Pandora

I can only speak for myself here, but I have never looked for proof of God – I don’t need to, as I don’t believe he exists.

If on the otherhand people insist that I must think as they do and live my life as their sky fairy dictates they have to demonstrate why they are right.

I regard all religion of all denominations as a complete waste of time, effort and resources. As Seneca said:

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

He forgot “profitable”!

Do I sense that you are planning to listen to all our reasons, decide that we are all jaded with Christianity and then jump in with a big publicity drive for Islam?

Maybe I’m wrong but reading between the lines of your posts, it seems to me that you have already decided your final answer. My advice: Chuck it away, open your mind, read what people are really saying and then go and think about it.

GunnerJ

A fine set of questions, jojo.

1. Why are you ahteist or free thinker?

Well, I'm a freethinker because I don't think that my opinions or convictions should be based on other people's supposed authority or supposed revelations. I believe in investigating claims skeptically to find new knowledge. But I suspect you want to know why I'm a nonbeliever. Well, for most gods I stay agnostic; the creator god of deism, or the limited gods of pagan myth, for example. These gods, while unevidenced, are at least not logically impossible. It's like a joke about UFO's I stole from someone here: I have no problem accepting the existance of unidenetified flying objects. It's when people start identifying them that problems start. Thus, I am an atheist towards the omnipotent, omnibenevolent god, as a being with these properties couldn't exist and stil be consistant with the condition of the Universe. This is known as the Argument from Evil. An indifferent, omnipotent god, or a less than all powerful, but still omnibenevolent god, may exist. I am agnostic towards such a creature. But when an object's properties contradict each other and our own observations, this object must be stated as impossible.

2. What faith were you as a kid? or what was Your religious ubringing and education in as a kid?

I grew up Catholic, but only my mother was of the Church, and even then she is very liberal. My father is an agnostic. (To the best that I can assertain, he may be a deist. Anyway, he had to say he believed in Jebus to get married to my mom...)

Wyrdsmyth

It's not just that most people get "fed up" with religion, as if it's something difficult or unpleasant that they just don't want to deal with (the way some people avoid hard work). I wouldn't try to make that analogy if I were you. It's trite, overused and misleading theistic rhetoric. It has the implication that atheists leave their faith because of reasons which may not be entirely valid. Of course, any minister, priest, Muslim preacher, rabbi, etc. who addresses atheists at all, is going to put this kind of spin on it:

"Atheists don't like to follow rules."

"Atheists want to go their own way, not God's way -- they find God's way too difficult."

"Atheists know God is real, they would just rather he wasn't."

All of this is balderdash. You will never hear an atheist saying this is why they don't believe. Quite simply, the vast majority of us don't believe because we don't think there are any deities, spirits, or ghosts, and all of that stuff is simply "made-up." There's no proof for it. A two-thousand year old book is not proof. This applies to the Torah, Bible and Qu'Ran. I can't go experience it; it's always hearsay, or out of old "scriptures" that people encounter the supernatural. It's never verifiable, or testable. In anything else in life, it's common sense to want to verify something --otherwise you're a sucker. If you buy a used car, you ought to have it checked out by a mechanic, not take the salesman's word for it that it runs just swell. If you invest in a small business, you ought to research them, maybe even go to the business site and see them at work, not just throw your money at some guy in a suit with a slick pitch.

It is only in matters of religion or the supernatural that this is inverted. We are told over and over again "you have to have faith." As if, repeating that mantra should erase our common sense, our natural desire to verify and check things out for ourselves. Suddenly, wanting to see with your own eyes, or understand with your own mind, is not a good thing. You are now told you shouldn't rely on your senses: "Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe." And you are told if God and the Bible (or the Qu'Ran, or whatever tradition) doesn't make sense, it must be because your mind is finite and flawed -- not because the religion is.

But this is all a smokescreen. Inverting what we most naturally incline to -- wanting proof -- and making not wanting proof "blessed" is just a clever ruse. I strongly disagree with these teachings. We ought to trust to our senses and our own individual understandings -- not trust what others tell us. We ought to each learn to think and test conjectures for ourselves, not be like a herd of dumb sheep following one charismatic shepherd. He may be charismatic -- but does that make him right?

