Are You An Atheist?

[Deidre]

Curious for those who have deconverted, do you still believe in a god or would you "categorize" yourself as an atheist? If you're an atheist, how did you go from believing in the existence of a deity to not?

 

Just curious, look forward to hearing your stories.

[Sophrosyne]

I would categorize myself as an agnostic atheist, because I don't believe in a god. There have been times since my de-conversion where I felt more at ease calling myself a deist, but I think I'm past that. I don't think it was so much a belief as it was wishful thinking that there is still a creator out there... it comforted me.

How I went from believing in the existence of a god to disbelieving? Just realizing that there is no evidence to support a god, and that in the past when I prayed it was more of a placebo than real. God is like an imaginary friend to people.

[mymistake]

Strong atheist.  We know beyond a reasonable doubt that humans created gods.

[Storm]

I think at this point, I would consider myself someone who just doesn't know if a deity exists. I am still in the deconversion process and have come to the conclusion that christianity is just another religion and that it is highly likely that there is no deity anywhere. But I just don't know. I am not sure I am comfortable with labeling myself an atheist. In some ways I am already there, but I am not quite sure that I am ready to label myself one just yet. It almost makes it seem so final. I am sure I will change as I continue my life's journey, but as of right now, at this moment, I just say I don't know.

[Jds22]

Agnostic Atheist for the reasons listed above.

[Overcame Faith]

100% convinced atheist as to the God of the Bible. As for whether there was a creator of the universe and/or some kind of deity in existence now or in the past, I do not know and think it is an unswerable question, so I don't try to answer it.

[Deidre]

Strong atheist.  We know beyond a reasonable doubt that humans created gods.

For some reason, I didn't know how strongly you felt about this. Pretty cool, thanks for sharing.

[Deidre]

I would categorize myself as an agnostic atheist, because I don't believe in a god. There have been times since my de-conversion where I felt more at ease calling myself a deist, but I think I'm past that. I don't think it was so much a belief as it was wishful thinking that there is still a creator out there... it comforted me.

How I went from believing in the existence of a god to disbelieving? Just realizing that there is no evidence to support a god, and that in the past when I prayed it was more of a placebo than real. God is like an imaginary friend to people.

Hello

Love how you describe this, it is very similar to how I came to atheism, as well. I hate to make atheism sound like an "end point," or like a place we finally "come to."

 

I'm open to the idea that anything is potentially possible, but there's no evidence that points to the existence of a god/goddess/gods.

 

A goddess would be cool though. haha

[par4dcourse]

Strong atheist.  We know beyond a reasonable doubt that humans created gods.

This. And I make no bones about it.

[mymistake]

 

Strong atheist. We know beyond a reasonable doubt that humans created gods.

You know Mymistake, it was you who suggested I become an atheist, which would ultimately help me with bipolar. I am now there and I have to tell you. So far it was a very good move. You were right, thank you.

 

 

 

I'm glad it helped you.  But just to keep things clear I didn't tell you what to do rather I was telling you how becoming an atheist helped me deal with my mental issues.  I have no guarantees or promises.  I only have my own experience and in my case my religious views were giving me many mental problems that were impacting my life.

 

I had:

 

- a terrible phobia of demons.  I was often terrified to go into the next room because I thought a demon might be there.  I really thought a scene from a horror movie might happen before my eyes if I walked in while the demon was there.  I also worried that the demons could send thoughts directly into my brain to try and trick me.  I thought some of my own sub-vocalizations were demonic in origin.  I kept praying for Jesus to send angels to protect me but I was never sure if that worked.

 

- the inability to make decisions.  I had to trust God but there was never any clear message.  So I hardly ever made any decision.  This turned me into a chronic procrastinator.  I would drag things out for years if I could.  I was always waiting for God to tell me the answer and no answer came.  However when I did try something the slightest bit of bad luck would appear to me as a sign from God that I was on the wrong path.  This tuned me into a quitter because I didn't want to be in rebellion against God.

 

- severe depression.  All of our works are filthy rags to God.  We are worthless without God.  All of our natural instincts are repulsive and offensive.  Nothing good is in us.  We have to hate ourselves.  

 

- shame complex.  Since everything we do is wrong whenever I remembered something I did I felt shame over it.  The bit about being covered by Jesus' blood did not help at all.

 

- memory loss.  Trying to repress my memories of all my past deeds made it hard for me to remember anything.  Repressing memory has side effects.

 

- traumatic memories.  When something would get through my repression it would give me panic attacks.

 

 

Most of that went away after becoming an atheist.  The effects of repressing my memories has taken a bit more to unlearn but I am getting there.

[Vigile]

I'm not a strong atheist as it's too close to an unsupported claim for my blood, but I think the probabilities of a god or creator are virtually nil. 

 

What we do have are natural explanations to every question we've been able to answer thus far, and the trend doesn't appear to be waning any time soon. 

[buffettphan]

Hmmm...definitely atheist as far as Abrahamic religions go.  I went the New-Age spirituality/creator/love-god route for a while but that didn't set too well with me either because I never could see any evidence for that either.   I guess I don't totally rule out some kind of something might be out there, but for all practical purposes, I'm an atheist.  

