“Why do atheists/others Deny God, Scriptures,

[joer]

Last week I came across something in reflection. Spirituality grows and develops as we do. There are three stages.

1. The first stage is discovering that God Exists. This usually takes place between 0-20 years of age.

2. The second stage is being led to God. You begin and develop learning about God’s purpose in your life. This happens about 20-40 years of age.

T3. he third stage is Living a Spirit led, God led Life. Now you know why you’re here and your ready for your fruits to be lived and seen. God is alive within you. Now you see yourself as Spirit within a body. This happens about 40 to forever.

So when I noticed this I thought about all my atheists friends here and I thought I may have found a cause of atheism.

Now on a normal world (The Vatican admitted last week aliens are our brothers and sisters in God) this would be our normal spiritual development. But on our world with so much error within it due to a messed up start with the negative influence of the Lucifer rebellion and the failure of Adam and Eve, our spiritual development can become jeopardized. So if we have a problem at any level of our spiritual development we can become spiritually stunted, become damaged, atrophy spiritually and suffer the consequences of our Spiritual malformation.

I further conceptualized that the level we were at when the spiritual trauma occurred might have specific symptoms or traits that are common to other atheists or non-believers

So my questions to atheists and/or non-believers are these:

1. At what age did your non-belief or denial of the existence of God begin.

2. Do you remember any specific incident or causes that precipitated that non-belief? Just use generalized descriptions if the authentic trauma to your loss of faith (if there was one) is too graphic or insidious to share here.

3. What was the course of development of your atheism?

I also think the participation in this discussion will help other Christians and believers better understand our atheist and non-believer brothers and sisters.

Peace and knowledge to all.

[The Duke of Vandals]

Give every developing child a chance to grow his own religious experience; do not force a ready-made adult experience upon him.

Christians are the worst culprits of not allowing their children to do this. Most Christians are trained and guilted into believing in the claims made by Christians. I think most parents either don't care that they do this or aren't aware of the impact Christian claims can have on a young child. In the book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins interviews a woman who was physically molested by a priest. The woman explains that the physical molestation was bad, but what was WORSE for her was the emotional abuse that most Christians would see as mainstream: the child was told by a priest that the child's non-Christian friend may not make it into heaven. As a child, the woman was so upset by this, she suffered more of a physical reaction (nausea, anxiety, panic attacks) than she did to being molested.

While I commend you on your idea that kids should be allowed to choose, I don't see Christians as being able to help themselves. Normal mainstream Christianity really is like a kind of poison to young developing minds. No matter how gently it's mentioned, it still has the potential for considerable harm.

[Cmass]

So my questions to atheists and/or non-believers are these:

1. At what age did your non-belief or denial of the existence of God begin.

As some others have stated, it didn't "begin". It never really "was".
I distinctly remember the most enjoyable thing about Sunday school was learning about origami and how to make better paper airplanes. (I still fold them exactly how I learned in Sunday school and think about that every time I fold one!) I viewed stories about the Ark and Jesus in the exact same way I viewed The Cat In The Hat and Horton Hears a Who: They were just fun stories.
I was told there was a big man in the clouds that watched over me all the time and, just like Santa, he knew when I was bad and good. (which I recall thinking was oddly perverse - even as a young child) I always assumed it was some sort of natural and explainable phenomenon that I would eventually understand. In other words, I thought God was an actual person and that I would eventually understand his technology. How is it he was able to float in clouds without falling? Was it some sort of anti-gravity machine? How was he able to listen to so many people at the same time? He must have lots of assistants who answered on his behalf. I prayed as I was told to but thought of it as some sort of bizarre communication device. I was also convinced that the Big Guy's microphone in my room must have been broken as he never seemed to talk back to me or give me what I asked for.
As I grew older and became more adept at questioning and making logical sense of things, religion became an odd curiosity to me. It became clear that no technology existed to allow someone to float on a cloud anywhere but I couldn't understand why some people seemed so angry when I pointed out this fact. My religious friends seemed less curious about larger questions of existence and became rather boring to me in that respect. I was learning all sorts of new things in school and had my own ideas about what the world was all about (and it included the history of religion, human history, psychology etc..) while they seemed more interested in ways of dismissing it and clinging to the exact same belief system. I quite honestly found them to be intellectually boring and fundamentally dishonest.

