I believe I wrote one post, a long time ago, asking readers to recount their journey to nonbelief. That, I thought, would not only help us get to know each other, but to appreciate the diversity of ways that people either embraced atheism from the outset, or did so while leaving their faith.
Today, though, I have a different question, one that came from a hypothesis I floated two days ago: is anybody an atheist for reasons other than lack of evidence for God or evidence against the idea of God (e.g., the existence of undeserved evil)? In other words, is your nonbelief grounded on evidence or the lack thereof?
I’d like to know the answer to this, for in truth I can’t see any other reasons for rejecting God. So here I pose a simple question to readers, which I’d appreciate your answering. It’s this:
If you were asked explain to someone, say an open-minded person you’d just met, why you’re an atheist, and were limited to at most three sentences, what would you say?
I’ve given my own answer before, but as always I’ll answer the question here. It’s this: “I realized at age 17 that there was not a whit of evidence for anything I’d ever been told about God, and abandoned the idea within a few minutes of that realization.”
Your turn.
Why would I not be an atheist?
Naturally, the burden of proof is on someone making the claim that a god or gods exist.
The existence of God were never proven to me.
Ditto Jerry except maybe age 12 or so.
Happily raised to think critically, I never took a “journey to nonbelief”. Blind faith is frowned upon where I come from.
Same here, no journey – my parents made it clear from my earliest memories that they didn’t believe in god, but they liked being part of a community and they felt deeply attached to their culture and history, especially right after the Holocost. They made me go through the motions, I even had a bar mitzvah, but god was never part of it for my family, or me. No journey, that’s how its always been.
Atheism is the default position. Until I see convincing evidence otherwise, I’m sticking to it. In addition, the multitude of contradictory and often antagonistic religions, together with the fact that nearly all religious people remain in the religion they were brought up with, is strong evidence against theism.
I don’t believe in any supernatural beings — ghosts, goblins, fairies, elves, angels, devils, gods, or goddesses. I’ve never seen evidence for any of them.
If god is real he’s a sociopath or an absentee landlord. Neither interests me.
In my youth I realised praying didn’t work. I heard about the Protestants and Catholics killing each other in Ireland and I remember being totally stunned when I learnt there were other religions – people believed in different things?!. It just didn’t make sense.
My three simple reasons:
1. I see no evidence of any deity.
2. I see quite a bit of wrong/evil perpetrated by those who profess to believe in deities.
3. There is little in common and many contradictions between and within various religions.
But is #2 a reason to reject belief in God?
On purely pragmatic grounds, that believing in God encourages religion with the adverse consequences mentioned by Bob.
cr
If people who are fascists do wrong, is that a reason to reject fascism? I say yes.
What if the wrong that the fascists did was running a red light and killing a pedestrian?
If we want to point to bad acts as a reason to reject a claim, we need to demonstrate a causal relationship between the claim and the bad acts.
But, no matter how much wrong is done by fascists, you cannot deny that it exists.
Yes; that’s an even better point than the one I made.
Point 2, lots of evil in the world, is a strong piece of evidence against the existence of a good deity. As almost all the larger religions profess a good deity it follows that they are wrong.
For the acts of people some religions invoke freedom of will, but just as good parents don’t let their children play on a busy highway at night dressed in black, a good deity would have to intervene when evil acts are committed.
Then there are all the ‘acts of god’ like earth quakes and tsunami. The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake is a famous example of a disaster that caused much philosophical discussion, and many people to become atheists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake
Who determines what evil is?
It could be a malicious God … unless I’m missing something… oh I see – the believers themselves – an endless regress is setting up here I think…
I did not receive the full frontal propaganda of religion when I was small and was therefore, allowed to decide that question on my own, thank g*d. So, while growing up and since, I never discovered anything to reasonably dispute non belief and plenty to confirm it.
I’m jealous of all you people raised without religion. My life is full of wasted time.
Pretty much like Jerry, even same age — just before leaving high school and mainly due to things I read. Kazantzakis was a step along the way, and existentialist reading in following years helped out a lot — more Camus than Sartre. In spite of its flaws, I really dig Le mythe de Sysiphe.
uh… Sisyhpe.
uh… Sisyphe 🙂
I realized when I was 25 (after being agnostic for 10 years) that people who believe in God *feel* their belief. Those who I’m close to that have faith clearly have an emotional connection to it, and even when I was a kid and believed in God (because I was told to), I felt nothing. I don’t think one can truly believe in a God without feeling something, and I never have.
That condition – emotional feeling or connection and the lack thereof,is likely part of the reason for many atheists. I think the experts would call it being honest with yourself.
I’ve long thought it has something to do with a need for a strong authority figure in order to feel personally secure. I think the emotional connection you mention is often based on that. I think a lot of people have such a need. Others don’t. I’m not suggesting this is the answer to why religion is so pervasive, just that it is a significant factor.
Yes, and the reverse, as vnectar calls it, feeling nothing is part of being an atheist.
I can totally relate to this state of non-feeling. I remember when I was about 10 telling my mom that I didn’t want to go to Sunday school anymore because I just could not relate to the message being conveyed there. When people describe to me the “spiritual” connection that they feel to whatever god they pray to, I just do not understand. I have never felt anything like that.
I can also relate. I remember feeling ashamed that all my peers seemed to be able to “bear their testimonies” (a mormon term), while I had to make stuff up to fit in.
(By “make stuff up” I mean invent stories about how I “felt the spirit” or whatever.$
Mine was a gradual journey. My parents weren’t outwardly very religious when I was a child, although my mother became far more religious after about she converted to Catholicism at age 55 (my stepdad was raised Catholic, excommunicated for divorcing his first wife after she left him but rejoined after he got that marriage annulled — about 36 years later) Mom’s father was a Baptist preacher who died when she was 10.
