Any atheists here who were once believers?

Balerion said:
And I'm not convinced your naivete allows you to see with anything other than rose-colored glasses, wegs.
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Not rose colored glasses. I try to see the good in people. Even if I disagree with them. ;)


Sarkus said:
Interesting: most atheists I know have no fear of death. Perhaps yours fuels your belief in an after life?
I have no fear of it. The process of dying, yes, but death itself, no.
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agree

It is also the acceptance of this being the only life that helps fuels one's happiness, in my experience.
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agree again.
 
wegs said:
Lol I see.

Well, there's nothing to fear if one doesn't believe in hell. I don't believe in heaven or hell, and never did. :eek:
Maybe the concept of eternity, but not based on anything remotely linked to morality deciding one's eternal "fate." And if an eternal after life exists, I personally don't believe my prayers or anyone else's said for me ...will help me to arrive there.
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@wegs - What about prayers for your friends. Could you imagine your friends in Heaven and you not? So was that you taking the piss out of me? I would like an explanation wegs.
 
Robittybob1 said:
@wegs - What about prayers for your friends. Could you imagine your friends in Heaven and you not? So was that you taking the piss out of me? I would like an explanation wegs.
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When you and I first started talking, I was on the fence with my faith. I still prayed for people. Prayer and the after life, were the last ''concepts'' to go for me. They were the two areas of faith, that I remained on the fence with for the past year, I'd say. Out of fear. I will say this, though. When I prayed for people...I never prayed that they would go to heaven...for I never believed in it. NEVER. If eternity exists, in my opinion....it is unfathomable. I don't believe that if God exists...he has a 'place' called heaven awaiting us...and a ''place'' called hell awaiting us.

Not all faiths believe this, you know. Are they wrong? If one isn't Christian...is he/she going to hell? If you can answer with yes or no...how would you even know this? You don't know. Just like I don't know. That's the point, Robittybob. That...is the point. To tell an atheist he/she is wrong to not believe, when you have no earthly idea if you are right or wrong yourself, doesn't make any sense to me. If you believe it...believe it with everything you have, for faith is meaningless if your heart is not in it. :eek:

Speaking of which...one of my dear friends died, recently. (roughly a year ago) She was very close to me. She was an atheist all her life. I never prayed for her soul. I remember her mother coming to me asking me to pray, for what I don't even know ...so, I prayed for her to accept death. That if she was going to die, to accept it with grace and peace. So, I have a Christian friend who was also this girl's friend. And she was always railing against her...you know, the fire and brimstone speech? But alas! My atheist friend died, and this same Christian friend told me...'she is in a better place now.' I turned to her with such anger and said...'how dare you say this. like you fucking know? you thought she was going to hell remember? because she was an atheist...and now ...she is in heaven? because you fucking say so?' I have not spoken to her since this happened, so you might want to pray for her for she needs far more prayers than my atheist friend ever did. My friend who was an atheist was a gem of a human being. She was charitable, kind hearted...a WONDERFUL shining human being, Robittybob. And she died. Tell me where she is.

Tell me where my friend went who didn't believe in a god. Is such a fine human being in hell? If so...what kind of a god had i been worshipping all those lost years?

:(

Now, you know how I feel about 'prayer.'
 
I'm not angry with you or anyone who believes this stuff, Robittybob. I just miss my friend. Some days, I can't believe she is gone and I refuse to believe that if there is some ridiculous place called hell...that she is there.

So, you see, believing this crap causes nothing but pain and angst for those left behind.

But, instead of talking about dreams and such...talk about the hard stuff, like this. This is the hard stuff. This is why people lose faith. This is why people stop believing in a god. I had stopped practicing my Christian faith...up until this point. But, my friend's death...is what caused me to stop believing in God. If God exists, I'm open to it, but I also have come to accept that he just may not exist at all...and I'm ok with it.
 
wegs said:
When you and I first started talking, I was on the fence with my faith. I still prayed for people. Prayer and the after life, were the last ''concepts'' to go for me. They were the two areas of faith, that I remained on the fence with for the past year, I'd say. Out of fear. I will say this, though. When I prayed for people...I never prayed that they would go to heaven...for I never believed in it. NEVER. If eternity exists, in my opinion....it is unfathomable. I don't believe that if God exists...he has a 'place' called heaven awaiting us...and a ''place'' called hell awaiting us.

