Man created God in man's image.
it's all about explaining the unexplainable, and keeping people in line.
it serves a purpose, now we're past the age of ignorance.

The reason I am an agnostic is....oh...well, actually I'm not sure.

I have yet to hear a good explanation of why a person is an atheist with respect to the thousands and thousands of gods that have been worshipped since the beginning of time - and why just the one. They have explanations but they are less than compelling.

when people organize into communities they adopt rules - many unwritten (social contract) but some written. thats where your bibles came from.

It always sounded ridiculous to me, even as a preschooler. I couldn't say so, of course.

My strong desire for my parents religion to be true was already being worn away jot by jot due to its inherent nonense when we got to the world religions section of our confirmation class. I realized that each of these religions had their own book and their own teachers. How did I know was mine the right one? I had enough doubt by high school to stop taking communion... and enough after high school to stop attending church. Eventually I had to admit that I hadn't found anything that would nudge me toward belief, but there was an awful lot of evidence that the bible had been written by people who were not inspired by an omniscient god. I think I'd become an atheist in 8th grade. But I only admitted it fully to myself, and accepted it as the right decision some time in my 20s. And honestly, I only got over the superstition of it in my 30s. Then in my 40s I encountered the simulation theory of the universe, and I had to revise my stance - for certain unusual definitions of god (e.g. a computer programmer in a universe I can’t know anything about), I’m actually agnostic!

The complete corpus of Bob Dylan’s work is as enlightening as any holy canon along with Plato and Carl Sagan.

It became clear to Me as I was running My routine 5k, an aha moment as a result of Years of seeing the obvious insistencies. I felt a little angry because I had been lied to, however, I kept running. That's been about 12 years ago.

I was being lied to as a 5 year old about 3 similar lies....Santa, ester boy bunnies laying candy eggs on dogshit lawns and alleged vaginal virgins birthing alleged baby gawds in dirty donkey stables....I knew reindeer don't fly fat Santa could not fit down our 6 inch coal furnace exhaust pipe.....and donkeys fuck quite the same as Bill Cosby in Playboy Magazines....the bible gawd seemed awfully worse than the magic Wolfman Lon Cheney in the movie...being bribed cap pistols and cowboy boots size 6 was too obvious for me in moms handwriting outside packages and red ribbons....praise the LARD and don't make me get baptized in that slimey green water behind the church Curtain

First, the notion of God is intrinsically illogical, and these arguments by Epicuris are widely quoted. "“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

My ah-ha moment had to do with my utter boredom in Sunday school, and my disgust with my shallow classmates. I saw nothing meaningful to honor, except the pleasant songs.

Real school taught matters of substance with intrinsic meanings buried inside.

Also, I read "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer.

When the idea that invisible, magical people in the sky was ridiculous bullshit.

Twas the early and very hot summer of 1976 and our Religious Education (R.E.) tutor had gone away to bother Indians with Christianity. So the school's deputy head stepped into the post.
After 35 minutes of explanation and questions a class of 32 young men had produced 30 atheists. I still don't know why boys and girls were separated for RE.
My mother didn't like the idea of blasphemy being taught to children, but there you are. She enlightened me that I was like her dad, an unbeliever.
To be fair, I doubted that there really was a god or gods before 1976. Why would a loving god allow so much evil. Why just one son, one location, and after Jesus had risen from the dead, why didn't he show himself off? Why are we not all Jews?

I think it was a combination of things. The non-logicality of the Bible (How did Moses have tablets that told the entire story of creation when his part was "mid story"? That's a snake eating it's own tail. There are all kinds of inconsistencies in the 4 gospels about JC's birth, death, etc. I had to look into the authorship of it all and became flabbergasted at the foibles of it all. I think "Holy Blood Holy Grail" kind of sealed the deal and I've been a critic ever since. The only part that I still find intriguing is the "Bible Code". Think I'll start a separate thread on that...

Let me see now, oh I remember now when rational and logical thinking told me that snakes and donkeys can't talk,and that the Fables confirms my suspicions of the mentality of a some bronze age ignorant savage who thought the world was flat.

Zeus, Jupiter, Osiris, Isis, Mythra, and thousands of "gods", all invented by man, did not do what you say, but that's another story.

Your reason objection--that God would not need to inspire a sacred text--is a valid only to religions that are based on a sacred text (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc.).

Taking snakes to seven headed dragons! The Bible is bullshit from start to finish!

There was a bunch of ah ha moments until one little thing threw me over the edge. At first I mostly just allowed the idea into my head but once that happened, it just seemed so obvious that religion was just a bunch of bunk. It's all been downhill from there.