[Astronomical]

(Original post by jam277)
Just wanted to know.

My experience, I used to be a strong christian until I was 17, I just wondered why I actually believed and realized that I could have been a hindu/muslim/insert religion just as easily as a christian if my parents were christian.

I then realized that the things that happen around me are the actions of myself and other people and not of a God. It was hard, but I think I had it coming, it was gradual, took around 3 months to convert fully from an agnostic to an atheist.

I also feel that it's such a barrier to so many things, that at times(before I offend anyone) that it's more trouble than it is worth.

I also find the theory of hell a bit sad, that a so called benevolent God who loves you always is letting you burn in hell, that is not love, regardless of free will, anyone who loves you would take you out of that fiery pit whether you wanted to or not, that is unconditional love.

Anyway TSR, what is your reason for converting?

There is no reason to believe that a supernatural deity exists, nor that heaven exists, or that hell exists. There is as much reason for me to believe in any religion as there is that a magical, pink, three headed unicorn is sat atop my head.

I went to a church of England primary school but it wasn't long before I started to disbelieve the miracles and other fables they perpetuated there. I suppose, generally speaking, my atheism stems from the fact that I tend to question everything that I'm told without being shown some form of evidence. To me, there is ample evidence against the existence of a God, namely that there are no observable effects to attribute to such a being, and we can describe almost everything we can observe through experiment (and it is only a matter of time before we have a complete Theory Of Everything), without the need for an external influence such as a God.

As Steven Hawking once said:




I think this is a powerful quote because it highlights the fact that many people who claim to be religious really aren't, they're just not a fan of the notion that once they die, that's it, it's all over.

[andyator55]

I think religion is just a 'shoulder to cry on' for most people. I have bee brought up by a very religious family however they respected my decision to to be an atheist. To be honest I do believe that everyone has very valid reasons for sup[porting a religious society however I have seen no evidence or proof (I do not see the bible as being a valid piece of evidence) that any of the religious tales are true.

I by all means may be wrong however that is what my critical mind has forced me to think. Without evidence I find it hard to believe anything. Hence why I become an atheist.

In other words as I started to question more and more of the religious entities the more I became an atheist.

I would like to point out that the majority of atheists do not 'convert' but meerly have never saw the point in religion.

[Ambry]

I am an atheist because I prefer to look at evidence, and there is really no evidence to prove there is a god.
Look at all the old religions, like the beliefs the egyptians had. Nobody worships Egyptian or Greek or Roman gods anymore, everything thinks they don't exist. Yet people in those times were convinced their beliefs were right, just like people today.
I just feel that being an atheist is the best for me. I don't have to stop doing what I enjoy, I can still help people, I don't have to look down on gay people, and I have a grip of what reality is.

I don't think you need religion to be a good person, and many religious people are indoctrinated by their family and don't have the opportunity to form their own ideas and opinions. Which I find a real shame

I don't think religion is necessary in a modern day society, it is something used a lot of time as a comfort blanket and to scare people into behaving nicely. It causes so much conflict in our world and I wish a lot of people could just look at the facts and see that religion isn't logical or necessary

[Final Fantasy]

Ex-Muslim here.

Wouldn't really call it a conversion though, more like apostasy and an understanding. And it's not like I can tell many people, especially relatives and family friends. This seems to be pretty common when it comes to Islam.

Muslim > just a confused theist > deist > agnostic > atheist (agnostic atheist I guess).

Took a few years from one to the last and those few years involved a lot of reading and exploring into things I never knew existed or never thought I'd be interested in e.g. other religions, philosophy and logic (inc. various problems), evolutionary biology and psychology, cosmology etc.

[Dinnes]

Grew up with a basic knowledge of Christianity. Parents have never been that religious, and have pretty much left me to it. I really got into religion around 11, perhaps as a psychological comfort, I don't know. I'd been like that since November last year: I'd always justified believing in God with logic, and my friend at that time completely destroyed all of my arguments. I couldn't think of any response to any of them that satisfied me. He said something to me which I will never forget:

"If someone challenges your view, and you go home and think 'I can't answer that', then it's not *wrong* or *stupid* to change your viewpoint. If anything it's more mature that you're being intellectually rigorous with yourself".

It took about 5 days for me to accept the reality that I didn't really believe in God anymore. It wasn't the most emotionally difficult thing in my life to go through but it was the hardest thing to accept and it was tough. I never had any choice in it though - in what I believed, I mean. So perhaps to ask 'Why' I am an atheist implies the wrong kind of things.

When I finally accepted my atheism to the point that I would tell people, I vowed to always be open minded about stuff - if something comes along that's irrefutable evidence, then I will probably change my mind.

