Atheists, tell me, a Roman Catholic: why should I become an atheist?

[Catholic_Lady]

Welcome to the forums! I hope you find the answers that you are looking for.

Hey aren't you going to advise him on whether he should give the atheism a shot?

Lol. He seems to be doing the right things... asking questions on both sides and examining both sides. I did a google search of his username and saw that he was also on this Catholic forum: http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1032587

I'm sure people there can probably answer his questions much better than I ever could.

[Balaco]

Thank you for your responses everyone. I plan on reading through and thinking more about things about why exactly I believe in God more tomorrow, and responding more as well. As for now, in short, I suppose it was because I was raised Catholic, looked into the teachings without questioning them too much, and following the teachings seemed right. It just made sense to me.

The thing is, questioning my faith seriously for the first time obviously forces me to think against what I've considered fact for a while. This is the first time I've genuinely thought, "What if there's no God?" I know, from the mindsets most of you are used to, God existing is just made up and doesn't make sense. It's hard for me to let go of what I and so many others considered fact. Obviously I need to look into this more.

[Aegon]

The thing is, questioning my faith seriously for the first time obviously forces me to think against what I've considered fact for a while. This is the first time I've genuinely thought, "What if there's no God?" I know, from the mindsets most of you are used to, God existing is just made up and doesn't make sense. It's hard for me to let go of what I and so many others considered fact. Obviously I need to look into this more.

I was raised Roman Catholic. I remember the first time I considered the fact that there might not be a god. I was 12. Before then it was something I thought had to be true; the sky is blue, the Earth revolves around the Sun, and God exists and he loves me. It's shocking to consider at first when religion is all you know.

I first flirted with the idea at 12. I didn't officially leave the Church until I was 17.

[Whateverist]

Mother Teresa flirted with the idea her whole life, never left the church and was made a saint. Go figure.

[Vincent]

Atheists, why do you reject the idea of God, and why should I? I know that your answers will include "there's no evidence" and all that, but please try to explain.

Hey bud. Don't know if you're planning on coming back to this thread, but I'm going to toss my thoughts into the mix. 

First of all, I can't tell you what to believe. I do not much like the religion you follow, but it's not my mission to de-convert you. Follow what feels right. 

That aside, I can offer you my own journey to atheism. I was raised in a household where the Christian god was believed in but not actively worshiped. We did not read the Bible or attend church. Most of my religious experiences came from spending time with my grandmother, who was a devout Baptist. Nothing that happened to me drove me away from the religion; I was overall apathetic to it. I considered myself agnostic through much of my adolescence. It wasn't until I entered college that I gave further thought to the god idea, and I started asking serious questions. 

I remember staring up at the stars one night. It had never occurred to me before just how small Earth and humanity are, and how overwhelmingly large the universe was. I looked up, and I saw so many stars. Hundreds. More than I could count. And each star was billions of miles away, and each one had planets orbiting around it. There were millions of other solar systems out there, millions of celestial bodies and millions of miles of space between them, just in our galaxy alone. And our galaxy, too, was just one in billions. Our planet is no more significant than a grain of sand on a beach. 

I guess I always knew that, but fully contemplating it made me ask: How can humanity be the centerpiece of any diety's plan, when we were no more than one mutated species on a tiny speck of dust in an incomprehensibly vast universe? Why were there billions and billions of other planets out there, almost all of which are completely uninhabitable to us? Why are there billions of other galaxies, billions of other suns, billions of other solar systems, and here we are, on this one, tiny planet? What is the purpose for all the rest of it? I searched for an answer to this question, and the only response I kept getting was "the rest of it was for the glory of god, like him playing around with the universe before creating us". That didn't satisfy me. He could make whatever he wanted, but instead of making other worlds of beauty and life, he made virtually everything off our planet desolate and inhospitable. Environments that would kill us if we took one breath of its air. And most of it is just empty space, empty space that we cannot survive in without complex scientific equipment. We cannot populate 99.9% of the universe. So, what then, god just put it there for the looks? 

And another question came to mind. If a being existed that was so vast and powerful it could create a universe as large and infinitely complex as the one we exist in... why the hell would that being care about humanity? To such a being we would appear as less than ants, and yet it would go through the trouble of writing a book, of creating a "son" in the form of one of us, of judging us for our behaviors, of caring who we slept with, of caring whether we worshiped it? No. That was nonsensical to me. If a god created this universe, this universe so so big, it would not give a single fuck if an ape descendant got on its knees and prayed to it. Such a being would not require validation from something so small. Believing that we are that special, that a god would care about us, was arrogance on the part of our species. It was humanity looking for meaning in its own existence, looking for some reassurance that we are not just evolved animals that came about through various mutations and millions of years of natural selection. 

