Joss Knight

I found this little passage in a book that sheds some light on this for me. It is a letter responding to an article:

What really annoys me is that people don't think of the good religion would do if everyone believed in it. Mr Harris suggests replacing religion with lessons in morality, but he does not realise that that is what religion is -- lessons in morality -- it simply has a groundwork on which these lessons are built to provide a basis. Feeling that there is someone there, someone who loves us, whether he can help us or no, really feeling it, help us, comforts us, and gives us a guideline of morality to follow.

A cynical friend of mine consistently complains that "religion is just a thing invented in the old days to keep the peasants in check". Well, if it is going to keep everyone in check, what is wrong with it? And this is quite apart from all the historical evidence of the truth of the accounts in the New Testament and some of the Old.

And also, why if `God' does not exist, have people died in his belief, have nations fought over their conception of him, and WHY HAS BELIEF IN GOD LASTED SO LONG? The truth always comes out in the end -- so why has religion stood? Because people can't justify their atheism.

Know who wrote this pile of wishy-washy, badly thought through claptrap? Me, aged 15. In those days I was in the habit of writing quite detailed diaries every now and then, which would last a few days or a few weeks until I got so behind I gave them up. This was the letter I wanted to write (but didn't) in response to an article in the school magazine. I continued:

I do wish those who criticise religion would allow themselves to think about it first. Even atheists find themselves praying to `God' when they're in trouble. Remove the God, and who're you going to pray to?

God I was stupid [sic.].

I can look at this negatively as a sad indictment of my reasoning capabilities, and as an illustration of the sheer depth of indoctrination that must be overcome even nowadays. Or I can see it as the beginning of the end of my theistic irrationality. Clearly my concepts and prejudices are being challenged, and I'm being forced to think about how to respond. I think I knew how weak my arguments were. It was around this time I started to call myself an agnostic if challenged, because many of my peers scoffed at religion (as I said in my diary "the heretics are in the majority").

My parents, as pretty ordinary believers, could not have done much more to prime me for the rejection of religious doctrine, it just took me rather longer than I, in retrospect, might have expected. My father is a fairly straightforward traditional Anglican, but never pushed his beliefs. My mother had a rather more unorthodox, pagan attitude. She variously saw God as a genuine force invented by man, the collective global consciousness or `Gaia', or something genuine but ethereal, non-personal. Her view on the afterlife tended to be that what happened to you was what you were expecting to happen to you. Now she describes her faith as 'hoping God exists rather than knowing it'. I also had a very unorthodox RS teacher at the age of 11 (who was also a vicar) who would attempt to rationalise the New Testament miracles. Together they had me rejecting the Old Testament, seeing Jesus as man not God, rejecting the concept of hell as incompatible with a benevolent God, and recognising the Bible as mostly fatuous.

My rejection of theism grew fairly steadily through my teenage years to University. Then, in the summer of 1996, I read the Blind Watchmaker. Of course I already accepted evolution, but the book was to me more than just elegant argument, it was a blinding eye-opener (if that is possible) to the absolutely fantastic power, and simultaneous simplicity of darwinian evolution. It was so complete and obvious an explanation for the origin of life that any remaining room I had for God disappeared.

The fear still remained. Life, and particularly death, without God still seemed naked and vulnerable. Another book sorted that out for me. It was The Crow Road by Iain Banks. It is an excellent novel, with several layers of complexity. In one thread, the main character has been brought up an atheist but loses a close friend in a pointless road accident. The unfairness of the whole thing leads him to conclude initially that his friend cannot simply have been wiped from existence without purpose. But during the story he eventually reasons his way to the truth: fear of death, belief in an afterlife is perhaps laudable as an example of humanity's survival instincts, the will to live, the refusal to face death willingly. But it is a sad reflection on our reason. There are many ways of reconciling oneself with death, but initially it is simply about courage. The rational man has the courage to face the rational conclusions regardless of their nature. I still fear death, but I must learn to deal with it the rational way.

I felt my journey was complete. By this stage, at the age of 21, I finally felt like I truly understood life. I immediately wrote a letter to my parents, finally declaring my atheism openly and explaining my reasons. All that mattered was that finally I understood myself. That other people did not understand themselves was of little consequence.

5 years later religion drove a group of people into a sufficiently big frenzy for them to be capable of justifying the mass-murder of thousands of innocent people. What was new (because that certainly wasn't) was that I watched the murders happen, right in front of me, in graphic detail. I realised it simply wasn't good enough to let this hateful viral idea propagate itself unopposed. I shall be passive no longer, I declared!

And that's why I'm here.

Joss

Goddess Clancy

I was born an atheist. Literally.

Actually my mother was always a rather strident atheist. She was brought up in what was nominally a catholic household. My Grandmother was a Small, fiercely intelligent woman...with no where to go but into marriage with my Grandfather...also fiercely intelligent so I was told, but boorish, selfish and overindulgent. He died aged 42, when my mother was only 12.