Not all faiths believe this, you know. Are they wrong? If one isn't Christian...is he/she going to hell? If you can answer with yes or no...how would you even know this? You don't know. Just like I don't know. That's the point, Robittybob. That...is the point. To tell an atheist he/she is wrong to not believe, when you have no earthly idea if you are right or wrong yourself, doesn't make any sense to me. If you believe it...believe it with everything you have, for faith is meaningless if your heart is not in it. :eek:

Speaking of which...one of my dear friends died, recently. (roughly a year ago) She was very close to me. She was an atheist all her life. I never prayed for her soul. I remember her mother coming to me asking me to pray, for what I don't even know ...so, I prayed for her to accept death. That if she was going to die, to accept it with grace and peace. So, I have a Christian friend who was also this girl's friend. And she was always railing against her...you know, the fire and brimstone speech? But alas! My atheist friend died, and this same Christian friend told me...'she is in a better place now.' I turned to her with such anger and said...'how dare you say this. like you fucking know? you thought she was going to hell remember? because she was an atheist...and now ...she is in heaven? because you fucking say so?' I have not spoken to her since this happened, so you might want to pray for her for she needs far more prayers than my atheist friend ever did. My friend who was an atheist was a gem of a human being. She was charitable, kind hearted...a WONDERFUL shining human being, Robittybob. And she died. Tell me where she is.

Tell me where my friend went who didn't believe in a god. Is such a fine human being in hell? If so...what kind of a god had i been worshipping all those lost years?

:(

Now, you know how I feel about 'prayer.'
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I've copied it so you won't delete it.

That is an odd question, for you want me to tell you where your friend is. OK I don't need to know anything about her other than she is your friend.
Now no doubt I will be given an answer and you will want proof, so really the answer should go directly to you. So my first prayer is this: Lord Jesus you have heard ......'s cry and so have many others Lord. Please tell her where her friend is in a dream tonight.
Give her the courage to tell us the answer tomorrow. (12:00 midday NZ time)
Amen.
 
Balerion said:
Spoken like someone who doesn't know what spacetime is. Define your terms, sledgehammer. Otherwise, this is a useless exercise.
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You continue to be evasive. You said that everything in reality is material. Or do you prefer to back off from that statement. I asked you, like 5 times, to tell us what you mean by "material". I don't understand what is wrong with you. Others have conceded this point and have still made strong arguments about materialism. Gee whiz!

And I'm not convinced your naivete allows you to see with anything other than rose-colored glasses, wegs.
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wegs, whatever you do, don't be like Baleron.
 
wegs said:
I'm not angry with you or anyone who believes this stuff, Robittybob. I just miss my friend. Some days, I can't believe she is gone and I refuse to believe that if there is some ridiculous place called hell...that she is there.

So, you see, believing this crap causes nothing but pain and angst for those left behind.

But, instead of talking about dreams and such...talk about the hard stuff, like this. This is the hard stuff. This is why people lose faith. This is why people stop believing in a god. I had stopped practicing my Christian faith...up until this point. But, my friend's death...is what caused me to stop believing in God. If God exists, I'm open to it, but I also have come to accept that he just may not exist at all...and I'm ok with it.
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Do you read the BCS thread? The story about Tony (Carol's son whom we buried yesterday) and the one about Dad, as far as I know they too were atheists.
 
Robittybob1 said:
I've copied it so you won't delete it.

