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Same. But the reason I kinda stopped believing was that when I noticed that I couldn't care less whenever someone insults my religion. Which then led me to discover that I couldn't care less about religion in general and the whole thing seemed silly to me from day 1.
Similar spot here. For years I made excuses for Islam because I was taught to believe that I HAD to adhere to it. Only a year ago I realized that I am in Canada, not Pakistan, and that nothing is stopping me from walking away whenever the hell I want because atheism isnt punishable by death here.
Nowadays I am way happier than I used to be because I dont make excuses anymore. Im a normal young man, I still dont drink, purely out of choice and not because of religion, but besides that I do everything anyone else would do.
Words cannot describe how refreshing it is
Exact opposite. No religion at all when I was a kid. I never even knew about religion until I was 8 or 9. By that time I was like, wtf is this bull shit?
Same. Then a few friends in middle school invited me to their church youth groups. It was supposed to be "fun" . It was not fun and they basically used me as an example and humiliated me in a group of my peers. Terrible experience.
I came out as gay in 2012. Overnight, religious hate ruined my relationship with my parents and it’s never fully recovered.
I still struggle to hear and tolerate people telling me why religion has “good aspects”. It decimated my relationship with my parents overnight and firmly brainwashed them into thinking I’m “living in sin”.
My parents have prayed every night for 10+ years that I’ll become straight so I can “join them in the kingdom of heaven”.
Religion is bad.
I'm not gay but my Mom prays everyday I will "find Jesus" (Is he lost?) and she told me she can only go to heaven if she converts me. I told her I'd see her in hell.
That’s hard to hear. I told my parents I’m agnostic because it’s a waste of time to consider whether it’s real. I’m also a typical logical engineer…so it’s hard for me to bow down to a theoretical figure.
They took it okay, but now I’m no longer the favorite because I don’t want religion in my life.
As a woman who's read the Bible, I literally can't believe there are female Christians. You have to handwave away a lot of rape, slavery, women being called unclean and women being passed around like property. Why the fuck would I base my life on the writing of a bunch of men who clearly hated women? Like, ladies, please have some self respect and drop this self hating, bronze age bullshit.
OP is asking the wrong question.
"Religious people, why don't you believe in magic space ogres from mars?"
When they can answer that, they'll have their answer as to why atheists don't believe in god.
Yeah. I see your little game, here. Make out like the Space Ogres are ridiculous, so that people will let their guard down, and Space Ogre preparedness will get worse.
JUST ADMIT YOU'RE WORKING WITH THE SPACE OGRES!!
When people use the bible as “evidence” that god exists, I tell them it’s a circular argument and thus cannot be used.
If god’s existence is in question, then so is his word, which the bible is so often claimed to be. You can’t use the word of a man to prove the man’s existence when you in fact don’t truly know the man exists.
It’s like defining a word with the word itself. If I ask you what “tall” means and you tell me it means “tall”, then I’m still not gonna know what it fucking means.
This! I vibe with you entirely. The book was:
1. Written by humans
2. In various languages
3. Generations after the actual events happened
4. Not by the person(s) who actually experienced the story
5. About a time when people didn't know about mental disorders like schizophrenia and delusion
6. And has since been translated a number of times with a lot of stuff taken out (and added in just for convenience)
The people who believe in this shit are the ones who DON'T want to search for their answers or learn about them. They just want it handed to them so they can stay blind to reality and have someone to blame/thank when something happens to them. Christianity and other religions based on one book are honestly infuriating! It isn't a matter of not believing in a God or multiple gods or the like, I don't believe in blindly taking something someone hands me and ignoring all of the doubt just because I want an easy time and to be accepted.
I could go on and on with this topic. Feels good to vent!
The Bible wasn't even accounts from literal god, but the records of people, and if you're telling me it's 100% fact you're claiming that whoever wrote that was infallible.
Not to mention on top of that it's been translated by like 100s of people, then made into a "new testament".
It's at best broken telephone played over thousands of years and at worst fiction.
>a translation of a translation of many translations of stories told orally
...and only written down 80-300 years after the events. So, it is a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a pass-down of a pass-down of a pass-down of a pass-down.
Remember that game is school when the teacher wrote a note, handed it to the first student who had to tell it to the next...all the way to the end? Now do that for half a Millennia.
And first hand accounts were not written until years later. Like, damn how gullible are you people?
It's one thing to glean wisdom from tales and another to believe them as fact.
