How you became an atheist?

I have been curious about this subject for a while and this forum allows me the ability to get a lot of answers at once! I was wondering if any of you remember becoming an atheist, what made you change your mind and the thought process you followed that broke your faith (if you had one to begin with). I can start with my own.

I personally remember quite vividly my train of thought that lead to me becoming an atheist. I know that from a very young age I was not convinced of the validity of the bible. I knew some parts (Genesis, the flood, etc) made no sense. I was not happy with the reactions I received from Church leaders when I asked my questions. I remember asking simply Why? How? How do we know that? And getting the response of misdirection with a quick subject change or anger that I did not have strong enough faith. Even as a child I felt that was a cheap cop out.

Most of what lead to my becoming atheist was the realization that there are so many different Christian religions (at this point I was only faintly aware there were non-Christian religions also). I was raised Catholic and their edicts state that Catholicism is the one and only true religion and all others are false and will lead you straight to hell. This dogma never sat right with me. The way I figured the only reason I was Catholic is because I inherited from my parents. They were Catholic because their parents were and so on back to my ancestors becoming Irish Catholics. I realized I never looked into every religion, I never critically examined the pros, cons, differences and similarities between other faiths and I know my family members hadn’t either. How could I be positive that I had chosen correctly. I personally don’t trust my family members to make that kind of decision on my behalf. This lead me into a though process that made me examine the origin of the bible. It’s not disputed that the bible was written by men (human, mortal, god-fearing, mistake making human men). I don’t know that I trust them either….

After that I briefly became agnostic with a strong Pascal’s Wager mindset until I realized that if there was a God he’d know that I was only pretending to believe in him because I was afraid of hell. What good would that do? Eventually I realized I was comfortable admitting there was probably no God and I was no longer afraid.


Anyone else feel like sharing?

I was born an Atheist just like everyone else. Lucky for me however, I never had to suffer through dogmatic teachings when I was growing up. My mother and (for the time he was there) father raised their children with a mindset of "I don't know, and I don't care" but at the same time always assuring us that any religion we chose didn't matter to them as long as we didn't try to push it onto them. It is perhaps worth noting that while my mother remains Agnostic in this sense (she does believe in ghosts however) my father converted to Paganism after he left for the US.

Growing up though I never thought about religion until about 7th grade when I met a friend who was a Jehovah Witness, and we all know what they're like. Another friend of mine and I got talking and we went through a number of religions trying to find the right fit (from Satanism to Astrology to Jehovah Witness) before I stumbled upon The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. That book set me into a love of things like evolution, biology, and debate that I never had before and put a name to what I always thought, Atheism.

Just out of curiosity Kai, but how does your family feel about your being an Atheist? Also I love the George Carlin quote in your signature.

Originally Posted by Kiefer

Just out of curiosity Kai, but how does your family feel about your being an Atheist? Also I love the George Carlin quote in your signature.

The weird thing is it has never come up....I think they prefer not to know and I prefer not to talk about it. At first they would ask if I was interested in going to church and I would say no. Eventually they stopped asking.
I think they're all Agnostic honestly, they only do the religion thing out of tradition. They think of themselves as Irish Catholic like it's a race. It's hard to explain but they do admit that a lot of the bible makes no sense at all.

My "coming out" was a little more long and drawn out.

I'd say I always was a doubter. I was brought up catholic, went to Sunday school, confession & communion pretty regularly right up until I was a teenager. But I went through phases of acceptance. I never could bring myself to buy the whole story and it all seemed less and less plausible as I grew older. Even at a young age I was very skeptical of some of the stories the nuns used to tell us. I always wanted to know how they knew certain things. I got very unsatifactory or no answers and it was made very clear to me that doubters and questioners were wicked! I can't say how many times I heard the story about 'doubting Thomas'. It just seemed so wrong that asking for a little confirmation was such a bad thing while blind faith was so praiseworthy. It went against the grain and I had my suspicions that somebody was making shit up.

Still, it took many years for me to shake the underlying instilled conviction that "belief in god is good, non-belief is bad". I, too, had that Pascalian mindset for a long time. There was a feeling that, even if the adults didn't have all their stories straight, there just seemed to be so many people (and authority figures) who were so much smarter and more experienced than me who seemed to have no doubts at all. So who was I to challenge the accepted wisdom?