She used to tell me stories about her awful life at the catholic boarding school, where she would lock herself away in the girls toilet to read science fiction and on one occasion try to swallow rat poison.

My father, well i was never really sure what he believed until I asked him aged about 11 I think. basically he described himself as an agnostic. He just didn't know. However they never tried to get me to believe in Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy. It was always pretty obvious to me that these were mythical beings with no basis in reality.

Both my parents allowed me to choose what I wanted to believe, although perhaps my mothers influence, and that of her brothers was the strongest. I remember family arguments and debates about religion and the meaning of life. Both my Uncles were also very intelligent...and articulate.

But when I was five I remember sitting on the dunny in the back of our house where we lived on a farm. I was staring out at a starlit swathe of sky...and I just thought to myself in a blinding realization, that there could be no God...because everything was just so BIG. How could it be encompassed by anything, created, observed. I felt that anything that huge had to have simply happened by accident.

This conviction stayed with me all through my childhood and adolescence, and gradually my reasoning and critical thinking analysed my own convictions and I became more certain.

I even explored other religions, seeking to understand why others were sucked in. I could not comprehend why otherwise intelligent rational beings would persist in believing a fairy tale.

And I still don't.

Clancy

qwertu

I didn't 'Come to be an Atheist'. I was never anything else.

I prefer to think of it as never having 'Gone and become a Christian (or whatever)'.

I was lucky to have been brought up in an Atheist household. Religion didn't darken my doorstep until I started school. Thankfully, by then it was too late. They may as well have been trying to 'teach' me that pigs could fly.

-Steve

EvilTeuf

The short answer is: I was born not believing. The longer answer has "...and somehow escaped the conditioning applied by 12 years of Anglican schools" tacked on after that.

I realised I didn't believe when I was around 5 years old. Up until that point, it didn't exist as an issue. No bolt from the blue, no road away from Damascus, but a growing realisation that I found school assemblies, which were rather heavy on the religious content, boring for a reason.

I may be slipping on the rose-tinteds (nowadays, more likely to be rosé-tinted), given that I remember very little about my life before the age of 10, but I don't think so. What little I do retain is so strongly embedded as to be indelible.

I may be the only person writing here who was repeatedly called a blasphemer, aged 8, by my teacher. She was very much a Christian, and to annoy her I repeated "Jesus Christ!" every time I missed a catch while playing on the school field. An early triumph for disbelief.

My starring role in the next year's nativity play as Herod, complete with stuck-on beard and crown, may have been an indication of what I was to think later on . . .

I went through primary school bored witless by assemblies, although still unaware of alternatives and mostly indifferent.

When I entered secondary school, I began to read more widely, encountering philosophy and history properly for the first time.

Resentment played a part, I admit; my dislike of being forced into chapel once a week only encouraged me to find more reasons not to believe.

To make it a bit shorter, before I was about 10, I was an Atheist because I did not believe. After that, I was able to find arguments in support of it.

I believe that my disbelief has matured since childhood; the best analogy is a policeman who knows a criminal did it, through a hunch, who then builds a compelling case against him. All gods are recidivists, anyway, and the same applies.

I became an Atheist because of what my gut told me; I remained one because of what my mind told me.

EvilTeuf

SMBond

I was born and raised into an LDS (Latter-Day Saints, a.k.a. Mormon) family. Baptised at the age of eight, and received the Aaronic Priesthood when I was twelve, I was just going with the flow; it was just what my family did. When I as young, I never questioned anything that I was taught; I accepted it without question. I didn't know any different, nor better.

I first started to question the faith that I'd seen so many people take seriously when I was about seventeen-years-old. It was at that point that I'd decided I didn't want to go to church anymore. This was a problem for my father because it was “his house, his rules” and “I didn't have a choice”. We fought about it a lot.

The only good reason I could give him was that I didn't feel comfortable there. When I would say the prayers to “bless” the bread and water for the sacrament meetings, I felt like I was lying to the congregation, because I really wasn't sure that I believed it. That's when I started to take my search for answers seriously. There's too much to talk about, so I'll just give you a couple examples.

My mother, Valerie, died when I was eleven-years-old; suicide. She suffered from severe depression, bipolar disorder, and paranoid schizophrenia. When she died, I was still an active member (as was the rest of my family) of the LDS church. At the time she died, she and my father had been divorced for several years, and I was living in another state with my father and step-family.

I was, of course, approached by many church-members and leaders after her death. I heard it all! “God works in mysterious ways,” or “We aren't always able to understand the reasons for these things,” and “It is all part of God's plan”. I know, now, that those sentences are nonsense.