But as to the specific question, I just find no rational reason to believe in any god as the existence of a deity is not supported by any valid evidence and it seems far more likely to me that humans invented all their various gods than that any god exists and created anything. Frankly, I find all religions absurd.
The lack of evidence. To elaborate, the lack of evidence falls into two broad categories. (1) The permitted existence of evil and tragedy, as well as good fortune, which happens to the pious and non-pious alike. There is no hint of evidence for a caring & intervening god. Theodicy is dead. (2) The explanatory power of science shows convincingly that what we know about life, the universe, and everything is the result of natural causes. There is no need to hypothesize some sort of pitiless and indifferent god that started it all & occasionally twiddles the knobs.
Neither of my parents was at all religious, and my mother’s father was a lifelong admirer of Robert Green Ingersoll, the Great Agnostic. So I grew up in a household that paid no particular heed to any theistic belief. Religion, my sisters and I understood, was something other people might become involved with, and that was all right–but it wasn’t for us.
Here are my three sentences: (a) The arguments presented to justify belief in God (both by natural theology and reformed epistemology) are quite weak. (b) The religion I was raised in, as well as other Abrahamic religions, make claims about the nature of reality that are thoroughly incompatible with our prevalent (scientific) worldview. (c) The traditional notion of faith is morally repugnant.
No evidence. And I was lucky enough to have parents who did not need religion – a father who was brought up Unitarian, a mum who was brought up high church Episcapalian, taught me the Lord’s Prayer and gave up – both became well lapsed. And an education that exposed us to reason & science.
(Am 88 and only get stronger in my atheism).
What about pointing out – as Dawkins did and got credit for – how everyone is an atheist about every god except theirs – not the answer you’re looking for? That’s where I’d start, if put on the spot.
Also the Ricky Gervais idea of being a non-skier, being a non-golfer – why not? I suppose there are lots of reasons, perhaps not being offered the opportunity … different question maybe….
Yes, different question. I share Sam Harris’ sentiment that “atheist” is at best an unnecessary term and at worst playing into the theist’s hand. We don’t explicitly identify non-astrologers because it doesn’t make sense to identify someone as a person who rejects obvious nonsense along with almost everyone else in the world. If we were to start identifying people as non-astrologers it would grant legitimacy to astrology that it doesn’t deserve.
I like Dawkins relativising the term “atheist” by pointing at many other a-somethings all of us could be called: afairyists, aleprechaunists, ahobgoblinists, athorists…
I myself use the term when appropriate. In contrast to a theist, I may call myself an atheist. In contrast to gnostic atheists, I may call myself an agnostic atheist. In other contexts, I may use other labels like humanist, skeptic, naturalist, consequentialist, bicyclist, 🙂 and so on, to position myself in the respective system of concepts.
Yes, the word has a pragmatic utility, and I use it for that reason, but I still don’t like it.
I totally agree with those who said that the question is not “why are you an atheist?” but “why is anyone a believer?” It’s a mistake to think that the word god means/denotes/stands for anything at all, and then to ask people if they believe that concept. When someone asks “do you believe in god?” the correct answer isn’t “no”, but “what do you mean by ‘god’?”
Also agree. While it does not directly answer Jerry’s question, I find that a good place to start such a discussion is “Which god?” It is discombobulating to the questioner when one points out the problems with god found in scriptures and in their carrying out the commands of god. I am also fond of throwing a curve by saying “I do not believe in belief” and tell them that I do not need to hear the words of what a person believes – I can pretty much tell what they believe by the life they live.
You’re right, it’s not an answer to Jerry’s question, but that’s because the question is bad.
Many were theists and found themselves to be incapable of accepting a theist god, so they choose to be deist instead. Before going atheist, I believe many were deist. So a similar question would be : why going from theist to deist?
I think one good element is the existence of hell combine with the existence of people we dearly love is incompatible : how can a loving God can take those people to hell? Hence, rejection of this kind of god.
Hence, deism. And there, they think more profoundly about why theist is not a good intellectual position and they’ll see the lack of evidence for it.
But they’ll still think a vague god is real. Which remind me of John Locke, who said something like this : only obscurity can protect what is absurd.
An obscur God who do not really intervene with the world is easy to deal with (no hell, the creation in itself is a miracle, so everything is a miracle…)and to defend.
“Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Oh, I didn’t respond to the question.
I never believed in God, because it didn’t fit with the vision I had of the world. So we can say that I was never convinced of the existence of any kind of supernatural entity. My parents are atheist (dad) and maybe deist (mom) – but she kept quiet about it. And I’m from Canada.
« I think supernatural beliefs work so well because they seem plausible. And they seem plausible because they fit with what we want to believe and already think is possible. […] Ideas and beliefs may be transmitted, but only those that resonate with what we think is possible take hold and make sense. […] Ideas have to fit with what we already know. Otherwise, they do not make sense. »
Supersense, de Bruce M. Hood, p. 8
Those are both great quotations.
I was taught 8 different religions at school and they all contradicted each other, which made clear they are all nonsense
They mustn’t have taught you the one, true one!
That is probably the best reason for teaching comparative religion in primary schools.
It always just seemed obvious to me that the whole concept of God was man made. No supreme being would create things they way they are, all messy and poorly thought-out. It was clear to me men made God to suit the world we live in, and not the other way around.
I never believed in any gods. I’ve never seen any reason to believe in any of the gods.
I came to atheism through studying science, which steadily chipped away all the reasons I had for believing in a god, until the only thing left was wishful thinking, which eventually I gave up.
There is no good reason for God to conceal himself from the universe. If there existed a all-powerful, all-loving God who wanted to have a relationship with humanity, then his existence would be plainly known, like the existence of the sun. What makes me an atheist is the very fact that we even bother to ask if God exists.
I always harbored many doubts, however I felt that I could not identify as an atheist as I didn’t really look. So I did and was met with multitudes of nebulous gods lurking in the fissures of doubt. Now I feel more confident that the perceived supernatural are merely delusions of the masses.
