I know this is a journey, and what I am asking is, where are you on your own personal atheistic stance? Would you considered yourself confirmed, convinced, still doubting, adamant, or still looking over your shoulder at your religious training/indoctrination? Please provide your own favorite adjectives.
I consider myself convinced and adamant about atheism. I feel very strongly about my nonbelief. Too strongly some times.
Where stands you?
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I consider myself convinced and, yes, adamant. Sometimes I look over my should, but it's not because I think there's something to look at. There are aspects of religion/believing that I miss, but that sentimental feeling doesn't sway my conviction that there is nothing supernatural out there, or that there is no afterlife. I just sigh, knowing Heaven or reincarnation is just a fantasy to quell my dread of oblivion. Sure, I won't know when I'm gone, but I'm one of those that wouldn't mind continuing into eternity. I'm too curious about what comes next to despair and wish my life was over. But I can tell the difference between wishful thinking and stark reality. It's just like the old saying goes: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
I cannot think of anything that would even remotely cause me to entertain the idea that there was a creator. Besides, there's no reason to believe that a creator would be benevolent. Why would a supernatural deity necessarily be "good"? Why would my well being be the goal of the universe? I've had too many negative experiences as a Christian... too many disappointments... too many contradictions. I felt like the butt of a joke a lot of the time. I'm now comforted by the fact that there was no reason certain things happened to me; there was no encrypted message to decode, nor any test to pass. I was not being ignored or laughed at. I'm just an organism experiencing life like any other organism. The universe is indifferent at best.
I just have to smile and nod at people when they try to convert me; it's like trying to explain chemistry to a three year old. They don't get that I don't believe. I hate they think it's a choice. I hate that they think some warm, fuzzy experience will win me over. I hate they think I'm going through a phase. Honestly, I hate how stupid they can be sometimes. I don't believe they are stupid, but their thought-processes can be so... infantile.
My grandmother sent me a birthday card with a nice letter, but she included a small paragraph about hoping I'd come back to my "first love" (Jesus), and quoted the verse that says (1 Corinthians 13:11) "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." I just wanted to scream EXACTLY!!! Believing in Santa or Jesus is something a child does... and I have put the ways of childhood behind me.
At this point in my life (mid-fifties) I am completely grounded in my understanding of the origins of matter, man, and the romance of religion. If people need a crutch to deal with reality I cannot fault them for that. Acceptance of our finite existence is not easy for some.
I'm just glad I wasn't a May fly..... :^ )
Ed
As a young boy, around 7 or 8, I remember the neighbor girl coming over and showing me her new church dress, she asked me if I was going to go to church, I asked "Why would I go there?" she said "To pray to god", I said that I don't believe in that stuff cause there's no such thing, she asked "where do you think you came from?" and I said "I came from my Momma", exasperated she asked "where do you think your momma came from?" and to me it was obvious, I came from my mom, she came from her mom, and on and on down the line, she got angry, and said "you just don't understand" and turned and walked away, and I remember thinking that she was the one that didn't understand, how can you believe in something that isn't real, you can't see it, you can't touch it, and I wasn't going to believe in fairy tales no matter how many people told me they were true, and that has set the tone for the rest of my life, as I grew older I called myself an agnostic for awhile so as to fit in with my "confused" friends who individually would admit their nonbelief but in a group they always professed in their belief, because if you didn't you were ostracized, I couldn't wrap my mind around why this happened but went along with it up through my early teens, it was then that I realized why my friends were so contradictory, GIRLS, girls believe because they were taught to believe, boys want girls, but girls don't want boys who don't believe, so boys "believe" to get, and keep, girls. Here in my 55th year of life, I see how that same conclusion fits in with today's young men, even now the friends of my youth are still the same, man to man they profess that they don't believe, but in front of their wives and children they won't admit it, and will get angry if I try to push the point, so I've come to the realization that that's why I get such angry and disgusted looks from women when I wear my "Out of the closet Atheist" hat, and men ignore it. A year ago I visited a friend that I had been out of touch with for several years, I wore my (Atheist) hat (it's my favorite) and once inside I noticed a Jesus picture hanging on the wall and I asked him why he decided to "believe" when as kids he didn't, before he could open his mouth his wife chimed in that it was her fault, that she came from a catholic family and that they wouldn't be together if he didn't "believe", after a short visit I left, my friend told me he would be in touch but I haven't seen nor heard from him since, I've called and sent cards but get no reply, to me it's obvious that his wife has forbidden him from associating with the evil atheist, and since then it's dawned on me why I've lost touch with almost all of my married friends but get along fine with my single friends, so, to me it seems that women (and effeminate men) are those responsible for this overbearing belief in some almighty being, and that you either play the game, or you don't get to play at all, and I guess I've just been too old (mature) to play their ridiculous games (so it seems.)
