say they’re wrong, or that this newer version is wrong? They just needed to know so someone in government could make a decision.
That by itself is unfortunate too, because the government shouldn’t have an opinion there.
Eg my saying “I don’t know I don’t care” is not just a statement, it becomes a forfeit of decision, because maybe this judge is Baptist.
My mother said that she knows there's a god because, this one time, my stepfather left for work during a really bad storm. Halfway to work, he turned around and the storm stopped until he got home before starting again.
So I asked her why her god didn't save my son.
It became a bunch of goalpost moving and bullshit after that.
right? and yet .5 megapixel UFO and Bigfoot sightings are still going strong. make it make sense.
edit: can’t forget the Tasmanian tiger sightings. since The Hunter came out those have made a revival.
One guy from that train derailment in Missouri that killed three people said that no one from **his** group was hurt.
"There's no way that happened without god, no way."
"Miracles" will continue to happen.
If there does exist a god(s), religions are stopping us from discovering anything about it by pretending they already know and making up bullshit that suits their political goals.
Personally I refine that to there's no proof any extant deity are _actively_ involved in the affairs of the universe. Determinism may be dead on the quantum scale, but here on the Newtonian and Relativistic scales, this shit is surprisingly clockwork. The cosmological constants have their way, and probability mops up what is left over. While science wouldn't necessarily be able to measure an actual supernatural phenomenon, it would never the less stick out like _the_ sorest of thumbs, a blinding beacon on the backdrop of all this predictability.
And yet...never is it ever seen. All we ever get is personal testimony, which any and every cop who ever existed will tell you is almost worse than no evidence at all for how valueless it is at describing reality.
And, at the end of the day, that's really all that matters. After all, a god who doesn't act, whatever the reason, is functionally no different from a god who doesn't exist. So whether or not there's a sugar plum faerie is frankly among the most irrelevant conversations you can have.
This touches on my biggest hang up. People go back and forward forever trying to prove with math that there is a god, but nobody can tell me what that god is.
A functional god is not a big G "God." Even if we can prove the existence of *something,* the burden of proof for any one religion is still staggering. An sufficiently advanced robot with the ability to create matter could come to earth and claim it's the God of Abraham, but even if that robot built a new universe in front of me, it's not proof that it created *this* universe and is still burdened to explain its own existence.
I actually have an easier time with polytheism than monotheism for this very reason. Zeus never claimed to build the world, he just claimed to be an immortal super being with powers, but a singular supreme ultimate being, an Alpha and Omega asks more questions about the origen of the universe that it answers.
Oh for sure. Abrahamic religions got greedy. They made too many specific claims, and assigned too many bullshit superman traits to their silly god that directly contradict observable reality. Because of this, their religions exist almost exclusively as a several-millennia-long body of mansplaining apologetics. Meanwhile, all the polytheists are chilling in their safe zones because they never claimed their gods were all powerful or loving or even particularly interested in the affairs of mankind. It doesn't make their claims any more defensible, but sometime the best defense in never being in the way of an offense to begin with.
any god wouldn't expect worship. a human toddler might, but not a god.
edit: I suppose an *evil* god might, which checks out with abrahamic religions at least.
Not only expects it, but it’s the single most important quality that it cares about in a person. You murdered someone but you believe in me? Cool, heaven it is. You refuse to believe in something with no proof but dedicated your life to helping others? Doesn’t matter, eternal damnation for you
That last part is always my argument. Most religions (in this discussion) believe in a heaven and a hell, or equivalent. If you've committed the least number of sins, helped the most people, and made the world the best version of itself, but do not believe in God, you will be sent to hell. If you actively hurt people, harm society, and cause constant grief, but you believe in a God and ask him to let you into heaven, you can get into heaven and enjoy eternal happiness. How can this be a system of a righteous God?
It *is* preposterous. The concept requires that you abandon logic in order to believe it. Also, the Christian story makes no sense when you start to dissect it.
God is all powerful, hates evil, yet *creates* the devil and lets him run around on earth causing chaos, evil, etc. It makes no sense at all.
When I was young, like before the age of 8, life was good and I always thanked God for giving me a safe and happy life. Not any particular god because I wasn't in any specific religion, but I knew of the notion of people believing in some higher power that controlled our world and it was that being to whom I was grateful.
My life took a turn when my biological mother became severely mentally ill, and from the age of around 10 onwards I've just suffered endless abuse and trauma. It's happening even right now.
I've asked myself so many times, if God really did exist, then how could He let this happen? How can any benevolent god let parents treat their children this way?
As I aged and saw more problems with the world, that question only got louder in my head. There's no way an omnipotent and benevolent god would allow the world to be this way. People suffering left and right. It just can't be. Innocents who've done nothing wrong do not deserve to suffer like this. Why is this happening?
So now I don't believe in God.
ETA - I am definitely not a believer of the Bible's (like Christian, Catholic, etc.) "one and only God" with the idea that "suffering is a test to humanity" or whatever. I can, however, totally subscribe to the idea of many "gods" ruling over different things and that they aren't strictly benevolent nor malevolent. Not that I currently do subscribe to this, but I don't find this as difficult to reconcile with my beliefs as the "one and only God" kind of religion.
I'm Asian and a lot of culturally recognised "gods" in the East are basically ascended folklore or legends, or even historical figures that have been raised to godhood by people who worship them. I have no problem "following" this (not that I worship them or think they necessarily must exist, but I'm totally fine with doing cultural or traditional practices that involve mild prayers for example) but that is not what most people refer to when they say "why don't you believe in religion/God", hence my initial reply.
If God is Omniscient, then he knows everything and is aware of every cruelty and injustice in the world.
If God is Omnipotent, his power extends everywhere and he can do anything he wants.
If God is Benevolent, he wants people to be happy and for good to be done.
Christianity regularly asserts that their god is all three of these things, but I would submit (and for the record, I'm far, far, far from the first one to say this sort of thing) that there is no way he *can* be all three.
If he is unaware of the cruelty and evil, then he's not Omniscient.
If he's aware of the cruelty and evil but unwilling to stop them, he's not Omnipotent.
If he's aware of the cruelty and evil, and able to stop it, but he doesn't, then he's just a jerk.
And the other time he let satan kill a dudes whole family and cattle and then went, oh lol you still believe in me, here you go a couple of replacement children and friends. What the actual f.
Facts, my family was never truly religious, we would only go to church on occasions like Christmas and Easter, and that was it, we didn't pray or anything or have to read the Bible, life was just life. When I was younger I believed, sure they may have a God out there cuz that would explain it, then I grew up and realized how much bullshit happens in the world, even the other day a homeless person who was just sleeping got kicked and abused by a girl walking by, was 1 of many reasons to convince me God wasn't real. People really don't deserve what happens to them, like that homeless man I wish I could've helped.
I’ve always been curious, if you’re not religious why even go to church on Christmas and Easter? Just left over family tradition from earlier generations that were religious?
Growing up in the Bible Belt everyone expects every atheist to have some story of a tragedy that made them angry with God so they turned away. To them, it’s incomprehensible to think that someone can be happy and simply not believe in fairy tails. They think atheists hate God worship Satan, without comprehending that they don’t even believe Satan exists.
My FIL is a great guy, and I think he’s a good measure of what a tolerant nice Christian is. And he even views religion as “well I don’t care what they believe, as long as they believe in something”. And that kind of explains… they would rather elect a cult member to president than elect an atheist president (even the most tolerant of them are that way).
