Strong and Weak Arguments

[Mister Agenda]

My journey from being a Pentecostal who spoke in tongues to being an atheist took about 20 years. My initial disconnect came from reading the Bible a couple of times, but that didn't disabuse me of God, just the notion that a being that could reasonably be describes as a God with a capital 'G' would have inspired a document like that. So I wasn't a Pentecostal anymore, but I was still a sort of 'agnostic theist'. A few years later I started being skeptical of poorly-evidenced claims in general (I used to believe in ancient astronauts, ghosts, ESP, etc.) and stopped believing in a lot of things I used to believe. In my thirties, I was a de facto deist; my main sticking point was that I still had trouble wrapping my head around there not being a Prime Mover. I didn't even know there were serious proposals for a natural origin for the universe. A couple of science courses cured me of that ignorance; and I was down to keeping a space in my head for God because his existence can't be disproven and I didn't want to be close-minded like those atheists. Taking a couple of logic courses and reading Smith's 'Case Against God' made me realize that it was not close-minded to not accept something as true if you're willing to change your mind given sufficient evidence; and that the burden of proof was on those who claim God is real.

So for me, I'd say the Prime Mover argument was the one for theism (or deism) that gave me the most difficulty; and that understanding the concept of the burden of proof was the decisive factor in me giving up belief in God entirely, with understanding that 'whoever started the universe' didn't have to be a 'who' at all being important, too. The experience was sort of like 'hey, I don't detect any more belief in God within myself; I seem to have become an atheist!'.