I am an atheist because as a fervently religious teenager who felt she should become a missionary, a question suddenly popped into my head: why would a god create all those people over there who believe the wrong things and then make people over here have to go and change their minds? This type of questioning brought down the whole house of cards.
🙂 Good question. It’d take me two minutes to dig up three Xians who could rationalize it for you. Of course, the rationalizations would all be different. But then, they’ve had many centuries to make stuff up.
I would respond like so:
”Seriously, who believes in any god these days unless they have been indoctrinated?
There is absolutely no evidence and besides, the god you worship, Yahweh, was a man-made Canaanite deity who once had a wife!”
I loved things scientific from my weest years; things steeped in Christianity, however, just never meshed inside my brain with what I was (fortunately) learning in science.
In my teenage and early adult years, the whole of worldwide religions’ patriarchal repressions against humans who were female ones of any age, and particularly as re females’ virginities and fertilities in almost all of these religions, became ragingly obvious and impossible to explain away … … except by their manmade – ness.
At my age of 42 and suddenly one afternoon, my father at his age of 70 finally came out to me; and along then at that very same unburdening of his with his admittance that, throughout nearly all of their lives, my mother, my (only) brother, my favorite uncle, my favorite male cousin (that uncle’s kiddo) and all other of the close – to – me male relatives were all atheists (although appearing TO ALL in their communities as abiding and steadfast Christians !), this revelation, overnight, crystallized for me that any religion with its various gods existed everywhere at all because of, and only because of, the overwhelming determinedness of this specific piece of the patriarchy.
Voilà, … … atheist.
Blue
The earth and universe are very old, but humans were supposedly what creation is all about.
The fact that it took God almost all of the 13.7 billion years to make us makes me wonder what he possibly could have been doing all of this time.
In light of this, it doesn’t make sense that [Christian] theology is correct; therefore, it isn’t plausible that God exists at all.
Utilitarian reasoning, at age 18 in my case.
It seemed far far easier to be wrong about anything regarding religion, than to be right. Whereas there were other schemata that had far more practical, immediate value, like science, including evolution explaining the origin and diversity of life.
I also didn’t like how I had been manipulated as a child by my church (I taught Sunday school from age 14-18). Too much make-belief for what is good for children
I was raised by agnostics who encouraged me to learn and think for myself. Studying history, especially the history of religion, set me on the road to agnostisism. Then my love and study of science showed me there is no evidence for any supernatural beings. Thus, I became an atheist as a teenager and haven’t seen any reason to change my mind since.
But if I were talking to what you would call on this website a “Sophisticated Theologian”, then my response would be as follows: I am an atheist because I do not agree with the use of the word God to refer to the numinous, or pleroma, or the beyond, or whatever conceptual tool you want to use to achieve the state of kenosis or fana. Because “God” has a lot of unwanted anthropomorphic and religious baggage.
Sorry, this is an addendum to my comment (#15) above.
I have, as far as I can remember, always been an atheist for every version of “deity”, and for the same reasons I’ve always been an a-gryphonist: lack of evidence and sound arguments for the affirmative claim. Even the most philosophical and “sophisticated” of the arguments for at least one deity are either based on baseless premises or straight-up non-sequiturs. I see no epistemological reason to take religious claims any more seriously than any other made-up and/or mistaken belief.
I agree strongly. Co-opting a religious word for perfectly secular concepts always strikes me as an obvious act of desperation. They so badly want credibility that they’ll leech it off others. It’s why I don’t just regard religion as intellectually untenable, but as practically contemptible.
When I was young I constantly tried to make sense of the reality described by my religion. The only thing that resolved all my questions was the realization that it was made up. Cobbled together by a bunch of dumb humans.
If gods existed as most religions posit, we would see clear evidence; prayer would work, people imbued with the holy spirit would be nicer than those of no or other religion, the faithful would be protected from accidents, the righteous would be rewarded rather than con artists like Peter Popoff, etc. All that expected evidence is lacking. I am an atheist not only because of insufficient evidence in the existence of a god, but because every evidence we should see is completely absent.
Dragon’s remark is what my first stage was like, too.
My second stage came after reading Scriven’s arguments in _Primary Philosophy_ about the “would a six year old intervene here?” and realized this is a better argument from evil than I’d ever seen previously. I still think so.
My third was realizing that the big bang was an origin only of something local, and there’s also reason to suppose anything creating such a thing has any initial conditions obliterated. So there’s no god in any useful sense possible. (Thanks to the late Vic Stenger on the latter point.)
Stumbling over discrepancies as Teenager. Understanding the danger of religious faith, looking and not finding evidence for god. Drowing a conclusion.
A commenter here stated that people “feel” their beliefs, I happen to agree to extent in regards to religion. This belief is trained as well as felt. I was one of the trained. I was trained to believe that there was one gawd, he was all loving and perfect, and you would burn forever if you believed otherwise. Then I saw that the majority of the world would burn (the majority said that all the others would burn also) because they weren’t trained as I. Then the training broke down, and I being mildly rational, saw that I had been duped, conned, and conditioned. Then when I looked again, I saw nothing staring back, just a pale reflection of all the other stories of gawds, faeries, daemons, jinns, warlocks, you know facets of humanity.
End of the story. Since age eleven.
Yes. Learning about competing and incompatible religions should be enough to start anyone down the path that leads to atheism.
At the age of 17 and in a clique of religious peers, I noticed that nobody was taking responsibility for their own actions. It was either Gods will, or the Devil did it.
This wore thin with me and annoyed the hell out of me. That’s when I realised that religion is no more than narcissism.
More importantly, I actually started to read up on things that had always confused me ((evolution etc) and that was that!
My journey into atheism started early, I remember being at the children’s service and hearing about the story of Cain and Abel, I wondered how Cain could find a wife elsewhere when god had created everyone in the garden of Eden. I asked the pastor about it, I don’t remember what he said, but I wasn’t convinced. I guess I filed it under weird stuff grown-ups do and say.
