RE: When, Where, How and Why did you become Atheist?
October 6, 2015 at 3:22 pm
(This post was last modified: October 6, 2015 at 4:14 pm by Simon Moon.)
I was born without belief in any gods. If I was not indoctrinated, I would most likely have remained that way.
In my early teens, I began to explore logic and critical thinking (thank you Carl Sagan, Issac Isamov!). I applied them to all sorts of unsupported claims: alien abductions, ESP, ghosts, etc, etc, and discerned that there was no demonstrable evidence to support belief in any of them.
But most importantly, I applied them to all the other god claims of all the other religions other than my own. I thought to myself, "I already do not believe in these other god beliefs because my parents, relatives, religious teachers told me they were not true, I should see if there actually good reasons not to believe in them".
At some point, it hit me that I was not applying critical thinking, and valid and sound logic to my own god beliefs. In the name of intellectuall honesty, I had no choice but to examine my beliefs with the same level of scrutiny I applied to all the other unsupported god claims. It did not take long for my god beliefs to vanish.
For a very short time I was a deist, then a pantheist. Then it became obvious, that the thing I was labeling 'god' was the universe. The first thing that entered my mind at that point was. "oh, I am an atheist".
In my early teens, I began to explore logic and critical thinking (thank you Carl Sagan, Issac Isamov!). I applied them to all sorts of unsupported claims: alien abductions, ESP, ghosts, etc, etc, and discerned that there was no demonstrable evidence to support belief in any of them.
But most importantly, I applied them to all the other god claims of all the other religions other than my own. I thought to myself, "I already do not believe in these other god beliefs because my parents, relatives, religious teachers told me they were not true, I should see if there actually good reasons not to believe in them".
At some point, it hit me that I was not applying critical thinking, and valid and sound logic to my own god beliefs. In the name of intellectuall honesty, I had no choice but to examine my beliefs with the same level of scrutiny I applied to all the other unsupported god claims. It did not take long for my god beliefs to vanish.
For a very short time I was a deist, then a pantheist. Then it became obvious, that the thing I was labeling 'god' was the universe. The first thing that entered my mind at that point was. "oh, I am an atheist".
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.
