Why and how did you become an atheist?

How did you become an atheist [or non-believer]? [Multi] [Choice for theists too]

  • Never indoctrinated

    Votes: 1 4.5%

  • Always a moderate

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Once a Strong believer, some experience convinced otherwise

    Votes: 3 13.6%

  • Once a believer, study of science and philosophy convinced otherwise

    Votes: 7 31.8%

  • Anti-Religiousness [for any reason] lead to/contributed

    Votes: 1 4.5%

  • Conversations/ educations/aquaintances convinced you

    Votes: 2 9.1%

  • Never indoctrinated, study of science and philosophy confirmed it

    Votes: 5 22.7%

  • Want to rebel/deny God and want to do immoral acts [Lulz]

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Indoctrinated, belief shaken, recovered [are a Theist]

    Votes: 1 4.5%

  • Never an atheist [Are a Theist]

    Votes: 2 9.1%
  • Total voters
    22
It could depend a lot on different ways of looking at things. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Is a brain that seems to tune into god stuff the mere result of chance, reinforced by evolution or is it purposefully there for supernatural communication. I lean strongly toward the former and tend to agree with scientists like Carl Sagan.

Someone sent me a link to a Joe Rogan video interview of Graham Hancock. It's a long one, and I was less skeptical about the lost civilizations than the significance of DMT produced in the body and from plant sources. (It's an hallucinogen.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygWxXphYRos

Now that I'm on this thread, I'll let you'll know that I'm agnostic, so technically can't answer the question. One idea that reinforced my belief status is that out of the billions of personalized human belief systems none of them are probably right. Also, I've come to conclude that belief is an involuntary function of the brain that depends on personality, upbringing, experiences, and information.
 
aaqucnaona said:
Of course the primary objective is not to know people but to discuss and understand, and one of the things to discuss and understand is other people and their ideologies and thinking.
Click to expand...

You've never been to an academic debate club, have you?
 
People come here with different ideas about what these forums are about.
And some posters do see the forums as an extension of a college debate club.
Others see them as yet another situation to socialize, like a watercooler, coffee shop or dinner table conversation.
 
I became an atheist after I left college and had money and environmental control from a good job. I wanted to be as wild as liberalism said was normal, such as many girlfriends at the same time. This is what evolution was teaching. I tried it for about a decade but generated a lot of guilt, because of the intrigue needed to maintain unstable situations.

This atheist herd path was not really for me and was out of my true nature. I did an about face, but tried to find a way to integrate my science education with the faith of religion. I placed myself in the middle between then. These seem mutually exclusive, but not for me. It makes me an individual and not an animal from either herd. The tension of opposites helps create energy for my creativity.

What I learned is science made me objective to the outer world of physical reality. Religion is more about the inner world of human nature. Science does not have a way to deal with human nature and unconsciousness as effectively as religion. The output of human nature is usually subjective which is not the same as the objectivity of science.

For example, why are atheists so angry all the time? Science cannot answer this question about itself, since the answer needs to be found in another way. The projection of " evil religion" is irrational, considering that small children can cope with it. The unconscious mind is not right within atheism since, although it pitches objectivity, it lacks the tools to be objective to itself. It needs more tools than its herd can provide, to deal with shadow side of atheism. I did that already and overcame.

Stalin led the largest social experiment of atheism of all time. It was not about free speech or freedom of expression but censorship like creationism. It was paranoid and projected all the evil on those it abused. Once religion came back to those atheist empire, freedom also appeared again. The problem was human nature is not yet a science.
 
wynn said:
Philosophical(ly inclined) discussions are generally boring to lay people and often seem inappropriate to them.
Click to expand...
Some of the lay people I encounter are bored by discussions of evidence and the reasoning that supports a given inference.

wynn said:
If you would go to college, you would be expected to produce large amounts of reasoning "just for the sake of the argument."
Click to expand...
Anyone with an aversion to reasoning would probably be spared the indignities of college by failing the entrance exam.
 
You got it backwards, once they had freedom in Russia, they were able to practice their religion again, which they never lost. The USSR was just as religious as the United States. Obviously you arrived at atheism for the wrong reasons. It wasn't reason you were moving towards, it was religious guilt you were moving away from. That makes your atheism disingenuous. I've never believed, but I've also never had more than one girlfriend. I've never felt part of a herd as an atheist, quite the opposite. Religions like to organize, atheists are the ones left out alone.
 
wellwisher said:
I became an atheist after I left college and had money and environmental control from a good job. I wanted to be as wild as liberalism said was normal, such as many girlfriends at the same time. This is what evolution was teaching.
Click to expand...

You have a communication style that makes it hard for me to understand what you actually mean. For example, here I'm left with several interpretations:

(1) he has an axe to grind against the theory of evolution
(2) he associates his hedonism with a harmful influence of evolution
(3) same as above, only he is referring to Social Darwinism

After all, surely you don't mean you went into freshman biology class, had a session that covered natural selection, then took from it that you were being instructed to go select as many females as you could handle.

Or do you?
 
Aqueous Id said:
After all, surely you don't mean you went into freshman biology class, had a session that covered natural selection, then took from it that you were being instructed to go select as many females as you could handle.

Or do you?
Click to expand...

Shouldn't one hold as truth, or at least seriously consider that which is taught in class?
 
To label the nonviable is to give it credence it has not earned by the upper intellect.

"Theist/Atheist-formed" terminology needs a thorough re-analysis upgrading.

Sample:

This year is not 2012, as the label "2012" has no credence as a label, when analyzed by the upper intellect.

The past is incredible, but only in a very guarded sense should it be regarded as credible.

With the greater level of intellect and tools to enhance such being available today, the upper intellect should urge a broad analysis, including access by the lower intellects at this site, on their "acceptance level capabilities" at resetting the "Year Metering Tabulation" from 2012 to 0.

Direct Positives:
1) A sense of newness and fresh start.
2) Less use of copy ink in year-mark documentation printing/memory useage.

Argumentative unknowns :
1) Jesus of Nazareth's birthday is no longer "forced-commemorated", and such continued commemoration will have to subsist on alternate means of "subconscious adulation inhibitors".
2)Expense of Y2K alterations revisited.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
wynn said:
Shouldn't one hold as truth, or at least seriously consider that which is taught in class?
Click to expand...

Evolution doesn't make any demands of our behavior, unless it includes demands to get vaccinated. If you don't believe evolution, get last year's flu shot.
 
wynn said:
Shouldn't one hold as truth, or at least seriously consider that which is taught in class?
Click to expand...

Only honest people can be expected to pursue truth.

And what Spidergoat said, which nails it concisely.
 
Last edited:
aaqucnaona said:
But schez, the point of the debates on this forum is not to resolve, but to understand - though these debates would almost certainly never resolve the great undecided questions, they allow us to understand our and other people's thoughts about them, to dig deep into our minds and into the subject of deliberation - a worthy goal, no?
Click to expand...

I am quite capable of reiterating both sides of almost any argument after an interval of research, aaqucnaona, as this was an exercise in High School, never mind college.

The goal of understanding what people think and perhaps also why they may think in such manner remains a worthy one but this goal is wasted when people insist on bringing strong emotions and personal baggage to the table.

The 'reasons' that people attach themselves to various affiliations has considerably less to do with logic and far more with early conditioning and security in the forms of social acceptance.

It is still far from socially acceptable to be too vociferous in regard to a non-belief in God. The United States is yet a world superpower and if one thinks that one's religious affiliations or lack thereof are of little consequence, one might want to be following some of the current political debates.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top