When/ how did you become an atheist?

[420Joey]

Atheism is a lack of belief in god. How can something believe in god (higher functional understanding) when it can't even talk? Remembering has nothing to do with it. No one is born with a belief in god, are you serious?

God is relative to understanding.
Baby is not athiest. :bugeye:
Athiesm is the rejection of belief not the "lack of belief"
In your definition, animals like dogs and cats are athiests?? Sorry we cant use this term in that context because we dont know if they have any belief to reject. Thus they are not athiests and any speculation on religious inquiry relating to it is meaningless.

 

[tablariddim]

When I realised that belief in god rested in nothing more but blind faith based on some stories and certain persons skills in interpreting those stories, it became illuminatingly apparent that faith, or self-deception, was the force that led one to 'believe'. It followed that with enough faith one could 'believe' in a rock or a lump of shit; one could create their own god whatever. That is when I escaped the clutches of my faith.

 

[universaldistress]

God is relative to understanding.
Baby is not athiest. :bugeye:
Athiesm is the rejection of belief not the "lack of belief"
In your definition, animals like dogs and cats are athiests?? Sorry we cant use this term in that context because we dont know if they have any belief to reject. Thus they are not athiests and any speculation on religious inquiry relating to it is meaningless.

You are just trying to pare down a broad term to one meaning that suits your desires. The context I framed, of a baby being born without faith and therefore being an atheist is not a position you can question.

"Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist."

What is the etymological root of A-theism? "Without god". Again, are you telling me babies are born with a belief in god? no, of course they aren't. It is perfectly legitimate to refer to a baby as an atheist for they have no belief in god. Stop being ridiculous. You can't argue with a use of a dictionary term that is widely accepted. Well one can, but one just exposes one's ignorance.

 

[SciWriter]

Upon arriving at St. Bernadine’s Catholic grammar school each day, I would always stop at Bill and Betty’s little store, which was just across the street, and buy two honey dipped donuts to eat in the classroom after mass; this was a privilege for those saintly students who had fasted and received Holy Communion. For me, as a 5th grade boy, it was the ultimate treat, considering that the staying-in-one-room school day provided little other diversion until lunchtime.

Oh, how delicious those donuts tasted to a growing boy who had starved since dinner the night before, fasting all night and then sitting through a seemingly never-ending mass during which special prayers were said for nearly everyone’s grandparents and sick relatives. But, it was well worth the wait, for breakfast never tasted better than it did for us, the famished holy of holies. Imagine, eating right there in school during class, without even having to sneak in the bites, such as one had to do with candy snacks later in the day during hunger attacks. And out there, cooling, on the window sill, in all its glory, was our free chocolate milk, there only for the deserving, the healthful drink that washed down the honeyed donut. All in all it was a morning feast truly fitting for us young Christian warriors.

 

[YoYoPapaya]

God is relative to understanding.
Baby is not athiest. :bugeye:

So baby is theist?

Athiesm is the rejection of belief not the "lack of belief"

There are different definitions Joey. The most inclusive is lack of belief.

In your definition, animals like dogs and cats are athiests??

Excuse me, but how do you know they don't worship cat or dog deities?

 

[SciWriter]

To get milk, one needed only to have the foresight to sign up the day before, and, of course, to sit through a Latin mass, most of which time was spent either in looking over all the minute details of the person just ahead or in nudging someone’s shoe or lunch box along the floor until it had quite disappeared. Of course, to kill even more time, one could pretend to climb the wall buttresses barehanded and to maneuver among the ceiling arches, sliding down the lamp wires and such—until rudely bumped back into reality by the nun siting behind, the nun with eagle eyes that could detect the slightest lack of attention. Or one also could look and see which of the girls had forgotten their veils by the sorry napkin and handkerchief assortment draped upon their heads. Yes, a mass was a long and difficult time to suffer through, especially the endless periods of kneeling, but it was the tasty dreams of milk and honey donuts that carried me through, and now and then I’d catch a whiff from my donut bag of the breakfast, which everyone knew meant breaking-the-fast.

 

[spidergoat]

My next door neighbors were boy scouts, and the other neighbor was an eagle scout. I was interested in joining so I read the boy scout manual. I was into everything until I got to the section where they said a boy scout has to believe in a higher power. So, obviously I couldn't join as a matter of principle. I did buy the manual and learned the knots and stuff.