I was always interested in sci-fi and read a lot of Heinlein and Asimov. In the late 70's I started to come across some of their non-fiction. I found some essays by Heinlein and got hooked on reading those great science articles that Asimov used to write for various magazines. His publisher would collect them into books with common themes every once in a while and I couldn't get enough of them. Asimov would always write intros to each article and, between the articles and the intros, a lot of his personality and philosophy would come across. I was very sad when he died.

It was one of Asimov's articles that introduced me to Carl Sagan. I found articles about Sagan in Omni magazine and that led to more interest in the skeptical/critical thinking crowd. When Sagan's Cosmos TV series came out I felt like he was talking directly to me. Every word just seemed so logical; it was like he was articulating everything I had always known or suspected but didn't know how to express. I bought the book and read it from cover to cover. This would have been around the early to mid '80s. I've read quite a few of his books since then.

I discovered Stephan J Gould, Bertrand Russell, Samuel Clemens, Robert G Ingersoll, Charles Darwin and others. I began to realize what an insidious, manipulative, intellect-sucking tool religious faith is. I also began to realize that all the really clever thinkers of the modern era also don't buy the magic sky-daddy story. But many others do; there are acts that people would not consider for any amount of money or logical argument, but tell them they are duty-bound by god's holy word and they comply without hesitation and look scornfully on those who refuse.

It doesn't seem logical that a person actually makes a conscious decision to believe in god. I find it very hard to fathom how someone can accept the ridiculous claims of most of today's religions. The more I learn about different religions and their beliefs and origins the more I have to wonder about the reasoning ability of the average person. I find it a fascinating subject to ponder how overpowering and effective the guilt and fear tactics of the proselytizers can be.

Thank god I'm an atheist!

though I already summarized my atheistic trajectory in my intro, I'll just say that unlike many atheists who already just knew who they were, I came about becoming an atheist more through learning and self-discovery over the years as I grew into adulthood.

as a child, I always wanted to believe in magical things like Santa Claus. though I quickly outgrew that, as an early teen, I always felt there was something missing in my life. my zealous cousin introduced me to her church, and for while I really got into Christianity: reading the bible regularly, listening to christian rock and sermons on the radio. heck, my first concert was seeing Michael W. Smith at Expo 86!

after a couple of years, I just outgrew that too and basically became agnostic after reading Carl Jung. from learning about the major religions in university, it further cemented my burgeoning agnosticism that religion was just part of the collective unconscious, as the teachings of islam, buddhism, christianity all shared universal values at their core. at the same time, I had this niggling notion that if religion was just a human construct, then the concept of a god must be too.

but what ultimately rocked my foundation was when I was introduced to Carl Sagan and started reading Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. so like Blondin, it was Sagan who helped concretize those niggly skeptical thoughts which have been swimming in my head for the longest time. he also helped me to understand evolution and human nature. I mean, it was the cold hard truth about life and the universe, and it was fucking frightening. but at the same time, it really opened my eyes and gave me a different sense of hope, wonder and purpose. and the rest was history.

but I must say, becoming atheist was probably one of the most liberating moments of my life.

amen!

I really don't think a lot of people decide to start believing in god consciously. I am sure that a lot of theists are so because of childhood indoctrination and all those religious edicts that warn if you ever think of changing your mind you'll go to hell. People are afraid to stop being theists. I think Pascal's is a very common mindset in America.

I remember when I went from thinking God was defiantly real because that’s how I had always been taught to becoming an apathetic agnostic. It would have been age 6-7 when I approached my parents and asked if Santa was made up. I was pretty sure, I just wanted to see if they’d admit it. They did. After that I reasoned that if Santa was not real then neither was the tooth fairy, Easter bunny or God. They’re all the same basic thing right…an invisible babysitter that my parents made up to try and get be to behave when they weren’t looking. Looking back on this now with adult perspective I smile every time. That observation was a bit ahead of its time in my whole analysis of religion.

I really don't think a lot of people decide to start believing in god consciously.

Yeah, that was kind of my point. As somebody once said, "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into".

Like yourself, many of us have used logical thinking to shed our religious upbringing. It's not unusual to hear evangelists claim that they used to be atheists but I take this with a grain of salt. I suspect such people were never very good at applying logic. We hear of the odd exception like Francis Collins or CS Lewis but they are rare.