Later as a teen I sung in choir, that ment every other Sunday I was in church. At that time I kept asking myself: Do I believe it? My answer changed (evolved I guess) from “guess so” to “dunno” to “no”.
“I guess I filed it under weird stuff grown-ups do and say.”
As a child I was never a theist. It just seemed dumb to me. I remember seeing adults sometimes talking god talk or saying a prayer at dinner, and wondering – if it’s so dumb, are these adults in on some big joke? Are they really just saying stuff out of tradition? They cannot be serious, right?
I thought, because the time between Christmas & Easter was mere months & Jesus died in his 30s, that Jesus grew into an adult really fast. I figured it made about as much sense as the rest of the Jesus story. Sadly, I though this well into my late teens at least.
I am a black man i am gay it does not benefit me!
I am more an Apathist because to be honest with you, I really don’t care. People should be free to believe what they wish . . . but their belief shouldn’t be allowed to infringe on other people!
I don’t mean to suggest that I think all nonbelievers should be activists or anything remotely like that, but. Peoples beliefs will always impact other people around them. There just isn’t any way around that. It is just a matter of degrees of impact and degrees of separation.
I know quite a few very kind, decent people who are not overtly religious and definitely don’t impose their religious beliefs on others in any direct way, but who will almost certainly vote for Trump because when it comes down to it he is the representative of the party that has pandered to religious belief for decades. And they believe it. This kind of thing affects me in a significant way.
Is it too late to organize a write-in capability for this year’s election? The two choices from the two main parties are . . . unpalatable, to say the least.
I agree. I pretty much have to care. It means a lot for me and for the future of human civilization. I want to see religions eventually fade away. The whole world would work so much better as a community if it was like Scandinavia in that regard. I contribute to secular causes and vote to steer society in the right direction.
I’m an atheist because I hate God. Or is it because I want to be free to be hedonistic?
I’m sure it must be one of those.
😀
I thought it was because someone at your church insulted you.
Or you hated your parents.
Careful about using “reasons” – someone inevitably will distinguish plain reasons from good reasons. I do it too, so, you know…
I will admit I find being an atheist very convenient. I don’t have to waste precious time in churches bored out of my mind. I can watch porn without feeling guilty. I don’t have to feel vaguely guilty and morally obligated because Jesus died for my sins. I don’t even have to try to convince myself to believe the improbable/incredible stuff in the Bible.
If I were to do a sort of Pascal-like weighing of the pros and cons, I would say that, in probabilistic terms, the religionists would have to produce a hell of a lot stronger evidence in order to make it worth putting up with all the nonsense I listed in my paragraph above.
So I’m an atheist for 100% pure logical reasons and also for 100% selfish reasons. They both lead to the same conclusion.
cr
But to answer directly, I think I was always a doubter, I felt vaguely guilty at not really believing what we were told in Sunday School, till at about the age of 12 I realised that, if it wasn’t true (as I suspected), then IT DIDN’T MATTER that I didn’t believe it. I still remember the feeling of relief. It really was an epiphany.
cr
I wish I would’ve gotten to the “it didn’t matter” realization sooner.
The existence of a “God” makes no sense. I too believe in the “default” position. And, as I heard a woman say one time, “asking me to talk about the existence of God is kind of like watching my sister have sex . . . I would just as soon not.”
My Sunday school teacher led us in catechism: “Do we understand? No. Do we believe? Yes.”
Not me lady.
If you analyse the reasons advanced by theists it is simply misleading.The universe had not been created by GOD.It is the product of evolution.The talk of Atma is buckwas.It is the chemical reaction inside the brain that produces intelligence and consiousness etc.To believe in a super power for adressing worries and expecting relief is another thing.In fact GOD is the creation of man to make simple the complicated puzzles of life.
I was raised in a small rural Georgia town in a community of fundamentalists where the church was the center of the universe. When I went away to school (to become a minister!) the gap between the way I had been taught the world was, and the way I experienced the world became so great I could no longer straddle it even with determined effort. When I admitted to myself I no longer believed that Jesus was resurrected from the dead I stopped calling myself a Christian; when I realized that I no longer believed that a god existed I started calling myself an atheist.
Without gods the world becomes much simpler to understand.
I used to believe in God, or at least I think I did, when I was a kid. I always hated going to church though; luckily I only had to go when we visited my grandparents – so only a few times a year.
I don’t think I made a sudden transition. I think that when I was young and gullible, I believed. Then I spent many years not even considering it. Then at some point when I was (I suppose) in my late teens, I suddenly realised that the whole thing was preposterous.
So a little bit like one of the TV shows you used to love as a kid, then didn’t watch for 20 years, then happened upon a re-run and realised, “Actually, this is shit.”
Religion is looking externally for answers,”what is god’s plan?”, a supernatural solution. Atheism is accepting it is only us, humans, who must forge ahead the best we can. It gives us freedom to grow, evolve and create the world we want to live in.
1. God is an incoherent / tautological idea–it’s sometimes just gibberish, and simple bullshit at all other times.
2. No amount of evidence can be enough to back up a theory if said theory is bullshit.
3. See #1.
Example: If I heard a voice from the sky saying “I am the LORD!”, I would think I heard *something*, but I would conclude it wasn’t god, since god is nonsense. First, they (theists) have to come up with a coherent idea of what they’re talking about, and *then* we can look for evidence for their position. Same as everyone else.
I was more detailed about these ideas here:
https://medium.com/@rationalMexican/god-is-not-a-good-theory-e73524247712#.9h13vs4r6
Certainly lack of evidence is at the top. I’d also add that belief-based claims are so contradictory to reality, and the nature of such beliefs are better explained by other hypotheses. Finally, as I began to realize that at best, a belief in any deity lacks any real necessity. These three realizations slowly convinced me to be much more comfortable in my own lack of belief. So 1) lack of evidence, 2) inherently contradictory claims and better explanations for the nature of belief, and 3) lack of necessity.