With all this learning I began to put organized religion into a context that made more and more sense: It was a human system created to help deal with subjects people did not understand or that frightened them. Most of it related to lack of control - especially concerning their own death. Religion appeared to be a way to bring control into their world. This kind of analysis continues today - which is why this forum is fascinating to me.

2. Do you remember any specific incident or causes that precipitated that non-belief? Just use generalized descriptions if the authentic trauma to your loss of faith (if there was one) is too graphic or insidious to share here.

My non-belief did not precipitate from a belief. I think it is important for Christians to come to terms with this experience in others. I did not lose anything.
The only "trauma" associated with religion occurred when I was about 17 when my mother - who at the time was quite religious - used rather cruel religious shaming in various attempts to control my behavior. She seemed especially obsessed with keeping me from sleeping with my girlfriend at the time. Thankfully, it didn't work and I had all sorts of wonder pre-marital sex that I don't regret one iota. Since then, over the years, my mother has become a VERY liberal Christian and we now get along quite well.

3. What was the course of development of your atheism?

Ironically, the major aspect of my atheism that has "developed" is my continued study of and understanding of religion and the religious mindset. I have taken many courses in religion and have been surrounded by religious people. In addition to my degree in Engineering I also have a minor in psychology and a degree in Music which required several years in a music department fully immersed in classic church-based music and many highly religious people. A large percentage of performances were in churches. I even paid for part of my education with a part time job as soloist (as in NO other people!) in the Christian Science church. (LOTS of interesting stories from that experience)
I have heard a wide variety sermons in a wide variety of settings - including during a tour with a choir through the Midwest. In each one of them I became a bit more interested in what the heck was happening in the heads of the people who showed up for this experience each week. My mind was constantly thinking and considering:
I would consider what the preacher said and then question it's validity. I would measure it against what I had heard the previous church. I would then look around at the audience and consider their reactions. I would wonder what they were REALLY thinking. I wondered if other men in the congregation had as healthy a lust for women as I did (hey, I was in my early 20s!) and wondered if they too noticed and appreciated the brunette in the front row - just as the preacher was waxing eloquent about sexual sin. I wondered about the lives of the families in there. I would wonder about how much or how little people knew about the music we were performing for them - who wrote it, how it was paid for, what it's influences were. I wondered how much they knew about other culture's music and religious traditions. All these kinds of musings and hundreds more were always going through my mind as I sat and experienced church.
Come to think of it though, I never labeled myself an atheist until I joined this forum and needed a shorthand way to describe my perspective on religion to others. I have considered removing that label because religious people - mostly newbies - often assume I am some horrible or violent or immoral individual. In fact, since participating in these debates I have developed a better appreciation for what those who openly call themselves "atheist" go through - and it ain't always pretty.

I originally came to this forum right after the last election during my investigation into why fundamentalist Christians were so enamored with George Bush. GW was (is) the epitome of a greedy, immoral, spiritually sick individual and yet his strongest supporters were people who claimed to vote for him because he was the most moral choice. I continue in my attempts to fully understand this and other religious quandaries.
So, my atheism has "developed" as I follow my natural curiosity.

[byofrcs]

Last week I came across something in reflection. Spirituality grows and develops as we do. There are three stages.

1. The first stage is discovering that God Exists. This usually takes place between 0-20 years of age.

2. The second stage is being led to God. You begin and develop learning about God’s purpose in your life. This happens about 20-40 years of age.

T3. he third stage is Living a Spirit led, God led Life. Now you know why you’re here and your ready for your fruits to be lived and seen. God is alive within you. Now you see yourself as Spirit within a body. This happens about 40 to forever.

So when I noticed this I thought about all my atheists friends here and I thought I may have found a cause of atheism.

Now on a normal world (The Vatican admitted last week aliens are our brothers and sisters in God) this would be our normal spiritual development. But on our world with so much error within it due to a messed up start with the negative influence of the Lucifer rebellion and the failure of Adam and Eve, our spiritual development can become jeopardized. So if we have a problem at any level of our spiritual development we can become spiritually stunted, become damaged, atrophy spiritually and suffer the consequences of our Spiritual malformation.

I further conceptualized that the level we were at when the spiritual trauma occurred might have specific symptoms or traits that are common to other atheists or non-believers

So my questions to atheists and/or non-believers are these:

1. At what age did your non-belief or denial of the existence of God begin.

2. Do you remember any specific incident or causes that precipitated that non-belief? Just use generalized descriptions if the authentic trauma to your loss of faith (if there was one) is too graphic or insidious to share here.