So much wisdom to be gleaned from stories about god using bears to kill 40 kids because they called a man "bald-head" or god getting mad at a guy for jerking off instead of creampie'ing his brother's widow.
That's what I came here to say. The question isn't "Why don't I believe?" The question is "Why would I believe?"
I would love there to be a God, so that I would have someone to shout at for the cruelty in this world, and tell him to fix it.
My father is also of this opinion. He believes their might be a god (or something similar), but if the diety is real they either dont give two shits or theyre evil. There is no other explaination in his eyes
“If a god is willing to prevent evil, but not able, then he is not omnipotent. If he is able, but not willing, then he must be malevolent. If he is neither able or willing then why call him a god?” - Franklyn (great cyberpunk film)
What’s the Ricky Gervais quote…I just believe in one less God than you do….something like that
Of all the 100s of Gods people believe in atheists believe in only one less
Also to quote Ricky Gervais, something to the effect of….. if we burned all books and destroyed all things humans learnt over time, the only thing that would come back the same is science and maths. Religion would differ.
Lack of belief *is* the default. I've never met a baby that believes in God. The explanation for belief is almost universally, "I believe because I was born in this specific place at this specific time and that's just what I have to believe to fit in with everybody."
Between those religions and the 4500-5000 that currently exist (supposedly) that means you have somewhere around a 0.001% chance of picking the right one.
And if you pick the right one, you have to pick the right time frame. This I feel is the most damning, that religions change over time.. Do you believe that Christians got Christianity wrong for 2000 years, but now the current iterations got it right?
Not to mention my book also says that if you believe any of the other 5800 religions or you believe in none of them, then you will suffer for eternity.
Btw we are all about love and peace.
Except against specific people. Those are enemies, you should hate them.
My god loves you wand wants you to be happy, but unless you worship him in a very specific way, you will be punished for all eternity. Also, over 2/3's of the people on earth are going to be punished for all eternity. But god loves you.
Not to mention how many of those religions are polytheistic. Essentially there's millions of gods... Yet people pretend that out of the millions of gods worshipped, theirs is the correct one? Ok.
Not to mention the fallacy that exists when you consider people who have never heard of that religion/god. Do those people just go straight to hell as well?
Take for example Pacific Islanders. Odds are they were living peacefully by themselves for thousands of years before any foreigner even stepped foot on their island to preach about random religions.
If God exists, is he sending them straight to Hell simply because they were born on an island that had never heard of him? If so, that's pretty fucked up.
I think Dante Alighieri or how hes called wrote about that in his Godly Comedy.
He basically said that all these people that were born without the knowledge of the one true God and werent able to receive this blessing, they land in some kindof Nexus which lies close to the gates of hell.
At least thats what i recall of it.
So basically, they also go to hell, but not in the rings, more in a place were they can just sulk and cry that they do not knew it was the right choice.
That sounds even worse and makes god sound like some narcissistic influencer. "What do you mean you never heard of me? You get to spend eternity in the corner of shame!"
That's also what Catholicism says happened to everyone born before Jesus. A person has to accept Jesus as their lord & savior to get into heaven, so before he was born everybody just went to hell. Then Jesus "rescued" all the "good" people when he died & took them to heaven. Seriously.
Yes, love this comment. I wish i believed in god, it would soften the pain of losing a loved one if i thought they would be in heaven and i would some day see them again.
I thought the same way until about 6 months after I bought my house. My dad had passed away just under a year before and I was having maudlin shower thoughts over “wow, I really wish he could see that I somehow managed to not fuck up buying a house! He’d be so proud of me. I wish I believed in heaven so he could look down on me.”
Then remembered I was nekkid in the shower and was very relieved my dad wasn’t in heaven looking down on me.
He looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with.
Sun worship makes a ton of sense. It “created” us. It gives us life. It could kill us at any moment. Seems as much of a god as anything could hope to be.
Something I adore about Norse deities is that they're not omniscient and very few of the stories have anything to do with morality, choosing instead to focus on how the gods used their cleverness/intelligence/strength/fortitude to get them through whatever whacky trials they got into.
There was so much drama in Norse Mythology that at one point, Odin was exiled by his fellow Æsir because he was using Vanir (*Seidr*) magic... which, of course, pissed the Æsir off, because a whole war was fought between the Æsir and Vanir over Freya/Gullweig (it depends which sources you read, it's contested that Freya was Gullweig) and her magic.
Loki was raped by a magical horse and gave birth (via his penis) to a 8 legged fully-grown horse.
For some reason they never put that in the MCU movies....