I think you have it right Jerry. It is difficult to conceive of any reason for not believing in gods that doesn’t reduce down to a lack of good evidence.
My explanation? No evidence for any gods. Gobs of evidence everywhere you look refuting the claims of every religion. I can’t really think of a third that doesn’t fit into one of those two.
In general terms it really is that simple.
Religion requires faith and thus the abdication of one’s capability to use reason. I did not like that and became an atheist.
In addition to lack of evidence and evidence against derived from science, I also object to the conceptional framework of religion when it come to matters of relevance to the natural world. The notion of deciding the answer, and then trying to find evidence to support it (even in the face of counter evidence, or better more plausible axioms/explanations) is profoundly unscientific … Outside of its relevance (in so far as it exists) to the physical world (in so far as the dichotomy exists) I also find no need to justify morality objectively in a theological framework. I’m happy with the FACT that ethics/morals evolve with the Zeitgeist. However I feel that the ideal of minimizing harm/suffering (subject to constraints) is approaching the status of objectively valid. In short, wherever it might be claimed that religion has some virtue, I personally find it either unnecessary or that exists a perfectly valid alternative (that lacks the huge existential speculation).
As for me, I don’t believe in things that can’t be coherently defined.
When a boy of twelve,
I put together a crude telescope,
a three-inch reflector. . .
and looked up at the sky. . .
My mother sent me to church,
mostly for sound social reasons,
a respectable protestant christian church,
where I looked in. . .
and looked away. . .
and never back. . .
but always up. . . .
I love the line: “Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.” From FVF.
Which is, of course, the inversion of a common theistic trope. The “is” version theists propound is valid as long as it is reasonable not to expect any evidence of the claim. For instance, just because I’ve never seen my friend’s Canadian girlfriend doesn’t mean she can’t possibly exist. But an interventionist god? There *should* be all sorts of observable evidence that such an entity exists, eg, prayer that works, but there isn’t. Which goes to show something.
D’oh. The *is not* version.
Dude. The stories, the nuns, the other believers… no thanks.
Epistemic responsibility. I am morally obliged to require evidence for my beliefs. Each person acts in the world either beneficially or deleteriously, their actions informed by their beliefs. Having a strong regard for the epistemic quality of ones beliefs leads one to more certain knowledge of reality, and therefore a greater chance to actually affect the good. The God hypothesis does not pass this test and therefore should be rejected on ethical grounds.
I agree!
Three sentences, eh? That’s barely enough for two premises and a conclusion, which is all I need.
“God is all-powerful, or at least very powerful.”
“God wants me to know he exists.”
“God has failed to convince me that he exists, therefore either P1 or P2 must be false”
Okay, so I cheated and snuck P3 into the conclusion. 😛
I like it. Of course, you’re just being sinfully stubborn and rebellious…
Succinct!
I would bet most theists would quickly admit that P2 is false. What god wants, according to them, is for you to come to the conclusion that he exists, not just believe in him because he magically forced you.
I grew up in a moderately Catholic environment which took me a long time to shed (probably still doing that subconciously). Lots of reading about various religeous traditions and the obvious disparities helped me realize eventually that they were just stories. I came to realize that unless I was god there was no possible way for me to properly conceive a god – trying was a waste of time. So I just got on with my life.
The existence of God is a smaller hypothesis within a larger question: is reality fundamentally natural (mind comes from matter) or supernatural (matter comes from mind)? The evidence for the theory of naturalism is strong, and the case for supernaturalism weak. There are also good natural explanations for why why so many people could believe in supernaturalism even if it’s not true.
Shorter answer: method, method, method.
YES!
Oh, my background: I used to be Spiritual, Not Religious.
AAARGH – not that!
I accept your reply in a nonjudgmental spirit of transcendental love.
AAARGH! 😀 😀
“Shorter answer: method, method, method.”
Yep, that sums up my position as well.
I believe physical-ism is true, doesn’t mix well with a believe in God.
I grew up in a Roman Catholic household, when I was about 12 years old I started questioning the articles of faith since they just didn’t seem right to me. I read the bible from beginning to end for the first time around then and I decided that it was a collection of stories that primitive versions of ourselves told each other. Religions came along and codified these stories.
The lack of evidence to support the biblical claims and evidence that disconfirms their claims came later for me and only confirmed my growing unbelief.
…and if I’m being honest (which I think I am) this process of de-conversion took me about 7-8 years and it took place entirely in my own head since I wasn’t comfortable talking to my family about it.
It was only several decades later when I realized that one of my brothers went through the same ordeal.
Something similar with me, raised as an Anglican. It was failing to make sense of ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to die upon the cross for our sins’ (plus a complete lack of any experience of my personal God) which turned me into an atheist.
To this day, though I’m now much more knowledgeable about all religions’ epistemological problems, the nonsensicality of central Christian doctrines – original sin and salvation through vicarious atonement – would alone stop me from being a Christian.
And since we are allowed three sentences I should have added to doctrinal implausibility and lack of evidence the inability of gods to resolve questions of morality and life purposes.
At some point I realized there were many religions and assertions of God, all of them said they are the One True Religion, and none of them could show why they had the truth and the others didn’t. At least beyond the usual spurious interpretations of the Bible or other scriptures.
I lumped god myths with myths of fairies, leprechauns and unicorns. Truth be told I really didn’t think about God and religion much at all, and it wasn’t until I became involved with Fidonet and Usenet in my mid twenties that I realized some of my own beliefs had poor foundations.
I think it’s perfectly legitimate to reject a *particular* god on the basis of contradictions in his character (rather than a lack of evidence for his existence). For example, you could say of Jehovah, “I’m sorry, but a god who orders his people to commit genocide simply couldn’t be the all-loving creator of the universe.” However, I think you’re probably right that the only legitimate basis for categorically rejecting gods in general is the lack of evidence.