3. What was the course of development of your atheism?

I also think the participation in this discussion will help other Christians and believers better understand our atheist and non-believer brothers and sisters.

Peace and knowledge to all.

Joer, I think you've got the time frames more or less right but the conclusions are not as clear cut.

The question you should be asking is, "When did you adopt a naturalistic worldview" ?

I do remember one pivotal argument on the non-evidence for God with my parents and grandparents when I was 11 but that was just the "coming out". Though I was at a Catholic school the arguments for the existence of God were shallow and the system focused on repeating text rather than logical presentations and substantiating claims. It was bling with no ping! for me.

I found that once you have enough basic knowledge on a few subjects then you can easily trump any claims presented to date for God.

Being pre-Internet I loved reading the Encyclopaedia at the library (remember those ? - full of *paper* books). When presented with the stories from the Encyclopaedia and comparing that to the stories from the Bible then the naturalist model easily won.

Naturalism was a more reasonable argument on explaining how things worked, and if naturalism then not-God, therefore atheism (as an honest position).

So from I think around 9 years old onwards my naturalistic worldview grew. Eventually it became to what you would call atheist, though there isn't any traumatic event I can think of. All our family lives to old age, no suicides, no war casualties (those involved were in engineering and police), usual percentages of divorces and children. I don't know of any of our family for 4 generations back and out to 3rd cousins who's even been charged (a few arrests) or jailed.

So that's it really,
1) Brought up in Christian household,
2) Read science books,
3) Became follower of naturalism
- ....
5) No prophets

I blame the science books. The alternative is "If God therefore not-naturalism" and the theists to date have been useless at providing satisfactory predictions to even the most basic of natural phenomena.

Can you have God and naturalism ?. That is the Intelligent Design model and I have seen little that supports that and I have looked as the idea of something that is irreducibly complex is a compelling argument but it is to date without any working examples.

So in the end my atheism can't be attacked as it is a side-effect of my naturalistic worldview. The day theists finally realise that then that is the day that the argument moves on.

So when are you going to start arguing against Naturalism rather than going on about atheism as if that mattered ?.

[bernee51]

Last week I came across something in reflection. Spirituality grows and develops as we do. There are three stages.

1. The first stage is discovering that God Exists. This usually takes place between 0-20 years of age.

2. The second stage is being led to God. You begin and develop learning about God’s purpose in your life. This happens about 20-40 years of age.

T3. he third stage is Living a Spirit led, God led Life. Now you know why you’re here and your ready for your fruits to be lived and seen. God is alive within you. Now you see yourself as Spirit within a body. This happens about 40 to forever.

Ok Joer - it is time for you to put up. You state above "Spirituality grows and develops as we do." I asked you if you could define spirituality (in 17 words or less). No answer.

It is you who claims the "spirituality grows and develops as we do" - you are yet to state exactly what this 'spitiruality' is that is is 'growing as we do." Surely you have some ideas.

[Negative Proof]

My apologies for not quoting the specific question you asked in the first post. I feel that attempting an overview of how my worldview was formed would be more informative.

Looking back, I can't be sure I ever completely believed in god. I know that I knew I was supposed to, and I'm very good at making excuses, so I might have glazed over my doubts as they occurred, or told myself that I believed because I was too scared of what would happen if I stopped.

I was raised in the Church of Christ (which I thought was the reason for the word "Christian" until my late teens) by parents who were both adamant believers, but lazy practitioners (we didn't make it to church every week). I was taught that god was the creator, and that if I didn't believe, I would go to hell. Everything else I had to find out on my own. I vaguely remember attending a children's Sunday school class occasionally that was taught by an older lady who was very boring and did very little bible study, but instead had us color in christian coloring books for an hour. I didn't like that much, as I was a child with a very active mind. I also remember wanting to be baptized simply to drink the little cups of grape juice that were passed around to the other people and my parents, just so I could feel important.

One Sunday, on the car ride back home, I asked my dad how we knew god existed. He was quiet for a second, and then said, "Boy, don't you ever question that. We just know. If you don't believe, you'll go to hell." And that was that. He didn't answer my question, but he did scare me away from it for the time being.

