Corgan Sow

Why not agnosticism? Why not study all other religions on earth.

Like brainwashed Christians, there are atheists I know cling to their belief just because of their "angst" of their former religion. Doesn't make sense.

Novowels

I can't speak for everyone, but most atheists I know spent years thinking and studying as "agnostic" or more simply as "questioning" before reaching the atheistic conclusion. (I didn't even know what agnostic meant while I was one.)

Myself, I went from strict Catholicism to liberal nondenominational Christian to Satanist( ) to confused Neopagan/supernaturalist to Agnostic to Naturalistic Atheism, where I currently reside.

That's over the course of roundabout 5 years, not one day, too. I don't know of very many people that just wake up one day and go "Ooh, I don't want to believe in God anymore! I'll be an atheist!" You're thinking of the caricature atheists that people like the fruitcakes at the Baptist Boards think we are, not the real thing.

Atheism isn't something that's sought out, it's something that is realized. You don't search for "no gods," you search for the truth and find no gods. Ergo, Atheism. It's not a belief, it's just the lack of a belief in gods.

Hope that helps.

-William

excreationist

Corgan Sow:
Why not study all other religions on earth.
Well in my first year of Unversity, I had to read a book called "How to think about weird things" and at the time I was a young-earth creationist...
The book basically taught me about non-supernatural explanations for supposedly supernatural or "weird" experiences.

The reason I went from fundamentalist Christianity to atheism so fast was because I was sitting on the fence, trying to work out if creation or evolution was more likely. Creationists taught me that Christianity isn't really compatible with evolution.
<a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1316.asp" target="_blank">See Answers in Genesis - The Necessity for believing in six literal days</a>
Some quotes:
<a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4306apol_v3n21994.asp" target="_blank">AiG - The Authority of Scripture</a>
This explains why the Bible has to be free of errors - otherwise Jesus and others were deluded or were liars.

Anyway, creationism, and warm-fuzzy feelings, were my evidences for God. Reading books like the one I mentioned helped explain warm-fuzzy feelings and without creationism there wasn't really much evidence for God at all...

Why not agnosticism?
Well I know that ultimately I can't be sure if a god or gods are hiding away somewhere (or that Elvis isn't living inside the Sun) but I think that the existence of the gods of the major religions are quite improbable. And many of the religions (Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, etc?) don't damn unbelievers to hell so it doesn't matter if I don't learn about those religions. Perhaps those religions that don't send non-believers to hell are true, but I can't be bothered reading about them. It is like nutrition - eating certain kinds of foods would probably make me live longer, but I'm not very worried about finding out how to maximize my life expectancy.

Like brainwashed Christians, there are atheists I know cling to their belief just because of their "angst" of their former religion. Doesn't make sense.
Maybe they're just not in the mood to have an open discussion. If they were confronted with lots of obvious evidence that God exists they would probably believe it.

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

simian

Well, I was Catholic, so depending on your upbringing, I may or may not have been labeled a Christian. I did do a little searching: other versions of Christianity, listening to speakers on Islam, informally checking out polytheism. I went from Catholic to deist (or something similar) to agnostic to atheist.

I left Christianity because I finally looked at the world in such a way as to evaluate Christianity on the same footing as all other religions/mythologies. I rejected numerous polytheistic religions because they were obviously a collection of stories that could not be true. I looked at the bible, and saw similar stories. I already understood that the bible was not literal. So, as a rejected all the others religions/mythologies due to them being impossible, what justification did I have for making an exception for precisely one religion (the one I practiced or chose)? None.

That is why I went from Christian to atheist through a number of steps.

Simian

Heathen Dawn

That's a blanket statement you're making, Corgan. After I left theism I was a Deist for quite a time, and then became atheist, but even that wasn't the end of the journey for me. I don't think I'm an exception to a rule.

Theism → Deism → atheism/naturalism → naturalistic pantheism → nature worship / paganism. (I'm a metaphysical naturalist and nature-worshipping pagan today). Not such a simplistic turn of events as you think it always is.

southernhybrid

I did exactly that and still ended up an atheist. I'm sure I'm not the only one who took the longer trip to reality. Maybe it makes the transition easier when you do it my way but I don't see that it's necessary for everyone.