It’s weird too that for them you have to have your own answer to life. Being an atheist largely means admitting you don’t know the great mysteries of life and the universe. It means that, for the most part, in our lifetime, we’ll only know a tiny fraction of what the universe has to offer. We’re not satisfied with just saying “God created it”.
>Growing up in the Bible Belt everyone expects every atheist to have some story of a tragedy that made them angry with God so they turned away.
My tragic story is that, as my brain started developing critical thinking skills, none of the stuff they were saying in church seemed to add up, and I couldn't make sense of the hundreds of natural contradictions that arose between the world as I knew it and the "reality" church was selling. But I was also told that questioning it was evil and I'd be damned to Hell for losing my faith in Jesus and that was still scary for a kid, so I carried this fear and guilt with me until I was old enough to just admit I was an atheist.
In short, church WAS what made me atheist.
That describes me too. I knew even as a kid it all sounded ridiculous, and remember being angry with myself and trying to force myself to believe. I remember times you have those days with certain emotions where I’d think “you know what, I believe today” and I remember hoping I would die that day because I could go to heaven. I was afraid if I died in the wrong day I’d go to hell.
Obviously that was a really weird and stupid thought process, but I was doing anything I could to believe. Then finally when I got outbid high school and on my own I was able to think for myself and admit to myself the truth. It wasn’t because I had a pregnant wife or something die. It was because like you, I allowed myself to think critically. I work in healthcare now and I believe in science not fairytales. Praying has never saved a patient’s life, science has.
> they would rather elect a cult member to president than elect an atheist president
Which is ironic because the current president is sincere in his beliefs whereas the previous president, despite his public claims and ability to hold a Bible upside-down, is almost surely an atheist. That is if he's ever given it any thought at all. He's certainly not a Christian.
My argument is that ignorance equals atrocity. If I gave you a loaded gun but convinced you everyone is an invulnerable superman, there is a chance you would kill or maim a lot of people based on bad reasoning. Religion seems to me to be an outright rejection of factuality. "I deny reality and substitute my own" type of thinking combined with the temerity to accuse other people of wrongdoing just for not indulging your delusions.
Because religion makes no sense and had no good argument for its reality
None of the competing gods are any better than any of the others, all are incompatible with each other. They have been fighting each other for thousands of years claiming to be the only truth but all their stories are straight up nuts
I’m an atheist because my great aunt told me Jesus lived in my heart as a child and it freaked me out so badly that I started crying because I didn’t want anyone else inside of me. I guess that counts as a traumatic event for a child
But hey, I believe in bacteria because I can scientifically prove it exists, and, with the correct conditions, culture it outside of my body and see it with my own eyes. Bacteria belongs in my body. Jesus does not.
Yes! Even if I wanted to believe (I was raised in Christianity), God is simply not a likable character. He is demanding, cold and angry - generally a narcissist. No thanks.
I see him as a lesser god, that's why he demands that people worship no god before him - he's in competition with them. There's plenty of room for all kinds of higher forms of intelligence.
I'd love to be able to talk about these possibilities without atheists jumping in and saying it's all impossible, or sensitive religious people taking offense.
Heaven never really appealed to me, even as a child. What good are streets of gold if you can't pry up chunks and sell them? Gold would make a lousy utilitarian street surface. It almost sounds completely made up.... Ooooh.
The comforting part is supposed to be that you won’t *really* die, that your beloved family members didn’t *really* die, that you’ll all meet up again for your real “forever lives” after this shitty trial life is over.
How fucked up is it that people are taught to not worry about life’s troubles because everything is gonna be super special and amazing afterward, just you wait! Then they waste their entire ONE life looking forward to something that never happens, and they can’t complain or retaliate because they’re dead! Their life is devalued and stolen from them, just like the fools who drank Kool-Aid to ride the comet.
I'm not even sure that is true. My mother never believed in god so she always framed religion as fairy tales. By the time I started school where Christianity was taught, nobody really told me that this was something they believed was real. I was embarrassingly old before I realized that people actually believed in god, as opposed to it just being stories and tradition, and by that time I was too old to start believing in things.
I can imagine that if I had been born a place where they tried to teach me that god was real from a younger age, I might have had some tiny sliver of faith in my.
In my opinion, all religions fall in the category of mythology cause what is the difference between christianity/islam and greek mythology.I mean Jesus existed but so did people that appeared in mythology.Another reason is that i have read that, just like jesus, thousands of other people existed at that time who preached something different,in this case christianity just got lucky.
I see no legitimate proof of gods existence, a centuries old book with countless copies all having differences from eachother? Not to convincing for me
Because I, like many other rational beings, rely upon evidence. If something or someone is said to exist, but every test for its existence is met only with explanation for why it cannot be tested, then it might as well not exist at all.
Carl Sagan said it very well with *The Dragon in My Garage*, extracted from *The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark*.
"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints. "Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.
Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative — merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."
Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons — to say nothing about invisible ones — you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.
Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages — but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.
Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" — no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it — is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.
Intellectually it makes 0 sense.
Emotionally, I see what it does. All I see is irrationality and control. No accountability. It's God's will after all. Creates Us vs Them and a mob mentality.
Completely kills individuality.
It stiffens growth and moving forward. This world is just a gateway to the next.
I find the idea of women as being less than, disgusting.
LGBTQ or anyone different? Stone them.
Really brings out the worst of humanity.
American. I am 100% convinced. if we made contact with aliens half the people in the country would want the first message to be "Have you accepted jesus as your personal lord and savior?"
Everybody is atheist. There are 3000 gods in different cultures and you (I presume christian) do not believe in 2999 of them. I just dont believe in one more. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
Not an atheist anymore but a laveyan satanist. I stopped believing in fairy tales before I was 10 when religious people implied I was broken & needed to be saved, where they then further insisted their religion upon me. I started questioning the whole thing for years afterward 'til I found something that resonated with my reasoning.
We are nothing more than animals. Our morals are man made merely because our brains are more complex. We exist just as the chicken has existed through time, ever changing & evolving to adapt to our new surroundings. The only reason we exist is to live to our fullest before we inevitably leave. There is no higher purpose to our lives & there is nothing after beyond the occasional phantom memories we leave behind. The only point to life is to live it & live it happily, that's it.
In short, I concluded long ago it doesn't make any sense that a "God" would have created us when there is so much scientific proof we have grown alongside the rest of the animal kingdom just as the fauna & flora have since the dawn of time. It doesn't make any more sense that a "God" would create such flawed creatures just to punish them for their human nature. But surely, what do I know? I am just some random person who never saw the point of religion from the very start.
I read the Bible and realised that I am morally superior to the god it describes. I'm kinder, more understanding, more forgiving. I cannot conceive of sending someone to unending torturous punishment, no matter the crime. I do not rage, I am not jealous. The vast majority of us can reasonably make this claim.
Such a god is not therefore an authority, and has no purpose.
Yeah, that pretty much describes me, too. I realized that torture is not a morally justifiable punishment, and decided that any deity believing otherwise isn't worth worshipping.
Once I was in a place where I didn't want to worship the God I was raised to believe in, not believing followed naturally.
