Why are YOU an Atheist?

[Brian37]

While I accept that the existence or nonexistence of a deity cannot be truly proven, I base my atheism off of the extreme probability that there exists no such deity.

I see no point in giving the slightest bit of credibility to myth anymore than you would consider pink unicorns. Conceding to semantics is as silly as betting on last year's Super Bowl.

[paulpablo]

For me, being raised going to a catholic school it began with starting to notice even though religion talks a lot about kindness and everyone being equal the people i knew around me who were religious didnt act very kind.
The muslim people and the christian people around me would look down on one another and view each other as inferior, i once witnessed two of the more religious children at my school fighting each other about who was closer to god.
Next it was asking questions as a 8 or 9 year old like what about the dinosaurs and how the hell did noah get ALL the animals on the boat it would be impossible.
It was also around this time i began to fear heaven, the thought of being anywhere good or bad forever would get boring, as ive mentioned in another thread i think even being on a desert island populated with 1000 willing and eternally youthful women would get boring after a few million years.
Next i began to think ok religion looks ridiculous to me but i am just a young teenager and lots of older wiser people seem to believe in it.
But i remember at this time playing a game called civilisation call to power for the pc, and you get to control a civilisation and you progress by making scientific advances and one of the advances was religion and if you got it then you got to create a theocratic government which made your millitary stronger and if you built temples it made your people happier, you also got more money from using clerics to soothsay foriegn nations and it made me think just how much of a useful tool religion has been to governments and no wonder its agressively engrained in all societies.
And it shows in the progression of religion, there isnt a mainstream religion out there that has been divinely inspired, the religion has spread wherever the men and women of the religion have travelled, christians and muslims didnt travel to other nations across the ocean and realise god had also visited other far away lands aswell.
Anyway after these realisations i began to not care about religion again until i saw richard dawkins and christopher hitchens crush people in debates and it gave me as much of a rush as watching UFC fights,
and after watching ridiculous christian and muslim videos on youtube talking about how their religions are scientifically accurate, its mainly muslims who do this, which just makes my BLOOD BOIL!!! i saw it as my duty to put more research into these matters and debate muslims and christians wherever i can, unfortunately you cant really just go over to people in the street ask them their religion and start telling them they believe in bullshit, so i pretty much try and do it on forums.

[Ari]

I'm an atheist because I was never raised in a religious upbringing, and have perfectly fine morals. Treat others the way you want to be treated isn't so much a religious belief anymore, what moral guidance can religion give me now that I have not learned and applied to daily life since I was born and grew up in an irreligious environment?

It's the fact religion isn't required as a moral compass now, paired with the fact that fooling myself into believing religious dogma and the "afterlife" would go against rational thinking. Kind of depressing answering all of the questions to life, the universe, society, and morals with "because of X", when we still don't know those answers.

[Esquilax]

I'm an atheist because I'm not intellectually dishonest enough to believe in things that are clearly untrue, nor am I credulous enough to accept the platitudes that religion offers in place of actual proof. Nor am I able to align myself with holy books that call for the deaths of innocent people for arbitrary reasons, regardless of whether those rules are followed to the letter today.

In short, I'm rational.

[killybob]

Why am I an Atheist? Well, one day I Googled "reason and logic", and well, the rest is history.
But really, after being indoctrinated into the faith by my parents, I spent the first 15 years of my life strongly defending my religion, until one day I heard about the psychological explanations for religious experiences as well as aboigenesis and how it was proven to be entirely possible, and perhaps even probable. This, along with the big bag theory and the fact of evolution, showed me how God was totally unnecessary in the creation and maintenance of the universe, and thus I became a weak Atheist. Of course, not long after that when I discovered that my family's financial crisis was partly due to the fact that my father (the families main source of income) and mother were giving monthly tithes. This absolutely changed my view that religion was harmless and just for the emotionally weak, and thus, after a little research into other negative effects of religion, I declared myself a vehement Anti-theist, which is a position I hold today, as well as proudly declaring myself a Apostate.

[Brian37]

I'm an atheist because I'm not intellectually dishonest enough to believe in things that are clearly untrue, nor am I credulous enough to accept the platitudes that religion offers in place of actual proof. Nor am I able to align myself with holy books that call for the deaths of innocent people for arbitrary reasons, regardless of whether those rules are followed to the letter today.

In short, I'm rational.

"I am rational", in what context and what topic. Because no human is above evolution. No human is right all the time, no matter how smart they are.

If all 7 billion people were atheists, you'd still have a battle over resources, and resources are all life is about. To forget that is to play into the very problem humanity continues to fight over.

I am an atheist and yes, I do not believe in a god. But labels do not constitute evolution, they only describe our personal wishes. All humans still need food, shelter and a means to survive.

Labels only describe position. Labels do not automatically make an individual good or bad.

[Esquilax]

"I am rational", in what context and what topic. Because no human is above evolution. No human is right all the time, no matter how smart they are.

If all 7 billion people were atheists, you'd still have a battle over resources, and resources are all life is about. To forget that is to play into the very problem humanity continues to fight over.

I am an atheist and yes, I do not believe in a god. But labels do not constitute evolution, they only describe our personal wishes. All humans still need food, shelter and a means to survive.

Labels only describe position. Labels do not automatically make an individual good or bad.

I'm well aware of all that. By rational, all I meant is that my beliefs about the universe are contingent on the truth, and will change to reflect new knowledge. That doesn't make me good or bad, or correct all the time, or anything, really. But it does make me, me. And it's a useful tool for experiencing the world.

[Mothonis]

I started having doubts about 2 years ago. My dog died of parvo, and i started thinking about life after death.within a year i started realising that i only believed because i was afraid of non existance and ignorant of how the naturall world worked.

[KaNikki]

I was raised catholic. It wasn't a terribly strict upbringing (I went to public school despite my father's catholic school being around the corner, and church wasn't always a weekly event) but being catholic was still an important part of our daily lives. That being said, I never felt like I belonged. There was never a feeling of genuinely being close to God, and I could never fully buy into the gospel stories. I always felt like there was something I wasn't being told about the whole thing.
Like every other kids I knew, I was dragged to ccd classes once a week, sent to my first confession- another story for another day, sent up the Isle on communion day (the photos are hilarious) and voila! I was officially a born and bred catholic! Only, I still didn't feel anything. By the time I hit my teens, I tried desperately to make myself into something I wasn't- i insisted on going to church every day, and I even prayed multiple times a day, but I never felt like it changed anything. At about 15, I began stepping back and reconsidering everything right around the same time I was expected to make confirmation.
For those of you unfamiliar with the confirmation procedure, you choose a name and stand up in front of everyone to announce that you believe in the teaching of the church. I tried to postponed it in the hopes of getting the answers I wanted, but was told in no uncertain terms that I was going to make this public commitment whether I agreed to it or not because I was born catholic and had "no other choice". After that, I began really re-evaluating what I'd been told and the teachings of the church, and really didn't like what I was finding. In the past six years I've tried to find my own answers and have had a much better time of it.

[TromboneAtheist]

I was raised Catholic. I started noticing some contradictions in my own faith. Then I investigated other religions and found out how bogus they all were. So I started searching the web for arguments for and against religion. At this point I was leaning towards Atheism already. Then I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Great book. That pretty much sealed the deal for me. Now I'm struggling to communicate to my family, friends, and girlfriend, my new lack of belief.