Thank you for your answers. I don't see why a new thread about this would hurt, though. I believe that an intelligent person would have something new to say on any topic, or at least a better, refined way to put it if he put his mind to it everytime he was asked about it. But that's just me.
I can see that a lot of you say you were always atheists. I suspect that this isn't always the case, despite what you're saying, and I'll offer my own experience as an example.
Depending on how you look at it, you could say I was always a skeptic and an atheist, really, but I only fully realized it once I entered my teens and was able to think more reasonably about the world. In fact, I can remember being as young as 4 years old and thinking before going to bed that if I was Jesus on that cross, I would be ashamed to be naked in front of all of the people who were crucifying me. It was just a random thought, and I don't remember why I had it, but I somehow felt like I wasn't supposed to have it, like I was being bad or something. It didn't stop me from having similar thoughts about other things related to religion throughout my remaining childhood, though. And I can very well remember isolated cases where I was being skeptical about certain religious practices my mother was making me do. Add to that the fact that I was absolutely terrified of the fact that I would die one day, ever since I could think, more or less, and that religion never even once came to my mind as a possible help or solution to it while I was going through that as a child and I think you've got a fairly good picture of how un-theistic I really was.
But I think this is biased. I think a child can't be either a theist or skeptical about god belief, not in any meaningful way, anyway. I think it is only much later that we are able to actually consider what's on the table and only then can we take an actual position on such things. Consequently, I would more accurately say that I became a self-aware atheist about the time I developed critical thinking.
I can see that a lot of you say you were always atheists. I suspect that this isn't always the case, despite what you're saying, and I'll offer my own experience as an example.
Depending on how you look at it, you could say I was always a skeptic and an atheist, really, but I only fully realized it once I entered my teens and was able to think more reasonably about the world. In fact, I can remember being as young as 4 years old and thinking before going to bed that if I was Jesus on that cross, I would be ashamed to be naked in front of all of the people who were crucifying me. It was just a random thought, and I don't remember why I had it, but I somehow felt like I wasn't supposed to have it, like I was being bad or something. It didn't stop me from having similar thoughts about other things related to religion throughout my remaining childhood, though. And I can very well remember isolated cases where I was being skeptical about certain religious practices my mother was making me do. Add to that the fact that I was absolutely terrified of the fact that I would die one day, ever since I could think, more or less, and that religion never even once came to my mind as a possible help or solution to it while I was going through that as a child and I think you've got a fairly good picture of how un-theistic I really was.
But I think this is biased. I think a child can't be either a theist or skeptical about god belief, not in any meaningful way, anyway. I think it is only much later that we are able to actually consider what's on the table and only then can we take an actual position on such things. Consequently, I would more accurately say that I became a self-aware atheist about the time I developed critical thinking.
