This was asked of me at work today. Have I always been an atheist? How long ago? Why am I an atheist?

I remember a time when I could have answered that very easily. I could have defined the moment. Or, at least got close to it.

But now, I can't. The reason my Lutheran faith dissolved is faded to the point where I cannot remember why I bought into theism in the first place. I can date it, or at least bracket it to a time after we baptised our oldest boy, Primus. Sometime after what would have been Secondus died in utero. It would have been after that, too. I remember saying the words from a service I found on the LCMS web site to address such a death. I remember saying this service and being nearly unable to read it for the tears in my eyes.

So, it had to be sometime after that. Some time around seven years ago. Give or take.

Around that time, RD published his book, The God Delusion. I again, cannot remember what motivated me to get a copy of that book and read it. I do remember clearly how the faith I had held rather strongly for a few years crumbled after I read it and started to internalize what I'd read. Very much like the red pill from The Matrix. Every door I went through destroyed what came before, irrevocably. I couldn't un-learn reality. Nor did I want to.

The_Metatrix took the same path as I did at the same time.

To the best of my memorized reconstruction, this is why we are atheist now.

I remember being one for as long as I can remember. Mom doesn't believe in god but isn't too preachy about her atheism but she instilled in me a deep skepticism and curiosity that made me question the god-thingie from an early age. I remember there being this queue at the assembly in school before the classes started. Now after the prayer and shit were over, we were made to walk in a line and proceed up to the dais where there were different religious symbols (Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity) and most of the students would do a sort of prayer-gesture as they passed it. A few of us cut the line in short and never went up to the dais. And then I remember when one day a particularly religious friend was being preachy and I kicked an idol of a god just to piss him off! I was about 14 then...

I came to know of Dawkins through The Selfish Gene and by the time TGD came out, I was already a fan. Bought the book and it inspired me to be more vocal about my atheism. I joined the forum because I was kinda annoyed at Dawkins' arguments for legalising abortion which my naive 19 year self thought was a crime against the aesthetics of the process of embryonic development. It took a few angry retorts by campermon and others to set me straight.

Because the alernatives don't make sense.

I'm an atheist because I don't have any belief in gods.

Because I want to be one of the cool kids





That and the complete lack of anything like a god in my life no matter how hard I tried. Belief became a dead end. It brought me nothing but self-loathing, unworthiness and whatever the opposite of feeling special is. Taking my life out of the hands of God, karma and fate and into my own (not as successfully as I'd like) has brought me something like contentment.

Because I was born that way and no one managed to indoctrinate me.

I wasn't taught that theism was a ''thing'' until way too late in my development (8).

Maybe it should be, "Why aren't you a theist?"

Or "Why do you like to sin?"

Iz nais, ja?

Sacralicious.

Firefox spell check recognised that

But not "Firefox"!

I was schooled in a RC convent from the age of 5 or 6, and it was both horrible & scary. The nuns were fucking grim and they didn't really like me because I was born out of wedlock (the horror) and left-handed (oh, the horror). I quickly learnt that this god-creature couldn't be very nice because all his earthly angels were actual demons in grey robes.
As soon as I was free from religion-obsessed schooling I became obsessed with the polemic; I liked to read about Anton LeVey & anything anti-Xtian, I also reviewed many other religions & the silly stuff like Simon's Necronomicon.
When I grew up a little more I realised that 'it' was simply tripe, all of it. I studied all religions, to a minor extent admittedly, and found little of value in any scripture. Beyond some social cohesion I found the act of worship laughable in the extreme, that old funny picture we used to post - Prayer, or how to do nothing and still think you are helping - that is what I think to myself when I see the devout doing their thing. I wonder why so many of these oh-so-good people don't go about the world as healers or helpers, why so many prefer to harm instead, or simply pray and do fuck all.

I never labelled myself as Atheist until after reading TGD, but I did consider myself anti-theist up to that point. Now, I guess I am both. But worse, I 'know' there is no benign god at all (yeh yeh, hit me with it), I 'know' this because the history of civilisation points to no other answer - gods came and went as invasions ebbed and flowed, those with the 'real god' hate one another for being slightly different. No god ever brought the peace it's clerics promise(d), and those fucking Popes would climb over your cold bones to slit the throat of a rival. God does not exist, magic doesn't either and if you think differently then logical reasoning has gotchya stuck in an, ah yeh but scenario
But, my ass.
I know, it isn't the logical stance, and I know why - but it is, without doubt, this god-thing, all a load of shite.

I was brainwashed by my parents.