Why did she die? Because people die! In her case, she suffered from various mental disorders and that is how she chose to deal with it; ending her life. There's no “reason” for it, it didn't happen specifically so that I could “learn something”, it just... happened. Period.

My step-brother James was killed a couple years before my mother died. He was riding his bike to a friends house, and was hit by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel. No reason, no lesson, no mystery. I think the problem is that people have to have a reason for everything. There are some things that just happen. We might not always like them, but the only thing we can do is deal with it and move on.

I've heard so many people say “just look how everything is so perfect, there had to have been a creator”. That statement nearly makes me vomit! Perfect? Here's a thought: The dinosaurs probably thought they had it perfect too...

To make a really long story short, the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, etc., “God” just doesn't make a lick of sense. The world would not be the way it is if this were the case, and that cannot be argued; it is incredibly obvious. If there is a creator, it is clear that “it” doesn't (and probably can't) give a shit.

The best philosophical advice ever spoken? Shit happens. Looking back, I realize that I've never believed it. I was born an atheist, and I remain an atheist.

Sean-Michael Bond

Msanjelpie

Why I am an atheist doesn't sound right. Why I never believed sounds more accurate. Had my grandparents not have been born-again religious zealots, I probably would have come about to my realizations later in life, but that's neither here nor there.

I've known all along that there was no God. But dealing with the whole religion aspect took years to abolish.

I grew up across the street from a Baptist church. Every Sunday I would sit out on the lawn and watch the nicely dressed people enter and leave the church. Sometimes my parents would trek on over and sit in to listen. My father went along because mother wanted to go. When I was about 8, I decided that I wanted to go too. I wanted to be a part of it. I started the whole Sunday school routine. But there was just something strange about it. All of the children would recite what they were told to say, but I just didn't believe a word of it. I didn't pray when they prayed, and I didn't memorize the verses so I could get my piece of candy.

I thought perhaps there was something wrong with me. Why couldn't I have faith like they did? Perhaps I wasn't trying hard enough. This led to another church, joining the choir, bible camp, reading the bible, asking questions, church retreats, and on and on. When I spent the summer with my over-the-top grandparents, listening to Christian music radio and going to Bible school each day, I really wanted to fit in and believe. The problem was, in my mind, I just couldn't. I just knew it was a lie.

I was told to read the bible each morning upon awakening, and that it would improve my days. I realized after a week, it was a form of brainwashing. I listened to the church people spout their values at church, but they were completely inconsistent in their own lives.

Later, at another church, I had weekly meetings with the church ministers. We would go out to lunch and chat. I mentioned my lack of faith and was instructed that I should be baptized and that I should become a tithing member of the church so that I would feel more a part of it all. So I was baptized, and I became a member. I sang solos in the church choir, and played piano while they collected donations. Still didn't believe a word of it. Had trouble staying awake during the sermons.

I tried Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, holy rollers, I had Jewish friends who were active in their synagogue, I had a mother sending monthly checks to Jimmy Swaggart, cousins who were LDS, friends who spouted the Jehovah's Witness line, I was surrounded by religion.

Was married in the church (for mother-in-law's sake) had the children baptized in the Catholic church (for grandmother's sake). Put the kids in catechism, and that's when it probably really hit me. I don't believe in this shit. Why am I sitting here listening to this crap and forcing my family to choke on this?

I started stating that I was an atheist, and there were other people around me who also did not believe, but they all stated they were not atheists. That they just didn't know. I think they were afraid, that God might be listening and strike them down. When I state I'm an atheist in a group of believers, I am treated as a pariah.

As the years have gone on, and I have remained constant in my lack of faith, others around me have slowly absorbed my convictions, and now they have the strength to state clearly that God does not exist, and that the entire 'religion industry' is completely bogus.

There are believers who I can not touch. They look at me with pity. They try to change my mind. I wouldn't want to change their minds. I realize that they need to believe. Just as I now realize that I never have and I never will believe.

Msanjelpie

Hans4

This was the point in my life when I shed the last of my pragmatic concerns that I might suffer should I be wrong that there is no God.

The memory is clear even to this day of driving back to my office from an errand downtown. For whatever reason I was sifting through the storyline of 'Logan's Run' when it occured to me that all of the world's theisms had a simularity to the story. In the movie, all the people lived in giant city sized domes believing the world outside of the domes was destroyed, but they had never actually seen the world outside. All of our world's theists were living just as the people in the story; living, believing, and acting according to something none of them had ever seen.

The belief in a God, then and to this day, has seemed nothing but folly to me.

Hans4

OliverBendix

Not so much why I'm an atheist, but how I got here.

For my first few years, I was an atheist by default. We never went to church, and nobody ever told me about God. My parents had me baptised in the local Anglican church as an infant; mostly, I think, to please my Dad's parents.

