I was just wondering what people's reasons were for being an atheist or why they don't believe in god.
My personal reasons are that I can't believe that there is a person or "god" that is controlling the world/universe. How can that be possible? I believe in science and fact and the fact is that the universe was created by the Big Bang. We have actual proof that that happened, not that god created the earth. Any ways, how could someone know that the earth was created in 7 days because (according to that theory) no one was alive then.
Another reason is that I can't see how an all powerful god could let millions of people die like in the Holocaust or epidemics. How could a god let babies die and people get cancer and get raped? That physical and mental trauma that occurs because of those scenarios is unimaginable, so why would a god let people go through that.
I don't like all the bullshit excuses that "god has a plan for us all" or that "everything happens for a reason".
I think people need to wake up and see what reality is, yet I am understanding that people should be able to believe in what they want because I don't like when people put me down, give me grief, or try to shut me up when I talk about my beliefs.
So...what are your reasons? :)
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I'm atheist because the claims of theism are silly to me. It would be like worrying if an invisible fairy is dancing on the tip of my penis.
I am an atheist because that is how I was born and found no valid reason to change that position.
Though it was forced upon me by my parents to change it.
As soon as i was mature enough to understand what I was, I got back to what I was since it was the most reasonable position to be.
Why do you say its the most reasonable position? I'm not disagreeing with you or anything, I just want to know your reasons.
Well, the first thing you do upon questioning your existence is to seek knowledge from your parents.
Then they will give you their answer, and since you haven't experienced much except that your parents are always right, you must obey and follow their lead.
When you realize that your parents just follow the lead of someone else, they call god but heard it from someone else they call priest.
If you are smart enough, you will come to the conclusion that the priest knows more then your parents about god.
The problem is that most people are happy with just that, either because they are lazy or they don't care so much.
They just follow the flow.
Smart people want answers and even smarter people want the truth.
Then you come to realize that most preaching does not ask easy things, things which are impossible for you to do.
Like love everybody like yourself? How the hell can you do that?
Then you will see that parents do mistakes, priests do mistakes, then you will come to the conclusion that the best way to find the truth is to stop listening to people and believe no one.
Then you are back on the right path, the path that leads to the truth.
Then you will start to study yourself and compare yourself to god and see if you are worthy of him.
When you see that those demands are impossible to reach, then and only then you will realize that you got the wrong religion(or wrong denomination) or simply that someone got some basic concept wrong or that it is all a lie.
Then you start doing your own homework, and get to the inevitable path of being an atheist in 1 more religion then you were before.
Since before you were an atheist in all religions except one but now you are an atheist in all the religions.
That is why it is the most reasonable position because if your not brainwashed by your parents you can easily see that, that position is the position you take for the other religions.
You do this unconciosly when you were a kid.
You don't believe a rabbi on what ever he says about Judaism as truth.
You don't believe a buddist on everything he says about Buddhism as truth.
You don't believe a Muslim priest on everything he says about his religion as truth.
Why the do you believe a christian priest on what he thinks about the christian god?
That is the key but if you are brainwashed it is hard to see the problem here.
You need to be a bit smart, honest, understand yourself better and have the determination to find the truth.
A christian is usually none of those but accedes in arrogance in knowing more then everybody else without the need of evidence.
The worst part is that he thinks he is humble, makes me laugh that once I was so arrogant and didn't know it.
You have these 4 things you can escape the brainwashing/social pressure and find the truth.
I don't see Christianity as worse than any other religion, really. Nor any better, not one bit.
Well said props!
My main point of reference that tipped the scales to discard Christianity was in a geology class in college years ago. That point of time/scene is frozen in my memory. I was in class examining and identifying fossils, thinking about the difference between the approximate age of the earth (4.5 bilion years) and the approximate age represented by the bible of six to ten thousand years. It was apparent to me that the bible was written by men and there were many living things on earth an enormous span of time before the people that fabricated the bible would come into existence to fabricate their stories. After that tipping point, further research in different areas of study besides geology pointed to the same conclusion.
Reminds me of a story I read about a oil wildcatter who was a creationist. When asked how a creationist could be so successful at finding oil, he responded with something to the effect: "I've found that when looking for oil, it is profitable to pretend to believe the Earth is billions of years old, but when I go home to my family and church I can return to the correct belief that it is only a few thousand."
I wonder what percentage of his oil income he was willing to tithe to his church. :P
I'm an atheist because(to keep it simple) facts over fiction. There is no representable facts that can sway me to any holy book. One great example of this is a joke by Bill Burr. He said "I use to think Scientology was so stupid, believing in a ship taking their souls away etc. But then I looked at what I believed in and found it hyporcritical that I think thats stupid, when I believe that a woman was implanted by the seed of god, gave birth to christ, who could walk on water, cure demons, cure the blind, died, resurrected 3 days later. I'm not going to be a hypocrite".
That is very paraphrased but does bring truth to the value.
The claims of atheism are silly to me as well, but that neither lends to or takes away from their validity or lack therof. Moreover, lack of belief in the truth does not make it any less true.
In fact, i dont find any one of any of you all's reasons for not believing to be convincing or compelling.
What are "the claims of atheism?" Theists make claims. Atheists merely reject the claims of theists.
You would do well to read from your greatest champion, Richard Dawkins.
But no, atheists do not simply reject the claims of atheism. You must realize that by rejecting one claim, you are by logical extension upholding the/an opposite position. You are defending the antithesis of there being a God when you reject that particular thesis, which is to say, there is no God.
You have a bad definition of what an anti-theist is.
An atheist makes no claims, he just does not believe a particular claim about a theistic god.
EG
claim: Flying spaghetti monster exist
Rejecting the claim:
Lacks belief that the CLAIM (of a flying spaghetti monster exists) is true.
