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Started by AllRight, February 07, 2016, 10:11:52 AM

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Knighthawk1001

When was the first time you guys started to question your religion. And if you were never part of one how did you become a atheist

stromboli

In my case it took awhile. Left the LDS church in 1992, but became a Christian because I had a family and concerns for them. I did everything from youth leadership to cooking dinners for people to working with homeless people as a  Christian, but figured out it was the same crap in a different bag. Became an atheist about 7 years ago.

PickelledEggs

Welcome, AllRight and KnightHawk!

Mr.Obvious

And Welcome also, knighthawk.
I hope you'll enjoy it here
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

Baruch

Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 11, 2016, 01:01:25 AM
Haha sadly no. Lately I have just been feeling like if God truly loves everyone of his children then explain the holocaust in any meaningful logical basis.

The Trial of God by Elie Wiesel

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Its a love/hate relationship ... see Genesis
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Baruch

Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on February 11, 2016, 01:09:46 AM
Forget the holocaust..I just want the fuck to explain toothaches ..

The Tooth Fairy is needing to pay his mortgage
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Baruch

My mother is very slightly religious, my father an atheist.  But I was slightly spiritual as a child.  Entered religion as part of marriage, and supported it to the max, at least as a social/cultural thing.  Spirituality continued to develop, fell out of marriage, and out of religion eventually.  Even more spiritual now, but irreligious.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

gentle_dissident

Welcome, AllRight. I'm pretty new here too. It's a nice place. I tend to spew my brains out on the pages, and no one's complained about the mess yet.

trdsf

Welcome, both of you!
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

gentle_dissident

Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 10, 2016, 11:03:02 PM
Hey everybody. Man it feels really good to know you're not the only who doesn't believe in God. Especially when you've been in a lds church your whole life and you finally snap out of stupidity mode
I remember being 6 , leaning over the open freezer door, thinking that the adults were scared and taking any explanation. My father later told me that it was important to conform, or I would be shut out of prosperity by the rest of humanity (This is apparently what is meant by "Cristlike") . That may have been true, but now that huge lots of people have been shut out of prosperity just because they aren't type A enough, I'm in the poor house with many believers.

Knighthawk1001

I've come to realize one thing. Religion can't be trusted as a legal thing. Look at the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. People proclaiming that they have found the light of God and that this person is the one who was making pacts with the devil yadyadyadyahayada. So many people were accused and the reverends never thought of anything else and thought that God speaks to everyone. read or watch The Crucible by Arthur miller and it sounds so funny what they're saying

Baruch

Completely different culture from most of our experience, but not unlike fundie society even today.  And the Puritans were ... assholes to begin with ... just like ISIS.  ISIS (Xmas version) founded the US.  They didn't need courts, they needed padded cells.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Solomon Zorn

Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 11, 2016, 01:15:44 AM
When was the first time you guys started to question your religion. And if you were never part of one how did you become a atheist
I had the best mom. When I was very little, she told me that some people (including her) think you go to heaven when you die, and some people think you just don't exist anymore. So even at that age she left it up to me to decide what I believed. My dad (a very kind, and intelligent man) told me, some time later, that he didn't believe in God.

As a teenager, one of my best friends was a quiet atheist. He was an extremely talented artist at age 13 (now a nationally renowned sculptor), and inspired me to improve my own art. I also picked up on his worldview a little, and became, superficially, an atheist.

But as I got into smoking weed, I started wondering about mind-stretching experiences, including spiritual ones. I almost got taken in by a cult called the Rosicrucians. I ended up picking up a Bible one day, and reading something Jesus said (I think it was about love). It was unlike anything I had read before, in my limited experience at the age of 16. So I started reading more. I remember wanting to believe, but my conscience made it really hard to swallow the Old Testament stories. I had to retrain my mind to accept the "truth."

After about 15 years as a fanatical Christian (who once burned all his sci-fi books and comic books, and smashed all his vinyl records, for Jesus, before attending 2 years of Bible college), I became schizophrenic, and started experiencing phenomena that have been deemed hallucinations. In the process of explaining those experiences to myself, I succumbed to a lot of delusions. Over the next five years I realized that my beliefs about God were a delusion as well. By 2001, I was a firm non-believer.
If God Exists, Why Does He Pretend Not to Exist?
Poetry and Proverbs of the Uneducated Hick

http://www.solomonzorn.com

SGOS

Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 11, 2016, 01:15:44 AM
When was the first time you guys started to question your religion. And if you were never part of one how did you become a atheist

I was very young when I started to doubt, the same age as when I started to realize that Santa was a myth.  The similarities between a fat old man, who I never actually saw, and an all powerful god, who never actually showed up were obviously uncanny.  From there, I never stopped doubting.  Not to say, I didn't believe in God anymore.  I did, although not with a great deal of conviction (which according to my grandmother was a serious sin).  I was easily influenced by well meaning authorities in my life, who insisted God was real, although they never actually said how they knew.  At least, not in any meaningful way. 

My mother gave me a little leeway, however.  She said she believed in God, but now and then she would encourage me to explore my doubts.  I don't think she did so consciously, but I'm not sure.  I think it was more like doubt didn't alarm her as much as it did everyone else in my life.  When my grandmother dragged me off to her Baptist Church for my first Sunday school experience, my mother told me to ask the teacher who made God, which I dutifully did, and ended up pissing the poor man off because I wouldn't stop pestering until he could give me an answer that made sense, which he never did.

And then, as I got older, science in elementary school was hands down the most fun subject.  In high school, I learned about evolution for the first time.  This explained how life could evolve without a hand of a creator, which had been a problem for me up until then.  Then college came next along with some rudimentary explorations of critical thinking and very basic logic.  We read what amounted to bullshit from various philosophers.  I studied geology, biology, anthropology, and things about the fossil record kept showing up and cross referencing with each other.  At his point my religious training just fell apart into bits and pieces of totally nonsensical dogma.

I could no longer justify a single reason for believing in a God.  Although, I continued to believe anyway, or at least tricked myself into believing I believed, until somewhere in my 50s when I faced up to the fact that I didn't believe, and hadn't for many years.  That realization about myself was a profound insight, one of the moments when a bright light of understanding suddenly turns on, and things become intensely clear.

gentle_dissident

Quote from: Baruch on February 12, 2016, 06:11:44 AM
ISIS (Xmas version) founded the US.
Oh, come on. It's fun to play cowboys and Indians.