Then, when I was six or seven, we joined the local Presbyterian church. I think this was partly a result of various crises in my parents' marraige, although I knew nothing about that until much later. Joining the church was part of their method of re-engineering the family. I don't remember much of what I believed at the time. I recall deciding to believe in God rather than being convinced and I think I did a reasonable job of convincing myself. I remember worrying about the Second Coming at this age, about seven. I'd worked out that the proportion of the world who'd seen Jesus on his first time around was fairly small, and I was aware that there were heaps of odd churches, cult leaders and the like in the world now. How could we tell if one of these nutters was Jesus coming back?

One of the first clues I had that some of the thinking involved with Christianity was a bit twisted came after our church minister died of cancer. Not so much that he'd died, but the way his widow responded to it; accepting that God had something to teach her through the experience of her husband dying, and that this was in some way worthwhile. I thought that that was, frankly, nuts

When I was nine, my Dad decided to train as a Presbyterian minister. This involved leaving our small-town life and moving to Dunedin, a University city so he could do a bachelors degree in theology. We attended several local Presbyterian churches over a few years. I was a choirboy and attended a local church youth, but I was no longer a strong believer. I'd started from fairly liberal Christianity, wandered through agnosticism and general doubt and ended up as an atheist. This ought to be the point of this little memoir: how did that happen? I'm fucked if I know. I'd been learning science and becoming more sceptical. My mum set a good example by sniggering at the words of hymns during services, my favourite local minister (a closet Deist I think) made a point of gently poking dogma with sharp sticks at the youth group... I don't know. I chucked in being a choirboy in favour of going sailing with Sea Scouts on Sundays, and I think I'd given up all sorts of church attendance by the time I was 13 or so. Dad finished his degree but didn't go on to be a minister, and he doesn't have much to do with the church these days either.

I've been atheist ever since. That's the last 14 years, at the time of writing. My understanding of the issues has improved, and I've discovered the vocabulary to describe what I think a little better. I'd describe my position as sceptical scientific rationalism. Atheism is an implication of that.

Oliver Thompson.

(OliverBendix)

First of all this story isn't unique, hell, you may have alredy heard or told a story very similar to mine.

It might have all started once I was able to talk and then form words in to one word. WHY? The one word that has lead all Atheists to Atheism. (If that makes sense) Any way I was always wondering why things worked from school to home, not only why things were the way they were, but how they got to be that way. This was the way I was as a child, as an adolescent I strayed away from this very much in a desperate attempt to fit in. In my hometown being a Christian was something that everyone was and those who didn't believe in God was tossed aside and mainly were the Gothic kids, not being a Gothic I kept God. God to me was a social stepping stone. I went to Church even when no one was there and did what I was told. Study the word of God. I had even "given my life to God" but deep down all I could find inside me were questions. So what did I do study more into God, to no avail, the answers just weren't there. And then I snapped. I bid farewell to Church, God, religion and everything related to it.

At 17 I had tossed aside all my beliefs but I couldn't pull myself into any categories for what I was. I did a search on Google for Atheism and I found Martin's Site and another on Famous/Successful Atheists. And from that moment on I consider my self an Atheist and realized that I didn't need any God or religion to make myself popular or successful. I also consider that when I matured into an adult. I'm 19 now. Atheism was not just going against religion it was when I really began to look at all points of things. Work things out for myself, and not to just blindly follow whatever I am told.

nosce temet

I was raised a Christian, with all of my family being Southern Baptist Christians. I was never really into the church thing, spending most of my unsupervised time roaming around the old worship hall that had long been abandoned for the new and shiny version, thanks to the local members. I would explain to my parents that my Sunday school class was going to be sitting in the balcony (a lie), and then I would slip away into the empty hall. Everyone else was at “big church”, that is what I called it then. Many days I sat in that room, with the empty pews and unread bibles, and wondered what in the hell I was doing.

I guess you could say I was always somewhat of a loner, and when it came to religion, that is exactly how I felt. I didn’t even know what atheism was, let alone anyone who talked about disbelief. I was very much sheltered from outside criticism of the church, and yet religion never took with me. I never liked church, except for my little excursions to the empty hall. I can remember asking my parents every morning, “why are you forcing your religion on me”, but they mainly took it as a grievance against getting up in the morning, and not necessarily a philosophical objection to the church.

I came to liken my belief in god, much to the belief in Santa Clause. For Xmas one year I was telling my parents that I did not believe in Santa Claus, this is probably a year or two before I was baptized. My parents being very creative, set out to prove to me that he existed. When I was fast asleep my parents quickly arranged my presents, with a special note from Santa telling me that it was o.k. that I didn't believe in him. He would still bring me presents no matter what, just like god would love me no matter what. I was very touched that Santa had taken the time to write me, I mean with delivering the worlds toys and what not. I was most impressed however by the footprints that were left in the ashes in the fireplace (never mind the fact they looked exactly like my dad’s boot prints). Right in the center of the ashes, as big as day, were two HUGE boot prints. Santa had come, he was real, and I had been a fool!