That is a odd question, for you want me to tell you where your friend is. OK I don't need to know anything about her other than she is your friend.
Now no doubt I will be given an answer and you will want proof, so really the answer should go directly to you. So my first prayer is this: Lord Jesus you have heard ......'s cry and so have many others Lord. Please tell her where her friend is in a dream tonight.
Give her the courage to tell us the answer tomorrow. (12:00 midday NZ time)
Amen.
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Thank you. :(
 
Robittybob1 said:
Do you read the BCS thread? The story about Tony (Carol's son whom we buried yesterday) and the one about Dad, as far as I know they too were atheists.
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I hadn't read it, no. I'm sorry for your loss. Carol seems like a nice lady...I know she believes in all of this stuff.
 
Mazulu said:
You continue to be evasive. You said that everything in reality is material. Or do you prefer to back off from that statement. I asked you, like 5 times, to tell us what you mean by "material". I don't understand what is wrong with you. Others have conceded this point and have still made strong arguments about materialism. Gee whiz!


wegs, whatever you do, don't be like Baleron.
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I needed a laugh. lol
Poor Balerion. He can be nice. lol ;)
 
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wegs said:
I hadn't read it, no. I'm sorry for your loss. Carol seems like a nice lady...I know she believes in all of this stuff.
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I'm not sure she does. But she came to live with me, to cook for me and to do housework etc so that she will see the proof of the things written in the New Testament. I wanted her, to tell her own story in her own words (in the BCS thread) but she has still not been able to get a username registered.

PS: I re-read your post and my answer and I cried too.
 
Robittybob1 said:
I'm not sure she does. But she came to live with me, to cook for me and to do housework etc so that she will see the proof of the things written in the New Testament. I wanted her, to tell her own story in her own words (in the BCS thread) but she has still not been able to get a username registered.

PS: I re-read your post and my answer and I cried too.
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I haven't cried about her in a while.
 
Aqueous Id said:
I would never have turned out to be a religious person due to the death of a sibling at a very young age, which, by all accounts of the benevolence of the personal God, was irreconcilable even though I was too young to put the picture together very well. So I was resonating on your remarks. I do recall after learning all of the things God invests his time in according to Christians and Jews (later Islam) that nothing but a monster would be so cold and callous as to allow atrocities, horror and grief to descend on innocent victims and their families.
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I'm sorry for your loss when you were young, Aqueous. It's interesting you talk about a 'personal God.' Einstein was somewhat spiritual, but he didn't believe in 'personal' relationship with God.

Regardless of this kind of 'predisposition' to be an atheist, I actually arrived at my present worldview as a teen--either 15 or 16. I guess like anyone else it one day occurred to me that if I were born in India everyone around me would be professing Hinduism, or in China it would be Buddhism and in the Arab lands, Islam (obviously there are many minority groups in those places). Thus, I concluded, all religion is luck of the draw. Wherever you end up being born, that's what marks you for membership in the local belief system. But that was also the age when I began to express the absurdity of belief in God and was pretty disturbed by the way some people would shrink in horror, like I'd pissed on their sacred burial grounds or something.
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Take away the extraordinary anger I have over my friend who died who was an atheist (I mention above)...I look at this whole thing in a very sterile way, as well. Like you, I feel I could have landed in any family...being raised around any faith. It just so happened to be Christianity, for me. But, people change when they become adults. In other cultures, it's even harder to leave the faith of one's childhood. There are less freedoms in some countries, as we have here in the states. It is a freedom we sometimes take for granted, you know? I am free to practice what I wish or practice nothing at all. In other countries, I might go through persecution for the very same thing. So...don't dismiss that. :eek:

