.For those of you who aren't religious, why are you and was there a turning point in your thought (i.e. former theist --> atheist)?
Why are you Atheist/Agnostic
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FrostyM288
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Why are you Atheist/Agnostic
Post #1Though technically not a debate question...hope the moderators don't mind this topic .
For those of you who aren't religious, why are you and was there a turning point in your thought (i.e. former theist --> atheist)?
.For those of you who aren't religious, why are you and was there a turning point in your thought (i.e. former theist --> atheist)?
Post #21
It slowly dawned on me that there was no way that God would do the things that the Bible says he did.
And once that was firm in my mind, the rest very quickly fell into place. i.e. that the notion of a 'God' character was an entirely human construct, invented for the purpose of societal control.
It was a wonderful feeling, like a very thick fog suddenly clearing and I could see clearly now.
Oddly enough, the experience gave me a new respect for the Bible - or rather, one verse in the Bible:
.... the truth shall make you free. - John 8:32
And once that was firm in my mind, the rest very quickly fell into place. i.e. that the notion of a 'God' character was an entirely human construct, invented for the purpose of societal control.
It was a wonderful feeling, like a very thick fog suddenly clearing and I could see clearly now.
Oddly enough, the experience gave me a new respect for the Bible - or rather, one verse in the Bible:
.... the truth shall make you free. - John 8:32
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PhilosoRaptor
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Post #22
I was a Christian for the first 22 years of my life, approximately. Very devout, went to church two or three times a week during some periods, and almost always once a week. I thought I could feel the presence of God, and at times convinced myself I heard his voice. I was a Southern Baptist in South Texas, and almost all of my family (and many of my friends) were as well. I can only think of maybe 1 or 2 atheists that I ever even met in the 18 years I spent in my small hometown of about 16,000 people on the Texas coast. So as you can imagine, I was fairly well insulated from "difficult ideas", and when I encountered them, I had many avenues to go down in order to find a way to explain them away, or "debunk" them, or whatever.
That changed when I went to college. It was actually a Baptist-affiliated university, but that in no way indicated that the things we learned there were "Baptist approved." Some of my professors were atheists, and I found that even among the Christian ones, they were pretty open about discussing the very difficult passages in the Bible, and acknowledged that there were no easy answers for some issues. At first this strengthened my faith, I got more involved in church, teaching Sunday School to kids and so on. One influential preacher in my life celebrated paradox as a road to understanding. But as I took more philosophy courses, and developed a deeper love for truth, one day I came to a shining realization:
I cared more about Truth than I did about God.
If God didn't exist, I didn't want to believe in him.
This was HUGE. Up until then, I had simply assumed God to be identical with "big-T Truth", and fit everything I knew into that framework. It was this realization that they weren't necessarily identical that allowed me to truly critically assess my faith, and when I did, it crumbled. First to die was my belief in free-will, formerly a cornerstone of my beliefs which I savagely defended. I encountered the writing of Galen Strawson, and his arguments against free will I still have been able to find no counter for, to this day. In fact, I've explored them and developed them even more on my own.
Soon after fell my belief in Sola Scriptura. History did not seem to cohere with this belief. So in a last ditch effort, I went towards the Catholic Church, as several of my former-fundy friends had done - hoping their stronger connection with history might at last preserve my faith. I attended a few weeks worth of RCIA. But they depended as readily on free-will in their doctrine as my previous Baptist faith did. Only Calvinism remained, and I found the implications of it horrifying. Of course, during all this time I also encountered many other reasons to be skeptical of Christianity, too many to list here. So I had nowhere left to run, and slipped willingly into agnosticism. Been there ever since, and happily so.
That changed when I went to college. It was actually a Baptist-affiliated university, but that in no way indicated that the things we learned there were "Baptist approved." Some of my professors were atheists, and I found that even among the Christian ones, they were pretty open about discussing the very difficult passages in the Bible, and acknowledged that there were no easy answers for some issues. At first this strengthened my faith, I got more involved in church, teaching Sunday School to kids and so on. One influential preacher in my life celebrated paradox as a road to understanding. But as I took more philosophy courses, and developed a deeper love for truth, one day I came to a shining realization:
I cared more about Truth than I did about God.
If God didn't exist, I didn't want to believe in him.
This was HUGE. Up until then, I had simply assumed God to be identical with "big-T Truth", and fit everything I knew into that framework. It was this realization that they weren't necessarily identical that allowed me to truly critically assess my faith, and when I did, it crumbled. First to die was my belief in free-will, formerly a cornerstone of my beliefs which I savagely defended. I encountered the writing of Galen Strawson, and his arguments against free will I still have been able to find no counter for, to this day. In fact, I've explored them and developed them even more on my own.
Soon after fell my belief in Sola Scriptura. History did not seem to cohere with this belief. So in a last ditch effort, I went towards the Catholic Church, as several of my former-fundy friends had done - hoping their stronger connection with history might at last preserve my faith. I attended a few weeks worth of RCIA. But they depended as readily on free-will in their doctrine as my previous Baptist faith did. Only Calvinism remained, and I found the implications of it horrifying. Of course, during all this time I also encountered many other reasons to be skeptical of Christianity, too many to list here. So I had nowhere left to run, and slipped willingly into agnosticism. Been there ever since, and happily so.
Re: Why are you Atheist/Agnostic
Post #23For me, the turning point was when I went to the public library and looked up the cosmological, teleological, and ontological arguments for the existence of god.FrostyM288 wrote: Though technically not a debate question...hope the moderators don't mind this topic
For those of you who aren't religious, why are you and was there a turning point in your thought (i.e. former theist --> atheist)?
Before I did that, I expected to someday become a Christian, as soon as somebody showed me a good argument, gave me a way distinguish the bible from a book of fairy tales.
After that, I realized that Christians don't have any good arguments. If they had good arguments, they wouldn't use those absurd ones. I became content in my atheism. I accepted it as probably permanent.