 

[KilljoyKlown]

@ Spidergoat

Let me be very clear this is a great thread and I did get the idea for my thread Do Atheist Come Out of the Closet, because of this thread. It's my opinion that active management is needed to keep even a good thread going, so what have you been doing while all your customers have been knocking on my door?

 

[keith1]

One should not consider labeling themselves as an afterthought of "anti-theism". This feeling of corrected thought realized--preceded theism--and deserves a more original and dignified terminology.
"Deity belief" is really a(place appropriate new terminology here).

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Religion was never discussed in my home. I never heard of it until I was in the second grade. A kid started telling me about this person named "God" who lives up in the sky, sees everything we do, and has tremendous powers to affect everyone's life. I thought it was a really great story, the kind that kids make up, and I was laughing with delight at his cleverness. I couldn't understand why that made him feel bad and he walked away.

When I got home I asked my mother why he had behaved that way. She sighed and sat down with me. She told me that some parents tell their children stories like that, but she and my father had not. I understood, "Like Santa Claus, right?" and she agreed that it was very much like that. They had already told me the truth about Santa Claus and I asked when his parents were going to tell him the truth about God. She sighed again, more deeply, and said that many parents never tell their children the truth about God, so when they grow up they still believe in the silly story. I said, "But I had already asked a lot of questions about Santa Claus because the story didn't make sense. How can reindeer fly with no wings? How can one man go to every house in Chicago in one night? We don't have a chimney so how does he get into our house? Even if you had never told me the truth I would have figured it out by now. After all, I'm seven years old, not a stupid little kid. This God story is even sillier than Santa Claus. How could a grownup be stupid enough to not know that it's just a story?"

This time her sigh was very long and very sad and she didn't quite know what to say. Finally she just said, "Well you know that some children your age still believe in Santa Claus because their lives are very sad and the Santa Claus story gives them something to be happy about? I really didn't want to have to tell you this so soon, but many grownups have very sad lives too, and the God story gives them something to be happy about."

"How could any grownup be that sad?" I asked. "You get to make all the rules, you get to stay up late every night watching television, you get to drive cars, you get to go into town all by yourself, you get to decide what kind of dog we're going to have, you don't have to eat anything you don't like, you get to go off and do these fun things you call 'jobs.' You don't even need Santa Claus. How can any grownup be so sad that he needs God?"

She had to think about that. Finally she said, "I guess some people like to be sad, because then they can talk to God and he makes them happy."

When I was about fifteen, one of my teachers watched me walk into the classroom and said, "Well here comes Fraggle Rocker, that old cynic." I had to look the word up in the dictionary. After thinking about it for a little while, I said, "I know exactly when I became a cynic."

I wrote about this experience once before on SciForums, maybe even twice. I'm sure the accounts don't match up in all the details. It was sixty years ago, after all.

Like all kids I had some serious complaints about my parents and had some difficulty finding my way in life. But they taught me three wonderful, important things for which I have always been grateful--things that I now realize were utterly amazing, in the 1940s and 50s:

• People are all the same, no matter what color their skin is.
• Violence is never the right way to settle a disagreement.
• There are no gods. It's all up to us.

 

[gmilam]

I grew up in a fairly religious background. (My parents were/are liberal Methodists.) Everyone I knew went to church every Sunday. I remember asking difficult questions from as early as kindergarten age. Some of my friends would have been told to get down on their knees and pray that God doesn't send them to hell for such thoughts. Luckily my parents took a different approach and told me that it was something I would have to decide for myself. (Then my mom made sure I watched the movie Inherit The Wind... Thanks mom.)

I tried to reconcile religious faith with reality. In my mid 20's I went through several years of serious sincere bible study. By the time I was 30 I realized that it made even less sense to me than it did when I was in kindergarten.

I wouldn't give it much thought today if it wasn't for people trying to shove their mythology down the throat of the science classrooms. It's Inherit The Wind all over again.