Now here are my three sentences:
I became an atheist when I stopped depending solely on the writings of Christian apologists to buttress my faith and finally gave a fair hearing to secular perspectives on history, philosophy, and science. I eventually realized that the open-minded study of any of these three subjects leads inevitably to the conclusion that the traditional notions of God just aren’t plausible. I would have been willing to continue believing if I had seen strong evidence that a particular god was at work in the world (by performing miracles, for example), but I saw no such evidence.
I was born into and raised in a non-fanatical Catholic family and so became a serious but non-fanatical Catholic, to the point of choosing, from age 14 to age 19, for the Catholic priesthood (this was done during the 1950s but no longer is, I believe).
Exposed to pretty much only the Catholic vision of human life, I began to become aware of extreme evil during my teens, via learning about World War II and the Nazi atrocities (significantly through William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” — a huge best-seller during the early Sixteis and the first hardcover book that I chose to buy with money I had earned myself. This information starkly contrasted with the Catholic insistence that God was, besides All-Knowing, also All-Loving, yet He (the capital letter was mandatory then) let all this happen, which was blamed on human free will that He gave us.
After leaving the seminary at age 19, I gradually became aware of other perspectives on life that were not necessarily evil the way that Catholicism portrayed them. Among these was atheism. During the Sixties, many abandoned the main-line religions only to adopt others (Buddhism was popular) or try to create their own, sometimes with dire consequences (Scientology, Jim Jones, etc.). I went the other way, little by little concluding that it was necessary to abandon not only Catholicism but also the concepts of religion/God in any form (though it took me years to become comfortable with identifying myself via the word atheist). Finally, one Sunday during Mass, while a priest was delivering a sermon or reciting prayers, I heard a kind of voice in my mind that was saying, “Why are you here? You know you don’t believe in this stuff anymore.” I had to reply mentally, “That’s true. I don’t.” So I stood up and left in the middle of the Mass. Haven’t returned or wanted to return to church since except for some weddings and funerals of people I knew or as a tourist.
Cheated outrageously, I know — three rather long paragraphs instead of three sentences. Well, at least I no longer have to be concerned about the reaction of Sky Daddy to this and my other infractions.
I was an ordained minister that loved the idea of an all powerful, loving God. However, I came to realize that the only evidence for God was in the pages of The Bible and any confirmation of that evidence could be attributed to fallacious reasoning. I am an atheist because there is no verifiable evidence for the supernatural being plausible.
Background: Mother excommunicated for marrying a non-practicing Methodist before Vatican II. I was “raised” a Catholic. Last ritual I underwent, beyond worshipping the Mother-Goddess, The “Virgin” Mary,was “First Holy Communion.” When, at age 5 or 6, I began undergoing catechism in preparation for first communion, I kept asking the nuns “why” do we think this, “why” do we do this, “who” decided to teach this? I recall clearly resenting the fact they wanted to stop me from asking questions. Been that way all my life. When I don’t get answers, I go looking. I did have a mystical experience inside that beautiful church building, with the Latin mass, the ritual, so much beauty! But I was taught to expect it…and as a natural artist, the beauty inhabited my emotions. I get the same response now looking through telescopes, walking in the woods, experiencing the sublime through an accident of nature’s composition or from the grandeur and terror of reality.
10 years later, Dad, feeling guilty about screwing around, joined the WWCG under the tyranny of Herbert Armstrong. From around 16 to 20, I attended, studied the teachings, went to its premier college in Pasadena, witnessed clod-hand the corruption, decided that depending on interpretation, it could make an interesting science-fiction story, if it had any science. Further, it reminded me of Stalinism, with everyone conveniently forgetting prophecies HWA had pronounce when they never happened. Even the !3@%^*& Bible says not to believe false prophets! Most (not all people shunned me when I pointed this out.
Also, they did not like my asking penetrating questions about scripture, upon which they claimed everything was based. I began to realize that language and cultural context, archeology and supporting historical documents were crucial in beginning to understand what the writers meant when they wrote what they wrote…and really, how germane would their ideas be for us today? Finally, I saw it was a scam based on fear.
So:
1. People seek a “Higher Power”: mine is objective reality.
2. If any given scripture is the foundation of a belief-system, and it does not withstand rational inquiry, then it is nothing more than literature with historical interest (and even so, the historical interest is present only given its impact on human affairs): The Western testaments Old and New, the hateful gibberish of the Q’oran, the fanciful flights of imagination in the earlier Mediterranean belief-systems, and the story-telling of the HIndus, etc., offer a kind of entertainment, but do not offer insight into the nature of reality. LONG SENTENCE!
3. And, what Matt said resonated with me. I wanted to be free and to be free means taking personal responsibility (making amends when wrong, paying the debts, emotional or material: religion (like politics) is just a dishonest way of worming out of personal responsibility by blaming Satan or God or both.
It was the 70s. I read Ayn Rand and (philosophically naive) quickly grasped
that epistemology(how do you know what you know) was fundamental, and everything clicked into place! Thus my slogan is: “Reason and Science: They WORK!”
I’ve never believed in god but it’s because of the internet and the “new atheists” that I now call my non belief atheism.
I’m sure others have made this point, but in addition to there being *no* good evidence for the existence of god, I’d say there *is* quite a lot of evidence for god being an invention of humanity. The claims are 1) too parochial, and 2) obviously confected to manipulate human psychology.
(1) “too local, too provincial” — Richard Feynman
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One could do worse than to reinvent a wheel originally invented by Feynman.
(Although I’d guess he didn’t *originally* invent it, either.)
My lack of belief is based promarily on thinking the idea of god is absurd. It makes no sense of the iniverse as far as I can see. I cannot even be sure what evidence would convince me that there were a god. I should add, I see no problem in believing that there might be a god that is not good. I have probably said here before that I do not hold with the majority views on ‘evil’ & ‘good’…
promerily? oops – primarily!