I was a skeptic from earliest memory, and being born in small-town North Carolina in Feb, '44 I was pretty much ahead of the curve I'm sure. Even before I entered school in 1950 I argued with cousins about the impossibility of Santa covering the world in one evening, even assuming he could carry that many toys and goodies for all the "good little boys and girls", it was a preposterous idea.
I carried that skeptical attitude with me all through my adolescent 1950s and young adulthood of the 1960s. There were no atheists groups evident in the North Carolina of my youth, and to be sure not a lot of them in the state now and certainly not in my hometown of Eden, yes, "Eden" of all stupid names.
I was in the US Army Security Agency from '65 to '72 and covered the Far East, Europe, the Middle East and south west Asia, (Turkey and Iran). My travels convinced me that there was no such hing as an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent force for good in the cosmos, but I was still a skeptic.
After being coerced by my missus and our two children to attend a "Christian Fellowship, mostly Pentecostal bunch of crazies I outed myself as an atheist and that was 1990. I've walked that path ever since and there is no public doubt that I am an atheist as I most certainly don't keep it a secret and as such I shall remain. Yes, I am a strong and totally committed Atheist with the "Big A" and my believer brother in law calls it.
I even set it all down in a poem for my living will;
My Final Passage
I want to go to the ocean,
I need to go to the sea.
I want to be around water,
I need water to be around me.
For my last passage across the bar,
Make not my grave a landlubber’s chore.
Slip me across the starboard fore-quarter,
Find me a place far, far from shore.
Allow not a single parson to speak,
Nor a choir to sing sad songs over me.
Remember me as I once was
Make my monument the eternal sea.
In the sea I can rest,
Be it calm or storm-tossed.
In the sea I can rest,
In the sea I’ll never be lost.
No flowers bloom on a mariner’s tomb
Down in the deep blue sea.
When I’m laid to rest down among the rest,
Fret ye not about flowers for me.
When fog rolls in and foghorns keen,
May there be one keening for me.
My spirit will forever seek another passage
In my eternal voyage from sea to sea.
Ken Hughes
I don't believe there are any gods. I even go a step further and say that I'm rather convinced that there are no gods to believe in. I'm a little bit evangelical about my atheism; I put myself into situations where I'm surrounded by theists who are willing to talk theology and I get into discussions with them (e.g., Bible studies, the Alpha course, etc.).
It would take a rather convincing miracle for me to change my mind, and even then I'd somehow need to be convinced that I wasn't just insane.
Wow, Lynchburg!
I do firmly believe that progress is being made against irrational beliefs now that we're in the 21st century and religion is humanity's greatest mass concentration of irrationality. Falwell was one of the leading idiots in America's irrationality movement and I detested him for the many demonstrably crazy things he said.. My bride of the past 45-years and I are from Eden, NC just across the line near Danville, VA and we've followed Civil War actions all over that exceptionally beautiful part of that beautiful state.
We now live near Decatur, TX and even here the atheist movement is gathering speed. I do a lot of writing for the local paper and I am a liberal, independent who speaks out against religion and especially the Tea-Stained Republicans anywhere. I'm roundly excoriated and I love poking that neocon and theocon hornet's nest.
Be that as it may my bride is also an evangelical type Repugnican as committed to her "relationship" with Jesse's Crap as anyone I know, yet we manage to compartmentalize our differences. Hopefully you wont have to live a lie forever, and if your marriage is strong it will bear the pressure. Good luck.
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