Why am I (not)an atheist?

He said he didn't read the biglundi's text , he wasn't speaking abouth the bible and to answer this topic he don't have to read it since the title is self explanatory . I would change what i say : And please by the name of god , if you can't respect others ,. don't even come on the forum , just stay to your fapping . Btw isn't respect something your religion is suppose to teach you (to love one another) ?

Can you two take this squabble and switch it to PM's? This thread was not for debate or arguing, and that is all you seem to be doing.

Fuck this useless thread .

Though I am Catholic, I read the Hebrew text. And I base my beliefs off the text alone.

"God" doesn't want to be my friend.

Well at this present moment and probably for the remainder of my life, I am an atheist. When I was younger I guess I used the be a strong believer in Christianity, mainly because of the influence of my great-grandmother(when she was living). After she died I still attended services/Sunday school, but as I started to age into my teens, the question "Why" began to come up a lot. I guess I wasn't truly a believer from start and just went with it because it was what I was taught.

During my teen years, I really started to wonder why. Use to actually argue with myself about it. Like hours of arguing at a time. And to put it in a nut shell, I kinda developed little theses on how I viewed the world. I saw religion as a way of dealing with the uncertainty of death and the Universe. Something I didn't agree with, I believed basically, there was no secret or purpose. Life is simply what it is. You interact, you form bonds, you fulfill urges. Then you die and nothing. Basically, I saw no reason for there to be an afterlife. No reason to blame favorably possibility on some omnipotent being.

Taking that mentality to heart, I basically made myself an atheist. Just because I can not explain something doesn't mean there isn't an explanation for it; And honestly, in my opinion, it really doesn't matter. You'll be dead soon enough so why not just focus on life, making it better for yourself and the ones to come after you.

I am an agnostic theist probably because of some combination of being too lazy to worship/pray to a deity and being a fairly logical person.

Religion at its core is meant to guide people to live a certain lifestyle/worship certain gods/etc, but that's basically all I see it as. Since no religion gives legitimate evidence that their deity exists (Many Christians i know often pull the 'the bible is historically accurate!' card on me) or that their lifestyle is superior to those of others (Buddhism for example), I just choose the only religion that makes sense to me, that the possibility of a omnipresent deity exists, but it's not up to people to determine who or what the deity is. Mere atheists just can't explain the beginning of the universe (The big bang theory is a load of bull to me).

The truth is out there, but the lies are in your head.

I'm an atheist and the realisation came to me in the shower.
I was younger and still a Christian and I had just finished watching a YouTube video which discussed the benefits of reason and it used this quote by Bertrand Russell, "When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy. Ask yourself only, what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts spell out."
And so I was in the shower, doing some of my best thinking and that quote came to me, so I said to myself, why do I believe on God? What facts are there for God? And then I got scared. I was questioning God! I was going to burn forever! But I pushed that out of my mind for a while and thought honestly about it.

I could find no real reason why I believed in God.

So I tried something radical, just for a minute, I thought, I will believe there is no God.

I wasn't struck by lightening, the sky didn't fall, the universe still made perfect sense. And it all come flooding, I felt new, my eyes had been opened, and I realised just how strange the whole idea of God was.

After that I considered myself an Atheist, and am now living my life quite happily as one.

My family and I were immigrants from China where religions wasn't practiced by the general populace except those weird little cults where people immolate themselves for no reason. Then here in America, I was taught by those around me to believe in this God and to be a god fearing little boy. In the year 2001, my grandma was hit by a bus and fell into a coma. I prayed very hard for her every day, but she ended up dying a month later. Then I go to church and I hear people talking about these miracles that changed their life in the form of these small insignificant things like getting a job, marrying this person that they met in a dream or some other bullshit. In school, I was always bullied by Christians for being a foreigner. Somewhere before middleschool, I became mostly atheist because God played absolutely no role in life. As I got older, all my successes and good things in life came from my own power and effort and not by praying to some old man in the clouds. Every time, I meet a hypocritical christian, I side with atheism more. Seeing all of these religions in the world, I'm pretty sure it's just an institute to control people. Christianity was used as a unifying force by Emperor Constantine to try to save the Byzantine Empire and Islam was used by Muhammad to protect those around him. Also the Bible is filled with so many contradictions and absurd things.

Conclusion: Praying or believe in God had not done a single bloody thing in life for me and everyone who experiences this "awakening" just had a dream where they told themselves what they already know or is using religion as a way to rid themselves of their problems. I'm pretty sure if no one talked about Christianity or other religions, no one would experience these "spiritual awakenings" because they wouldn't even have the knowledge to hallucinate it.

I am Agnostic, but I have to say I am close to Atheism than believing in religion.
I think it is better for me to believe that God doesn't exist, or he is too cruel to the world. I want to believe that he doesn't exist, rather than believing that he does exist and he is cruel and doesn't give a crap. Although of course, if anyone proves to me that such omnipotent being exists, I am ready to believe.

I was grew up as a christian, I went to church regularly when I was a kid.

but since last 8 years, I became Agnostic, it's not like I believe there is no God, it's just I don't have any faith in any religions anymore. Why every religion claims their God is the right one? what is there different with every salesman telling their products are the best? With the high amount of fake so called faith healers it really looks like they are salesman, they sell "God".

Even if God exist I believe he will be very different from what we have heard so far, for example they said "believe in Jesus and you will be saved", what about non believer?? are they to be forsaken? the muslim has the similar claim, so who is the right one?

And the God's behaviors in old testament really puzzled me, he acted like those of Greek's Gods which full of human emotion, isn't He supposed to be omnipotent?

