As atheists, who or what particular things or events pointed you in becoming atheists? I would like to hear your story to atheism if their is a particular event that lead to you in believing that there is no god. If there is someone who guided you to your atheistic point of view, kindly describe him/her to this thread. I would appreciate hearing your stories.
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I was raised in a very scientific household, by an epidemiologist and an engineer. I was fortunate enough to gain an understanding very early on as to how things work in nature, and given that knowledge the concept of God never seemed to make any sense. I went through the motions for a while just because I thought I had to, but it never really stuck.
I think that for many younger people the choice to become an aetheist comes from angst against traditional religion not allowing them to do whatever they want. They can't as easily denounce their parents so they choose to denounce religion and try to seem more "cool" allowing them to fit better with their own crowd.
What gets me is that that's a fundamentally strange question. It's like asking who or what influenced you into not being a dentist - asking for stories about your journeys into non-dentistry. And yet, despite this question in theory being fairly erroneous, it's still a valid question at this point in time. That to me demonstrates the sheer scale of religion even now.
My reason for being an atheist is simply that I've never been convinced into believing religion, in just the same way as I have never been interested in becoming a dentist. You'll probably find that's the case for almost everyone who wasn't originally religious and then abandoned it.
I observed that some atheist are atheist since childhood and they grew in a non-religious families that lead them to disregard a topic about god. Do you think childhood and parents plays a great role on atheists point of view?
Many things influenced me. First it was reading stuff by anton lavey and alistair crowley. That took me to the dark side for a while and then I just found all of it ridiculous overt time.
We all go through phases in life. The problem is when you get stuck in a certain belief simply because you are afraid to question it. This is what happens to most religious people unfortunately.
Interestingly, Anton LaVey and the whole Satanism thing is what got me interested in Christianity when I was a young teen. Satanism (in theory, not really according to LaVey) is just Christianity in abstract and so while I liked what I read, I wanted to learn more about Christianity to figure out exactly what they were reacting to.
That and I have always loved Renaissance art, which was largely commissioned by the Catholic Church. A lot of great art was, and reading the bible more in depth brought me to a greater understanding of the art depicted in so many ways by so many artists.
Still, I never gave it much weight as a religion - just a handy cultural guide.