I lost my belief in god because the Bible had glaring problems. Contradictions, significant inconsistencies, and numerous areas where I simply couldn't stretch logic far enough to cover them. I tried my best to talk myself into believing, but I finally had to face it; the Bible is a real mess. Only after I'd realized that I did not believe in god, did I start to look for more information.
Theist theories and explanations and rationalizations don't sway me because I spent a very large part of my life (including my formative years) clinging to them and deliberately avoiding any contrary information. Being biased in favor of religion and god wasn't enough to keep me from finding it wanting. The alternatives have held up very well, so far. I'm still reading and learning, but I no longer feel like I'm trying to twist and stretch logic in order to understand. As Dawkins says, "science works." God doesn't.
That's why I am an atheist.
Theist theories and explanations and rationalizations don't sway me because I spent a very large part of my life (including my formative years) clinging to them and deliberately avoiding any contrary information. Being biased in favor of religion and god wasn't enough to keep me from finding it wanting. The alternatives have held up very well, so far. I'm still reading and learning, but I no longer feel like I'm trying to twist and stretch logic in order to understand. As Dawkins says, "science works." God doesn't.
That's why I am an atheist.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