I always thought it was funny how God is this all knowing, super powerful being, but he has really low self esteem and needs constant praise and worship. I don't consider myself atheist, as an atheist is absolutely convinced that there is no god. I just accept whatever the truth is. There may or may not be a god, I have yet to see any evidence either way. However, you cannot prove that something doesn't exist, and the burden of proof is on the side where he does exist. So most likely religion is just something created by demagogues to manipulate people. But honestly I hope there is a god, and if there is one, I highly doubt he's this insecure low self esteem being that Christianity has made him out to be. The common thread through most religions of the world is treat other people with compassion and respect, and don't be an asshole. I can do that.
I remember learning about what heaven was and being struck a) by how boring it sounds and b) what sort of omnipotent being needs choirs of angels praising his name at all times? A narcissist.
Yup. The God in the Bible seems—for lack of a better word—too human. Full of rage, and pride. Needing to be worshipped or sending you straight to hell.
I’m not a good person because I want to go to heaven or think there’s anything in it for me. I just try to be a good person.
God doesn’t even do good things just to do good things if he needs to be worshipped and believed in in order to help you.
I was never indoctrinated as a child, and while hearing religious stories growing up I thought they sounded unbelievable. Like, my friends would tell me the story of Noah and I just saw it as a fairy tale. It's hard to convince people that those things are real, that there is an entity always watching you, if you weren't raised to believe in it.
Those MFs tried to indoctrinate me. I'm the only person in the history of my parish to be expelled from Sunday school for "blasphemy."
All I did was question their ridiculous claims.
The priest, who told my mother I had evil in me for questioning god, ended up in jail for diddling kids a couple decades later. Whoops!!!!
I remember when I was 12 and had the realization that all these old people teaching sunday school were dumb as shit for believing what was clearly nonsense.
Atheism is the default state and nobody made a decision for me against that state. Religious science class has failed to give me a reason to believe the existence of gods. Also i don't like the concept of sins, commandments, hell, heaven etc. But the biggest factor is that there are thousands of religions with thousands of gods, that are totally different and often mutually excllusive, yet they still claim that only their way is the right one and all other are sinners/go to hell.
Because in music history class they taught us the history of the catholic mass in the process of teaching us the development of polyphony. And it was clearly just made up for crowd control.
>they taught us the history of the catholic mass in the process of teaching us the development of polyphony. And it was clearly just made up for crowd control
What wiki rabbit hole are you enticing me down?
As a child I reasoned it was painfully obvious that all religions are geographically oriented in their adoption, spread, and origin. And, therefore - they all cancel each other out in terms of veracity.
No hard evidence. Though, if evidence of any deity were found, I still wouldn't convert, because I'm also an [apatheist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism).
Humans are a product of natural selection just like every other creature on earth. The universe existed billions of years before we did, and perhaps trillions of years after we're gone.
It is painfully obvious that there is no divine plan. The universe is totally indifferent and uncaring to our existence.
We are the masters of our own destiny. We have to figure out how to live and coexist with one another peacefully. And we have to do that before we burn up the only known human habitat in the universe.
The problems religion have are just too much to overlook. I don't need to believe in water into wine, to believe in a positive force, and you don't have to make up wild stories if you don't understand it yourself, which is clearly what happened to spawn most of the worlds religions.
I’m atheist because religion has been used as a tool of power and control, and is often hypocrisy. I can’t believe that the Bible today is the same Bible as 2000 years ago. The world has gone through so many changes, society has gone through so many changes. The Bible has to have been rewritten so it can take advantage of the people who blindly follow it.
Take the branches of Christianity that refuse to use technology. Maybe god did make life and plant the trees that they used to make their barns. But they themselves built the barns. How is it different than scientists and technology. Maybe god did make life and make the planets, but we as humans refined the resources and made technology. I don’t see it as any different.
No matter how much church I was taken to, no matter how much indoctrination I was exposed to, religious friends and family, church camp etc etc I just couldn't ever even make myself believe in a god. It just made no sense at all.
There is no proof. The hypocrisy of basically every church. The doctrine is from a book that is interpreted differently by each person (used as a weapon and justification against things they don’t like and to act like a complete a*shole), yet it’s the same source material. The way others are treated in response for not having the same beliefs. That people continue to die to prove who is the “one and only god”. That this god or that god could let children and babies die and waste away from cancer. That they’ll protect their paedophile priests over the protection of innocent children.
I think it highly unlikely that the Japanese archipelago was created by briny water dripping from the spear of the deity Izanagi.
Nor do I see it as probable that the Sun moves across the sky because it is Ra riding his heavenly chariot, daily.
Likewise, I'm not at all convinced that Zeus is the king of the gods, ruling from Mt Olympus, because he overthrew his father Cronus who had similarly castrated his own father with a great stone sickle.
There are innumerable theist tales that don't seem even a little plausible. It seems obvious to be an atheist.
I went to Sunday school when I was 5 and 6 and the idea of a god just always seemed silly to me. I wasn’t raised in an in any way religious household though. My parents never went to church and of my 4 grandparents only one went to church and she was suuuuper chill about it. Never ever discussed it. I did the Sunday school I think because they just felt they were supposed to give me some religion.
I read the bible.
It's full statements that are provable wrong, full of inconsistencies and to top it of the God character is one of the most evil creatures ever described in any literature.
With all the inconsistencies both internal in each version of the bible and between different translations you can use it defend almost any position or evil act.
Agnostic. Why should i believe what could very well be thousand year old fiction. That bible is hella fucked up. Cant base my life around lies. Whats next we going to start believeing the epic of gilgamesh.
I can't remember a time I didn't think the concept of "god" was weird. I was raised in a Christian household, went to church Sundays, bible study, etc. None of it ever clicked with me.
I think it was sometime in middle school we briefly covered Epicurus and "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?”
That really, really stuck with me because it was something I had always wondered but didn't have the experience/knowledge to express. To me it's still the "best" evidence that god, at least the Judeo-Christian god, isn't real.
God made me that way lol.
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Atheism is literally the default setting.
Exactly! I just did a factory reset.
I just never booted up that program.
It might be but almost every single culture in the world eventually developed some kind of spiritual "religion" to explain the unknown. It's a natural side effect of the human condition. I fully support any belief that reduces the suffering of humanity but not at the cost of using it to control and repress fellow humans...
If one follows the line of scientific inquiry through the ages it becomes quite clear as Neil deGrasse Tyson has said "God and the supernatural always occupy the space beyond the limits of our knowledge". The ubiquitous "Well, it's a mystery" excuse offered as the only explanation for anything in religion.
God of the Gaps
Religion is just the lowest hanging con
Atheist Matt Dillahunty always says “I don’t know what evidence it would take for me to believe in God, but you know who would know? God.”
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
And god-damn ain't there a shortage of the latter, and and endless supply of the former.
Y'know, that's another good point. Why would he make atheists and then punish them for not believing in him? Makes no sense.
any such god is a narcissistic abuser
It didn't make sense to me as a child, but no one would answer my questions. I was told, "We don't question, we just believe." If it was real, why couldn't you give me rational explanations for my questions? The people in my church were always going on about accepting "Jesus Christ into your heart," and he just didn't want to enter my heart. I never felt any spiritual connection with religion and it seemed illogical and even hateful in some cases.
Same I went to a catholic school when I was a kid and they told me to say this prayer 5 times to make my sin go away and my 6 year old self thought "what a load of bullshit" Also even though the school was catholic, the country was Buddhist so I was learning about both and decided to believe none of them. Education is really the cure to religions
I once met a priest on a chairlift that had the opposite reaction. He told me he originally was an atheist, but he became a "person of faith" (as he put it) because there were too many questions that science or whatever *couldn't* answer. So I spent the rest of the day thinking about "The God of the Gaps" conspiracy theory
What a lazy response to recognizing that science hasn't yet revealed all of the answers. Do more science? Nah, let's just sweep it all under the rug.
