I stopped believing in God because...well, simply because I stopped. For years I referred to myself as an agnostic. Honestly, I suspect the only reason I continued to believe in deities is out of habit. Several months ago, as I was responding in this very forum, I came to the realization than I no longer believed. It wasn't a conscious choice. There was no proof-checking, no feeling of betrayal, no decision it was all a lie. I simply no longer thought of the gods as anything other than fictional characters.

I'm a born Atheist. My parents are Atheists and their parents were Atheists. My whole family.

I didn't even know what the Bible or the Christian God was until I was 12 and I fully understood the whole deal.

I take a logical approach to the whole deal.

I put as much belief into the Christian God as I do Odin or Zeus. To me it's all mythology. Nothing more.

To be honest with you...I feel sorry for people who have a belief in spirituality.

They say it's an advantage, that it helps, that you cannot live a happy life. What a load of crap. As I said, four generations of my family are Atheists...and we're perfectly fine and happy.

I still can't understand how someone can have belief in something that they haven't seen or heard which is based on a book that has multiple versions which is amended every century.

Anyway, I recommend the Bible to all who haven't read it. It's an entertaining read

Hey guys! I apologize for my belief in God. Its just that I haven't found an ounce of understanding or truth in evolution or any other theory out there plus I've had some spiritual moments myself when I least expected them. Even though I haven't seen God, I know He's there giggling in forgiveness of all who don't believe in Him. Don't mean to stomp on your beliefs if you don't believe in God, just saying what's on my mind.

(apology accepted Mad Manfred!)

It really hasn't affected me spiritually at all. I could never honestly say that I worshipped anything, or even that I had a faith to give up. Oh, I believed in God, but I wasn't anything like a follower of Him. The night that I realized that I was an atheist as opposed to an agnostic was...well, less a mind-blowing epiphany and more like the pleasantly satisfactory realization that you have learned something new that you didn't know before. I can't say it has bothered me at all, because I have never relied on faith for anything. Even when I believed in God, it simply didn't occur to me that one should bother an omnipotent being with something so insignificant as ones current emotional state.

Ultimately, my realization that I didn't believe in God didn't really affect me because I stopped believing in God long before I ever realized it.

I don't recall apologising for anything.

Well let's see... I've always felt more comfortable with the path I'm on. Herbal healing, shamanistic beliefs... Naturalistic worship. Celtic to honour my heritage, Native American, to honour the land I live on. This place is saturated with native american magics and legends.

What pushed me finaly to leave Christianity all together was a comment from a religios teacher from the church I went to. "Do you know why the Bible refers to people as sheep? Because we need to be lead."

No, I don't need to be lead in religon.

Prophacies always come true.. after someone reads into them abit, and tries to bring in parallels.

Don't apologize for believing in God...

For me, not believing has been an integral part of my life since I can even remember. My family raised me catholic, but even as a small child, I would stand in church thinking "this is so fake"... I have always felt that religion was invented as a way for simplepeople to understand things they couldn't explain. Even as a child, I would ask questions and get so disgruntled when the answer given was, "because god made it that way." I'm sorry, that has never been good enough for me. I need reason, logic, proof.

And as for how it affects my daily life...
I have a profound sense of accomplishment. Everything I have, everything I have acheived... its all been ME. I owe everything I have to myself, and I don't have to give credit to anyone else.

I find that the most sound minds that I come in contact with... the best people for conversations, the most intelligent people out there are the ones who are constantly questioning. There is something wrong with a mind that no longer seeks answers, its human nature to investigate, to learn, to become wiser. To stop questioning your environment is to become spirtual.

And what of the ghost dance? If that was to really happen, why don't they try it again. Honestly, if it was really to happen, I'd welcome the change.

What you get out of prophacies is what you put into them.

i have so many reasons...i have a friend that use to believe in god until things such as go churches not accepting gays, sayings that i am christian and killing people, and of course the big you can believe in what you want to but we are going to try to convert you.


i can post a whole novel but i rest my case on this:

"The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism."

don't any of you religious people read my post and counter what i wrote. the last time i checked this thread was For Those That Do NOT Believe In *God

Basicaly... they do the dance, the earth goes back to how it was before europeans came. The buffalo comes back, waters become clean.. sky clear... The land is for them and those who will respect Mother Earth.

The American government... in their oh so wise way, crashed it, slaughtered everyone. They were to afraid that it could be a well deserved uprising. So instead of finding out, they jump to the worse conclusion and kill them.