The other part of this is that notion you mention, eternity. It seemed primitive to me even as a kid; the idea of a soul inhabiting a body struck me as something like voodoo. Same with all the fascination over death, getting ready for death. That just couldn't be right. Add to this compassion that was supposed to be at the center of it, and there would be the reminder of God striking down a tiny child leaving the parent forever scarred, and it just never connected in me. I only saw one really scary exhibition of religious crackpottery at an evangelical event I attended with a girl I was dating, and only because I wanted to find out whether she was a closet nut herself (she was) but I hated the event. It made me feel like someone was putting a pillow over every ones' mouths and suffocating them to death. It was very visceral, I remember feeling sick, and I never again set foot in one of those events again. I did go into some churches and synagogues in connection with a music program I pursued in college and of course some marriage ceremonies I was in, and found them quite bizarre and stuffy as well. But none of this would ever correlate with the horrors their God was allowing to unfold. This huge disconnect left me pretty convinced that religion affects people like a mental imbalance, the same as some homeless person wandering around speaking incoherently to ghosts. Most of my life religious people just stayed in the background, as a constant reminder of a dysfunctional society. They really started going off the chain in the reign of Dubbya, and I see them now as threat to all peace and progress in civilized society, the instigators of the culture wars.
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How intriguing, that I think a lot like you on this topic. Death, eternity...ugh. It's just perhaps overwhelming to think about, sometimes. I think as human beings, we are always seeking answers...to the unanswerable. Maybe there is nothing that caused the Big Bang. Maybe there is nothing after we die. Maybe there is nothing else, but this life. Why are we not ok with accepting that? Why are seeking to fill in gaps...and even more than that...to LOVE a being that we can't see ...can't touch...that we have convinced ourselves somehow...LOVES US BACK?

I understand faith. It can be comforting, and a number of years, I felt joy ...ignorance is bliss, as they say. lol It really can be.

But all along I could have told them they were chasing windmills. People created their gods, not the other way around, and it happened as a consequence of trying to explain phenomena for which there was no science. We're way past that now. We know so much more; it's completely obsolete, and hardly a reason for running amok, tearing down science as they would idols.
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Yes yes yes. Couldn't agree more. See above. :D

That takes me to where I am. Here, talking to one of the sane members of one of the saner cults of religion. In a word, I couldn't agree more. No divine force of infinite good will would ever perpetuate all of the horror on the young, the old, and the innocent. It's criminal. (Therefore, God does not exist.)
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Quite frankly, I find greater peace, in not thinking about it all anymore. If God exists or doesn't...is not important to me anymore. It used to fill my entire life, and now ...it's just gone. I'm still angry over some things, but...I will heal. The interesting thing about removing faith out of my life...removing a need to follow God out of my life...is I find the solutions to my problems. Some people view atheists as selfish...but, rather they just believe in themselves, and that's enough. ((hugs))
 
Mazulu said:
You continue to be evasive. You said that everything in reality is material. Or do you prefer to back off from that statement. I asked you, like 5 times, to tell us what you mean by "material". I don't understand what is wrong with you. Others have conceded this point and have still made strong arguments about materialism. Gee whiz!
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Nobody has conceded that there are non-material objects in the universe. Nobody. And I've answered your question about material; why won't you define your terms for me?

This is all just you attempting to lay down a smoke screen to cover your ignorance. Unfortunately for you, it isn't working. You're getting trounced in every thread you participate, including this one. Aren't you tired of looking stupid?
 
arauca said:
My father during WW 11 escaped when they come at night to kill him,
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How lucky for your father. But that does not answer the question. What about the millions upon millions who were exterminated for their religion, their race and their sexuality and for their perceived imperfection?

we don't know if the priest forced the into their anus or perhaps he seduced them so they wil penetrate him and perhaps the even liked it. Woman if she would dress more modestly she might attract less to be seduced , Learn from the animal kingdom on how animals act to attract mating .
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You are sick and perverted, you know that?

You are going to claim that priests who molest young boys and girls, children, may not have been doing anything wrong and that perhaps the children liked being raped? And you blame women for being raped? It's never the fault of the men who rape, is it?

Learn from the animal kingdom on how animals act to attract mating... Tell me, what can children and women do differently to avoid being raped? Actually no, don't tell me. I have come across sick perverts like you, who condones rape and pedophilia, enough in my work to know how people like you justify your beliefs.

He is in you but you choose to rebel , and there is a price that we pay god or no god
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Well if you believe God is in you and you go so far as to claim that perhaps children like being raped and women are to blame for their rapes, then I rather be completely Godless.
 
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