Question for Former Atheists (or atheists)

[Furrowed Brow]

I have mentioned before that I struggle to understand how an atheist can become a theist. I really do not understand how. So here are some questions. I'd like to know just where you stood before you found religion and if what you are calling atheism bears any resemblance to what I have in mind.

• 1/ Did you have no feeling for or sense of there being any god?
  2/ Did you accept there is no objective evidence for miracles or God, and that prayer studies show prayer does not work?
  3/ Did you recognize that scripture does not pass as evidence for the existence of God, God’s law, or Jesus Christ?
  4/ Did you recoil from religious apologists that tried to square a loving God with evil in the word disease, famine and natural disasters.
  5/ Did you fully sign up to methodological naturalism?

Which ones did you sign up to? How deeply did these questions press on you? As an atheist I answers yes 100% to all of them. Where were you on 1 to 100. Where are you now?
If there are any atheists that would like to share, please do as you would provide a comparison.

[JoeyKnothead]

1/ In all seriousness, when I do acid or shrooms I feel like God could really be there. I'm not trying to be a wise guy, just being honest with you.
2/ Yeah, my family has a saying, "No proofus Rufus." Sums it up nicely for me.
3/ Not only does it not pass, but proves the opposite for me.
4/ No so much recoil, as kind of shake my head. I'm from the Bible belt, so I've heard just about every 'goofy' reasoning and example and what have you for/about God.
5/ I just sign up to the idea that we can't really know some things, but we can know with a high degree of certainty about other stuff

If I ever did become 'religious' I would probably become Jewish, they seem the most sane about their religion from my experience. I do feel a certain 'spirituality', but I consider it nothing more than empathy, and I work to suppress it at all times.

[Ayah5768]

Well... it's been 3 months since this was posted, but I'm bored. So...

1/ Did you have no feeling for or sense of there being any god?

Ummm... Complicated. I did sense that there was a god, but I understood it to be a result of brainwashing. After a while it went away and there was a complete lack of that sense until recently.

The next question is, of course, why was it brainwashing then but not now? As of this moment, I don't think it was brainwashing then. I think it was real but tainted by my previous experience with religion. I think that I needed a cleansing period so that I could come to think straight and believe without the shackles of abuse.

2/ Did you accept there is no objective evidence for miracles or God, and that prayer studies show prayer does not work?

Yes. I still do.

However, studies show that intercessory prayer does not work on the person being prayed for. There are studies that show that no matter what you pray for you will receive positive physical benefits equivalent to those of meditation. I do not think that is because of God. I think it is because when you pray you are essentially meditating. My point is only that there are studies that show that prayer works--just not to heal the sick.

3/ Did you recognize that scripture does not pass as evidence for the existence of God, God�s law, or Jesus Christ?

Yes. Still do.

4/ Did you recoil from religious apologists that tried to square a loving God with evil in the word disease, famine and natural disasters.

Yes. Still do.

5/ Did you fully sign up to methodological naturalism?

Yes. Still do. I have never really understood why those two things have to be mutually exclusive. To me it is like the mind and the brain. The fact that we can now poke and prod at a the human brain doesn't remove the value of the human mind.


How deeply did these questions press on you?

100%

My contention is that Person B never was an Atheist at all, but rather a Deist or possible Agnostic.

The no true Scotsman claim? I have never seen it in this context. I thought only Christians used it. Anyway... I was not agnostic or deist. I was an atheist.

[achilles12604]

I have mentioned before that I struggle to understand how an atheist can become a theist. I really do not understand how. So here are some questions. I'd like to know just where you stood before you found religion and if what you are calling atheism bears any resemblance to what I have in mind.

Hi Furrowed! Good to see you again. Since you PMd me about this thread (like 3 months ago sorry) I will respond to it first.

1/ Did you have no feeling for or sense of there being any god?

Feelings were actually the confusing part. It was logic which told me there was no God. But I still had feelings that there was a God. I could not marry those feelings with the logical analysis that God COULD not exist based on what I observed in the world around me.

2/ Did you accept there is no objective evidence for miracles or God, and that prayer studies show prayer does not work?

Actually at that point, I had not done any research on the matter. So this question really is non-applicable.

3/ Did you recognize that scripture does not pass as evidence for the existence of God, God�s law, or Jesus Christ?

Scripture became a lie. Since I had always been taught that scripture was THE word, non-metaphorical, non-interpretive, THE word, and I could not marry the story with the world around me, that whole story became a vicious lie to me. I despised it as I would someone who I trusted and who lied to me for my whole life.

4/ Did you recoil from religious apologists that tried to square a loving God with evil in the word disease, famine and natural disasters.

Recoil? They made me furious. They were liars and worse, they were pushy, annoying and condemning. The very picture of hypocracy.

5/ Did you fully sign up to methodological naturalism?

I didn't sign up for any beliefs at that time. I grew angry and disavowed any belief about anything. Actually this is probably what launched my interest in fact finding and apologetics.

I hope this helps.

Achilles

[Tuddrussell]

1/ Q: Did you have no feeling for or sense of there being any god?

1. A: yes

2/ Q: Did you accept there is no objective evidence for miracles or God, and that prayer studies show prayer does not work?

2. A: Yes to the first, and yes to the second as long as the subjects don't know about the prayers.

3/ Q: Did you recognize that scripture does not pass as evidence for the existence of God, God�s law, or Jesus Christ?

3. A: yes, and I still do.

4/ Q: Did you recoil from religious apologists that tried to square a loving God with evil in the word disease, famine and natural disasters.

4. A: hmm, I just sort of ignored them, I put up with most peoples illogical garbage: like etiquette, small talk, and being "normal", so I'm rather used to it.

5/ Q: Did you fully sign up to methodological naturalism?

5. A: not as such, but it has it's merits.

I was raised christian, but it never really made sense to me, I'm just not a christian.

After years of not believing in anything substantial... well I did, and still do believe in werewolves, but not vampires... even though they do make good playthings for when I'm feeling particularly authorial.

Eventually I gravitated to wicca, but it too was just not quite my thing... so I started my journey of enlightenment through philosophy, and meditation which lead to my current religon: ecclectic paganism, which is not really a religion, but rather an catchall term for non-traditional paganism.

My beliefs are mostly wiccan, but there is a noticeable druidic leaning to it, with more than a little taoism, shinto, and buddhism mixed in there.

A little confusing, but it works for me.