[florduh]

Post Christianity, I studied as many avenues of theological thought as I could find. Tried Paganism and Eastern disciplines. Searched diligently for some sort of a god other than the Christian god, which I knew wasn't viable. Zip, nada, zilch. I will say that Paganism and its adherents were fun, and I may dabble again and no god belief needs to taint that experience. The same can be said of some Eastern philosophies. 

 

So the only conclusion is that I couldn't find reason to believe any gods exist, therefore I don't believe they do. Of course I leave open the possibility that gods, demons, angels, fairies, reptilian shape shifters and anything else you can imagine could exist, but the probability is virtually zero so I don't even entertain the notion.

 

Apply labels as deemed necessary.

[LongWayAround]

Atheist has such a negative connotation for most people that I haven't used that word to describe myself.  I don't see any evidence that any god exists but I guess it is possible.  That being said, Atheist probably is the closest description of my current worldview.

[Leo]

I found myself out to be an atheist during my deconversion. Since deconverting, I have learned that I was increasingly atheistic in my thinking as a Christian during the past 15 years of my Christianity. What I mean by atheistic in that sense is, I knew more and more that supernatural interventions were nonexistent. I rationalized that Christians substitute God for unknown or perceived incredible odds to something. But it was more of a substitution than anything else. " We'll just say God," as an explanation.

I had shadows and images following me around as a little kid, strange things terrorizing me, some awful dreams that I revealed in another thread. I used to believe that was demons. But since they could not be made to go away by the Christian prescribed methods, either charismatic or old-world "never talk about it" responses, I realized there must be something else to all this.

Something else I'm surprised nobody has brought up: There is a tremendous amount of atheistic counterapologetics within Christiantiy, against all other religions. Even against the very deistic god other apologists use as a base to prove their own god. All over Christianity, there is debunking of every other religion on the planet. The well-formed debunking, the stuff I was attracted to, doesn't talk about these other religions being of the devil. It debunks them, citing insufficient archeological evidence for the Mormons' claims, the tax scam behind Christian Science, the myth surrounding Samuel Gardner's Wicca and the improbability of practices surviving the Church's genocidal acts, the paradoxes within Hinduism, and so forth. I simply turned on Christianity, unconsciously at first, and it wilted under the same rational deductive analysis. Many will admit that experience isn't enough, faith isn't enough. In fact I believe it's Karen Armstrong who complains that faith has been so reasoned that it loses what it once had. I'm not sure I see that as a complaint, personally. Not for me. But that about says it. I've illustrated other places how my deconversion went, but why atheism? This may explain it.

And, I also am an agnostic atheist as follows: Statistically improbable that there is a god, and if there is one, which one? What does it want, and how could we know among the thousands of available man-made images of it? Or is it something entirely different? And, it is impossible to know because it's impossible to test for a negative and a positive in this scenario.

I could never hold the hard atheist position, especially of the more so-called evangelical kind: I find that creates a one-dimensional perspective I never even held as a Christian, save for the couple of fiery years of my early 20s.

I'm more concerned with the moral philosophies of humanism, and how humanism has been so deliberately and deceptively maligned by Christian evangelicals to suit their end.

[directionless]

I imagine myself as a committee. There are several partial personalities that all need to be accommodated. The atheist seems to be in charge most of the time, but he must be careful not to step on the toes of the other people - like the Christian and the animist (I'm not sure who else is in there). Different personalities come to the foreground depending on circumstances and mood.

 

Intellectually I'm an apathetic atheist, but the intellectual part of me must be sensitive to the other parts and not trample on their beliefs.

[Deidre]

I'm really grateful to you all for sharing your stories.  It's really interesting to see how far we have come with our 'faith journey.' We're all different, we all think differently, but somewhere along the way, we all arrived here. It's neat to see that we can encourage and support each other on our respective paths.

 

So cool too, that I didn't realize how many here are atheists. That are comfortable with labeling themselves as such. I agree with some that it's sort of a sterile term, and why do we need labels? But, it is the easiest term when I'm asked about my religious beliefs.

[Guest]

Atheist.

[Orbit]

With regards to any gods described by any religion: Strong atheist.

With regards to the possibility that the universe had an intelligent creator: Agnostic (no evidence, may be possible)

 

I started out as a Presbyterian who didn't go to church, which probably made my de-conversion easier. In my 20s I studied world religions, paganism, the occult, and the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Apochrypha, and Nag Hammadi Scrolls. The God of the OT never made sense to me, and I never believed in the Trinity. After all that study of world religions, I came to see them, at their cores, as paths to the same thing: making some sort of peace with life. In my 30s and 40s I didn't think about religion at all. In my mid-40s I started looking for a spiritual practice and just this year realized that I was an actual atheist. It wasn't a decision, just a realization.

 

I became interested in Eastern philosophy as popularized by Alan Watts. This led to Buddhist meditation (no gods) and an appreciation for the Tao Te Ching as a life philosophy. That's where I'm at now. I like it. I find peace from it.

[Deidre]

With regards to any gods described by any religion: Strong atheist.