I honestly think I believed in Santa longer than I did god. I remember having my head dunked in the water while being baptized, my sins being washed away, and when it was over I felt an overwhelming sense of nothing. Everyone kept telling me that I was great, and god was in my life now, it was really quite the spectacle in my family. I was paraded around like a child prodigy for an entire Sunday. I never really felt it though, I still felt like me.

My aunt Joy and my Uncle Mike refused to teach their children about Santa. Although for them god is very high on the list. They say that they were just too crushed to learn that he wasn't real, and wanted to spare their children the same fate. I was never really crushed to learn Santa wasn't real, I think I was when I finally admitted that I didn't believe in god. I just knew my parents would hate me. They didn't. The rest of my family doesn't know, as I try not to cause a holly war at Christmas or Thanksgiving, but I think they have an idea. Maybe it’s the fact that I have politely refused to recite the family prayer at our gatherings for the last 15 years, my grandmother never fails to ask though. It could also be that I politely decline their invitations to go to church EVERY SUNDAY.

I'm not really miffed about my parents raising me the way they did. They were doing their best, and they did it with love. Sometimes I listen to my families "proof" for god when they have a discussion about someone on TV they heard saying he wasn't real. (everyone knows only people on TV don't believe in god). I just sit quietly in the corner and think about those boot prints in the ashes.

I guess the thing that really made me adamant about my atheism is death. I had never really sat still long enough to question what I believed, even though I had a vague recognition that I was different than the “believers”. The day that happened was when my brother was killed in a train accident, along with some other friends. I was 18 years old, and I will never forget the way I felt. At first I became very religious; it just sort of seemed like the right thing to do. My entire family became more devote than ever, and for a while I just played along, and went through the motions. Later, I became very angry and I think that gave me the courage to admit I didn’t believe. I guess you could say I fit the typical mold for the “angry atheist”, but over the years that anger has subsided, and I found logical reasons for my atheism. Slowly, I realized there was no one to be mad at.

For me, even though I don’t like to admit it, my atheism has been difficult. Not that I change the way I think about gods, but because I sometimes wish there was one. I would like a cosmic referee; I would like to know that the people I love will be with me forever, but they won’t. So in my family and in most of society I realize that I am a perpetual black sheep, and because of it I am singularly ill designed for the markets of this world, my wool cannot be dyed.

And yet, this is who I am, there is no doubt about that fact. And despite the difficulties at times, I love being me. I don’t regret the times I spent at church, nor do I regret the times that I tried to believe in god or Santa, those experiences have made me who I am. I'll teach my kids about Santa, and what I think about god if they want to know, but I consider the later more harmful to their progress. To me Santa was a good myth. As the saying goes, the point of fairytales is not to prove to us that dragons exist, but to show that they can be defeated. I like that.

But I learned something else when I think about it. When I pull the picture of those ashes to the front of my minds eye for just a moment I'm a kid again, and I see magic. I think that is needed in this world now more than ever, even if it is our own.

nosce temet

Hector Smith

To say why I’m an atheist I guess I need to imagine I’m talking to a believer.

To such a person I’d say that I don’t believe in the idea of a supreme being but most of all I don’t need such a belief to make my life whole and meaningful and above all, I don’t need to consult a 2000 year old document supposedly written in Palestine to tell what’s wrong from what’s right. Personally I’ll choose to be humble and say I don’t know. Some choose to be arrogant. They’ll say that they know a being called God created everything. Of course they don’t know. They believe that a surpreme being created everything. Big difference. But still, I think the concept of a universe created by a God is a plausible concept, as valid as anything proposed by physics. I’m just not convinced of it. But I’ll respect you if you are. I’ll just wish believers would just say, well, maybe, we’re not sure, it’s an hypothesis that we can’t discard. Most atheists wouldn’t have any problem with that and probably all agnostic would agree. However, if you try to push the belief further, most thinking people will have a problem. “Further” would mean fervently citing “sacred” texts that supposedly are God’s word to mankind from the Bible, the Koran or any other religious texts. Anyone who calls himself a Christian, a Moslem, or a Jew just makes me smile, but not in amusement. Anyone who tells me he’s a practicing Jew, a devout Catholic or a born-again Christian is not just telling me that they have an explanation for the origin of the universe. They’re telling me they are scared to death of dying and are clinging to a theory that they believe is going to allow them to save their miserable carcass in something they cling to as the “hereafter”. These people are not after an explanation of how and why and when everything happened. They want to save their asses. Yes, everyone desperately wants a happy ending. I could follow you in your theories if you‘d just believed in a God that created your universe but did not plan for your survival at the end of the story. In that case, you’d be simply supporting a theory explaining the origin of the universe. That would be fine. But that’s not what you do. Instead you’re pushing a theory that promises eternal life to you. How convenient. You want this God only if He gives you eternal life. Well, here’s my question: Why don’t you just believe in a God that created the world and then let us find our way in it? Why do you have to believe in a God that gives you eternal life? How come? I know deep self interest and fear when I see them!

