(July 24, 2018 at 3:23 pm)Alexmahone Wrote: Atheists: If you were born and raised in a society where literally everyone else was theist, and there was no atheistic material available in the libraries or on the internet, would you still be an atheist today? Phrased differently, could you possibly have "discovered" atheism all by yourself?
My answer is probably not. Prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris played a big role in me becoming an atheist. So I guess we ought to be indebted to other atheists (past or present).
It's really hard to say, but I would guess that I would eventually get there.
My atheism is a byproduct of my natural skepticism and critical thinking. I believe I was born a skeptical person, and that skepticism would have been evident no matter what culture I was born into.
I was an atheist long before I ever knew there was a word for it.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