Some people just take longer to heal from the emotional truama that may have taken place during their childhood exposure to Xianity. It's possible to be a strong atheist and still have some angst from the past. That doesn't mean that the atheism is merely a result of that angst.

excreationist

Heathen Dawn:
Did going from atheism to paganism involve you adopting new beliefs such as beliefs in ghosts, spirits, the afterlife, etc? If so, why did you adopt those beliefs? Was it a feeling that there has to be more to life? Or more concrete evidence?

not a theist

Because I believe that knowledge about the existence of gods may be possible.
Because once you have eliminated some from the playing field, others automatically are disqualified as well. If one has, for example, eliminated Christianity, why bother to study each individual denomination within it. Similiarly, if one rejects the "God of Abraham", why bother to study Judaism or Islam except out of academic interest. That alone eliminates a large range already. Then there are the religions which are strongly bound up with (to me) foreign cultures such as Shinto and Confucianism; no interest there. As for some of the others such as Buddhism, Sikhism, and Hinduism, I have given these some very basic studies and rejected them for similiar reasons that I reject Christianity (unverifiable claims, appearance of being ad hoc inventions, etc.)

I'm still open to them if anyone has any religion which they would like to submit for me to examine.

What belief? I gave up on having those things in any dogmatic sense of the word when I gave up Christianity.

Heathen Dawn

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Read again what I said:

</strong>

That means, no literal belief in gods or anything supernatural. Any talk about gods or goddesses on my part (such as "Nature is Goddess") is just symbolism.

Simple: atheism has no emotional appeal, and I'm a religious man. I wanted to augment the rational truth of metaphysical naturalism with a system of worship, communion and interconnectedness. From the metaphysical naturalist postulate "nature all there is" I went to "creation is nature is creator" and then to nature worship.

I use the word "pagan" quite loosely here: non-Abrahamic, nature-oriented, but not necessarily polytheist. I'm not a polytheist or supernaturalist, I'm a pantheist and naturalist. I'm a deeply religious person striving to reconcile reason (naturalism) with emotion (nature worship).

brighid

Well, I was raised Catholic and most of my life it was pretty liberal I suppose. My father and his family were devout. My father was an altar boy and even considered the priesthood. He was fluent in Latin and Polish (and most masses in his neighborhood were given in either.) My great aunt died 3 years ago and the service was performed in a Catholic Church entirely in Polish. His entire education was in the Catholic school system. And up until 3rd grade I attended Catholic School. My family left the Church after our parish insisted my father (the sole bread winner) tithe 10% of his income, or be barred from attending mass, etc. We were very poor at the time and my father couldn’t afford to feed his family AND tithe 10%, although he gave as generously as he could. After that we still attended services, but at another parish but Catholicism was not the center of our universe. I began questioning in 1st grade, got in lots of trouble and told little girls shouldn’t ask such questions, yadda, yadda, yadda. The end was when a nun severely abused members of my 3rd grade class and with my testimony she was permanently removed from teaching and sent back to the Philippines. I went through a phase of embracing Catholicism with “all my heart and all my soul.” My family moved and we became very active in our local Parish. When my parents divorced (due to my father being abusive and adultery) the Church and all the people we thought were our friends shunned our family. I was the Youth Group Leader and very close to our youth pastors and they would not accept my calls, and during one of the most difficult times in our lives I was totally ignored. OH well … I then became a liberal, non-denominational Christian and occasionally attended a Presbyterian Church. It was then I began exploring paganism. Prior to this and in college I studied Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism (to a lesser extent), Taoism and some basic philosophy in a few different classes I took. I wanted to know the answers to the many questions I had about God, Christianity and the world. So I explored everything with a voracious appetite. The more I searched, the less I could intellectually accept any religion. I didn’t want this. I wanted to reconcile my doubts to strengthen my faith, but the opposite happened.

I still participate in pagan ritual, although I do not believe in any gods. My path from Catholicism, to non-denominational Christian, to Pagan, to Agnostic to Atheist has been at least a decade long of conscious searching. It really hasn’t been until the last year and a half that I have defined myself as an atheist. I consider myself to be a strong atheist in regards to Gods created in the images of men, used to serve the purposes of men. I am an agnostic with regard to the existence of something that could be defined as a God/Goddess/Creator/Universal Consciousness.

It is really a mistake to generalize the diverse experience of millions of people whose only definite similarity is their lack of belief in Gods, not just the Judeo-Christian God(s) but the entire pantheon of Gods that have existed since the day man created them. I doubt many “quickly” converted because they were pissed of at religion. I think the anger; the betrayal, the irreconcilable differences and moral outrage began the process in many cases. However much those things were the catalyst to our deconversion process, it is not the tie that binds us to our lack of belief. Unfortunately for the theist argument it is one of the strongest reasons many atheists are reminded that the path they are on is the right one.

I hope you take the time to read through the testimony of atheists and not allow your previous notions of what we are and are not to cloud your ability to view the diversity and sincerity of our experiences.

Brighid