Do you see my problem? It’s not so much that you have a different theory than mine to explain the existence of the world. It’s that you’re paralysed by fear and I don’t think you can clearly think in that state. Frankly what does your survival have to do with the fact that some Being might have created the universe? Where does your survival fit in the complex known universe? Why do you have to survive to explain a world created by a God? Why do you link the two? The mere fact that in all religions the two are linked is a sign that the whole thing comes out of the mind of scared humans. You have such a huge interest in believing in your God that, to me, it makes you suspicious beyond any decency. I have the feeling that you would believe in any entity that would promise you eternal life, even if “It” didn’t create the universe. So, you’re afraid to die? You just can’t come to grips with this reality. And you believe those of us who are able to accept this reality should be the ones to feel ashamed because we’re not “strong” enough to believe in a god that gives us the gift of eternal life? I guess we don’t have the same definition of what to be strong means. Have you considered for one minute why anybody would refuse such a gift? Why on earth would anyone in his right mind refuse to survive his death if given the chance by any God? What does it cost to believe in God? Nothing. So why do some of us refuse to believe?

Is it about faith? We atheists don’t have faith and you do? What is faith? To believe in something without proof… something in which you have no factual or scientific reason to believe. Most of all, it is to believe in something your intellectual capacity and your intelligence find no arguable reason to believe in.. Faith never accomplished anything in mankind’s, and certainly not in America’s history.

You love America, don’t you? I’m sure you’re proud of all the achievements of this country. As well you should. None were accomplished by faith. All were wrestled into being with hard work, by people who sweated a lot, who studied a lot of calculus and physics and engineering. Not by people who just blindly “believed”. In a faith-based America, nobody would have gone to the moon, or invented lightbulbs or flown in an airplane. Nobody would have a computer or a TV or a car. There would not be MRI’s to find your tumor.

Look what we are able to do to countries whose cultures are based only on faith. We bomb them. We invade them on a massive scale and what can they do? Sure, they can kill a measly 500 American soldiers in one year. I’m sorry for the families of these soldiers and I deplore their deaths, but this won’t bring America down as America has brought so many faith-based countries to their knees in the sand.. Now, I’m pretty sure we did something to Aghanistan and Iraq that’s going to radically change these places. If we had only faith in this country, without scientific and technical intelligence, we would be exactly like the Taliban and Al Quaeda. We would have had to steal somebody’s plane and crash it into another culture’s builidings, and Bush wouldn’t be the one to have found Saddam in a hole. It would have been our President staring out of some pit at the bottoms of Iraqi combat boots. All the goodies, all the incredible privileges that we enjoy in this country are the fruits of the labors of men and women who display qualities totally opposite from faith. They devote their minds, they look, they search, they ponder, they wonder, they try again, but they never just mindlessly “believe”.

Should I be ashamed not to have any religious faith? Should I be the one embarassed to say I’m not a believer? I wonder who’s more American? The believer or the atheist scientist who gives America its superiority to other nations? In the name of no religion, we have taken down the malignant Saddam and found our own cancers. Without the intellect, the scientist, the cerebral visionary, I don’t even want to think about where we would be headed. Whether we believe in a celestial afterlife or blissful nothingness, you can bet we would have one foot on that side of nonexistense. We would be shockingly young and we would likely be dying …of an infected cut from the cross-cut saw at the mill or a bite from the neighbor’s rabid dog or childbirth or just because we rode our horse over a cliff in the dark on the way home from a thirteen hour work day..

To know who you are, just ask yourself this very simple question:

“ If god had only created the universe but does not give me eternal life, would I believe in that God”

If your answer is yes you’re stating that the theory you prefer to explain the existence of the universe is that it was created by God. I might disagree with you , but you’re respectable since I can’t detect any self indulgence or self interest on your part. I have my theory, you have yours, vive la différence.

If your asnwer is no, then it’s about time you looked deeper inside yourself because obviously you’ve been living like a scared little kid. It’s time to grow up in the world of strong adults who know they’re going to die and maintain some dignity in the face of that terrible fact instead of searching for false comfort in some self indulgent theory that promotes the fabrication of “eternal life”. You don’t have your mommy anymore to bury your face into her shoulder when the bully beats the crap out of you. But, please, resist the temptation to have another, bigger mommy, a god, a big father with whom you delude yourself you could do the same.