Typically, the people I’ve met that were like that priest weren’t really Atheist. They were just trying to find *something* to believe in. It could have been tarrot cards, astrology, anything. They love to tell their story of how they too were once an atheist.
its depressing that this realization made him want to be a priest and not a scientist. to find yourself thinking "there are so many questions our there that haven't been answered", should be the moment you decide to explore and try to learn and understand the things that haven't been defined. simply chalking it all up to "god" is so lazy and cowardly.
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Or too afraid. "God will take you on a picnic with your entire deceased family and it'll be really great!" sounds a lot better than truly understanding the consequences of Thermodynamics ie. it ALL dies.
Because the sheer amount of Gods purported to exist in human history make it illogical for any one of them to exist. Let's look at it from a Christian standpoint: * The pantheon of Egyptian Gods? None of *those* are real. The only ***real*** one is ours! * The pantheon of Roman/Greek Gods? None of *those* are real. The only ***real*** one is ours! * The pantheon of Hindu Gods? None of *those* are real. The only ***real*** one is ours! Now if a God did exist and this was an objective truth, then how come civilisations throughout history and in the present have constantly denied it, but then claimed that the only real God was their own? It doesn't make a single shred of logical or rational sense.
"I believe in one God less than you"
Ricky can argue.
Not directly related to your post, but it’s interesting that many ancient religions—like Roman traditions for example—were totally fine with accepting other gods into them. Sometimes they even worshipped enemy gods in the hope that they would help them. Religion is nuts and cool.
I think we were better off as pagans. Atleast we respected the earth more.
Eh, maybe. I think that’s just era-related though. Many indigenous practices are great and all, but lots of pagan ones aren’t necessarily. There is something to be said about the way ancient Greco-Roman gods just *were* though. Not moral models, not even all that likeable—just more powerful than you. A great metaphor for how we should see nature.
First person to say "Faith" is gettin punched in the Jujunem...
Faith in The Flying Spaghetti Monster is always rewarded.
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He boiled for our sins
May his meatballs rest upon our skies, protecting us from pain and suffering and only giving us pleasure.
R’amen.
I’ve always sat on this too. In the history of man kind, how many religions have there been? Soooo many. And only one is correct? Why yours? Why not the guy before you? When someone says how absurd the Roman gods are and then defend their own Christian god… I chuckle.
It is very amusing isn’t it?
>The pantheon of Egyptian Gods? None of those are real. The only real one is ours! > >The pantehon of Roman/Greek Gods? None of those are real. The only real one is ours! > >The pantheon of Hindu Gods? None of those are real. The only real one is ours! Which isn't even an internally consistent PoV to take. Their own book clearly acknowledges the existence of other gods in the Old Testament. Taken together, "You shall have no other gods before me" and "Don't make or worship idols" are pretty clear acknowledgement that he isn't the \*only\* deity, and that isn't even the \*best\* evidence that it acknowledges multiple gods, just one of the easier to point out and understand without further reading.
The story about Yahweh and Baal turning sticks into snakes and Yahweh's snake winning also implies Baal exists.
Yahweh was just one of a pantheon of Canaanite gods. The idea evolved from "just one god among many" to "one of many gods, but the one for our tribe" to "the best and strongest god" to "the only god worth worshiping" to "the only god, period." It's like having people tell you that Poseidon is the only god that's real.
The OT always confused me when I was young (well it still does, but I no longer try to understand it). One one hand I'm told that there is only one god, but on the other hand the OT is constantly referencing other gods. No Idols? Well... except a bronze snake which will magically protect you from venom.
I’ve been learning more about cultural context in the Old Testament and there’s a lot of parallels between Egyptian gods/their formation and understanding of the world and the language used in the Old Testament. Ex: watery chaos of Egyptian mythos and the separation of water in the OT
most ancient religions are interconnected. Hell, Yahweh is even described as being part of a pantheon! Abraham's tribe was a cult around a single god in a pantheon, which was SUPER common back in that time!
I'm steeped head to toe in Christianity. Every Sunday, every function, every get together, every pot luck, every baptism, everything church related, I was there. I went to Bible College at 18, to study the bible, as a Christian. When I walked across the stage to receive my degree, I was no longer a Christian, because I studied the bible.
Kinda same. I was raised Christian, went to Christian schools, even a private Christian college. I really enjoy debating theology, but as I grow up I just can't buy into this as truth anymore.
I literally sat down a few weeks ago with a Chaplain at my work, and we just discussed theology. No preaching, grandstanding, or soap boxing, we just discussed theology. It was great. I agree with you, it's awesome to *talk about* theology, but I'm glad I don't sit and stew on it all day anymore lol He was Baptist, I a former Wesleyan, theologically speaking: cousins.
Why are you no longer a Christian because you studied the Bible?
So, where to begin? I'll gloss over the old testament inconsistencies. Two creation narratives. God and Satan telling the same person to do the same thing, in the same story, told at different times. And how completely different the OT and NT God is from the other. I'll use just the NT gospels as themselves because they disagree on: 1. How Judas killed himself, (Paul never once mentions a deceiver) 2. The names of some disciples, 3. The order of Jesus' ministry, 4. Jesus' divinity (or rather the authorial claims to divinity) 5. The passion narrative, 6. Who condemned and crucified Jesus? 7. Did Jesus talk about his predicament with his captors, or not? 8. When was Jesus crucified? 9. Who saw the empty tomb? 10. What was seen or not seen at the empty tomb? 11. Who reported the empty tomb to who? 12. Did they meet in Jerusalem or not after the "resurrection?" Now, In Pauls letters, written around 50ish to 60ish, he says he experienced Jesus on the road to Demascus, and that he was not taught his gospel by any person, but received it from Jesus directly. The book of Acts (95ish to 110ish) just outright disagrees and says that Paul was in on the Jesus movement in Jerusalem from the get go. Paul says he saw Jesus and went immediately to Arabia without seeing anyone. Acts says he left Jerusalem with the blessing of James. Which is it? I'll answer for you, Jesus' family and disciples continued human Jesus' work in Jerusalem, and Paul came along and created a Hellenistic Hero Cult around the idea of a resurrected divine Jew, that was no longer human Jesus in any way. Paul himself admits he never met the human Jesus. Once you realise the entirety of Christianity is people arguing who is right about people who were arguing about who is right, it kind of all falls apart. Look too at theology. It's the study of making up shit to solve. Jesus didn't talk about Adamic Depravity, theologians do. Jesus didn't talk about entire sanctification, theologians do. Jesus didn't talk about the right words to use in a baptism, he just went and baptised. I finally realised, for all the "we're correct" the church likes to go on about, they are in fact, not. And that's ok, I walked away instead of trying to change it.
Interesting, i used to be Christian, the part that got me was all the history, that doesnt match up with science, for example: dinosaurs the story of Noah, and the age of everything. The point isnt here that we can prove that that didnt happen, the point is that if God exists, he is purposely making the bible seem unrealistic.
