Why you don't believe.

Just curious, but to the atheists/agnostics/freethinkers, out there, why do you believe there is no god? Are there specific events that triggered the disbelief? Is your disbelief related to experiences with religion?


I personally don't believe in God for a number of reasons. The first thing that made me start to question would have to be exposure to other religions outside of Christianity. I was first exposed to Wicca because a girl I was seeing when I was 15-16 was really big into neo-witch craft, goth metal, etc. I began to think that since there are other explanations to why we are here and what we need to do while we are here, then Christianity loses some of its validity. I tampered in paganism for a while until I realized that all I had done was replace God with God(s) that were just as illogical and humanistic as the God of Christianity. I realized that belief in any sort of supernatural being requires one of two assumptions-- that magic is real or faith in something with no objective evidence is required.

As a kid I believed in Santa, then I discovered my toys in my parents closet a couple of weeks before Christmas when I was 10 years old. I sat down in my room and started thinking about how stupid it was to believe in something like Santa in the first place. I knew that there was really no way he could deliver toys to every kid across the world on one night. I knew he couldn't fit down our chimney. The only thing that kept me believing he might exist was because of the magic factor. Magic allowed him to do these seemingly impossible feats. Belief in magic, whether it be a child rationalizing Santa Claus or a Pagan making a ritualistic sacrifice of sage, is the same thing as religious faith.

I am now most positively sure that there are no gods. We are the self-aware product of natural processes that have been in motion for an extremely long time (based on how you view the universe, either an infinite or finite amount of time).

 

I believe in elements and gravity.. If I didnt believe in gravity I think Id be better off this planet..

 

What do elements and gravity have to do with God?

 

To understand their truth is to be with G-D..

 

I do not believe in gravity.. nope,, still present .. cant change gravity.. Ill get back to you..

 

Gravity exists. It can be measured. The lack of it can be experienced. It is a property of mass. Elements exist. They can be measured, they are the building blocks of matter. They have different physical properties. God can not be measured. He has no physical properties. He does not exist.

You are saying just because I believe there are no gods, there are god(s) despite the fact I don't believe them, specifically I'm guessing the Judeo-Christian god.

 

well i have a friend named tianna and i think it is really interesting she believes that we are a 5th element called life because we need the other elements to survive i guess and she believes that every thing has a soul so what do you guys think?

 

This video is probably why I'm going to convert to atheism. I am/used to be a christian, but after seeing all the flawed logic and hypocrisy...I just don't know anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gAeYxgwuSo&playnext_from=TL&videos=gsBu6Co-fhg"]YouTube- Whence Cometh Evil?

 

yeah, I see you balled up in a corner after taking mega doses of psychedelics saying "oh my G-D oh my G-D).. Why do all the atheist do this?



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Objectivity is over-rated

 

Read my post in "Every one is Agnostic i supose".

If you understand and agree with my logic you will KNOW there can not be a God.

 

Some of the molecules that make up my brain 10,000 years ago were shat out of the backside of a cow from which the local villagers used to grow corn that was then used to feed a little baby girl, baby girls digestive system turned those same cells into bones in her right leg, 40 years later she died, was cremated and the ashes blew off into the local forest, landed at the foot of an apple tree that used those nutrients to make apples that was then eaten by a bear

....and on and on till 10000 years later those molecules were in a can of tuna my mother ate at the start of my conception

Every molecule in my body will be around for billions of more years, so my body is immortal.

As for my consciousness, not even sure I exist, let alone a God thats going to give a crap about it

 

No, it isn't.


Christians don't believe in Allah, Muslims don't believe Shiva existed. Why is it that religious groups can brand something rubbish but those who believe in nothing get questioned for it constantly.

There's meant to be hundreds, maybe thousands of Gods and we have no evidence of any of them. Either believe in the possibility of them all, or admit there's a chance there's no God.

I mean, looking at it this way, it is starting to make religion look very much like the club or cult I personally believe that it is.

 

I am going to use comparisons to Christianity since that's what I grew up around all though my nuclear family never went to church when I was growing up.

I don't believe in a Christian type God because in many instances I see Christians (friends and aquaintences) act less compassionately then atheists. I myself have never experienced god but it doesn't make sense to me that if you have and you talk to god daily through prayer that you would be a less compassionate person than someone who doesn't . In regards to some sort of unifying force or object I choose to not really speculate anymore, its just an endless loop of theories and questions but it doesn't get anywhere.

 

That's the point, if it's never ending loops and theories and thus, we find the idea of God unanswerable. If there is no answer, there is no God. You can speculate that much.

 

One must believe in something. Without the answer the ideas for faith must have plausible alternatives. Can the never ending intuition for loops and validation of theories (one person in a situation does one thing and the other person does the validation) be substituted by purposeful application in faith for 'God' (all people may share in the same faith ideal)?

 

I rejected the religion of my upbringing when I was 13 mostly because I became aware of other religions, and I realized that if I had been born in India I would probably be praying to Shiva so I had no reasonable grounds to believe that the faith which I was born into was actually correct.

Then I adopted a sort of pantheistic animistic belief system, borrowing elements from other religious systems.

Then I went to college and studied science and decided that, even though methodological materialism does not demand it, that philosophical materialism is probably correct.

Now I reject all supernatural explanations, whether it is a personal god or any other type of god, on the grounds that supernatural explanations do not in fact explain anything, and that the supernatural explanation always requires further explanation.

I rejected belief in god because it is irrational, and I continue to reject it because it is unintelligible and a waste of time.

 

I don't believe because the evidence demonstrates, at least in the following conjugation, that god in fact exists. At any one moment our thoughtful focus dominates our interactions with this world.

3. something that dominates: something that is so important that it takes over somebody's life

 

I always felt that way towards naturalistic explanations. Perhaps the acceptance of the truth is equal to our satisfaction of the explanation.

Right brain explanations versus left brain explanations.

 

Zepp, you are probably right about satisfaction and acceptance. It probably is not related in any direct or systematic way to the activity of the hemispheres of the brain. Most of what is said about the left and right brain is outright false or neither supported nor denied by experimental data, or too oversimplified to be meaningful. Sorry about the rant but I have studied psychology academically so I felt compelled to comment.

Getting back to the topic it isn't so much that I think that materialism provides an ultimate answer where supernatural explanations do not, but rather that whereas science admits it does not know the ultimate answers people often put forth god as if it were the ultimate answer to everything. I reject this because you still have to explain god.