Find the shoulder of another human. It’s not that bad. I know, when you see all the suffering, all the starving, all the maiming that goes unpunished, it’s tough to just believe that you’re alone, that that’s it, there’s no superior power taking care of all that mess. Nobody is seeing or watching. Nobody will be judged and nobody will be punished, except by their fellow humans. Totally unacceptable, I agree, but it’s called life on planet earth and it’s all we have. As much you’d love to have a supreme god in charge, watching all this horror and nodding wisely and assuring you the bad guys will pay…it’s just wishful thinking.

How many hundreds of generations of humans have passed by on this planet…getting old, losing their physical strength, unable to punish or avenge crimes against their brothers, against humanity, hoping that some superior being up there would do it for them…eventually…at the end.* That’s not just wishful thinking. It’s forgivable. It’s human thinking. Either way, it’s just wishful.

Just as little children grow up and learn the truth about the existence of the tooth fairy, the human race needs to mature and learn the truth about the existence of god. It’s a crutch. God is a crutch used by most men and women to avoid panicking about death while they’re alive. Humans have a terrible burden. We come wired with a huge brain and throughout most of our lifetimes, we’ll be painfully, terribly aware that we’re going to die. We’re the only creatures on earth to bear this burden. All of us, whether we’re Australian Aboriginies, Englishmen or Eskimos, even French guys. We have had to find a way to process this monstrosity, knowing that the end is coming. A god promising eternal life is what all cultures found as the best opiate. The universal comfort. And since mankind at its dawn needed an explanation for the existence of the world, since we didn’t have any of the tools of discovery and explanation we have today, we killed two birds with one stone. We imagined a God that gives us eternal life AND created the universe.

Hector Smith

I came from a small town in rural Northern Ireland, but I don’t have any gut wrenching tale to tell of how the lord left my life.

When I was a kid I didn’t believe in God because my big brother didn’t believe. I was young, stupid, impressionable, and well it just seemed cooler to agree with him. I went to Sunday school and all that to keep my mum happy, but church bored me out of my mind.

But about the age of 15 I found faith. I was in a Religious Education class at school and we were shown a video about this guy that was told he would never walk again. The doctors all said the same ‘forget it buddy, those things under your arse are just there for decoration now.’ He went trough torment, and then a faith healer was brought to the house, did his mumbo jumbo, and our guy got up and walked! Now he’s a minister and living happily ever after.

Well how could I argue with that? It couldn’t just be a co-incidence that just at that moment he was cured. Halelloolya I saw the light. I became a believer and it really felt nice to be the same as all my friends at school. But it didn’t stick. The ridiculousness of the whole package couldn’t be overlooked. I matured a bit, and started to learn allot more about people and their motivations. Well it didn’t take too long to see through the faith healing miracle. I started giving my RE teacher a pretty hard time in class after that. I just wish that I could have articulated my argument then as well as I could now.

At 17 I got my communion. My brother took me aside and explained that regardless if it was the biggest crock since the loch ness monster, it would really hurt my mum (who is big in the church, and it’s a small community), if I didn’t get it. I don’t regret going through the motions; it’s really no skin off my nose.

How I told my mum that I am an atheist was when I moved to Dublin to go to college. She asked if when I was in Dublin I would ever darken the door of a church? My exact words where “Well mum, as an atheist statistically the odds are against it.”

We’ve never really fought about it. I haven’t tried to convince her, and she hasn’t tried to convince me. You gotta give that some respect. Occasionally she does the “Where did I go so long to raise all these heathens?”, and I just answer “Yeah Mum, what with all our teenage pregnancies, drug addictions, prison time, and sex changes you really went wrong!” J That helps her to lighten up and see that we turned out OK.

I have tried to convince my friends however. It offends me to see people that I really respect being wilfully stupid, so now and again I’ll argue with them that they might as well believe in pink unicorns, because there is as much foundation in observable fact for their existence.

Why do I argue with my friends but not my family? I guess because my with my family we love each other no matter what, whereas I selected my friends, and I want them to live up to what they could be.

I’m fortunate to live in Europe. Here religion is dead or dieing. It really is. I knew ALLOT of people in Dublin, but not one of them would ever attend a church, mosque, synagogue, circle of standing stones or black mass. Quite a few people cling to some form of spiritualism, but extremely few under the age of 40 have a dogma.

For me atheism is important because I consider it one of my defining characteristics. It wasn’t some accident of birth, or even an inherited talent. It’s a realisation and stand that I made myself. There are no magic men in the sky, when you’re dead, you’re dead, and you know what? I’m gonna go out with a bang!

Nick

I was a good little Mormon, when i was growing up. Well, i tried to be. I prayed, i read, i tithed, i carried a can around the neighborhood to collect small change for the children's hospital in SLC, i asked questions so i could better understand...
That was the problem.
In school, in life, in learning how to do ANYTHING, i was taught to ask questions. IF you don't understand fractions, ask questions. If you can't tell which is the trash you're supposed to take out and which is mom's latest art/craft project, ask. If you don't know which bottle should be stored on the 'narcotics' shelf of the pharmacy, and which is the placebo, sure as hell ask dad.

