RE: Why are you an atheist?
February 19, 2020 at 2:14 pm
(This post was last modified: February 19, 2020 at 2:17 pm by Simon Moon.)
(February 19, 2020 at 1:44 am)Ongietan Wrote: Hi Everyone,
I am really interested to hear how you ended up as atheists at this point in your lives. I didn't grow up going to church or in a religious home (though my mom claimed she spoke to spirits), but I had a belief in God from an early age nevertheless. Of all the various beliefs and religious that one can hold to, why has atheism won?
Atheism can be a belief, but for many (maybe most?) atheists, atheism is a rejection of claim. It is not necessary for atheists to believe no gods exist, but simply not being convinced by theists' arguments, that a god does exist, defines one as an atheist. Atheism is not, a belief system, world view, has no doctrine, dogma, tenets, leaders, holy books. At its most basic, it is just not being convinced that the claim that a god exists is true.
What lead to my atheism, is the correct application of critical thinking, skepticism, and rationality, when applied to the god claim.
I grew up pretty religious, but I was also very skeptical with regards to other supernatural claims (ghosts, alien abductions, telepathy, bigfoot, etc, etc).
When I reached my early to mid 20's, I came to the conclusion, that I never applied the same level critical thinking to my theistic beliefs/claims as I did to those other claims. I was not being intellectually honest. When I did so, I came to the conclusion, that, not only were my theistic beliefs not supported with demonstrable and falsifiable evidence, or valid and sound logic, but the existence of a god in general (deistic god), wasn't either
I soon came to the conclusion, that I was not warranted in believing in unsupported god claims anymore, and those beliefs just fell away.
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.