Anti- original claim
Not only lacks belief but makes a claim that, if the original claim is correct then it would be a source of evil or has a negative effect.
In no way is there anybody saying that; there is no flying spaghetti monster.
To say that there is no flying spaghetti monster is to make a claim that it does not exist.
A flying spaghetti monster could exist but since there is no reason to believe it exist we lack belief in it's existence.= atheists
A flying spaghetti monster could exist but since there is no reason to believe it exist we lack belief in it's existence, but if it does exist it is a source of evil(claim)= anti-theists
Now replace the flying spaghetti monster with your god and it has the same logic.
I´m an Atheist just because I truly believe the human mind is the source of everything which has been created, developed or simply invented . Religions were invented to make people feel comfortble when going through bad times, questioning their existence . the only reason we have such a big number of beliefs aroun the world is that each society has its own way of threatening people in order to keep social control. that´s my point...
Your comment is only half true.....humans can only create cars, phones, buildning, etc. but they did not create birds, seasons, stars, etc. Only a higher being with more power can create the universe, humans have limits on what they can do.
Your comment is only half true.....humans can only create cars, phones, buildning, etc. but they did not create birds, seasons, stars, etc. Only a higher being with more power can create the universe, humans have limits on what they can do.
Sigh...here we go again...
You just said, "only a higher being with more power can create the universe..."
What proof do you have for this assertion?
What proof? Simple.....lets use logic. Please explain to me as scientifically as possible as you can why don't houses. light poles, iPhones spontaneously pop into existence. I know that may be a silly question but it will prove my point if you answer it correctly. Why?!?! Try creating something without using intelligence? Anything! If faith in god is too hard for you to accept, then here is another way for you to logically believe why there's a creator of the universe.
What if i told you that there is a possibility that nothing was ever created, and you just have different composition of matter and energy that makes up what you see.
"Try creating something without using intelligence? "
Bullshit
You seem an expert in those and you do not use your intelligence to sprout them.
Hey man....guess what!! Whether you like it or not, everything you see around WAS created, that's the way the laws of this universe work. Material+intelligence= creation. PLEASE TELL ME IF IM WRONG.
I usually do not do this but since I try to be nice to people:
YOU ARE WRONG.
happy, I told you what you wanted to hear. :)
Your idea of created does ot go beyond the boundary of a creator, so NO, you are wrong.
Created can also mean changed state, or a more precisely term, composed of something else.
Nothing comes out of Nothing, because we haven't experienced Nothing yet, and we do not know what nothing really is.
You are demonstrably wrong, but on the off chance you're not as closed-minded as you sound, try the following: take a hot mug of coffee and add a small amount of cold milk, gently so as not to mix them forcefully. The resulting free convection will generate turbulence from nothing, including turbulent motion in every direction that is a marvellously complex of eddies and vortices and is really quite a wonder when visualized in a lab (you only catch a hint of the complexity in a cup of coffee). Clouds are nothing but water vapour making turbulence visible: like the cup of coffee, their fine structure comes from nothing, purely out of the elementary physical principles that define turbulence.
If you don't like coffee, then very slowly heat a teflon-coated frying pan filled with molasses and oat bran. With sufficient care, an incredible hexagonal pattern will appear, again from nothing. They look amazingly designed, like a honeycomb, but like the honeycomb, while they look designed, they most assuredly are not. Like turbulence, they emerge from physical principles alone (in this case from a very well-understood instability).
Why do you assume that the universe might not be like a cloud or a honeycomb, beautifully emergent from nothing, yet deceptively suggestive (to you) of design?
Even if by some "Miracle" there is even a chance that you could be right in the claim of "intelligence can only create intelligence".
Then who created your god?
Unless you want to say that your god is not intelligent :P
Unlike humans, who are made up of TIME, SPACE, AND MATTER. God is NOT MADE UP OF TIME, SPACE, AND MATTER. So therefore, if god is not living time, then he never had a beginning, which automatically demolishes your argument about god having another god.
Bullshit squared
"God is NOT MADE UP OF TIME, SPACE, AND MATTER."
I guess you found that written in the bible right?
Oww, nope, it's not there, go figures.
"if god is not living time, then he never had a beginning"
You arrogance in knowing the nature of god makes puke.
"which automatically demolishes your argument about god having another god."
Lol no it does not.
You made appeal to logic, and logic dictates that if only intelligence can create intelligence then god must be intelligent and he must have been created by an intelligent being.
"then he never had a beginning"
Now can you switch the "he" to an 'it' and replace god with the universe?
"I guess you found that written in the bible right?
Oww, nope, it's not there, go figures."
John 4:24 "GOD IS SPIRIT, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth."
Here is says that god is spirit, and a spirit is not confined to time, space, matter.
"God is NOT MADE UP OF TIME, SPACE, AND MATTER."
John 4:24 "GOD IS SPIRIT, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth."
Seriously, you think those 2 are the same thing?
So when it says "worship him in spirit" means that when we worship we are "not confined to time, space, matter"?
How do you get from "GOD IS SPIRIT" to "God is NOT MADE UP OF TIME, SPACE, AND MATTER."?
make the connection?
Where did you get this definition of spirit?
your usual BS?
Tim, your response to my request for proof of your assertion is not, in fact, proof. It is a word salad that lacks substance and is in no way compelling.
You, Tim, are the one making the assertion. Therefore, it is incumbent on you to back that assertion up with proof. Asking me to explain or do anything is, well, a rather silly attempt to sidestep the responsibility to provision the proof...a responsibility that lies squarely in your lap.
We have heard this sort of arguement ad nauseum and it does not impress us. So pony up the proof, real proof, undeniable proof, verifiable proof, testable proof, or just admit you have nothing but a belief...one I happen not to share with you.
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