If you were ever a theist...

[Edwardo Piet]

Savor some of life too...quality over quantity. 

This is absolutely right. In some areas quantity is a bit of fun too hehe. But yeah, quality and patience, great things.

[*Deidre*]

I was raised Baptist, in a strict, devout home.

I could not avoid the conclusion that Religion is far too full, far too often, of unholy things,
for me to ever be able to believe that it serves a Holy being.

The good things do NOT offset the bad things.

I also see how much the religions have in common with each other,
yet they all ultimately dismiss each other as heresy,
each asserting their way is the only right way

...that's a big red flag.

The only belief structure that stands out to me as remotely logical is Deism.

Believing in God,

...yet acknowledging that religious DOGMA is the unnecessary, unfounded, dangerous, arrogant and highly flawed human practice
of placing parameters onto that God,
and therefore questioning the legitimacy of all so-called Holy Writs, so-called Prophets, so-called Saviours,
and so-called concepts of Sin.

If I could conclusively say that I believed in God, then I'd be a Deist.

I'd reject all religious dogma as man-made, arrogant Heresy...because it claims to speak for God.

I don't really have any problem with Deism.

Simple belief in God,
without any Dogma or Religious bullshit,
is like a snake defanged,
or a skunk with it's scent glands removed.

it's more or less harmless.
But asking people to believe that one book or another speaks for god,
or that God needs Prophets to speak to mankind...that is the stinky, dangerous part.


(However, I can't personally even conclusively say I belief or don't believe,
so I am Agnostic).

After a brief stint into looking at Islam/Sufism, I then explored Deism. A god who is a Creator, yet a distant one...and no personal relationship type of thing. It has often been said that if atheists weren't atheists, the next best thing is deism. lol 

The dogma of religion, yes...I don't follow all that anymore. Christianity doesn't need to be a prison, think that people lock themselves up in religions, and it doesn't bring them much joy. What is the point if what you are following is void of joy?

Agnostic is good if you are unsure. Hope you are at peace with your beliefs, that is most important.

[MTL]

I was raised Baptist, in a strict, devout home.

I could not avoid the conclusion that Religion is far too full, far too often, of unholy things,
for me to ever be able to believe that it serves a Holy being.

The good things do NOT offset the bad things.

I also see how much the religions have in common with each other,
yet they all ultimately dismiss each other as heresy,
each asserting their way is the only right way

...that's a big red flag.

The only belief structure that stands out to me as remotely logical is Deism.

Believing in God,

...yet acknowledging that religious DOGMA is the unnecessary, unfounded, dangerous, arrogant and highly flawed human practice
of placing parameters onto that God,
and therefore questioning the legitimacy of all so-called Holy Writs, so-called Prophets, so-called Saviours,
and so-called concepts of Sin.

If I could conclusively say that I believed in God, then I'd be a Deist.

I'd reject all religious dogma as man-made, arrogant Heresy...because it claims to speak for God.

I don't really have any problem with Deism.

Simple belief in God,
without any Dogma or Religious bullshit,
is like a snake defanged,
or a skunk with it's scent glands removed.

it's more or less harmless.
But asking people to believe that one book or another speaks for god,
or that God needs Prophets to speak to mankind...that is the stinky, dangerous part.


(However, I can't personally even conclusively say I belief or don't believe,
so I am Agnostic).

After a brief stint into looking at Islam/Sufism, I then explored Deism. A god who is a Creator, yet a distant one...and no personal relationship type of thing. It has often been said that if atheists weren't atheists, the next best thing is deism. lol 

The dogma of religion, yes...I don't follow all that anymore. Christianity doesn't need to be a prison, think that people lock themselves up in religions, and it doesn't bring them much joy. What is the point if what you are following is void of joy?

Agnostic is good if you are unsure. Hope you are at peace with your beliefs, that is most important.

Being Agnostic, at least to me, does not mean "unsure about God's existence".

It means "God's existence is unknown".

That is NOT the same thing.

After all:  not even the most devout Theist can really be "sure".

(If we could be sure about God's existence, "faith" wouldn't be so integral to religion;
Faith is BELIEVING without KNOWING).

IMO, too many people make the mistake of regarding Agnosticism as "fence-sitters".

Here is my response to that:

Some Agnostics may simply be fence-sitters...true.