I believe if God exist he will totally devoid of emotion, just create and watch over them without any interference, that why we have our chaotic world.

Hmm. Atheist. But i respect other religions as long as they dont come to rub it down my nose and trying me to convert to theyr religion.

Second:



And 3rd.

If god exists, he might, as George Carlin said, Not GIVE A SHIT!

Why a guy?
If it was a woman, i doubt we will live in this chaotic world.

And sorry if i might insult someone.

I am a Christian.

I will say that does not necessarily mean what some might think it would mean. The modern day view of the Christian faith, or any faith for that matter, is as vast and diverse as the human race.

There are those that say religion is like a salesmen trying to get you to buy his product rather than the other salesmen, and I agree that a lot of churches and Christians portray it that way. I don't like churches like that but some may not know that there are actually churches that don't portray it that way. One such example would be The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas. Pastor Matt Chandler is probably one of the reasons I am still a Christian today. Do some research into him if you are interested.

One reason I say I am a Christian and that my beliefs are correct has to do with Lewis's trilemma.

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."

This among other things makes me believe Christianity to be the "right" choice. I believe Jesus to have existed because there is far too much historical evidence of his existence. Of course there are issues with this argument as there are with any argument. If there was such a thing as a perfect argument for any religion or atheism, then there would be no debate. I do know that some people believe that there is a perfect argument for their views but that the other sides simply will not accept it or understand it but then that in itself would render the argument imperfect. I will say that being able to point out a flaw in an argument does not make the argument any more or less true, but it does give them an acceptable excuse to disbelieve it or to believe another.

Of course there is a whole lot more to it but you will be hard pressed to find a man that can defend the entire Christian faith and effectively convert non-believers in a series of books, let alone a single forum post. Especially since I am no theologian. I will say that one problem is that a lot of people are looking for simple answers yet that is impossible when none of the answers are ever simple, let alone simple enough for them.

I recommend that everyone read the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It is a great outline and logical argument for the type of Christianity I believe. If you aren't looking for that it's an interesting read if nothing else.

I first became an atheist simply because my mother is a Christian. Looking back, I figured that if God could allow such a ridiculously awful person to exist without punishment or confrontation, then I wanted nothing to do with him. If he allowed millions throughout history to murder, steal, and torture in his name, then he's not worthy of the praise of anyone other than sick sadomasochist Sheeple who allow themselves to be miserable during life simply because of profound promises during death.

Then I furthered my stance after becoming a more logical and critical-thinking being. I began to feel sorry for Satan, considering he gets blamed for absolutely every bad thing in the world, despite him only being mentioned a few times in the Bible. Despite his single-digit number of kills in comparison to the millions God killed, including trees for some reason.

Eventually, I rationalized that due to a vast majority of the things we enjoy in life being sins, Hell is the best place to go, as Heaven has no sins. Why would someone that's considered to be the King of Lies, Evil, Darkness, etc. punish you for being like him and earning a ticket to Hell? He doesn't even have a choice to be there or not. Most people's idea of an "Eternal Paradise" invokes one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins, which wouldn't be allowed in Heaven. In the end, I came to the conclusion that there's absolutely -nothing- you can do in Heaven, except probably go to church more. I was pretty amazed at how with just a bit of critical thinking, Heaven actually manages to make -itself- look unappealing.

In the end, while I was being forced to sit in church with my mother, there came a time where I'd actually get physically ill from watching these people who had bills to pay, mouths to feed, and cars that needed gas, give a large amount of the money they desperately needed to the church. In return, they got empty promises that God would double their offering. And even if he didn't, they'd moan and clap and cry just for getting through the week.

To me, theism just became a way for the weak-willed and weak-minded to seemingly thrust their problems on someone else. Someone who doesn't even exist. Instead of "I'm going to apply for this promotion or do a little overtime", it became "God will take care of it! I know God has something in store for me!". When I finally got out into the world, getting by comfortably was so ludicrously easy that I felt like calling my mother just to ask her why she was fine with being a brainwashed imbecile for my entire upbringing and beyond.

My reasons for atheism are so numerous that typing them here would make a text limit have to be enforced. The Bible is most widely purchased book in history, but the least read. Many atheists I know became atheist after actually reading the Bible, unlike the Sheeple around them who allowed the Pastor to just skip around to find what best suited him and his deep pockets.

At this point, to me, theists are absolutely -revolting- in a way that no rape,murder,torture,infantcide,or cannibalism can mimic.

It makes me all giddy inside seeing how agitated I've made you.

Despite that I will say that I did not see,



and for that I do apologize. I will not engage in any debates in this thread but should I feel the need to add to my original post or contribute to this thread in the proper manner then I shall do so. I will also delete my previous posts other than my original. If you wish I will delete this post as well. And no, I do not wish to debate with you further on this matter. I likely won't want to debate with you on any matter as I do not like the attitude and ego I have seen from you time and time again. Adios.

[color=#2e1a6b]lol



[color=#2e1a6b]I'll look up that pastor. I go to Town North PCA in Richardson. We've got a good pastor, but his sermons focus on details of the bible, instead of the bible's credibility.

I was forced to read Mere Christianity as a school assignment a few years ago, but you inspired me to read it again.

Glad to hear. I'll look up yours as well. You should be able to find some of my pastors stuff on youtube but you might be better off just going to TheVillageChurch.net Just so you know Matt can get a bit passionate while preaching but I love it. I find it invigorating.

Oh that's where the name TheVillageIdiot come from xD