I don't ever really remember identifying with anything that happened at the church. I only remember feeling obligated to participate in anything religious because "that's what you're supposed to do." I also remember hearing that a girl at the very small high school I attended (I graduated with a whopping 12 people in my senior class) was an atheist, and feeling afraid for her... not so much afraid that she would go to hell, just that she would get into trouble if any adults or her parents found out.

I've noticed you look for a trauma that leads to cases of unbelief, and while many here don't have that, I think I might have something that fits that description. In 2003, my parents divorced after 21 years of marriage. It didn't affect me much at first, but at some point in my mother's gathering of her things, I remember breaking down and crying and begging her not to leave my dad. So that could be viewed as a trauma, I suppose. At any rate, it jumpstarted my adult life, as I no longer returned home every weekend, and I no longer had that "safety net" to rely on, nor two parents interested in my life to let down. It was a strange freedom in that way, but I feel it was something I needed, as my parents were very protective and sheltering. Having them both focus on their own lives gave me the room to grow into my own person.

So when I say the trauma may fit into your definition, I want to be clear that it wasn't anything like me blaming god for my parent's divorce, or reasoning that a loving god would not allow that to happen, it was just what I would have done naturally had I not been coerced into believing and behaving otherwise.

With my parents' authority no longer molding me, I felt more free to make up my own mind about things. I essentially went through a more severe teenage rebellion for about the next two years. While I would make sure to keep my grades up in college, I would still drink heavily, I expiremented with every drug I could get my hands on, and I changed the way I dressed to suit my own tastes, rather than to keep within their standards. I also resumed my questioning of my beliefs.

I remember I was in a speech class in college one day, and someone was giving a poorly communicated speech that had something to do with a friend of hers having Lupus. At one point, she mentioned the doctors were doing everything they could to "make her as comfortable as possible". I thought, why would they bother to make her comfortable? She'll be dead soon and won't feel anything. That idea stayed with me all day, and when I got home, I buried my face in a pillow and tried to imagine nothingness. I could only come up with either solid black or solid white, but still there was that. I couldn't imagine "infinite clear" nor myself not existing. After that, it all kinda made sense to me. We created god and heaven and the soul to compensate for our inability to imagine our own non existence. This way, we survive in some fashion indefinitely and all of our questions are conveniently answered by saying that our creator did it.

The only time I've looked back was about 2 years ago. I was very vulnerable, as the girl who I thought was the one rejected me. No matter what I did, it wasn't good enough to get her back. I couldn't take it anymore, and finally said, "Ok, God. If you're real, then help me through this." I knelt at the foot of my bed, prayed for god to help me, and I suddenly felt better. I made the mistake of equating this with god, when what had really made me feel better was me washing my hands of my bad situation, and feeling like I had put it somewhere else. I hadn't, really, but I felt like I had. That made all the difference, and though I felt better, I unfortunately started my own quest to find god. It didn't last very long, thankfully, but I did make an appointment to speak with a pastor, devoured books on religion, and re-read some of the bible. I think the latter was what put me back on track. No, the pastor's answers to my questions weren't adequate, but he was only human. The books appealed to me as long as I read them from the standpoint of absolute faith. But the bible, with all of its contradictions and unsubstantiated claims, snapped me back to where I was. I felt better about my girl-situation, and I felt more sure than ever that I was right to start questioning in the first place.

Here I am, two years later, and having found a community like this one to discuss everything under scrutiny is the best thing that could have happened for me.

I paused a bit to reread some of my older writings so that I could effectively recount the opinions of my younger selves, so I apologize for any incontinence, and I hope this helps you, joer, to better understand the atheist position in some small fashion. I'll keep tabs on this thread and answer any further questions you might have. Apologies for the length and wordiness... I'm definitely a rambler.

[Cmass]

byofrcs wrote:

I blame the science books. The alternative is "If God therefore not-naturalism" and the theists to date have been useless at providing satisfactory predictions to even the most basic of natural phenomena.

That is the best summation of my experience I have yet heard.

bernee51 wrote:

It is you who claims the "spirituality grows and develops as we do" - you are yet to state exactly what this 'spirituality' is that is is 'growing as we do." Surely you have some ideas.

Not only does it need to be defined, but the viewpoint needs to be re-evaluated: The growth of supernatural spirituality is not some sort of process of maturation or gaining of knowledge. In fact, I could argue that it is quite the opposite: A form of arrested development in which long-term gain provided by skepticism and critical thinking skills are suppressed in favor of immediate gratification of simple, canned answers.