However, for me, it means something very different.

As I see it,

Fence-sitting is for cowards who are afraid to pick a side...they are waiting to see who wins.

Rather, by contrast, I regard my Agnosticism as walking down the centre line of a long, long road,
...aiming to hopefully find Truth at the end of it.

This is an important distinction.

It is far from cowardly.  It is hard work.

Sitting along one side of the road I have Theists, urging me to sit down and rest myself on their side,
because it will make me feel better.

(Now, "feeling better", to me, is a selfish purpose to believe in God.

If God exists, we are supposed to serve Him primarily for HIS GLORY...not our own comfort.

Besides, any God who has to bribe...or threaten...people,
with promises of Eternal Life, or conversely, Eternal Hellfire,
is not a God worth His salt).

Anyway,

On the other side of the road, are the Atheists
...some of whom are snubbing me as "Atheist Lite" or "noncommittal" or "almost there".

Sadly, they also misunderstand:

I am not Agnostic because I'm afraid to commit to "full Atheism";
I am Agnostic because I think it is the only response with any real integrity:
there are lots of reasons to think God doesn't exist
(and few reasons to think He does),
but no definite proof one way or another;

So while I favour the Atheist perspective;
I continue to regard His existence is an unproven theory, that is all.

So:

It is actually more emotionally challenging to be Agnostic, than Atheist, IMO.

Don't you think it would be EASIER for me to simply choose a side??

No human being likes being in the dark about something important;

Consider the sad example of a parent whose child has been missing for years:

The parent feels a need for closure, to move on....yet they are conflicted: 
they feel racked with guilt for even wanting  closure,

...since getting closure might mean either finding out conclusively that their child is deceased,
or at least relinquishing all hope of their survival.

But it is human to want closure; to want a definite answer.

As an Agnostic, I am no exception:

I also would get much satisfaction from decisively putting the question of God's existence to rest.

But I can't.  So I won't.  I won't pull the wool over my own eyes.

I refuse to take "comfort" or the path that is "easy" over the pursuit of the TRUTH;

No one said the Truth was easy.

[Edwardo Piet]

I'm an agnostic atheist. I hold the existence of gods to be unknowable, but I don't believe in any of them.

[Natachan]

Short answer: I saw no positive reason to continue believing and as such could not justify a belief in God.

Longer answer: when I first went to college I studied history. I took courses in archeology and anthropology. When looking into the history of the bible in the times the events were said to occur there was silence. Utter silence. So a disconnect formed. I knew how history was studied, and how it was established. And I also believed that the bible was true. But the history I learned through established scholarship could not exist in the same way and time as biblical history.

So I simultaneously believed these two things that could not be reconciled. But I hated this conflict. I decided I had to be honest with myself. So I sat down and thought it out. Did I accept the bible stories and throw out everything I knew about history and epistemology, or would I throw out the the bible stories? I have to be consistent.

In order to be consistent I had to accept that I didn't buy the whole God thing.

Actually, some Bible history is true, it can be traced to potentially actual events, but I know what you're talking about. Yes, very interesting path you've taken. So fascinating how everyone came to identify with atheism, no two stories remotely alike. When I left Christianity and belief of a deity in general, it had a lot to do with that disconnect you speak of, that all I had been taught about my faith simply wasn't true. But, coming back to faith...I view the Bible differently, albeit not as a text book but as a spiritual book, and much of it is based on allegory. Appreciate your story here, do you feel that secular views and faith can't coexist? That at some point, someone must make a choice about which 'world view' to let go of? I think they can coexist.

Sorry if this isn't the best. Have had a few ciders (I got married!!!!). But this warrants an answer.

What you are describing is the last stage of theism I went through. I viewed almost all of the bible as allegory and had no problem with it being not literally true. However when I sat down a problem emerged. In order to properly call oneself a Christian a person has to believe that there was a single person Jesus, that he was was God incarnate, and that he came back to life after being dead three days. And that's where the problem came up.

Now you asked can secular views and theism coexist. Absolutely they can. Now however we are leaving 21-year-old me and moving more towards how I think presently. Secular views have nothing inherently to do with theism. Either God exists or he does not. This is a fact about the universe. Either way we still have to define frameworks within which we operate, and they have to be consistent. Add to this the question is pointless without a clear definition of God.