Anyway, that's my story. Never had an issue with the problem of evil, but I had felt for a long time that the stereotypical concept of 'The Christian God' is inherently flawed.

Dan

[NR09]

When I was growing up religion was not an issue, it wasn't really discussed. But when we visited my grandparents (on my mums side) who are incredibly religious we would go to church with them. And I remember being in Sunday school as a youngster getting taught the famous stories of the old testament and just thinking that talking snakes, Noah's ark, and Jonah and the whale etc were just very silly. My young self just thought that these stories were not true.

And when in school I just continued not taking the stories taught in RE seriously. And I have always been interested in science and nature from an early age and growing up I read books and watched many documentaries (I still do) about science and nature from a scientific viewpoint that "spoke to me" if you will.

So I just made my mind up as I grew up learning both sides of the story and I suppose my interest in science and nature relegating religion as something unimportant and very improbable in my eyes.

EDIT: sorry, just read that back and I realise that its a very messy post

[Venomilys]

(Original post by jam277)
That's pretty interesting, wanted to know about ex muslims and why they convert. Is it hard to leave islam, compared to other religions, I know the media slam islam all the time, but did it seem easy for you to convert or was it hard?

When I realized why I was a Muslim it was very easy. Before my eureka moment I was a pretty 'bad' Muslim anyway (barely praying, doing half of my fasts etc) so this probably helped the transition quite a bit.

[FrigidSymphony]

(Original post by jam277)
Agree, it's a big comfort, it's a bummer thinking that you'll become nothing when you die lets be honest.

I'd rather become nothing than be forced to worship a celestial dictator for all eternity.

[H903]

I was born an atheist, just like everyone else.

[05sykesd]

(Original post by jam277)
Disproving it, well there's evolution and other stuff like abiogenesis and other theories that makes it more likely that he doesn't exist than him existing. We accept other theories as fact because they're the most likely option e.g. The earth orbits the sun in an ellipse for example or the earth is tilted 20 something degrees and there's proof that it's like that. There's proof that electrons have a negative charge to that of a proton. It's not 100% clear that an electron has the opposite charge of a proton, but there's enough proof for me.

I think that it's the most likely option that God doesn't exist.

I'm using science because I believe the argument is explainable by science. Yes it focuses on the natural world, but the science of the existence of humans and how they're formed makes it unlikely God exists via the way it's explained in relgiion. If there's another reason to prove God existence besides religion then I won't use science on it.

Since when has there ever been any doubt whatsoever over the charge on an electron?


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[TurboCretin]

(Original post by BeanofJelly)
Sorry to butt in - but I think you can be sure that something doesn't exist, when its nature dictates that you would see certain evidence of its existence, and that evidence isn't there.

For example - if I go to a garden which is not tended, the plants are overgrown and disorganised, the grass is not cut, and there is no sign of interference - is it not fair to conclude that there is no gardener? (If there is a gardener, they're not exactly meeting the job description).

Likewise - I look around and see a world determined by natural laws, which has no motives, no inherent justice or design or benevolence - no interference just what happens - I can conclude that there is no interferer, no external conscious force, no God.


EDIT: And there's nothing that controversial about this. We draw these conclusions, correctly, every say in almost every aspect of life. No eggs have gone missing from the fridge, therefore there is no egg thief in the house. I haven't found any nibbled wires or rodent droppings in my room, therefore mice aren't living under my bed. I don't feel tugging on my scalp, I can't see anything in the mirror, and I shower just fine - therefore there isn't a monkey clinging to my head.




Ah but if there was a God, I can be pretty sure there'd be pretty good evidence to believe he existed. It's just not plausible that God can exist and there will be no evidence of it.

Therefore no evidence = no God.

Not with an absolute certainty perhaps, but with the same reasonable certainty I apply every day to other things like egg thieves, mice under the bed, and monkeys clinging to my head.


EDIT: And btw, you can bet your trousers that if there was a long history of people believing in monkeys clinging to our heads, and many people in the world, otherwise intelligent and rational, were still raised with that belief and believed it strongly, and attended meetings about it, and entire countries based their laws upon it, and even the people who didn't really believe it were sort of still influenced by it (say, monkey repellant hairstyles remain the cultural norm) that I could as easily be having an argument about that instead of God. And it would seem controversial for me to conclude that head-clinging-monkeys don't exist.

I don't believe that there's a 5p coin under this sofa, and neither do I have any evidence to believe that there is. But I don't believe that there isn't a 5p coin under it merely on that basis. Imagine I have no means by which to check. How does this differ from thinking about the existence of God?

