I was brought up as a Protestant in the old country having had to go to classes once a week for two hours taught by a pastor for two years in order to get confirmed. On many Sundays I went with our Catholic family friends to Catholic Church, this way I became quite familiar with the Old and New Testament. My incentive to keep going to these classes was that the confirmation was rewarded with valuable presents from family and friends. My pastor basically told me that he could tell I only finished the classes because of the looming presents, and most likely he would not see me in the future. He was right, my mind never got indoctrinate to a point where I ever had the urge of going to church. All the Bible stories I had lerned I always interpreted as ineresting fabels written by man. From early on in my life I always considered myself an agnostic/athiest.
I would like to hear from others how religion affected their lives and how and why they became none believers and started questioning the existence of god?
In order to get people to believe a lie you need to repeat the lie long enough for people to think it is true and that it was always true...well, for most people, thankfully not all.
I got involved with a church once and whe I said I no longer wanted to be a part of it I was threatned with the "you need Jesus' forgivness or else........."
So I set about determing that if this turned out to be true then I would albeit reluctantly sign up to God. So I undertook research. And I mean research. Different religions, history, bible historians, psychology, evolutnionary psychology, sociology, science- not just evolution but other areas as well and other forms of spirituality. I had to be 100% sure that I was turning my back on somehing that was nonsense.
One thing became clear. Becoming an atheist is stage one. There is so much to understand how abiut how the world works. And very easy it is to sucumb to nonsense- religious or otherwise.
Good for you, you seemed to have escaped the indoctrination and avoided years of conflict.
I think I became religious when I was younger because I did not even know atheism was an option. I just assumed that if you died and were not saved you went to hell. The turning point for me came when I took a quiz called 'belief-o-matic' on faith.net which would tell you what religion you should be based on answering the questions. I analyzed my beliefs as I took the quiz and it said that I was a secular humanist. I was a little shocked but the nail in the coffin of christianity was Richard Dawkin's book "The God Delusion.'
I was raised in Sunday school and was astounded at about 7 when I realized adults around me thought the stories were real.
I had been seeing them as interesting parables like B'rer Rabbit, Aesop and Paul Bunyan.
I was also savvy enough to keep my mouth shut.
For me. I was born and raised fundamental independent Baptist. After. Bible college continued to study the bible thoroughly. Gradually it became more of a joke the more I learned. I'm embarrassed it took me that long to figure ot out.
I am embarrassed how long it took me to figure it out also. I think I believed because I really did not know atheism was an option.
I attended Catholic elementary and high school. The family attended mass every Sunday. I learned Catholic dogma and the more famous bible stories suitable for kids. At funerals, people would contribute to a bribe for God to shorten the departed's sentence in purgatory. I guess God really wanted that marble alter. i remained a closet religious person into my 20's. But when I figured out that prayer does nothing, I started questioning. And I might say that it was the Carl Sagan series, "Cosmos," that crossed me over to being Agnostic. Fortunately, I was always interested in astronomy. I could not learn about the cosmos, particularly in the way Sagan presented it all, and keep holding to silly biblical myth.
Religion as I know it has been defined for almost 2000 years as :Religion... pure and faultless is this: to help widows and orphans in need and avoiding worldly corruption. James 1:27.
Because of what people call "religious " text and because it is said "man created God", I become a man to create Taco God. Any person that has eaten at least one Taco in their life is a Taco God.
As to the existence of some God I find it is accepted that people are Gods. 3 different references that people are Gods. With out disputing truth or fiction of Jesus character, it is written that Jesus style God argued that people are Gods.
Isaiah 41:23 Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.
Psalms 82:6 I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
John 10:34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
The biblical text is record holding most copied book of it's kind. Biblical text has been peer reviewed for 1000s of years. It has critics but overwhelming acceptance that supports Jesus's statement that people are Gods.
Gods exist because people are accepted to be gods, atheism illogical.
It is not necessary or required to prove any other style of God, only one style of God is required to prove atheism illogical.
Willy wanka style god, Harry Potter style God, Zues style God, Medusa style God: what ever, none of these are required to be proven to show and prove atheism illogical. Atheism by basic definition is that NO God(s) exist. Proof and acceptance of just 1 style god proves atheism wrong or illogical.
I was raised mostly in Conservative Baptist churches and grew up hearing a lot of "hellfire and brimstone" sermons.I left organized religion when I was in my late twenties thinking I could be a better Christian without going than the many racists, hypocrites, adulterers, child-molesters etc that I encountered--some of them stood behind the pulpits.
I had always had questions but had resisted challenging my beliefs. This changed when I was in my early thirties when I could no longer ignore the nagging questions: why would an all-good god create a place of eternal punishment? Why does this god allow such horrible things to happen to good people--and especially to children? Why is the god of the Old Testament so different from the god of the new? If we cannot accurately translate some things from one language to another, in today's languages, how can we know what ancient writers actually wrote, or meant? And, many more.
I began by learning more about the Bible(actually reading it all the way through) and ancient myths. I realized that the Bible was not the word of any god and that the god described in it was too contradictory to actually exist. Two books that really helped me at this time were: "Who Wrote The Bible?" by Richard Elliot Friedman and "101 Myths of the Bible," by Gary Greenberg.
I began to look at other religions and realized that none felt right to me. I settled into deism and I began to learn more science through books and the Internet. The more I learned, the more I realized that there is no evidence for any kind of god and that the universe behaves just as it would without one; so I saw no reason to believe in one.
This was a long, painful, anxiety ridden, journey; but one I am very happy to have made.
At age 13, I became and atheist when I realized the Bible is just a book of stories written by men. I chose rational thought, not magical beliefs.
Michigan had a hard winter that year. My little brother, 10, and I read the World Book Encyclopedias together. I was inspired by rational philosophers Descartes and Spinoza, who bravely were anti-theist (anti-God), anti-clergy and anti-church in the 1600s, when heretics were burned at the stake.
Their writings inspired the Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that emphasized the use of reason and science to advance understanding of the universe and to improve the human condition. The goals of the Enlightenment were knowledge, freedom, and happiness.
"Mom, I decided I'm an atheist," I told my mother in the kitchen. "I don't want to go to church anymore."
"That's fine, honey," she replied. "I became an atheist in nursing school when I realized a woman cannot be turned into salt." She laughed.
Raised Catholic, my mother attended Catholic schools through college. Dad never went to church. Mom dropped us kids off at Sunday school- First United Methodist Church- and went back home.
Apparently my parents hoped Sunday school would somehow tame us four intelligent, spirited and smart-aleck children. Fat chance.
I am glad that you four weren't tamed.
You were lucky, if I had so much as set foot in a catholic Church my mother would have tried to drown me in a bath of holy water while singing singing Salvationist hymns over me and tanning my hide with fragments of the one true cross.
Even when my Catholic great great Aunt died she prayed over us for fifteen minutes and insisted we not listen to the Papist liar in the pulpit and instead pray constantly for the soul of Auntie Biddie while inside the temple of Mammon.