Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by CJoe on February 1, 2011 at 10:21pm

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.

Permalink Reply by deepthought42 on February 2, 2011 at 11:38am

Oh, no doubts here! I tried for years to force myself to be religious, but it just never happened. I finally stopped trying and I have no desire to go back. Reality makes more sense to me, and if there's one thing I despise, it's people who lack common sense.

Permalink Reply by Ed on February 2, 2011 at 10:52pm

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 

Permalink Reply by Laura Ann Johnson on February 5, 2011 at 7:25pm

I was raised Jewish and never got it. I still love the people at the temple that I grew up in because I have known them all my life and they took care of me when I was young, HOWEVER, they do not know that I am an atheist, and have been for a long time. My husband, a Baptist, I do not think knows either, although at lunch today, in one of our many discussions about religion, I asked, "Why didn't god stop the Holocaust if he is so powerful?" He said, "When you (me) die and stand in front of god, you will be asking him all these questions!" as I continually do about why people follow religion, and my response was, "What if I do not believe in god?" He said that "Maybe we are all wrong, but we will probably find out some day when we die" (not sure how I feel about this). I am convinced but still in the closet. I am slowly testing the waters a little in our small city, but I live in the town of Jerry Falwell (Google him if you do not know about this person). I feel like I am swimming (hard) upstream sometimes just to stay sane.

Permalink Reply by Laura Ann Johnson on February 6, 2011 at 5:48pm

Hmmm...I wonder what it would be like for this southerner to live in such a great city? Lucky, lucky you. A city where Christians are rarely heard from. I could not imagine how freeing that would be.

Permalink Reply by Wynprks on February 11, 2011 at 5:44pm

  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.)

Permalink Reply by Laura Ann Johnson on February 11, 2011 at 6:47pm

As a 49 year old woman, I believe that men do follow the lead of their wives beliefs. I am in the opposite way, sort of. My husband is an active church going Baptist who, I am sure, gets tired of all my questions about the belief of god and religion. I detest when women say, when something bad happens, that they will pray for them and have all these prayer circles and stuff like that. Jeez, enough already! Since becoming atheist, I have left behind my feelings of guilt over everything and the feeling that something is always ready to judge me. I look at people differently too, wondering why they will believe anything concerning a supposed higher power. I go by tons of churches daily (I am in the bible belt) and am sick at the realization how much religion has hurt our society, allowing very bad things to happen in the name of this god. Excuses to make it all o.k. I think of other countries and how they have wars in the name of their faith. I don't get the religion thing, I really don't, no matter how many people try to explain it. I work with mostly women as a teacher, so I am in the closet atheist because I just don't want to hear it, just like the men mentioned in the post about men following their wives.

Permalink Reply by Wynprks on February 13, 2011 at 1:38pm

As I have said. I am a confirmed American atheist, have been since a boy, but I have a half brother who became a Methodist minister thirty years or so ago after seven years in the US Army, he said he became a minister after seeing firsthand the devastation and the degrading lives people were living where he was stationed, we talk often on our differing opinions on religion and my lack thereof, and he points out how in their situation life is so miserable that they need religion to make it bearable, and on that point I can understand it's benefits, and we both agree that it's the extremists that take the worst of religion and use that as a tool of aggression, and from what I've read that aggression is mostly towards the Christians (mostly American) who are pushing Christianity into a culture where it's not wanted, but here in the US it's a different story altogether, here religion is a status symbol, it's a "we are better than you because we are holier that you and you must revere our god or be forsaken" and we both agree that it's the extremists, the loudest, the most obnoxious, that are giving religion a bad name, especially those who are infiltrating our government in attempts to turn it into a Theocracy such as is U.S. Rep. J. Randy Forbes who wants to put religion in all of our government buildings including our schools and our libraries, as a minister my brother doesn't necessarily share their belief in a logical, relatable supreme being, but bases' his ministry on the life and love and the good teachings that came from the experiences of Jesus, he says he lives a Jesus' life, and in part I commend him for that, teaching love and caring towards your fellow man is a good thing, my only argument is that there's no need to credit someone who may or may not have ever existed, but to own up to the fact that it is who HE is (my brother), he can aspire to represent the good in mankind without giving credit to someone else, because as atheists that is what we aspire to do, not because you'll go to hell if you don't, but because it's good for mankind, instead of saying go ahead and sin because Jesus has already forgiven you, we say be good or suffer the consequences of the law, not because of eternal damnation but because we'll lock your ass up, the bible was a good thing back in caveman days, mankind was undomesticated and uncontrollable, and an all knowing chief of police with unstoppable power was necessary, but today we know how to act right and the consequences if we don't, the power of an all knowing god has become obsolete except for those out to cause trouble because they have so many misguided followers to back them up, if we support the Constitution and it's present amendments, support our local police, and condemn those politicians infiltrating our government with antiquated theocratic laws of "Belief" we may somehow survive this out of control world we live in, because if we let them win, the self fulfilling prophecy that IS the Bible, will destroy us all.

Permalink Reply by Ken Hughes on March 20, 2011 at 6:37pm

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

Permalink Reply by MikeTheInfidel on March 27, 2011 at 7:33pm

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.

Permalink Reply by Ken Hughes on March 28, 2011 at 9:31am

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.

Permalink Reply by Wynprks on May 15, 2011 at 6:48pm

I don't consider myself convinced because I've never had any belief as far back as I can remember, I've always felt like it was some kind of a trick to get me to do/not do certain things, therefore I am adamant about the fact that there is no god and make that clear to anyone that asks, I will not coddle anyone so as not to hurt their feelings, someone has to help them grow up and quit acting like children, I'm 56 years old and I'm tired of grown people playing pretend. Sometimes you just have to smack someone in the head with a chair (figuratively) to get their attention, but I'm not mean about it, I do it with a smile : )

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