[Cephus]

I decided that if Christianity was true, it ought to stand up to critical scrutiny.  It didn't.

But, then it wouldn't be called 'faith.' ^_^ But, yes I hear you.

Faith is idiotic.  Anyone who has blind faith is, by definition, not rational.  I have no respect whatsoever for the non-rational.

I heard an interesting commentary from an atheist last year who said that he chooses to hope in reality, in humanity, not in something he cannot see or may never see. He said, there could be a god but there very well may not be, why hope in one?

I don't hope for anything.  What is, is.  What is not, is not.  Part of the basic maturation process is coming to grips with what is and not pretending that what is not, is.

More people need to get that through their heads.[/quote]

[*Deidre*]

But, then it wouldn't be called 'faith.' ^_^ But, yes I hear you.

Faith is idiotic.  Anyone who has blind faith is, by definition, not rational.  I have no respect whatsoever for the non-rational.

I heard an interesting commentary from an atheist last year who said that he chooses to hope in reality, in humanity, not in something he cannot see or may never see. He said, there could be a god but there very well may not be, why hope in one?

I don't hope for anything.  What is, is.  What is not, is not.  Part of the basic maturation process is coming to grips with what is and not pretending that what is not, is.

More people need to get that through their heads.

[/quote]

I hope for everything. To me, that is rational.

[GrandizerII]

The simplified answer is because I realized I was lying to myself the whole time. I professed belief because it felt good thinking there was a God out there.

[GUBU]

If you were ever a theist/believer, what led you to no longer believe? Not looking to preach, that’s not my thing and it’s against rules anyway, but just curious. I remember my own journey over the past few years with it all, and just thought it’d be interesting to hear your ‘stories’ if you were once believers before identifying as an atheist. 

Partly it was a reflection on the world around me and how vastly it differed from the world presented in catholic theology, and partly due to a single event.

The reflection bit was a process, which probably started early in secondary school but which I was aware of only from University, I gradually stopped going to church and started looking at different points of view vis a vis religion and god, to the point that at the age of 21 (about 2002) my religious views were best described as being pantheist (I'd done quite a bit of reading on Spinoza when I should have being reading on FRS's and tax legislation), a position I now described as being only one small degree away from atheism (in that the pantheistic god is indivisible and inseperable from the rest of reality).

But then in 2005 I was watching a documentary on Channel 4 (UK), the name of which I have forgotten unfortunately, about trying to find out who it was that jumped from the top of the twin towers on 11-09-2001 rather than face the slow death inside the building (there was a series of pictures at the time with some fame depicting this event). At one stage the documentary presenter was thinking that the clues best described a Puerto Rican man who worked as a chef on the top floor and whose body hadn't been recovered at that stage. The presenter went to the man's family (who were catholic) and their vehement response to the possibility shocked me hard. The essentially said that there was no way their son/brother/cousin would throw himself off the building as that would be suicide and the he knew he would go to hell if he died that way. I realised then that there exists no being could possibly twist someone's thinking in such a way as to ensure that they would take a slow agonising death over a quicker and less painful one (and throwing yourself off the top of one of the twin towers that day could in no way be considered suicide, you were dead already) for fear of what may happen to a non-existent part of themselves after death, to discount suicide as the ultimate evil (as the Puerto Rican family did), and be considered good or moral. It was at this stage I said out loud to my flat mate 'Fuck this, I want no part in such evil. I cannot even think to believe that a god exists and either allows this to happen or creates it'. I'd finally come to the realisation that all religion was simply snake oil salesmen exploiting the gullibility of others for their personal gain. That is why I'm an atheist.

Now I'm not going to say that a god can't exist, but my realisation that day was that all the gods of the varied human cultures are simply creations of their cultures and have no existence, nor can they ever have an existence.

[Cephus]

Faith is idiotic.  Anyone who has blind faith is, by definition, not rational.  I have no respect whatsoever for the non-rational.


I don't hope for anything.  What is, is.  What is not, is not.  Part of the basic maturation process is coming to grips with what is and not pretending that what is not, is.

More people need to get that through their heads.

I hope for everything. To me, that is rational.[/quote]

But that's the thing.  "To you" doesn't matter.  Rational is objective.  It is not subject to your opinions.  You either act rationally or you do not.  You are not acting rationally.