That would be the iniverse inverting your typing.
Arrrggghh!
🙂
I am not superstitious in the least, never have been.
or, depending on whether is is curiosity or challenge;
If god created adam and eve and they had four sons, where did the women come from that those sons married?
^^ Always my answers
Either Adam & Eve also had four daughters (who didn’t rate a mention in patriarchal society), or they all married Eve.
Interestingly incestuous, either way. [vbeg]
cr
Hello Jerry, Let me say how much I enjoy WEIT and admire you for standing up for reason; you are the American counterpart to our own Richard Dawkins;But i expect you know that already!It is not quite so bad a problem here in Jersey (Channel islands U.K.), and the U.K generally as in the US,- but still bad enough.My credentials are that I am a retired general medical practitioner, and a member of the National Secular Society and British Humanist Association and a member of U3A (Jersey) and Convenor of a U3A Philosophy group;–so defending Atheism is one of my chief interests.There are a number of responses one can give to the question you pose: Three sentences,–starting with the ones you mention: 1. No evidence for, and lots of evidence against. There should be evidence given God’s ubiquity throughout the Old Testament,and his alleged omniscience with respect to all our personal details; eg numbers of hairs on head etc. Deus Absconditas,–the Absent God. 2. Natural Evil–earthquakes, diseases etc. God is dumb,—literally, and stupid as well. Can he ride a bicycle?-No? I can,–perhaps everyone should be worshipping me! 3. The ineffectiveness of Prayer; the resemblance of the Judaeo-Christian God to pagan gods in his dying and resurrecting habits; the preposterous claim of a disembodied Mind,-which has no logical or empirical precedent. I could write an essay , but that’s all i can say in three sentences. Regards, Reg
This is our existence. We share it together. We have uncovered what we know about the universe only through science. The creation myths purported by all religions have failed to produce a useful explanation for anything.
You know, it also occurs to me that I was profoundly troubled about something that happened to our family.
1. First born of my parents, still-birth of Sheila, 30 days after our date: Why no inducement of labor by the doctor? Baby fully formed, nothing wrong, just in the womb too long!
2. Second child: Georgie. Small southern, rural hospital. (Same) doctor induces birth, leaves for a cocktail party, rare snow, can’t get back. Breach birth comes in, two interns only, they give Mom a shot and cross her legs so to attend breach birth. Georgie’s umbilical cord cuts off oxygen, damages his brain. Life in a wheelchair, Mom taking care of him at home (into her 70s) most of his life.
I was born 7 years later, probably an accident. This was a central question for me: How could such a senseless accident occur, if there is a god to prevent it? I came to realize it was up to on each of us as individuals, as his family, to bring meaning and any goodness to what had happened to him, there was nothing to extract from the event except we should have sued that doctor.
In other words, stuff happens, good and bad. Mourn it, turn it around into something good, deal with it. God can’t make any difference. Just do the next right thing.
Beyond a complete lack of evidence, I would say that I have never encountered a single good reason, philosophical or otherwise, to think that such a being exists, and, by contrast, an abundance of reasons to think that belief in a god or gods is a purely human phenomenon.
I was raised atheist, and nothing I have encountered has made me doubt my atheism.
Origin of the human species. There is obviously no god involved.
I’m an atheist not only because there is no evidence for a supernatural being but also because it is so obvious that God is a human invention – from the needs He satisfies to the attributes that are ascribed to Him.
My interest in science late in life probably turned things around for me. The four horsemen and this website certainly opened my eyes as well.
Something I’ve been thinking of lately: About the time of Jesus china had a population of some 60 million. What was god doing messing around with a bunch of goat herders in a much more sparsely (I believe) populated area?
When I was 10 or so, I decided to run a test for god. I put a key into a drawer and pushed it to one side. I made a sort of pact with this unknown character (my family wasn’t so much atheist as just not anything except intellectual): I would pray every night for a week, on my knees, etc., with whatever language I’d derived from literature–I certainly wasn’t picking up any at home. (I suspect “Jane Eyre” had something to do with the language.) And if there were a god, he had to demonstrate his existence by moving the key to the other side of the drawer.
He didn’t. That was it for me.
I should say that I never had a sense of the ineffable, before or after that experiment. For that, I bless my parents every day of my life.
I walked away from the Church when I walked out the back door of chapel one Sunday morning at age 14, after a parish priest gave a sermon railing against communist infiltration of the civil rights movement.
But I had left “belief” behind even before that, I think. Oh, I suppose I maintained an inchoate belief in belief up until then, believing that I should believe, the way others around me in church and parochial school seemed to believe. But the whole thing had an air of make-believe about it for me, so let’s chalk it up to the lack of evidence. I never believed in Santa, or the Easter bunny, or the tooth-fairy either — though I played along with the ruse when the folks stuffed Xmas stockings, or put chocolates and eggs in baskets, or left a little gelt under the pillow after swiping expired baby incisors.
I have a great-nephew who is not the brighest of kids, but when he was twelve or so he asked my sister (his grandmother) whether she believed in God.
She replied “No, not really”, and asked why he had asked. He said that his parents had told him about the tooth fairy, and that wasn’t true; and they had told him about the Easter bunny, and that wasn’t true; and they had told him about Santa, and that wasn’t true; and now they were telling him about God.
Even kids have a BS detector!
That’s why early education is so vital – we can either encourage the growth of that “organ” or let it atrophy or worse, stunt it.
I have a saying: “reason begins at home” – as far as I can tell it is often (but not always) too late once formal school starts.
No necessity.
No plausibility.
And, crucially, no evidence.
Well said!
Very succinct.
“That about wraps it up for God.”
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When I was around 7, a relative gave me a children’s bible. I quickly read it, realized it didn’t make any sense, and stopped believing in god. As I learned more and more about the universe, the god hypothesis made even less sense.