[daedalus 2.0]

1. At what age did your non-belief or denial of the existence of God begin.

2. Do you remember any specific incident or causes that precipitated that non-belief? Just use generalized descriptions if the authentic trauma to your loss of faith (if there was one) is too graphic or insidious to share here.

3. What was the course of development of your atheism?

I also think the participation in this discussion will help other Christians and believers better understand our atheist and non-believer brothers and sisters.

Peace and knowledge to all.

1. About at 24-25

2. No event. Do Theists have certain traumatic events that make them believe in God? Death of a loved one, end of a relationship?

(BTW, this question is often asked by Theists to Atheists. Its a rather silly question and is a cartoonish way of looking at atheism. As if it about emotion. Atheists are generally, atheists because there is no reason to believe in a God - no evidence - as opposed to there being a reason but they reject it because their angry at their Uncle or something.)

3. After having rededicating myself to being a Xian, and going to Bible camp I began to see that things in the Bible don't add up. That the reasoning (Josh McDowell and C.S. Lewis were the most popular) didn't make sense - it wasn't reasonable. However, it took years - 10 years for me to call myself an atheist at about 35. At first I was scared that God would punish me - it was so ingrained, all the fear-mongering of Christianity.


Questions for you:

1. At what age were you first indoctrinated to believe that Xianity was even marginally true? Or that there should be a God in the first place?

2. Do you remember a specific line of reasoning that made you believe in God, or was it from constant repetition of suggestion by your parents, or did you have an emotional experience that convinced you a God must exist? And, if so, why a Xian God?

3. What was you path to Xianity? Were your parents and community Xian and you chose it because it was available, or did you deeply research all religions in equal depth and arrive at a conclusion?

[Zzyzx]

.

I blame the science books. The alternative is "If God therefore not-naturalism" and the theists to date have been useless at providing satisfactory predictions to even the most basic of natural phenomena.

That is the best summation of my experience I have yet heard.

I agree. That is an excellent summation.

As an example, theology cannot be employed to gain an accurate working knowledge of:

1. Size and shape of the Earth
2. Relationship between Earth, sun, stars and planets
3. Earth processes such as volcanoes, floods, droughts, etc
4. Earth features such as river valleys, rock strata, mountain locations, continents
5. Disease, sanitation, nutrition
6. Chemical reactions, biological processes, metallurgy, engineering, construction, transportation
7. Animals and plants

In fact theology not only contributes nothing to learning about the above but actually works against learning by:

A. Promoting theistic “explanations” through religious teachings / training / indoctrination (as in promoting Creationism) without evidence of truth but with widespread promotion.

B. Insisting that religious “explanations” supersede competing information from science and study of nature (as in condemning Galileo for daring to argue that the Earth was NOT the center of the universe as claimed by theocrats).

[joer]

jmars

There was no inner struggle or turmoil with my Faith as I remember and I don't believe my faith was any less "true" than yours is.

I guess I could agree with up until the point you gave up your faith in God.

I still feel that you are trying to rationalize why a Christian could become an Atheist and that it must be because their faith was "dubious".

I’m not. I did have an idea that are certain stages of Faith growth and maturation and that atheism was a result of not realizing that spiritual growth at one or more of those stages. While this study from among my atheists friends here has turned up much more than the simple investigation of my inquiry. While the phenomenon growth and maturation I speculated about may have a spiritual basis, that would be a subject for a future religious discussion.

It does seem from your answers that there are NATURAL stages of development when we as individuals have a natural tendency to question the reality we live in and establishes our beliefs/opinions about that reality. These stages seem to occur about 9-11 years of ages. 14-20 years of age. And then again in our thirties and beyond. We update the integrity and understanding of our perceptions and concepts of realities at natural intervals of maturation. It does seem to be continuous. But there are certain key times when we can distinguish a major episode in the maturation process.

It also seems in our perceptions of reality including belief or non-belief, we are influenced by a parent or someone who has influence on us or establishing our views as a rejection of someone trying to force their views upon us. But ALL and Whatever views we adopt we do so by our own choice. We may do it out of fear, out of interests, out of influences or by whatever means presents itself to us in our individual situations.