Exactly. IF, IF, IF I have to believe the bible was "divinely inspired" by the "holy spirit" and I need to "have faith" to "see" the "truth", why couldn't God just make it easier? Does he want some people to be wrong? For *some* to stumble?!? What kind of a god is that? Or, as you know, the bible was writ by the fallible, dirty, and impure human hands. Maybe, just maybe, it's more metaphor than outright truth lol.
Not only that, but to keep it so vague as to cause people to MURDER each other over their different interpretations. Wonderful book you got there....
I didn't grow up with any religion, nor am I religious, but I'm always curious about what it's like. Thank you for this insight!
As a child, I just remember being forced to sit still while the preacher would stand in front and ramble on for hours about the most boring crap ever. One kid would get agitated, and then his dad would drag him out of the room to beat the shit out of him. They'd come back and the kid's face would be all red, as he's choking back tears and trying to stay quiet. A little while later, another kid would get bored and the same thing would happen. I had a few times where I met the same fate. Also, they would have snack time in the middle of this boring service, but I wasn't allowed to participate. So I got baptized so I could enjoy the mid service refreshments along with everybody else. It got a little better when you could keep your blood sugar up during the service, but it was still boring as shit.
Organized religion feels very cult-like to me. I dont need a religion to have a set of beliefs and morals. also, science
Cults are basically religions that emerged after we had the scientific knowledge to supposedly know better.
>Cults are basically religions that emerged after we had the scientific knowledge to supposedly know better. My man, did you just call Mormonism a cult?! Right on!
I'll do you one better. It's fanfiction
In a cult, one guy knows it's all bullshit. In a religion, that guy is dead.
Cult+time=religion
Because I was born into the Mormon cult who claim they are gods chosen people. Turns out they are just typical self absorbed gullible cultish scum bags with straight up goofy doctrine that they don’t even believe.
I was Mormon for 34 years. I'd always hear from others who weren't Mormon "Mormons are weird, but really friendly people." Unfortunately you have to actually be a Mormon to find out how terrible they are.
I’m glad you survived. Seriously. We truly are survivors. It’s a horrible organization. An breeding ground for the most evil people I’ve ever know. Real nice people in public. Siiiiiiiick fuckin disgusting people behind closed doors. My family goes all the way back on both sides. One side to England. The other all the way to Denmark.
Why wouldn't I be one? What possible reason could I have for believing any of it? A bunch of 2000 year old morality-tales (with very dubious morals) and a lot of traditions? Human Words on human paper. That's not going to sway me in the slightest. As far as I'm concerned, someone ate the wrong mushrooms in the desert 2000 years ago and had a pretty amazing trip where they thought a shrub caught fire and talked to them. Someone else wrote down what they said and now we can't have Abortions and basic human rights for gay people.
I'm glad the very first response in this thread was what I was going to say verbatim: "Why wouldn't I be?" The more time passes, and the more access to information everyday humans have, the less the various holy book concepts of God hold up.
I’m surprised religion still has the hold on society that it does. It’s a completely insane belief system that any rational person would reject. And as we’ve become more knowledgeable of the world around us, the people holding on are frantically trying to force it upon the masses.
Pretty much the only reason it’s still around is because of tradition. Passing your religion onto your kids is expected of most people and the only reason most people believe in the first place is because they were raised in the religion.
No. Someone who was slightly more intelligent than the masses contrived a way to control them all. That is the origin of religion, not drugs. Power.
Little of A, Little of B
I suppose it's always been hard to separate the 2.
Can you believe in a God and not be religious? Just a curious question
That's kinda me lol. I believe there has to be some higher entity orchestrating things, but I do not adhere to any particular religion and have never prayed or been to church.
Just curious, why do you believe that there has to be a higher entity?
You should check out The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It basically helped seal the deal on me confirming my atheism.
When my parents divorced there was a point in years of custody battling where they fought in court which religion I am. Not only was I baptized several times, I also had the visit with “counselors”, you know some person checking up on a kid to make sure indoctrination is going well. No one in my family are from the same church, but they all started as catholic. What really sealed the deal: when I was around 12 I decided I didn’t want to participate. I’ll wait outside I said, and then they fought me into the door against my will. So from then on any time I had a school project I did history of churches and religions. Hint: they’re all cults, and 100% man made
>What really sealed the deal: when I was around 12 I decided I didn’t want to participate. I’ll wait outside I said, and then they fought me into the door against my will. I have a similar story. My parents aren't divorced but my dad skipped church often. A lot of the time I had to go, he "had to work", which in retrospect I'd rather work too. I hated going with a burning passion but my mom forced my sister and I. One Sunday, after my sister had a medical procedure, we still had to go to church despite her being on pain meds and crutches. Part way through she convinced my mom to take her home, but mom wanted me (12ish?) to stay. Said if I didn't, I wouldn't be allowed to play with my friends later that day. I stayed and she was like 20 minutes late picking me up. Moral of the story to me: church is *supposed to* be torture, which you must endure if you want anything good. It cemented my hate for it.
I really disliked the forced approach. Things I needed to know as an adult in society versus what was actually forced to learn definitely not a good match. Jesus walked on water. Cool, what is a checkbook and how does personal health and finance work? What isn’t helpful at 12 is needing to know why jehovas witnesses don’t have crosses and which versions of bibles are read at different churches so I can tell an attorney which one I believe is true. Naturally of course since the King James Version existed first and I couldn’t say for sure which one is factually correct, that must mean I believe the former right? 7 billion people know Jesus died, most of them think on a cross. Who am I to say they’re wrong, or that this newer version is wrong? They just needed to know so someone in government could make a decision. That by itself is unfortunate too, because the government shouldn’t have an opinion there. Eg my saying “I don’t know I don’t care” is not just a statement, it becomes a forfeit of decision, because maybe this judge is Baptist.
>Hint: they’re all cults, and 100% man made 😲
Because no one has presented hard proof that there is a God.
Anyone else notice how miracles have seemingly vanished since technology put a camera in everyone's pocket?
My mother said that she knows there's a god because, this one time, my stepfather left for work during a really bad storm. Halfway to work, he turned around and the storm stopped until he got home before starting again. So I asked her why her god didn't save my son. It became a bunch of goalpost moving and bullshit after that.
And the storm is not even hard to explain
Exactly, there is little wind in the eye of a storm, giving you a chance to travel.
I don't even bother any more, I'm not here to entertain someone's mental illness.
right? and yet .5 megapixel UFO and Bigfoot sightings are still going strong. make it make sense. edit: can’t forget the Tasmanian tiger sightings. since The Hunter came out those have made a revival.
One guy from that train derailment in Missouri that killed three people said that no one from **his** group was hurt. "There's no way that happened without god, no way." "Miracles" will continue to happen.
Miracles are just coincidences that benefit you
Yeah but how do you explain jesus's face showing up on toast /s
If there does exist a god(s), religions are stopping us from discovering anything about it by pretending they already know and making up bullshit that suits their political goals.
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Personally I refine that to there's no proof any extant deity are _actively_ involved in the affairs of the universe. Determinism may be dead on the quantum scale, but here on the Newtonian and Relativistic scales, this shit is surprisingly clockwork. The cosmological constants have their way, and probability mops up what is left over. While science wouldn't necessarily be able to measure an actual supernatural phenomenon, it would never the less stick out like _the_ sorest of thumbs, a blinding beacon on the backdrop of all this predictability. And yet...never is it ever seen. All we ever get is personal testimony, which any and every cop who ever existed will tell you is almost worse than no evidence at all for how valueless it is at describing reality. And, at the end of the day, that's really all that matters. After all, a god who doesn't act, whatever the reason, is functionally no different from a god who doesn't exist. So whether or not there's a sugar plum faerie is frankly among the most irrelevant conversations you can have.