With regards to the possibility that the universe had an intelligent creator: Agnostic (no evidence, may be possible)

 

I started out as a Presbyterian who didn't go to church, which probably made my de-conversion easier. In my 20s I studied world religions, paganism, the occult, and the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Apochrypha, and Nag Hammadi Scrolls. The God of the OT never made sense to me, and I never believed in the Trinity. After all that study of world religions, I came to see them, at their cores, as paths to the same thing: making some sort of peace with life. In my 30s and 40s I didn't think about religion at all. In my mid-40s I started looking for a spiritual practice and just this year realized that I was an actual atheist. It wasn't a decision, just a realization.

 

I became interested in Eastern philosophy as popularized by Alan Watts. This led to Buddhist meditation (no gods) and an appreciation for the Tao Te Ching as a life philosophy. That's where I'm at now. I like it. I find peace from it.

 

And thank you for introducing me to Alan Watts. As u know, I'm coming around to learning more about Buddhism, and actually practicing some of the disciplines. It's been a wonderful thing for me so far, like you say there's a peace from it. Like how you say atheism is not a decision, it's a realization. So true.

[Deidre]

I can also be classified as an agnostic atheist. Although I don't see evidence for God, I am still very much open to the fact that there may be a God (hence the agnostic part). I changed from a Christian to an agnostic theist, because I was afraid to reject the idea of God and suffer in Hell. Then I moved to Deism, because I still had a lingering fear of Hell and I saw the cosmos as evidence that there is an intelligent creator. Then I read up more about the cosmos and realized I was believing in the "God of the gaps".

Then I largely shed my fear of Hell and I became an agnostic. Subsequently I realized that I also fit the description of humanist, freethinker, soft atheist, agnostic atheist and just plain agnostic.

I still struggle with the residual fear of Hell, but I know that logically, it does not make sense.

Thanks for this, Henry. I think everyone can see a little of themselves in each other's stories. So, what is it about hell that u think about?

I never really believed in hell except to say that man rewards and punishes so it would seem fitting that he would dream up a paradise for all the worthy people and an eternal dungeon for all the bad. Why would a creator of the universe act petty like man?

Then I think if there is a god and he does operate like that, do I want to spend eternity with him? Lol

[sparklingphoenix]

I am atheist now. After everything unraveled in my mind I just could not believe in any kind of god or supernatural thing anymore. The god delusion just completely disintegrated and I was left with emptiness about the universe. Since the god I believed in so wholeheartedly wasn't real I had no reason to believe any other god or supernatural entity existed. When I see some cold hard evidence that a god or creator exists, then I will simply acknowledge that it exists. Until then, I just have a hard time believing in anything remotely magical, mysterious or religious. In fact I avoid it like the plague. Been there, done that, not doing it again.

[sparklingphoenix]

I never really believed in hell except to say that man rewards and punishes so it would seem fitting that he would dream up a paradise for all the worthy people and an eternal dungeon for all the bad. Why would a creator of the universe act petty like man?

Then I think if there is a god and he does operate like that, do I want to spend eternity with him? Lol

To butt in on the conversation, >.< I had similar thoughts. Part of my deconversion was seeing god act like a petty jealous human in the bible, and that made me think that god was just a human creation. Even if the Christian god was real, I think he's a dick, and he would prove me right by sending me to hell (if there were one). If there is a god who created the world I don't really see why it would need my worship.

[Deidre]

 

I never really believed in hell except to say that man rewards and punishes so it would seem fitting that he would dream up a paradise for all the worthy people and an eternal dungeon for all the bad. Why would a creator of the universe act petty like man?

Then I think if there is a god and he does operate like that, do I want to spend eternity with him? Lol

To butt in on the conversation, >.< I had similar thoughts. Part of my deconversion was seeing god act like a petty jealous human in the bible, and that made me think that god was just a human creation. Even if the Christian god was real, I think he's a dick, and he would prove me right by sending me to hell (if there were one). If there is a god who created the world I don't really see why it would need my worship.

Well said. I've always viewed the god of the bible as being limited. He has limits of what he will tolerate and is constantly moody and insecure. So much so that he incessantly plots ways of destroying his own creation. He is threatened by mankind?

 

When we break it down like that, it's just a flimsy house of cards. And you see it for the farce it is. Hard to believe we followed this religion, right? lol

[FreeThinkerNZ]

I'm an atheist.  Technically an agnostic atheist because agnosticism is about what we (don't) know and atheism is about what we (don't) believe.  I don't know if there is a force that we're unaware of but I believe the probability is almost nil.  I have no hangups about the term atheist, it's the best descriptor for me.  

 

How did it happen?  I had started to read the bible more in an effort to understand it.  It wasn't working.  One Saturday morning sitting in my bedroom it occurred to me that biblegod wasn't real, and that it had all been a hoax.  My belief just fell away.  Instantly I thought about whether I could get it back, and I knew I couldn't.  (I think my belief had been slipping away piece by piece for a long time.)  At the same time I affirmed my skepticism of all unsupported claims about supernatural things and "spirituality".  Since then, I haven't looked back.  I'm very happy about it and proud to call myself an athiest.