But that was not the only thing driving me from theism. I came to an understanding that the afterlife probably did not exist. I figured that everything we are, everything that makes us us, is entirely a product of our brains. Our personality, our memories, our fears, our emotions, our hopes, our motivations, our ability to comprehend language and solve complex problems and make connections... all of that can be explained with a course in physiology and psychology. It's all a result of completely material processes. And it ends, every single bit of it, when we die. Our brain shuts off, our body stops functioning, and we are gone. The brain does not transcend to a different state of being; there is no afterlife for it. It just... stops. And if that is the case, then what is carried into the afterlife? It can't be us, because the thing that made us who we are is gone. I began to realize that the afterlife was a story, created by humans frightened of death, of a life that ends when our mortal bodies do. I've heard it said that animals have no soul, that there is no afterlife for them, not in Christian theology. Why are we so different? Because our brain is more advanced, because we are more evolved? That doesn't prove the soul's existence, and thus it doesn't prove an afterlife. There is no reason to believe in a soul aside from the fact that a book is telling you to. And without a soul, without the afterlife, the Christian god's entire existence is thrown into serious question. 

But beyond even that, I contemplated a world where there was no god, and what such a world would look like. I imagined it would be filled with harsh, barren planets, life capable of existing on only a scarce few. I imagined it would be filled, most of it, with empty, useless space. I imagined it would run on completely observable systems, on natural processes that could be tested and understood. I imagined that "miracles", or instances of suspending the natural order, would be few and far between. And I imagined that defying the natural order would be impossible (example, a human amputee spontaneously waking up with a limb regrown, or a certified dead person walking around the next week with no other apparent reason than that someone prayed for it). I imagined that life would only come into existence through struggle, through survival of the fittest, through many species dying out mercilessly because they were not strong enough to make it, leaving only the most adaptable to breed and pass on their genes. I imagined that if an intelligent species eventually evolved, it would very likely turn to magic and mysticism to answer the questions it had. I imagined such a species would proclaim storms to be the work of the gods, and the seasons to be the work of the gods, and the sun and the moon to be the work of the gods. I imagined, as that species grew older, and matured, the gods it believed in would change and evolve, with many falling out of memory and others taking up fame and popularity, much like a free market economy. I imagined, as that species learned more of the world it inhabited, its gods would turn into, as Neil Degrasse Tyson so eloquently phrased it, "an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance". I imagined that believers in these gods would look for solid evidence for their deity, but find none, and thus be forced to turn to supernatural claims that could not be proven or disproven, and unreliable or biased anecdotal evidence to support the existence of such a being. 

I imagined a world just like ours.

I cannot say for a certainty that no god exists, as I do not know everything. But thus far in my life, I have looked at the world and drawn the conclusion that there is probably not a god, in the same way that there are probably no unicorns and elves.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Before I begin, I ask that you please avoid being hostile or anything. I'm a Roman Catholic, but I feel like many people of faith immediately jump to degrading atheists as people, rather than trying to understand their mindset. I'm heavily confused right now, and am asking both Catholic and atheist sites for their mindsets. Obviously, Catholics are going to defend Catholicism, while atheists are going to defend atheism. I ask that you please be civil about it, as this could be life-changing for me.


I've been questioning how to improve in my Roman Catholic faith lately...but this morning I came to the realization that I never really questioned my faith itself. I was lightly raised Catholic and recently took it upon myself to grow closer to God. Now, for probably the first time in my life, I feel like I'm genuinely considering atheism as a possibility.

From what I understand, atheists do not accept the possibility of a supernatural being, and restrict themselves to our "natural" human thinking. Previously I thought that atheists are simply conditioned by society to the point where they are unable to "rationally" believe in a supernatural being...God doesn't allow us universally undeniable proof of his existence as a test of faith. Now, though, I feel like it's impossible to tell whether that mindset is correct, or whether atheists are correct in their focusing on our natural human mindsets. I do feel like I've felt something while praying throughout the past. 

The other night, for example, I was planning on praying for about fifteen minutes, but felt oddly calm and ended up taking about an hour. Now I feel like that could have just been because I was comfortable, and my mind was "making things up" as I was more convinced in my faith.


Atheists, why do you reject the idea of God, and why should I? I know that your answers will include "there's no evidence" and all that, but please try to explain.

You should follow your own light, so long as you don't glare it into the eyes of others.

[Minimalist]

in short, I suppose it was because I was raised Catholic, looked into the teachings without questioning them too much, and following the teachings seemed right. It just made sense to me.

You're hardly alone in that, though.

If we had opened our eyes to the light under the shadows of St. Peter's at Rome, we should have been devout Catholics; born in the Jewish quarter of Aleppo, we should have contemned Christ as an imposter; in Constantinople, we should have cried "Allah il Allah, God is great and Mahomet is his prophet!" Birth, place, and education give us our faith. Few believe in any religion because they have examined the evidences of its authenticity, and made up a formal judgment, upon weighing the testimony. Not one man in ten thousand knows anything about the proofs of his faith. We believe what we are taught; and those are most fanatical who know least of the evidences on which their creed is based.



--Brig. Gen Albert Pike, C.S.A.

The question is, now what?  Are you willing to put down the bibles and learn about actual history?

[robvalue]

Hello, welcome I appreciate your respectful introduction. I haven't read everyone's replies so apologies if I'm repeating points.