The only thing I can honestly say that might make sense is that I was much more credulous in my younger years. I trusted anything and everything adults told me. It wasn't until I went to college that I learned to really think for myself. Even then, it was not an overnight transformation. It took me years to gradually let go of God. I didn't want to! It was hard, but I could no longer believe if I was to be honest with myself.

I find this following statement interesting:

I think most atheist would tell you that they would prefer that there was a God. That would make life and death a lot nicer, but wanting it does not make it true.

Real thinker

However, it's not something I can believe and live, so what do I need to do, as an atheist father, to satisfy that need for my children. That is where I am now. Spirituality is something we all experience and we need to have our spiritual needs met. I've got to develop that, without religion, for my children. It's a daunting task. They're 8 and 5 now, so the needs aren't sophisticated yet. It's going to be interesting in the next 5-10 years. My children don't pray. They don't have guardian angels. People die and turn into dirt, their life energy released to the cosmos. I've got to make them comfortable with that.

I think I mentioned about being strong and reliable in your parenting skills. Than allowing your children to choose their realities. The one who is eight will be entering a questioning stage soon where the formation of their beliefs/ opinions will enter a natural stage of development. The question of God exists or doesn’t exist will probably come up in their minds and regardless of how you guide them they will come to a conclusion via their own evolution. But your influence or someone whose influence is important to them most likely will affect that evaluation and conclusion that they come too. You might consider presenting alternative views of reality that people may adhere to and then give the truth of your reality and why you believe in it.

That idea, the fact that atheists still have to satisfy their spiritual needs and the needs of those dependent upon them, is what I'd have the believers recognize. Atheism isn't an emptiness, a void of morality and spirituality. It's an unstructured pursuit of a new understanding of those things.

The duke of vandals

While I commend you on your idea that kids should be allowed to choose, I don't see Christians as being able to help themselves. Normal mainstream Christianity really is like a kind of poison to young developing minds. No matter how gently it's mentioned, it still has the potential for considerable harm.

In view of how much error exists and how much damage done in main stream Christianity I can understand your reservations. I don’t know if they’ll ever be a Christian whose integrity at least you can respect even though you would disagree with their beliefs.

Cmass

I have considered removing that label because religious people - mostly newbies - often assume I am some horrible or violent or immoral individual. In fact, since participating in these debates I have developed a better appreciation for what those who openly call themselves "atheist" go through - and it ain't always pretty.

Cmass that’s one of things that has become more apparent to me listening to the atheist prespective in this thread. Thank you for your honest sharing.

I originally came to this forum right after the last election during my investigation into why fundamentalist Christians were so enamored with George Bush. GW was (is) the epitome of a greedy, immoral, spiritually sick individual and yet his strongest supporters were people who claimed to vote for him because he was the most moral choice.

You know I was sickened by the same phenomenon. Pro Life except to when it comes to killing Iraqi civilians and getting our young soldiers killed for obscenely excessive Texas Corporate Profits. I imagine your Liberal Christian Mom was against GW as was I.

byofrcs

The question you should be asking is, "When did you adopt a naturalistic worldview" ?

As you mention latter I see God within that view.

I do remember one pivotal argument on the non-evidence for God with my parents and grandparents when I was 11 but that was just the "coming out".

That seems to be a key age in the development of our belief and non-belief in God.

I found that once you have enough basic knowledge on a few subjects then you can easily trump any claims presented to date for God.

From a materialistic perspective.

So from I think around 9 years old onwards my naturalistic worldview grew. Eventually it became to what you would call atheist,

That’s sounds about right.

Can you have God and naturalism ?. That is the Intelligent Design model and I have seen little that supports that and I have looked as the idea of something that is irreducibly complex is a compelling argument but it is to date without any working examples.

It appears your “naturalistic worldview� continues to develop and mature as your conceptual frame of reality. At again a higher natural stage of conceptual understanding of reality and confirmation of the same view.

Bernee

Ok Joer - it is time for you to put up. You state above "Spirituality grows and develops as we do." I asked you if you could define spirituality (in 17 words or less). No answer.

It is you who claims the "spirituality grows and develops as we do" - you are yet to state exactly what this 'spitiruality' is that is is 'growing as we do." Surely you have some ideas.

Ok Bernne. Were almost there. From what I’m finding out Bernee your belief in Spirituality and mind while different may be products of natural ideational development. It appears to me that atheists and believers go through the same developmental process but adopt different beliefs from the available concepts or any that they may develop while developing their personalized conceptual frame of reality.