It wasn't that the dance itself was banned, but huge gatherings were. Which as one can find out, has been repealed. Since Pow Wows are common now.

kail said:

I've always heard that there is no such thing as a true atheist because any one laying on a death bed would 'by nature' call out to a being greater than him/herself....


i write:

i would never...maybe mother nature.

kail, was that a joke????

what's a true atheist????

When I need help in life, depressed whatever... Ihonestly just take time out to work on what the problem is. I fix it myself. I've become really good at adjusting, as I've moved over 20 times in my life all over the world, and I have a non existing family. I have really learned to pick my battles... I have adopted the philosophy that if its not going to affect me a year from now, I shouldn't let it bother me now. For the larger than life things, (luckily I havn't had too many) I focus my energy on something else... school, art, music... something to occupy myself, to heal, to move on. It always helps. And friends definately help too. You can never say enough about the help a friend can give you just by being there...

I would gather a true atheist has never questioned whether there IS a god, but simply knows there is NOT one.

They had multible gods. The Great Spirit has many names. Olm Man being one of them. Mother Earth, Grandmother Moon, Spider Woman, Old Woman of the Sky... Grandfather or Chief Sun... Kokopallii, Coyote, Gloosclap... All but a few deities.

bizeebutt:

could be, but let kail answer it...she brought "true atheist" up.


if people believe in god then why go to doctor for medicine which was formed by using science??? (in the case of a christian) why not go home and pray for good health and hope god heals me for work tonight???? do i smell science believers????

hahaha... good point cajun you can't have your cake and eat it too!!

So why are you asking us why we don't believe in a god like you?

understood kail...i must apologize. as a current medical student with a ambition to become a geneticists, i must say my life is nothing but serious. i am a very serious guy like Blade.


(not an attack) from reading what you wrote kail. it seems that you "want to believe" though. i am simply asking for a clearer stance on where you stand.

If your in the mood for it, here's some more good advice I've been given and am willing to share with others...

An older teacher of mine was telling me the secret to his mothers happiness throughout her life, and it started while she was pregnant with her second child and her husband got called to WW2. To cope with the depression, she sat down at the end of every day and wrote down one beautiful thing that touched her from the day... whether it was a child's smile, a rainbow, an act of kindnes... anything that she thought was beautiful. At the end of every week she would mail out her letter of beautiful things to her husband over seas. She continued this idea of looking for one beautiful thing in every day for the rest of her life and she died a very happy woman, at a very old age.

So there... find one beautiful thing in every day and reflect on it. You don't have to write it down, but take a mental note. It really helped me see how amazing this world around me is.

My mom told me a story about a woman who was in her church growing up. She was huge and everyone thought she was pregnant, but after a year or so people started wondering why she hadn't had the baby yet. Well, someone finally asked her what was going on, and she said that she had a stomach tumor and she was waiting for God to heal her.

Anyway...I guess I stopped believing when I was about 12...one of my aunts is pentecostal and she would make me watch these movies about the rapture and the apocalypse. She'd tell me all I had to do was accept Jesus as my savior and I wouldn't be scared, that Satan was everywhere, blah blah blah. I was so scared I couldn't sleep. It was that fear that made me realize that religion is just brainwashing. While not all religions strike fear into the hearts of followers, it just felt like all organized religion had been poisoned. Since then I've just been studying different religions and I call myself agnostic, but I don't really believe in any God. I just prefer to use the term agnostic because the term atheist tends to make certain family members angry.

I appreciate an open mind. I have had so many Christians tell me I'm a bad person for not believing in god. It's refreshing to know that there are people like yourself out there with an open mind.

my staunch catholic family ain't so pickled tink about me being athiest either

bizeebutt:

i understand what you mean...it's really sad when i hear people ask questions like that becasue they want you to be like them...majority of priest i have talk to try to convert me...nope thier magics and fables don't affect me. let's say they do convert everyone to a christian...what then???? white christians againts black christians???? sounds stupi# to me...

But I do believe.. but not in the monotheistic religions.

If I was forced to.. I'd choose Judaism.


However, I'm rather happy with what I do believe in.

just curious Cajun... did you see the post I started about the God Gene>> just curious about your take on that...

no problem, now a friend and I talk every other day and ask each other about our "beautiful things". We both do it now, and it has really made a difference in my life... I'm so much happier lately... I just really appreciate every moment, every thing.

I've three names. SilverCougar is what i go by, then my legal name... (No you can't know that ;P) Then another... which is also something no to be known.

I do not believe in a god as written by man. People can say it was the spirit of God or Christ that wrote though the hand of man - it was though the hands of man; thus, it has no truth. This goes the same for science; it also has no truth. Only god (a god) knows the truth and neither I, nor any of us, know the truth. I believe it is possible we will never know the truth, even when we die, so by believing that no living man will ever know the truth (at least not for a BAZILLION years ) I have little to defend in the sense of an after life.