Grandmother passed away and couldn’t rationalize why God, the creator, would take a life. The seed of doubt towards religion began to grow, especially when I took a class on evolution in junior college. Ever since then the natural order has made the most sense to me.
I grew up in a strict Penetcostal home, and most of my family are still very religious. My wife is actually the admin at her church, and runs a religious charity aimed at school age children. I actually really enjoyed church, and think there’s something to be said for the social side of religion even though I no longer believe in any sort of afterlife or god.
There were a number of things that led me towards atheism. Working alongside a number of gay and lesbian people who were some the loveliest human beings ever didn’t gel with the idea of a god who thought they were an abomination. Other friends who were Wiccans and Satanists challenged my beliefs with questions that made more logical sense than the platitudes offered on Sundays by our pastors. And finally, Dawkin’s book “The Greatest Show on Earth”, showed me what an elegant and comprehensive idea evolution was, and compared with Genesis there was no contest as to what was real and what was myth. I had been to a seminar with Ken Ham where he made a fairly convincing argument that the whole of the bible rested on the literal Genesis, so when my belief in that crumbled, and original sin was placed firmly in the category of myth and allegory – well, that was that. There didn’t seem to be much more value in tithing 10% of my income and wasting my Sundays in church, so I just stopped going.
One piece of evidence against gods is the profound lack of agreement in human societies regarding gods. Greek gods, Egyptian gods, Roman gods, Incan gods, Mayan gods, Hindu gods, Norse gods, Abrahamic gods. Such a muddle!
I started questioning my parents’ Catholic faith at about age 9, when I realized that, in confession, I was confessing “sins” that I hadn’t committed. The next step was realizing, when reading mythology, that the Catholic church was lying to me, just as I was lying to them. Then I began to read scriptures from many religions, until by age 16 I was a thorough-going atheist, with sufficient knowledge of scriptures to combat the faithful. (I might add that, despite my parents’ best efforts, all 6 of us siblings are atheists of one stripe or another.)
I was raised Catholic. When I left home at 18 I quit, no epiphanies or deep thought just didn’t see any need for believing in anything. Since then I have grown more to believe in non-belief. Call me an atheist if you need to put a label on it, I don’t care.
A question I sometimes kick around is: “Why are there smart people that believe in gods?”
Great question. One obvious answer would be that they are indoctrinated as children. However, that does not explains why they keep being believers. I see at least two possible answers: 1) they have never spent time thinking critically and deeply about the subject or 2) they have compelling social or economic incentives forcing them into a sort of cognitive dissonance.
Religion started out as a means to explain natural phenomena that couldn’t be explained otherwise and became a tool for controlling and manipulating populations. Once the purpose of religion and lack of evidence for any type of god sunk in – it took a few years to completely let go – I became an atheist.
1. My parents weren’t religious, though one was expected to be a believer at school. C of E.
2. As I got into my own reading I saw no argument for god stood up. I was an unthinking agnostic,
3. Until I watched the jihadis force people to jump to their deaths from the twin towers. Now a militant atheist.
“As I got into my own reading I saw no argument for god stood up. I was an unthinking agnostic”
That was me before The God Delusion.
After I read that book, my thoughts on religion were fully crystallized in my mind and there was no going back. No more soft spot for religion (hangover from youth in a church).
When I studied hypnosis and realized that a good hypnotist can induce a “religious experience” and connect it to belief in anything.
Ah, that reminds me of a hypothesis I’ve suggested here before, that the is a connection between susceptibility to hypnosis and religious belief. I’d really like to see that tested.
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1 – I want to learn what’s true, whatever it looks like.
2 – Beliefs not grounded in truth, may give a sense of security in the short run, but in the long run, they inevitably come in conflict with each other and with reality, and destroy the very security being sought.
i.e. Religious belief is both untrue and incoherent.
The discussion in Presbyterian confirmation class about predestination made no sense to even a gullible teenager. A naïve boy thought the obvious extension of the concept was, “Why would you worship a God who predestined human misery?” Then, the suffering of quite ill people, especially children, witnessed as a medical student in a university hospital, was the kiss of death to God. There was no God. And, if there was, he deserved to be hated, not loved.
Andy Thomson
J. A. Thomson, Jr., M.D.
I had a long and painful exit from religious belief. Although many things pressed me to keep thinking about it, what moved me to unbelief was realizing and accepting that the mind is what the brain does. At this point, the idea of the afterlife fell apart, and without that, there wasn’t any reason to continue believing the rest.
I am slightly envious of the people here who were raised atheist or with no religion.
It took me so long to “recover” from being raised catholic. The indoctrination was thorough and I had to go through many stages before being able to let go of the notion of g*d.
Now, just like a smoker who has quit smoking, I am a royal pain in the ass when anyone brings up the topic of g*d or religion.
I usually don’t even bother with the “where’s your proof?” stuff, and go straight to “what a bunch of bull”.
It wasn’t till I read Christopher Hitchens, where he called it child abuse to raise kids with religion that I was able to fully appreciate what had been done to me.
I will never forget the feeling the day I knew I was free of “belief”. It was like being born again, if you will forgive the comparison. Haha
I’m glad I stopped going to church when I did, then, before I was confirmed; I didn’t feel “indoctrinated” and drifted away from Christianity altogether during my high-school years. I guess I was a vaguely deistic or pantheistic agnostic through uni and for many years after. It was only via arguing with creationists on Twi**er and from there discovering gnu atheism that I realised that not only was there no evidence for any theistic god but also the evidence pointed to a purely naturalistic cosmos.
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This is the explanation I use, edited to three sentences.
Growing up I had never been exposed to religion, nor had I been to a religious service save funerals and weddings, and I on those occasions I didn’t understand or care what the priest was talking about.
I had no idea, until I was in my twenties, that people actually believed in god.
I find the entire concept silly.
Because a benevolent God is incompatible with natural selection of sentient beings.