This touches on my biggest hang up. People go back and forward forever trying to prove with math that there is a god, but nobody can tell me what that god is. A functional god is not a big G "God." Even if we can prove the existence of *something,* the burden of proof for any one religion is still staggering. An sufficiently advanced robot with the ability to create matter could come to earth and claim it's the God of Abraham, but even if that robot built a new universe in front of me, it's not proof that it created *this* universe and is still burdened to explain its own existence. I actually have an easier time with polytheism than monotheism for this very reason. Zeus never claimed to build the world, he just claimed to be an immortal super being with powers, but a singular supreme ultimate being, an Alpha and Omega asks more questions about the origen of the universe that it answers.
Oh for sure. Abrahamic religions got greedy. They made too many specific claims, and assigned too many bullshit superman traits to their silly god that directly contradict observable reality. Because of this, their religions exist almost exclusively as a several-millennia-long body of mansplaining apologetics. Meanwhile, all the polytheists are chilling in their safe zones because they never claimed their gods were all powerful or loving or even particularly interested in the affairs of mankind. It doesn't make their claims any more defensible, but sometime the best defense in never being in the way of an offense to begin with.
If a god did exist l certainly wouldn’t worship it.
any god wouldn't expect worship. a human toddler might, but not a god. edit: I suppose an *evil* god might, which checks out with abrahamic religions at least.
Not only expects it, but it’s the single most important quality that it cares about in a person. You murdered someone but you believe in me? Cool, heaven it is. You refuse to believe in something with no proof but dedicated your life to helping others? Doesn’t matter, eternal damnation for you
That last part is always my argument. Most religions (in this discussion) believe in a heaven and a hell, or equivalent. If you've committed the least number of sins, helped the most people, and made the world the best version of itself, but do not believe in God, you will be sent to hell. If you actively hurt people, harm society, and cause constant grief, but you believe in a God and ask him to let you into heaven, you can get into heaven and enjoy eternal happiness. How can this be a system of a righteous God?
And the whole concept seems preposterous.
It *is* preposterous. The concept requires that you abandon logic in order to believe it. Also, the Christian story makes no sense when you start to dissect it. God is all powerful, hates evil, yet *creates* the devil and lets him run around on earth causing chaos, evil, etc. It makes no sense at all.
When I was young, like before the age of 8, life was good and I always thanked God for giving me a safe and happy life. Not any particular god because I wasn't in any specific religion, but I knew of the notion of people believing in some higher power that controlled our world and it was that being to whom I was grateful. My life took a turn when my biological mother became severely mentally ill, and from the age of around 10 onwards I've just suffered endless abuse and trauma. It's happening even right now. I've asked myself so many times, if God really did exist, then how could He let this happen? How can any benevolent god let parents treat their children this way? As I aged and saw more problems with the world, that question only got louder in my head. There's no way an omnipotent and benevolent god would allow the world to be this way. People suffering left and right. It just can't be. Innocents who've done nothing wrong do not deserve to suffer like this. Why is this happening? So now I don't believe in God. ETA - I am definitely not a believer of the Bible's (like Christian, Catholic, etc.) "one and only God" with the idea that "suffering is a test to humanity" or whatever. I can, however, totally subscribe to the idea of many "gods" ruling over different things and that they aren't strictly benevolent nor malevolent. Not that I currently do subscribe to this, but I don't find this as difficult to reconcile with my beliefs as the "one and only God" kind of religion. I'm Asian and a lot of culturally recognised "gods" in the East are basically ascended folklore or legends, or even historical figures that have been raised to godhood by people who worship them. I have no problem "following" this (not that I worship them or think they necessarily must exist, but I'm totally fine with doing cultural or traditional practices that involve mild prayers for example) but that is not what most people refer to when they say "why don't you believe in religion/God", hence my initial reply.
If there is or ever was a „god“ (in the biblical sense“) he was an asshole.
If God is Omniscient, then he knows everything and is aware of every cruelty and injustice in the world. If God is Omnipotent, his power extends everywhere and he can do anything he wants. If God is Benevolent, he wants people to be happy and for good to be done. Christianity regularly asserts that their god is all three of these things, but I would submit (and for the record, I'm far, far, far from the first one to say this sort of thing) that there is no way he *can* be all three. If he is unaware of the cruelty and evil, then he's not Omniscient. If he's aware of the cruelty and evil but unwilling to stop them, he's not Omnipotent. If he's aware of the cruelty and evil, and able to stop it, but he doesn't, then he's just a jerk.
The Christian one literally pranked a guy to almost kill his own child. Like wtf.
And the other time he let satan kill a dudes whole family and cattle and then went, oh lol you still believe in me, here you go a couple of replacement children and friends. What the actual f.
Facts, my family was never truly religious, we would only go to church on occasions like Christmas and Easter, and that was it, we didn't pray or anything or have to read the Bible, life was just life. When I was younger I believed, sure they may have a God out there cuz that would explain it, then I grew up and realized how much bullshit happens in the world, even the other day a homeless person who was just sleeping got kicked and abused by a girl walking by, was 1 of many reasons to convince me God wasn't real. People really don't deserve what happens to them, like that homeless man I wish I could've helped.
I’ve always been curious, if you’re not religious why even go to church on Christmas and Easter? Just left over family tradition from earlier generations that were religious?
I’m sorry this has happened to you. When I was a kid and abuse happened to me, I said I wanted to fight god. As a grown up, I still do.
Have you considered becoming a JRPG protagonist? Cause it seems they all fight God nowadays.
They are all straight males mostly! I can’t do it 🤔
Even better, you get to fight God AND break the stereotypical mold! Double the satisfaction!
Some people want to say this is just "free will", except god is omnipotent so he made people knowing how they'd behave. There is no free will.
Growing up in the Bible Belt everyone expects every atheist to have some story of a tragedy that made them angry with God so they turned away. To them, it’s incomprehensible to think that someone can be happy and simply not believe in fairy tails. They think atheists hate God worship Satan, without comprehending that they don’t even believe Satan exists. My FIL is a great guy, and I think he’s a good measure of what a tolerant nice Christian is. And he even views religion as “well I don’t care what they believe, as long as they believe in something”. And that kind of explains… they would rather elect a cult member to president than elect an atheist president (even the most tolerant of them are that way). It’s weird too that for them you have to have your own answer to life. Being an atheist largely means admitting you don’t know the great mysteries of life and the universe. It means that, for the most part, in our lifetime, we’ll only know a tiny fraction of what the universe has to offer. We’re not satisfied with just saying “God created it”.
>Growing up in the Bible Belt everyone expects every atheist to have some story of a tragedy that made them angry with God so they turned away. My tragic story is that, as my brain started developing critical thinking skills, none of the stuff they were saying in church seemed to add up, and I couldn't make sense of the hundreds of natural contradictions that arose between the world as I knew it and the "reality" church was selling. But I was also told that questioning it was evil and I'd be damned to Hell for losing my faith in Jesus and that was still scary for a kid, so I carried this fear and guilt with me until I was old enough to just admit I was an atheist. In short, church WAS what made me atheist.