A different way to put it is, I was never told (tantalized) about an after life; thus, once I truly comprehended the idea of an after life, I felt taking on an idea like this for myself would be like adding salt to my eggs. Why add more salt when they already taste so good?

Last way to say it – I grew up with the idea that life is for the living, and death is for the dead. When you are dead you are dead – maybe there is more after and maybe not – you will never know –so live life because you are alive! Simple

“All possibility are possible – all of them could be correct – the beauty is, we will never know unless we know”
4dplane

Thanks Kail

Bizeebutt's post:

"This is my first post, but I recently read something in Time Magazine a few weeks back about a "God Gene." I personally feel like someone finally put a name to something I've wondered if I've had all along... I've considered myself an atheist for about 7 years, but I've never been able to fully understand why I just don't believe in God. I've always been a logical person, so of course that is definitely a huge part of the reasoning behind my belief, but for the first time I now understand why I might be logical compared to others who are spiritual. I'd like to know other's thoughts on this subject... "



Bizeebutt:

i just finished reading your "God Gene". this is what i believe.


you say you are a logical person...of course you are...why?...well, i like to say that religion is inherited like inheriting blue eyes (in science). there is a major differnce though. the inheritance in religion, people tend to blame on geography or in your case (i think) becasue your parents forced you into becoming a christian. you didn't know any better. all you knew was that your parents were christians and so had to be one too. no explanations...and when you questioned why??? people say don't question god.

when it comes to picking a religion it seems that even if a religion had the best evidence in thier favor, best miracles or best moral codes didn't even matter. so what am i getting at??? like i said and you said, you are a logical person and understood this.


that is my take.

No, this is what makes it so simple.

4dplane:

i understand where you are coming from..i have some questions though...if you don't believe in either god or science, what do you do or believe in. also, if you really didn't believe in a god then why did you say:

"Only god (a god) knows the truth and neither I, nor any of us, know the truth."

and


you said:

"I believe it is possible we will never know the truth, even when we die, so by believing that no living man will ever know the truth (at least not for a BAZILLION years."

i ask:

what truth are you referring to??

Kail,

As I said, I was raised in an Atheist family. I had no knowledge of the Christian God. However, I was taught quite a bit of mythology.

When I came of age I was far too old to be influenced. When someone tried I usually laughed them down.

Now I know how the pagans of old felt when the Christian Romans tried their best to convert them.



How do I function? The same way you do, just without the belief of a higher power. I do not need that reassurance. I'm stronger than that.

kail, i would like to know how are you feeling and (if you believe) what can religion do for you to make you happy???? example, is it by having a religion you can secretly talk to someone about your life. then all of a sudden you are guilt free????

i ask if that is a what people think???? isn't it just having to do with your mind making you think a certain way??? that's not religion doing it's work. it's the power of the human intellect. something religion despises.

Anyone who lives in this anthropic universe must take an extreme leap of faith to be an atheist. Just pure mathematics tells us that the odds of our coming to being by pure chance is a virtual infinity to one. Change even one of the laws of physics to the slightest degree and we would not be here. Stop being so linear, stop viewing things as cause and effect and the answer will come to you. God is right here with us now, growing as we are. When we reach infinite computation we will be reunited to zero point or Omega Point. Open your minds, consider the possibiliteies. It is absurd to believe we are an accident since it has been proven that the Universe is finite.

They can argue the fact that you need to open your maind and not believe in that some higher power created this place. We only know a tiny fraction of the universe. We have no idea if thre's life out there other then us. It would be foolish to think not.

Up until about two years ago i beliefs in God, being raised in a non-religious but not atheist family (well, my mom and step dad, the rest of my family is very religious) I was raised knowing of God. But, god never did anything for me, just made me feel like i was throwing all my trust into an empty cup. So my faith died rather quick from that point, i started reading up on all kinds of stuff, each thing i read killed my beliefs more and more. I am now proud to be the first atheist in my family

The primary causation of disbelief is:

lack of good religious environ,

pressure of the pratical knowledge goverment imposed on people,

the emergence of cults and demonic practices,

lack of a spiritual and traditional society with values and deep rooted perception,

and the disharmony caused by the many,many religious extremists.

In about fifth grade I started getting really interested in plainly watching the night sky and I got to thinking: There's always a bigger fish. We have atoms inside of us, and we are inside the Earth and the Earth is inside the Solar System, Solar Sytem inside the Galaxy, Galaxy inside the universe. I imagined the universe being inside something, itself, as common sense points at it- only we can't see past the universe.