 

[Sarkus]

I grew up in a Catholic family, and attended mass every Sunday and HDO. But was bored throughout the mass and saw the whole religious thing as a chore.
From there I grew the sense that if God did exist (as I accepted at the time) then, from what I understood (that most people were the same religion as their parents etc), it wasn't the religion that was important as much as having belief... afterall, how could he punish all non-Catholics... that was just... wrong.
So from there I accepted a personal God, but attended church whenever I had to, not to keep God happy but to keep the authorities happy (school / parents etc).
By this time I was about 12 or 13.

From there it was just a matter of applying the same rational thought to the question of God that I did for most other things... and from there I began to see God as merely filling gaps in knowledge.

At about 17 I think I hit the tipping point and became sufficiently agnostic that belief could no longer be sustained as the default position.
Yes, there are still unanswered questions... but "God did it" I find rather unhelpful in understanding.
And yes, religious teachings in the scriptures can be of benefit, and religion itself can benefit people (comfort, charity etc) as I have witnessed first hand, although I consider that this is more a statement of the person than of the religion.

So there ya have it.
The actual age at the various stages may not be accurate - it was a few years ago - but I know I hit university aged 19 as an agnostic atheist.

 

[Pinwheel]

I must have just been born one because I never really belived in the first place.

 

[Gremmie]

I must have just been born one because I never really belived in the first place.

I don't think anyone is born an atheist... But, eventually we realize there are myths and fairytales and we get on with reality...

I believed in a God when I was a little boy...Then again, I believed in Santa for a bit too...Then I started kindergarten...

 

[Rhaedas]

Alright, people are born without the awareness of things such as gods. So if that's not atheism, the lack of belief, what term is appropriate?

Quibble the terminology, but you can't argue that the fact isn't true. There's a reason that most people who grow up in a region of X religious domination tend to believe in that religion. Take a baby from India and have him grow up with a family in the US bible belt. He's not going to automatically be hindi, the odds are he'll follow his surrounding believers, particularly if he's not told anything else exists.

 

[KilljoyKlown]

Alright, people are born without the awareness of things such as gods. So if that's not atheism, the lack of belief, what term is appropriate?

Quibble the terminology, but you can't argue that the fact isn't true. There's a reason that most people who grow up in a region of X religious domination tend to believe in that religion. Take a baby from India and have him grow up with a family in the US bible belt. He's not going to automatically be hindi, the odds are he'll follow his surrounding believers, particularly if he's not told anything else exists.

You got that right. If everybody were aloud to become adults, before being exposed to religion we'd all be atheist. Oh! Wait a minute if we didn't have any theist there couldn't be any atheist could there?

 

[YoYoPapaya]

you got that right. If everybody were aloud to become adults, before being exposed to religion we'd all be atheist. Oh! Wait a minute if we didn't have any theist there couldn't be any atheist could there?

zomg atheism is doomed!!!

 

[phlogistician]

I was born an atheist, as we all were, and nothing ever swayed me otherwise.

People tried, a friend of the family tried selling me Christianity, but unfortunately she tried too hard, and tried selling me young Earth creation too. She couldn't answer why there were dinosaur fossils, or where they went, or whether they were on the Ark, and basically, hadn't asked herself the same questions a curious five year old wanted answering.

Two kids at school used to attend Sunday School, and on Mondays, we used to go around the class and tell everybody a synopsis of what we did at the weekend, and then write a small essay. They always told us what they had been told at Sunday School. It always sounded like bullshit to me. One gem I remember is them proudly telling us that the devil made the germs that made us ill.

And since, in adult life, no theist has ever managed to answer my questions adequately, or honestly. There's always doubt, hand waving, dodging, contradiction, and never a direct answer to the real questions.

 

[spidergoat]

Alright, people are born without the awareness of things such as gods. So if that's not atheism, the lack of belief, what term is appropriate?
.

That's "dictionary atheism" and there is a trend to try and get away from this. Modern atheism is a set of beliefs that respects rationality and science and rejects the supernatural as having no evidence in support of it.

 

[KilljoyKlown]

That's "dictionary atheism" and there is a trend to try and get away from this. Modern atheism is a set of beliefs that respects rationality and science and rejects the supernatural as having no evidence in support of it.

"dictionary atheism" Would http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism qualify? Lot of stuff there, I didn't read it all, but I think I did notice a part about having no evidence in support of it.

Not sure I would class Wikipedia and dictionary as interchangeable, but it is worth a look see.