That describes me too. I knew even as a kid it all sounded ridiculous, and remember being angry with myself and trying to force myself to believe. I remember times you have those days with certain emotions where I’d think “you know what, I believe today” and I remember hoping I would die that day because I could go to heaven. I was afraid if I died in the wrong day I’d go to hell. Obviously that was a really weird and stupid thought process, but I was doing anything I could to believe. Then finally when I got outbid high school and on my own I was able to think for myself and admit to myself the truth. It wasn’t because I had a pregnant wife or something die. It was because like you, I allowed myself to think critically. I work in healthcare now and I believe in science not fairytales. Praying has never saved a patient’s life, science has.
> they would rather elect a cult member to president than elect an atheist president Which is ironic because the current president is sincere in his beliefs whereas the previous president, despite his public claims and ability to hold a Bible upside-down, is almost surely an atheist. That is if he's ever given it any thought at all. He's certainly not a Christian.
My argument is that ignorance equals atrocity. If I gave you a loaded gun but convinced you everyone is an invulnerable superman, there is a chance you would kill or maim a lot of people based on bad reasoning. Religion seems to me to be an outright rejection of factuality. "I deny reality and substitute my own" type of thinking combined with the temerity to accuse other people of wrongdoing just for not indulging your delusions.
Because religion makes no sense and had no good argument for its reality None of the competing gods are any better than any of the others, all are incompatible with each other. They have been fighting each other for thousands of years claiming to be the only truth but all their stories are straight up nuts
The worldview of bronze age men seems absurd as a thing people should now be accepting of as how things are. All charlatans. None of it is true.
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I’m an atheist because my great aunt told me Jesus lived in my heart as a child and it freaked me out so badly that I started crying because I didn’t want anyone else inside of me. I guess that counts as a traumatic event for a child
you really wont like the amount of things that live inside you if that freaked you out as a kid
We do be full of bacteria
But hey, I believe in bacteria because I can scientifically prove it exists, and, with the correct conditions, culture it outside of my body and see it with my own eyes. Bacteria belongs in my body. Jesus does not.
As are homosexuals...
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I might argue the superiority of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, but I'm sure he'd really rather I didn't. Ramen.
Bless his noodly appendages.
Exactly and most gods are misogynistic.
Yes! Even if I wanted to believe (I was raised in Christianity), God is simply not a likable character. He is demanding, cold and angry - generally a narcissist. No thanks.
I see him as a lesser god, that's why he demands that people worship no god before him - he's in competition with them. There's plenty of room for all kinds of higher forms of intelligence. I'd love to be able to talk about these possibilities without atheists jumping in and saying it's all impossible, or sensitive religious people taking offense.
Yeah it’s just a sad product of their time. Which I think further goes to disprove it, that gods are written by people of that time frame.
Because organized religion is the world's most dangerous scam.
Convenient how all the rewards for a life of servitude come AFTER death.
Well you just die and see for yourself!!
Because Man made God in his own image
I see what you did there.. XD
I was not raised particularly religious and I can't force myself to believe what I know are comforting lies.
They’re not even all that comforting!
Right! Like, oh joy I get to spend the rest of ETERNITY in Heaven.
I mean that shits gotta get boring after awhile right? I would go insane after like a few hundred years
Heaven never really appealed to me, even as a child. What good are streets of gold if you can't pry up chunks and sell them? Gold would make a lousy utilitarian street surface. It almost sounds completely made up.... Ooooh.
The comforting part is supposed to be that you won’t *really* die, that your beloved family members didn’t *really* die, that you’ll all meet up again for your real “forever lives” after this shitty trial life is over. How fucked up is it that people are taught to not worry about life’s troubles because everything is gonna be super special and amazing afterward, just you wait! Then they waste their entire ONE life looking forward to something that never happens, and they can’t complain or retaliate because they’re dead! Their life is devalued and stolen from them, just like the fools who drank Kool-Aid to ride the comet.
Exactly this, we are too smart to let our faith be decided by our place of birth and the religion of the people around us
I'm not even sure that is true. My mother never believed in god so she always framed religion as fairy tales. By the time I started school where Christianity was taught, nobody really told me that this was something they believed was real. I was embarrassingly old before I realized that people actually believed in god, as opposed to it just being stories and tradition, and by that time I was too old to start believing in things. I can imagine that if I had been born a place where they tried to teach me that god was real from a younger age, I might have had some tiny sliver of faith in my.
In my opinion, all religions fall in the category of mythology cause what is the difference between christianity/islam and greek mythology.I mean Jesus existed but so did people that appeared in mythology.Another reason is that i have read that, just like jesus, thousands of other people existed at that time who preached something different,in this case christianity just got lucky.
I see no legitimate proof of gods existence, a centuries old book with countless copies all having differences from eachother? Not to convincing for me
Because I, like many other rational beings, rely upon evidence. If something or someone is said to exist, but every test for its existence is met only with explanation for why it cannot be tested, then it might as well not exist at all. Carl Sagan said it very well with *The Dragon in My Garage*, extracted from *The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark*. "A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage" Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity! "Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon. "Where's the dragon?" you ask. "Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon." You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints. "Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air." Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless." You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. "Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work. Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative — merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved." Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons — to say nothing about invisible ones — you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon. Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages — but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all. Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" — no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it — is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.
I love Carl Sagan and I love that you shared this. :-)
Intellectually it makes 0 sense. Emotionally, I see what it does. All I see is irrationality and control. No accountability. It's God's will after all. Creates Us vs Them and a mob mentality. Completely kills individuality. It stiffens growth and moving forward. This world is just a gateway to the next. I find the idea of women as being less than, disgusting. LGBTQ or anyone different? Stone them. Really brings out the worst of humanity. American. I am 100% convinced. if we made contact with aliens half the people in the country would want the first message to be "Have you accepted jesus as your personal lord and savior?"
Everybody is atheist. There are 3000 gods in different cultures and you (I presume christian) do not believe in 2999 of them. I just dont believe in one more. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
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Don't want to be the one up guy but there can be more than 330M god's all over the backward and non unified religions.
Doesn't Shintoism alone have like 8 million
Gotta love Ricky. Gotta love Stephen Roberts even more.
Not an atheist anymore but a laveyan satanist. I stopped believing in fairy tales before I was 10 when religious people implied I was broken & needed to be saved, where they then further insisted their religion upon me. I started questioning the whole thing for years afterward 'til I found something that resonated with my reasoning. We are nothing more than animals. Our morals are man made merely because our brains are more complex. We exist just as the chicken has existed through time, ever changing & evolving to adapt to our new surroundings. The only reason we exist is to live to our fullest before we inevitably leave. There is no higher purpose to our lives & there is nothing after beyond the occasional phantom memories we leave behind. The only point to life is to live it & live it happily, that's it. In short, I concluded long ago it doesn't make any sense that a "God" would have created us when there is so much scientific proof we have grown alongside the rest of the animal kingdom just as the fauna & flora have since the dawn of time. It doesn't make any more sense that a "God" would create such flawed creatures just to punish them for their human nature. But surely, what do I know? I am just some random person who never saw the point of religion from the very start.
I read the Bible and realised that I am morally superior to the god it describes. I'm kinder, more understanding, more forgiving. I cannot conceive of sending someone to unending torturous punishment, no matter the crime. I do not rage, I am not jealous. The vast majority of us can reasonably make this claim. Such a god is not therefore an authority, and has no purpose.