I was a theist until I attended a lecture by the late and unlamented Duane Gish given at my college in 1987. The quality of his arguments were so poor and the lies so transparent, I decided to investigate the claims of biology myself. I was raised in a very fundamentalist, inerrantist sect. One of the cornerstones of their doctrine is that if the bible contains even a single error, then there is no reason to believe any of it. So, following their teachings to their logical conclusion, I chucked the whole thing a few months later.

I can't remember when I had faith of the 'God is real and he affects my life' kind, even as a small child. I was raised in a vaugely Christian household, went through Marist and Jesuit education, was a choir boy and soloist for mass, weddings, funerals ect and attended church six days a week from pre-school to the end of high school. All the stuff you'd expect would keep me in the faith.

Following school, I stopped going to church except for major religious holidays and eventually identified as a 'Catholic agnostic' - someone who didn't know whether there was a god or not, but generally followed the Catholic tradition.

I can remember the moment I self-identified as an agnostic, but post hoc I also realise it was actually the moment I became an atheist. In my final year of high school, we were sent on a religious retreat with our peer group, down to a small town on the coast. A group of friends and I went out for a pre-dwan body surf, in a particularly large swell. After swimming out beyond the breakers, I found myself treading water and watching the sun rise, with the sound of the surf roaring in my ears. At that moment, I was overcome with a sense of something profoundly serene, transcendent and spiritual, but something that was absolutely not linked to a god or gods.

That evening, in wide-ranging discussions led by our very intelligent Jesuit priest, I made the point that Einstein, Sagan Twain and Russel were deists/atheists because they had "overthought it". That rationalisation rang false to me then, and it rings false to me now.

The actual moment I self-identified as an atheist was a discussion with a friend in 2010 after attending a discussion with Christopher Hitchens. None of the arguments he gave for the existence of god made sense to me. So I swithced from the position of 'I don't know, because I'm uncertain' to 'I don't believe, because I see no convincing case to'.

chairman bill wrote:I'm an atheist because I don't have any belief in gods.

Scar wrote:Because I was born that way and no one managed to indoctrinate me.

^^ This. I was taught to be sceptical thinker from before I can remember. I can only remember ever regarding religion and all that goes with it as a load of bullshit.

Nobody has ever convinced me otherwise.

I have many other similar fascinating anecdotes to share if anyone wants to PM me. Among my greatest hits are "why are you an a-unicorn-ist?" and "why don't you believe in stork theory?".

Nice question, to tell the truth I dont remember when I begin to feel that way.

I was with my grandmother in another city till age 6 and we were praying together before sleep every night. When I returned to İstanbul in the elementary school we had religion lessons and our neighbour which my parent left me when they were away were fanatically religious people, 5 times prayers daily, not even letting their kids to watch TV during calls to prayers and endless crazy religious stories. My parents are moderately religious not practicing worships but still theists.

Sometime between age 10-15 my feelings and belief began to weaken, I didnt want to be in that group any more. Although my character and way of life fits better to conservatives people they were making me angry.

9/11.

I stopped being a Catholic during adolescence when I realized what a nasty, body-hating religion it was. But I was forever wishy-washy on the topic of gods and religion. Then came the terror attacks, and I was shocked into coming out on the side of reason and against unreason.

I still remember. It started when I was learning about paleontology. I went to a religious school but they still taught us about paleontology and everything associated with it if you didn't go through the med school track. Also at the same time, I was in an interracial relationship at a conservative Christian school and that didn't bode well with the other members of that (the school) community. So I was studying evolution for school and the Bible for defense (my girlfriend and I were being assailed by religious texts constantly so I figured God would guide me if I studied the Bible to ward of our attackers) and I started to notice things. As any good Christian does when they notice things, they go to the seminary to ask the religious scholars about what they know about what you're reading and like any good religious leader, they know how to kill that curiosity.I worked.

Actually it worked for a couple of years. I had developed an anger toward religion due to the venom I encountered while in that relationship (we had broken up by this time now) and I took up a cursory interest in ancient history. Specifically Sumerian history. As I studied more and more about the Sumerians, I started to realize that Bible history was not what it seemed to be so like any good Christian, I shot off an email to the seminary (same one as before) about what I was reading and like any good religious leader, they know how to kill curiosity except this time I had actually befriended a group of atheists who kept telling me to study for myself. Fast forward a year, one of these atheists told me that if I wanted to find out more (I had classified myself as a deist or pantheist by then well I wasn't really sure what I was), to head over to RDF and the rest as they say, is history.