Firstly, atheism is a description of a state of mind. It's not something you can choose to be, or not to be. You just are, or aren't. If you're actively convinced that god(s) exist, you're a theist; otherwise you're an atheist. So if you're unsure, and not convinced either way, this is called weak atheism. If you're convinced there isn't in fact a god, that is strong atheism. The most common mistake is to assume all atheists are strong atheists. I have much more material about this point if you're interested. Whether or not you identify as an atheist (if you are one), is of course up to you.

So someone can be an atheist yet remain "a catholic", or any other religious title. Outwardly they profess to believe certain things, but in their mind, they're not totally convinced they are true. So this would be an atheist in denial, or simply choosing to remain in the religious group, due to social benefits or fear of rejection for leaving.

Atheism is only concerned with one subject: the existence of gods. It doesn't tell you anything else about a person. Now, I don't even know what a god is. When I ask people to define it, I mostly get a load of nonsense. The only overlap I generally get is an intelligent creator. I have no opinion about this, things would look the same either way. So I'm a weak atheist, with respect to this kind of "God". It could be a computer programmer; whatever. And honesty, I don't care either. Whatever kind of "God" there may be, it doesn't affect me. I'll carry on behaving in the ways I think are right. I won't worship, I find that a creepy concept. And I won't compromise my morality to please some external voyeur, if their expectations differ from how I act. When it comes to very specific God characters such as Yahweh from from the bible, they are so absurd, internally inconsistent and completely unevidenced that I give them no more credibility than Superman. If they are holding my future hostage in order to blackmail me into acting a certain way or kissing up to them, that is terrorism and I can't be doing with it. I wouldn't trust such a deranged being to keep their word, anyway.

So you can be an atheist and still believe in "the supernatural", whatever that is. Again, I don't have a useful definition. But you can believe in ghosts, magic, universe creating pixies, karma, whatever you like. If you come to atheism via scepticism (logically assessing the truth of claims based on evidence and only holding positions where the evidence is of a high standard) then you'll most likely reject all those things too.

Personally, I've never been religious. Never been a believer. I wasn't "raised atheist"; God and religion was just never mentioned to me by my parents. At all. I experienced it for the first time when I was five years old, faced with a room full of people apparently talking to no one (prayer). I thought they were all nuts, but accepted that's what they wanted to do.

So yeah, not only is there no evidence of a God, there's not even a coherent, falsifiable definition. (Again, I have much more material on these points if you're interested). Without this, there cannot even be any evidence, because the whole thing is based on assumptions.

You can also continue to believe in a God, whatever you might think about it, and not be part of a religion. You can either develop your own relationship with it how you see fit; or just ignore it and carry on with your life. It doesn't do anything, if it's there. It may not know we're here at all, or that we're self aware. These are all assumptions of super power, based on nothing.

One reason for leaving the Catholic Church in particular is that they actively shield child abusers and lobby to stop law changes which might bring them to justice. I would never support such an organisation, with money or by word, on principle.

I hope this has been of some help. Please feel free to ask any questions, or to PM me!

[Opoponax]

There is always the possibility of just accepting your faith and rolling with it.

Does it make you happy, or at least contribute to the happiness in your life? Dies it give you a sense of peace? Satisfaction? Does it fulfill a sense of wonder in you?

If it does indeed do those things, then, well, there's no reason to leave it.

If you respect the rights of others to believe differently, and you're probably already doing that anyway, then maybe don't worry about this atheism stuff.

For me personally, I'll briefly echo what some others have said. I like knowing things. learning without impediments, and being able to get as close to what's true as is possible. And for better or worse, God just doesn't fit in. I consider a creator to be possible, sure; but I'd put the odds at about 0.0000000000000000000001%. And that's not worth believing in. Also, if there is a Creator, I give it a hell of a lot more credit than its believers do. I refuse to believe that an entity who could create an entire universe would be so concerned about what we do with our genitals, and then be willing to torture us forever because of it. It really is absurd if you think about it for a minute.

[Jesster]

Thank you for your responses everyone. I plan on reading through and thinking more about things about why exactly I believe in God more tomorrow, and responding more as well. As for now, in short, I suppose it was because I was raised Catholic, looked into the teachings without questioning them too much, and following the teachings seemed right. It just made sense to me.

The thing is, questioning my faith seriously for the first time obviously forces me to think against what I've considered fact for a while. This is the first time I've genuinely thought, "What if there's no God?" I know, from the mindsets most of you are used to, God existing is just made up and doesn't make sense. It's hard for me to let go of what I and so many others considered fact. Obviously I need to look into this more.

Well you aren't alone there. I was raised protestant and I deeply believed that stuff until I was about 25. I know how tough it can be to rethink those kinds of beliefs, especially when everyone in your social circle and family is part of it as well.

As long as you are questioning your beliefs, you are doing the right thing. I still question what I think I know today. When people stop doing that, I consider them braid-dead. Good for you for not falling into that category no matter what it is that you believe.