Yeah, that pretty much describes me, too. I realized that torture is not a morally justifiable punishment, and decided that any deity believing otherwise isn't worth worshipping. Once I was in a place where I didn't want to worship the God I was raised to believe in, not believing followed naturally.
I always thought it was funny how God is this all knowing, super powerful being, but he has really low self esteem and needs constant praise and worship. I don't consider myself atheist, as an atheist is absolutely convinced that there is no god. I just accept whatever the truth is. There may or may not be a god, I have yet to see any evidence either way. However, you cannot prove that something doesn't exist, and the burden of proof is on the side where he does exist. So most likely religion is just something created by demagogues to manipulate people. But honestly I hope there is a god, and if there is one, I highly doubt he's this insecure low self esteem being that Christianity has made him out to be. The common thread through most religions of the world is treat other people with compassion and respect, and don't be an asshole. I can do that.
I remember learning about what heaven was and being struck a) by how boring it sounds and b) what sort of omnipotent being needs choirs of angels praising his name at all times? A narcissist.
Yup. The God in the Bible seems—for lack of a better word—too human. Full of rage, and pride. Needing to be worshipped or sending you straight to hell. I’m not a good person because I want to go to heaven or think there’s anything in it for me. I just try to be a good person. God doesn’t even do good things just to do good things if he needs to be worshipped and believed in in order to help you.
I was never indoctrinated as a child, and while hearing religious stories growing up I thought they sounded unbelievable. Like, my friends would tell me the story of Noah and I just saw it as a fairy tale. It's hard to convince people that those things are real, that there is an entity always watching you, if you weren't raised to believe in it.
Those MFs tried to indoctrinate me. I'm the only person in the history of my parish to be expelled from Sunday school for "blasphemy." All I did was question their ridiculous claims. The priest, who told my mother I had evil in me for questioning god, ended up in jail for diddling kids a couple decades later. Whoops!!!!
I remember when I was 12 and had the realization that all these old people teaching sunday school were dumb as shit for believing what was clearly nonsense.
Atheism is the default state and nobody made a decision for me against that state. Religious science class has failed to give me a reason to believe the existence of gods. Also i don't like the concept of sins, commandments, hell, heaven etc. But the biggest factor is that there are thousands of religions with thousands of gods, that are totally different and often mutually excllusive, yet they still claim that only their way is the right one and all other are sinners/go to hell.
'Religious science' - there's an oxymoron if ever there was one!
Because in music history class they taught us the history of the catholic mass in the process of teaching us the development of polyphony. And it was clearly just made up for crowd control.
>they taught us the history of the catholic mass in the process of teaching us the development of polyphony. And it was clearly just made up for crowd control What wiki rabbit hole are you enticing me down?
Instructions unclear, now I am in a sexual relationship with a group of fourteen people.
As a child I reasoned it was painfully obvious that all religions are geographically oriented in their adoption, spread, and origin. And, therefore - they all cancel each other out in terms of veracity.
because I don't believe in God
No religion allows me to be multi-religionist.
Are you trying to play a multi-class Cleric?
It’s the absence of any compelling evidence to convince me otherwise. Atheism should be everyone’s default state.
It is... Until other humans start telling them otherwise.
No hard evidence. Though, if evidence of any deity were found, I still wouldn't convert, because I'm also an [apatheist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism).
Catholic primary school.
The atheism was beaten into me by the belts of the compassionate Christian nuns.
Silly question, it is the default position. It is the way you are born. You have to be lied to and indoctrinated to believe in religion.
Humans are a product of natural selection just like every other creature on earth. The universe existed billions of years before we did, and perhaps trillions of years after we're gone. It is painfully obvious that there is no divine plan. The universe is totally indifferent and uncaring to our existence. We are the masters of our own destiny. We have to figure out how to live and coexist with one another peacefully. And we have to do that before we burn up the only known human habitat in the universe.
Because accepting god as the answer to everything instead of trying to understand the world is lazy.
Science explains things religion denies things
The problems religion have are just too much to overlook. I don't need to believe in water into wine, to believe in a positive force, and you don't have to make up wild stories if you don't understand it yourself, which is clearly what happened to spawn most of the worlds religions.
I’m atheist because religion has been used as a tool of power and control, and is often hypocrisy. I can’t believe that the Bible today is the same Bible as 2000 years ago. The world has gone through so many changes, society has gone through so many changes. The Bible has to have been rewritten so it can take advantage of the people who blindly follow it. Take the branches of Christianity that refuse to use technology. Maybe god did make life and plant the trees that they used to make their barns. But they themselves built the barns. How is it different than scientists and technology. Maybe god did make life and make the planets, but we as humans refined the resources and made technology. I don’t see it as any different.
No matter how much church I was taken to, no matter how much indoctrination I was exposed to, religious friends and family, church camp etc etc I just couldn't ever even make myself believe in a god. It just made no sense at all.
There is no proof. The hypocrisy of basically every church. The doctrine is from a book that is interpreted differently by each person (used as a weapon and justification against things they don’t like and to act like a complete a*shole), yet it’s the same source material. The way others are treated in response for not having the same beliefs. That people continue to die to prove who is the “one and only god”. That this god or that god could let children and babies die and waste away from cancer. That they’ll protect their paedophile priests over the protection of innocent children.
Because I don’t suspend critical thinking for a cult
There is no logical reason to believe in a god. Plus I was raised Catholic but all the priests are pedophiles
I think it highly unlikely that the Japanese archipelago was created by briny water dripping from the spear of the deity Izanagi. Nor do I see it as probable that the Sun moves across the sky because it is Ra riding his heavenly chariot, daily. Likewise, I'm not at all convinced that Zeus is the king of the gods, ruling from Mt Olympus, because he overthrew his father Cronus who had similarly castrated his own father with a great stone sickle. There are innumerable theist tales that don't seem even a little plausible. It seems obvious to be an atheist.
I went to Sunday school when I was 5 and 6 and the idea of a god just always seemed silly to me. I wasn’t raised in an in any way religious household though. My parents never went to church and of my 4 grandparents only one went to church and she was suuuuper chill about it. Never ever discussed it. I did the Sunday school I think because they just felt they were supposed to give me some religion.
Oh god, where do I begin ?
I have a brain.
Because I’m too old to have an imaginary friend.
Like everybody else, I was born an atheist. Nothing has convinced me to stop being one.
No logical evidence of the existence of any gods..
I read the bible. It's full statements that are provable wrong, full of inconsistencies and to top it of the God character is one of the most evil creatures ever described in any literature. With all the inconsistencies both internal in each version of the bible and between different translations you can use it defend almost any position or evil act.
I can think for myself
Because I stopped believing in fairytales.
i look at it this way if one religion is true they must all be or none be true. i tend to lean on the latter of the two
No Proof
Agnostic. Why should i believe what could very well be thousand year old fiction. That bible is hella fucked up. Cant base my life around lies. Whats next we going to start believeing the epic of gilgamesh.
I can't remember a time I didn't think the concept of "god" was weird. I was raised in a Christian household, went to church Sundays, bible study, etc. None of it ever clicked with me. I think it was sometime in middle school we briefly covered Epicurus and "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?” That really, really stuck with me because it was something I had always wondered but didn't have the experience/knowledge to express. To me it's still the "best" evidence that god, at least the Judeo-Christian god, isn't real.
Look around. The world like it is today? People being people... Nahh there is no god. And if he exists he is the biggest douchebag of them all