P.S. If you want to draw a conclusion from the fact that there are more atheists in the secular West than in the world of Islam, I'd be careful of the reasoning. It probably has more to do with freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to question, a la our secular governments.

Soon, the Muslim countries will have secular governments, also, however. This will begin with Turkey, and then like dominoes, the others will begin to follow. Then, you'll start to see more atheists in the world of Islam, too.

[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: Wyrdsmyth ]</p>

GunnerJ

Um, look, if you're going to turn around and say, "See? All these atheists used to be Christian! Islam must be the perfect religion!" spare it. This is an ill-formed conclusion.

You see, that's the benefit of being a freethinker: we don't come up with explainations and selectively look for evidence to supposrt it. We find evidence and look for all the likely explainations. Let's look at some other possible explainations for the deconverted Xian "atheist phenomenom."

You are on a message board on a server in the United States. The most popular, by a HUGE margin, religion here is Xian. And we small band of infidels represent a tiny smattering of the possible unbelivers in this country. Ergo, if you go on this American web page looking for resons why these American unbelievers deconverted, you're likely to fond a lot of ex-Xians. Finding ex-Muslims will be much harder, due to the TINY amount of Muslims in this country.

Thus, to test this theory, find a SecularWeb-like organization in Middle Eastern countries and ask them. Unless, of course, such things can't exist because they commit thoughtcrime against the "Holy" Koran, from the "word" of the "most beneficient" Allah, as related to us by "his" "prophet" "Mohammed."

Born Free

So jojo-sa are you done with this thread???


<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=45&t=000079" target="_blank">Jihad</a>

Theophage

Or simply ask the Loch Ness Monster; Nessie should be a bit easier to find

[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: Theophage ]</p>

tronvillain

1. I am an atheist because it appears to be the rational position.

2. I was raised Catholic, but I was an unbeliever as far back as I can clearly remember.

Mageth

1. Well, primarily because god doesn't exist.

2. I, like everyone else, was born an atheist. I had no god-belief (well, I did worship that soft warm place where I found sustenance) until I was around 3, when the indoctrination kicked in big time. Fortunately, as I grew older and wiser, it didn't stick.

Ted Hoffman

1. Why are you ahteist or free thinker?

I am an Atheist because I don't believe that God exists. I have never come across any reason to do so.

2. What faith were you as a kid? or what was Your religious ubringing and education in as a kid?
Kids dont have faiths; they just do what they are told.

I had a secular education and semi-religious upbringing.

[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: jaliet ]</p>

Pirate Smoker

1. Why are you ahteist or free thinker?

I just stopped "getting it". God wasn't anywhere and people were getting all excited over nothing. This was when I was about 11. I continued going to church, merely to observe, and was terrified by all the homophobia (I don't care if they call it "loving the sinner, hating the sin", it's still homophobia to me) and all the threats of hell and how really good people are going there even though they haven't done anything wrong except failing to accept Christ. I realized that if this were true, billions of people around the world are going to burn in hell just because they follow a different religion.

I eventually decided that it just didn't make sense anymore, and that if I'm going to hell for honest skepticism and disbelief, then fuck God.

Don't get me wrong, "losing my religion" was having an effect on me, and I tried frantically to hold on to the last bits of faith I had... but it just wasn't enough. I really WANTED God to exist, so I repeatedly asked Jesus to give me a sign, ANY sign, just anything to let me know. Guess what happened? Nothing. Gee, big surprise there.

So that was my departure from Christianity. For a while I was a bit of a pantheist... but then I became interested in the subject of religion and read about arguments for atheism on the internet, and realized that that was what I was.

2. What faith were you as a kid? or what was Your religious ubringing and education in as a kid?

Protestant Christianity. It wasn't something I thought about a lot until I was older. Church was just this boring place my family went on Sundays.

[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: Pirate Smoker ]</p>