And you base your entire argument around the assumption that God would play an active role in our universe, which isn't necessarily the case at all. I'm not talking here about the Christian God, nor necessarily any particular conception of God which humans have sought to base a religion upon. We can't refute the possibility that an entirely sedentary God exists. Sure, he'd be a pretty lousy gardener, but maybe he likes weeds. Unlike a gardener tending to his employer's garden, nobody argues that God exists to serve our interests.

Your precepts (no particular evidence of order/natural wordly bias toward objectively 'good' occurrences or against bad ones) work as a basis for naturalism, but they don't really have any bearing on the belief or otherwise in the existence of a God.

[Caribbeantwist]

People say they can't believe in God because there is no evidence he exists.
Well what evidence do they have that God doesn't exist?


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[TurboCretin]

(Original post by G56)
Because believing something 'does not exist' should be the default in situations where there is no evidence for either side.

If I said that I have a unicorn under my bed. You cant prove or 'disprove' the unicorn. But you dont believe it exists anyway.
There are an infinite number of 'un-disprovable' claims I can make. So the default is to not believe anything until you have proof for it in the first place.

If you don't have any good reason to believe either way, you should suspend judgment. Either unicorns exist, or they don't. There is no middle ground there. But we do have the luxury of being uncertain in varying degrees. Though it might not be very psychologically satisfying to be unsure of something, it is important to become comfortable with it to avoid falling prey to flawed black-and-white thinking.

[Final Fantasy]

(Original post by alexandraa)
People say they can't believe in God because there is no evidence he exists.
Well what evidence do they have that God doesn't exist?


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Replace the word 'God' with something else, e.g. a celestial and eternal pink dragon that blows out marshmallows... or Marshon Goddess, for short. These marshmallows cannot be detected in any way and are used by the Marshon Goddess to watch over us and judge our every thoughts and actions.

Now what do you think is wrong there?

[G56]

(Original post by TurboCretin)
If you don't have any good reason to believe either way, you should suspend judgment. Either unicorns exist, or they don't. There is no middle ground there. But we do have the luxury of being uncertain in varying degrees. Though it might not be very psychologically satisfying to be unsure of something, it is important to become comfortable with it to avoid falling prey to flawed black-and-white thinking.

Its similar to the 'innocent until proven guilty' basis in law.
If there is no affirmative evidence for something, you don't believe it.
So im assuming your agnostic about unicorns, goblins and vampires?

[TurboCretin]

(Original post by jam277)
I know. But as a scientist, I use the God hypothesis, the null hypothesis is that he doesn't exist. If I have proof that he's there, then he exists. Just believe that we can say that the absence of God can apply to so many situations, I can say that I am wearing green trousers when I have no green trousers. Proof is me saying it, but you don't know unless you see, even though I've already said I don't have green trousers so it's very unlikely I'll be wearing them.

Also, the only evidence of God is related to religions, which to me seems unreliable as evidence.

Null hypotheses are no basis for a claim to knowledge, though. Or are you still an agnostic? I assumed from your previous posts that you had rejected agnosticism in favour of a 'strong atheistic' stance.

[TurboCretin]

(Original post by G56)
Its similar to the 'innocent until proven guilty' basis in law.
If there is no affirmative evidence for something, you don't believe it.
So im assuming your agnostic about unicorns, goblins and vampires?

Well I agree with that, but that's not what you're saying. What you're saying is "if there is no affirmative evidence for something, you believe the opposite". In a case where there is no support for the negation either, you run into a contradiction. Do you not see the problem here?

I don't believe that goblins, unicorns or vampires are real. That's enough for me.

[miser]

I de-converted at age 16 or 17 from devout Christian (protestant) to atheist.

[babyjustin]

I am an atheist because I could never convince myself to believe wholeheartedly in something that isn't there.

[Hypocrism]

(Original post by TurboCretin)
In a case where there is no support for the negation either, you run into a contradiction. Do you not see the problem here?

The lack of positive evidence for something is support for negation. You can't have a situation where there is no evidence for something and no evidence against something, because the absence of evidence against that thing is the evidence we find for something.

Before people spout rubbish about "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" - that's the most clichéd, incorrect phrase that humans ever invented. It's entirely wrong. If we have no evidence for God, that gap equates to evidence against God. If we can't find evidence for something, despite years of attempting to, that is evidence that it doesn't exist.

Suppose we are doing a scientific test. We test for the aether. What do tests show up with? A lack of evidence for the aether. We predict what would happen if the aether exists, and fail to find this evidence. Hence we have evidence that the aether doesn't exist. Do people claim that the aether can still exist because there is no evidence for its absence? No.

Somehow people managed to twist words into the catchy, but incorrect, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".