But the teachers, instructors, family home visit elders, the bishop...none of them really answered my religious questions satistfactorily. I got tired of platitudes and IOUs for answers ("You'll understand one day") ("You have to believe God has a good reason for that") ("Some things are a mystery"). I left the Mormon church and tried to find one with real answers. SHopped the christain ones first, of course. I still believed in God, in the Christain God, but figured that Josef wasn't as prophetic as they thought.

Found out more about religion in general, Christainity in particular. Then branched out, searching for someone that KNEW. Found many that are CONVINCED, but few that are convinced for reasons i could accept.

Eventually, came to realize that i just did not have a belief in God anymore. It all seemed like a variety of competing conspiracies and pyramid schemes.
3000 beliefs each saying the other 2999 are wrong, inspired by Satan, or just man's attempt to justify his sinful life, and no one takes the thought to the logical conclusion.

BookMark My Words

What is an Infidel?

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines infidel as:

1 : one who is not a Christian or who opposes Christianity
2 a : an unbeliever with respect to a particular religion b : one who acknowledges no religious belief
3 : a disbeliever in something specified or understood

Yep, that'd be me. I'm an infidel. I'm an atheist. I oppose Christianity, and all other religions for that matter.

I wasn't always an infidel though. I was raised as a Catholic, and I even went to a Catholic high school for two years. I never really was into it back then though. Then, sometime around college, I started getting into creation science. I had these videos by a guy names Kent Hovind. Boy, was I convinced. I was a creationist, I accepted Jesus, and was born again. Woohoo!

For the next few years, I went through phases of being into it, and not being into it. Then, about a year ago, I started REALLY getting into it. I was going to church a lot, the whole nine yards. (Don't they know you need ten yards for a first down?) Anyway, I even had thoughts of becoming a preacher.

That's when I hit rock bottom. Last spring, and into early summer, was probably the worst period of my life. I had been using drugs off and on for the last ten years, but during those few months, I was hooked big time. Nothing that i'm proud about, but it's nothing I can change.....and I'm definitely not going to deny it. It made me who I am today (cliche anyone?). Anyhow, I was on the verge of suicide multiple times. I knew that I couldn't live a life hooked on drugs that hard. And a few times, I thought ending it was my only way out. Then, one day, I thought of something that made me do a complete 180. I thought of the pain that I would put my parents through if I killed myself. That right there was all I needed to realize that I wanted to live. But, I knew I couldn't live like I was living.

I was fortunate to have an opportunity to get out of the situation I was in. My brother had agreed to let me move in with him, and whether he realizes it or not, he saved my life. That first month was difficult, as I assume I was going through some physical withdrawals, and I went through a little bout with depression. Once I made it past a month though, I knew I was home free. I knew that I had defeated my problem.

That's when things started to get interesting. See, during that whole withdrawal process, I had once again accepted Jesus into my life (can it be done twice?). I had given him credit for everything, and was living my life for him. Then came the interesting part.....I started to think about things. I mean, I thought about everything....God, people, places, animals, earth, space, sports, music, war, peace, guns, crime, global warming....you name it, I thought about it. That's when I decided to examine everything I believed in. I figured, if I was going to believe in something, I sure as hell better know why. Makes sense, right?

And that's when it started happening. That's when I lost my faith. For the first time in about ten years, my mind was totally clear and totally free, and wouldn't you know it.....I lost my damn faith. I won't get into every reason for me losing it right yet, this story is getting long enough as it is, but I will tell you this....I thought of things in ways I never dreamed of. I saw errors in the bible, I saw contradictions in the bible, I saw shit that just flat out didn't make sense in the bible. I thought about the concept of hell, I thought about why evil exists, I thought about the logic of an omni-everything God that failed so miserably at creating something good, I thought that if there was a God, there would probably only be one religion, not thousands. Point blank, the shit didn't make any sense anymore.

And you know what the best part about it was? I was now free to decide for myself exactly what I thought about EVERYTHING. I didn't have to rely on an imperfect book, full of tales of genocide, infanticide, rapes of young girls, slavery, suppression of women's rights, and so on and so on, to decide how I should live. I could now decide for myself what I thought was right and what I thought was wrong, and what I should value and what I shouldn't value (don't worry, I'm a good person). Now, I will admit that there are some good parts to the bible. Not all of it is trash. There are some good rules to live by in there, you just gotta get by all the atrocities that God....er...Moses commanded his followers to partake in.

Anyway, I just wanted to get my basic story written for you. I wanted to show the world how I became an infidel. Thanks for reading!

Vegan4Truth