(June 1, 2021 at 9:10 am)johndoe122931 Wrote: I made an earlier post called “Why do you hate God”, and needless to say I was quickly and rightfully corrected as to how I structured the question and the incoherent post that followed. For all that responded I thank you for your positive criticism of it and how I can better word my comments.
Now my intent in all this is that I really want to hear from you all as individuals as to why you do not believe in a God or more accurately the concept of a God. I would like to hear what we as Christians call your “testimony” or story as to why you came to the conclusion that you have.
I know there is a list a mile long as to reasons why people do not believe and that’s great, but I am more interested in hearing from the individual as to why they personally do not. What lead you to become an atheist? Were you a believer before you became an atheist? What happened to cause you to turn away from your faith? What religion or God did you follow before you became an atheist if any at all? When you turned away from God what did your friends and family say or do?
I am interested to hear the impact it had on your life. Was it a positive one or a negative one? Are you still struggling with the outcome of your choice? How does it feel to be free from such ideologies and beliefs?
I know there are multiple questions involved with this, but they all together form the story of your personal choice and I think it to be better framed in this way instead of making multiple threads to get the same answer.
I thank you all for your patience and understanding and please feel free to correct me when necessary, on how I can better understand and communicate more efficiently. Thank you for your time!
Welcome to the forum, brother. I was an evangelical Christian and was very serious about my religion. I prayed multiple times a day, all throughout the day. Sometimes my parents would take my brothers and I to church 3 or 4 days a week. My acne got so bad as a teenager, and I didn't think it was fair that Yahweh was putting this on me, the good little Christian who was doing things right. One day I cursed out God and told him in a prayer that it seemed to me like he wasn't listening, so I stopped praying that day. It sort of built up over the course of a few months where my prayers to God started getting less and less respectful on my part. My parents had always told me that satan would give you the world if you traded your soul, and I was so distraught about my bad skin that I tried that out. I prayed to satan just once, but nothing happened. I'm in my 30s now and I still have the acne. It's here for life.
After my Christian de-conversion, I looked into Buddhism a bit and tried to hold onto the idea of an afterlife. That didn't last long. I started watching some atheist stuff like Dawkins and soon enough I was convinced that there was probably no afterlife. It stung to come to this realization, and it was scary, but I couldn't help but accept the logic behind it.
My parents didn't like it at all, but they pretty much accepted it. They tried to talk me out of the atheism for a number of years, which is fine with me. I don't mind those kind of discussions or get bothered by them.
Did it have a positive or negative impact on my life? Sometimes I think ignorance is bliss and it would be nice to think that you're going to paradise after you die, but I am happy I de-converted because then I was free to explore and discover without the chains.
Why do I reject the concept of a god? If god didn't need to be designed or created, then neither does our universe or any other universe, as far as I'm concerned. I don't necessarily reject the concept of a designer. We could be living in a computer game made in someone's basement. In that case, I guess you could call the designer God if you really wanted to. The idea of a supernatural god is just not an idea that adds up in my head though.