[joer]

Negative Proof

I was taught that god was the creator, and that if I didn't believe, I would go to hell. Everything else I had to find out on my own.

And you did find a reality that worked for you in spite of the pressure from Your dad and perhaps others to accept a reality that didn’t ring true for you.

"Boy, don't you ever question that. We just know. If you don't believe, you'll go to hell." And that was that. He didn't answer my question, but he did scare me away from it for the time being.

Having them both focus on their own lives gave me the room to grow into my own person.

Now you could develop your concepts of reality based on your own investigations. It makes sense.

"Ok, God. If you're real, then help me through this." I knelt at the foot of my bed, prayed for god to help me, and I suddenly felt better. I made the mistake of equating this with god, when what had really made me feel better was me washing my hands of my bad situation, and feeling like I had put it somewhere else. I hadn't, really, but I felt like I had.

Interesting. With me when I tested God I felt better but believed in was coincidental so I tested God again and again. After about the fifth time, the odds of it being coincidental 5 times in a row were a little more astronomical. So I believed. We performed similar tests Negative Proof, but came up with diametrically opposed results both of which were satisfactory to our beliefs (conceptual understandings) of reality.

I hope this helps you, joer, to better understand the atheist position in some small fashion. I'll keep tabs on this thread and answer any further questions you might have.

It does help Negative Proof. Thank You I hope I haven’t been gone so long that don’t get my response. I really liked your post.

daedalus 2.0

there is no reason to believe in a God - no evidence - as opposed to there being a reason but they reject it because their angry at their Uncle or something.)

I began to see that things in the Bible don't add up.

There seems to be a lot of that among atheists and progressive believers. Simply because it’s true. The main difference between believers and non-believers is that true believers focus on the truths they find in the Bible as the reason they believe. And non-believers seem to focus on the contradictions as supportive of why hey don’t believe in the bible. And don’t recognize it as supportive of Belief.

it took years - 10 years for me to call myself an atheist at about 35.

That seems about right solidifying our conceptual framework of our reality prespective.

Questions for you:

1. At what age were you first indoctrinated to believe that Xianity was even marginally true? Or that there should be a God in the first place?

Like so many atheists, objecting to the terms and ways my questions were couched, I have to say I was never indoctrinated into Zianity any more than any atheist was. Like many atheists at about age 11 I began to have serious questions about the existence of God. Like Negative Proof putting God to the test by prayer. Like him I found an answer to my prayer but considered coincidental. So I repeated the test until unlike Negative Proof, I experientially found personal proof of the existence of God in dynamic interaction with an unseen, unproven being that by virtue of my test appeared to exist. And like Atheists at that age I found my answers from among the ideas and concepts of reality that existed at that time.

2. Do you remember a specific line of reasoning that made you believe in God,

yes. If you pray to God and your prayers are answered seemingly from the personality that you petitioned than perhaps that personality exists.

or was it from constant repetition of suggestion by your parents,

Nope.

or did you have an emotional experience that convinced you a God must exist?

Nope. Although the repeated answers to prayer testing surprised me because like most atheists at that age I was pretty much convinced that God didn’t exist. And having a Atheist Mother who drilled into me that God didn’t exists and that religion was a fantasy invented to control the masses.

And, if so, why a Xian God?

God is God, Zian or otherwise.

3. What was you path to Xianity?

It was as I mentioned, then reinforced at the other stages of what I initially had called spiritual growth but which after talking to my atheists friends here seems to be natural stages of development where we question confirm and develop our perceptions and concepts of reality.

Were your parents and community Xian.

There were no Zians in my family or community. But my dad was Christian and my Mom Atheist. And there were Christians in my church and Atheists at my Mom’s meetings. I assume the other kids had churches too. But basically as a kid and even growing up. The community and schools had more social focus than a religious or non-religious one.

and you chose it because it was available,

I choose belief in God after not believing and experientially testing for reality of existence. Finding that there was a good possibility based on personal experiential testing that God exists as far as I was concerned.

or did you deeply research all religions in equal depth and arrive at a conclusion?

Cross out the “equal� in your question which would in all practicality be an impossibility. And the answer is that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years. Including researching this current question from an atheistic point of view given by my friends here.

Thank You all for helping me “SEE� more than I have before from Your collective perspective in general.