So I figured everything is inside something bigger which means it's a never-ending circle of life. And that's what I believe in. Never-ending. If you're looking at a perfect circle, you can't pick out with point is the beginning, nor the end... To me, it's the same with the universe. The universe may have been created, but I see it more as being BORN from whatever is beyond it, sort of the way that stars are created within the universe.

I picked up the same idea with souls. I think that if we do have souls [which I think we do] then we can't just simply "go to heaven" or "go to hell". Because that would end the circle.


Enough of that babble.

The main reason was because it seemed so fake. I mean come on. The word "God" and the word "Devil" are just one letter away each from "Good" and "Evil." Someone was lacking creativity when they made that stuff up.

And anything that contradicts itself so many times is just hilarious. "Do as I say, not as I do." That should be somewhere in the bible cause for as many times as God says "Thou shalt not kill" he's off flooding the world and telling some dude to go kill off some other dude. Yeah. That's lovely.

And basically it seems like the god everyone refers to is not the same god at all. People can take the guy mentioned in the bible and turn him into whatever they want him to be, because it's so broad it's not even funny anymore. God could mean: "Guy who wants me to go off and convert all the non-believers before I die" to one person and then "Guy who wants me to love my neighbors and never commit any of these 'deadly sins'" to another person. Know what I mean?

Yeah. It's 4 in the morning over here so uh. Forgive meh.

I don't disbelieve for any of those reasons.

Can't someone disbelieve simply because they're born and raised without it's negative influence?

There are billions of people who have no belief in your god...are they all small minded ignorant fools? Or are you?

another reason why i don't beleive in a religion. (in the case of a christian god) let's say 5000 years from now we are all dead. let's say thousands of years pass by and a new intelligent life form like us springs up. they find a Superman comic book....and look, even more superman comic books under that one...they read superman's comics and wow...he's a super-being let us worship "superman". let's despise his evil nemisis Lex Luthor. we know superman is fake.

what i am trying to say is that many religions today espicially christians speak of their religion like Cinderella to illustrate some laudable moral homily. they treat thier biblical stories like fables and have forgotten the difference between fact and fiction.

I grew out of believing in the Tooth fairy.
I grew out of beliving in Santa Clause
I've grown out believing theres God and a devil

All the way through school I was lead to believe that GOD was fact, aswell as the devil. As I got older I understood more and made my decision based on what I have found out.

Religion seperates too many people. You have religion vs religion. It has and causes wars against countries and people.

The new testiment was written after jesus and there were 4 different accounts of what happend with jesus, each person told a different story. They werent eyewitness accounts in the new testament and each author contradicts the other, it is inconsistant to what people are lead to believe.


You shouldnt need a bible to believe in GOD either. Dont read the bible litrually because it was not meant to be. Some people do unfortanatly.


Even tho I do understand the implications with the universe existing to be perfect for us to live by chance, Im still confident that science will progress its understand soon enough.

and mathematically the chances of our coming into being by the actions of a "God" are exactly the same as the quote. That is one reason to believe in a Creator and is one reason to disbelieve in a Creator....Sad ain't it, everything is so uncertain, seems that a god like the Christians worship would have fixed it so belief was much easier!

LoL, nice point.


Why dont we just say. Forget medicin, forget everything to do with science. Lets just pray and see what happens.

Also where was god when this big earthquake happend under the water in asia?

Thousands of people dead. no good praying people. They need some good Doctors and nurses. They need help from real people who will help out. No god will save them

I was raised in the Bible Belt, w/ extremely conservative and religious parents. A prevalent mentality, towards everything, is: This is the way my father was raised, and his father, and so on, so it must be right. NOTHING is questioned, religion of course being a part of that.

Well, I'm too much of a thinker and questioned. I've not come up with a good answer supporting any major religions. The Christian faith just seems to be a security blanket for people who need to find a place, whether it's in society or heaven.

I just can't reconcile myself with any of them. I do feel there is a god of some sort, just that we needn't think we know anything about him/her/it (deism). I'm damn sure he's not a published author.

heck, maybe the earthquake was an act of god...

Jennrose said:

" I do feel there is a god of some sort, just that we needn't think we know anything about him/her/it (deism).'

i write:

the point here is many atheist are opened that beliefe but not christians. however, if there is a god like you mentioned it is totally differnent from the god that determines what you can eat or what you can wear.

most scientists Look at evidence for ghosts. god and other but they can usually explain them with enough investigation..

but religous fanatics do not even look at evidence that science provides.

its religous people that are not open to discussion about other possibilities. most are closed minded