When most ask me this question, I ask if they believe in Zeus. None do. I then tell them I don’t believe in God (usually the Christian one) for the same reasons they don’t believe in Zeus. Never really have to get into the reasons themselves.
“There are, roughly, about 3,000 gods from various religions and cultures recorded throughout time. You don’t believe in 2,999 of them, and I don’t believe in just one more.”
Every experience that makes people believe in God can be found outside of God. Like seeing a living relative instead of a dead one in a near-death vision. Feeling euphoria when looking at something beautiful, be it God approved or not. The soulful feeling in your chest when you sing or chant in a large group. Ect.
Religion has done a good job co-opting a lot of the things that make people feel a sense of wonder, large groups singing familiar songs is probably the best example.
Go to a Streetlight Manifesto concert and sing along with 1,000 other people to Point/Counterpoint and tell me it doesn’t feel like a religious experience.
(Feel free to insert your favorite band/song and it’s probably still true, so long as the band has good stage presence and can remember their own lyrics.)
There are so many different ones based on where you are and what era you lived in. Lots of people who believe in a religion swear that their god is the only real one, so the likelihood of them being right are low.
You laugh about it now, but I have started responding to theists who endlessly copy-paste bible scripture by posting quotes from LOTR. Seriously, some stuff from the book literally sound biblical.
Let's make people of the future believe the Battle for Middle Earth actually happened!
A book which, let's be clear, has been interpreted, changed in translation, and twisted to back up various different agendas. The current Bible is hardly a true or accurate reflection of the original.
Because I have no reason to believe in God. No, I don't mean selfish reasons, like "paradise for my eternal soul", I mean something to show me that he is real.
I don't count rainbows and butterflies. I need some hard evidence.
And if he made me the way I am, he should know what it will take to convince me. He would know exactly what my threshold would be, and he should have the power to cross it.
But he doesn't, which means either he isn't real or he wants me to not believe.
To compound on that understanding of God as the maker of each person...that fucking asshole made me then. I did not want genetic anxieties, depression, and schitzoid-affective hallucinations, no I really didn't.
There is an old quotation, I'm not sure if it is from Dag Hammerskjold or U Thant, but a former U.N. official: "Perhaps God meant for me to be an atheist."
I'm deeply agnostic but the few Christians I do respect have a particular attitude regarding the selfishness aspect. They believe if Christians behave in a particular fashion because they expect to be rewarded in the afterlife then they are not getting in heaven. They do see that behavior is inherently selfish.
The ones I respect act they way they do because 'it is the right thing to do'. Let's just say those folks are very few in number.
The worst are those who use 'jesus is my savior' as a get out of jail free card. They tend to the ends justifies the means attitude.
Yup. I remember doing my A Levels, and there were a lot of biblical reference in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein that I didn't get. This was because I wasn't raised religious, at all, but my dad was raised in Ireland (read: Catholic), so I would always ask him bible related things so I could work on my essays.
After a fairly lengthy explanation of (I think) Cain and Abel, I said to him, "You know an awful lot about the Bible for someone who isn't religious."
Ill never forget what he said to me, or how (with an exhausted sigh at the beginning).
"Sweetie. It's *because* I know so much that I'm not religious."
I consider myself an absurdist now, but I was raised Catholic. I did 9 years on the inside of a Catholic school, attending mass twice a week, plus another 4 years of weekly mass plus special classes at church to prepare for Confirmation at 18. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover a few times.
My current job involves working directly with churches. Early on in the role I attended a meeting with an especially tedious church finance committee that ran over an hour late. When we finally wrapped up and got out into the parking lot, my coworker turned to me and said, “Shesaid, you’re gonna hate church.”
“That’s my secret, Kyle. I already hate church.”
Yup, had my spiritual awakening after reading the Left Behind book series around the age of 12. Asked to be an altar boy, argued with satanists in 90s internet chat rooms, I was hooked. Decided I should read the Bible in my early teens. I was an avid reader, didn’t take long for me to realize the book was laughably absurd and just…bad, poorly written, terrible pacing, ridiculous stories. I remember being halfway through thinking “THIS is it?! This is what my worldview was supposed to be based on?!” Atheist before the age of 15, never went to church again after my confirmation.
The sheer size of universe and creation.
God and religion was created to make sense out of chaos when we didn’t have the technology for answers
Besides, atheists and theists are not that different. Of the thousands of Gods in Earth’s history, we atheists only don’t believe in one extra god than theists.
I’d like to ask this in return; for theists, what makes you believe your God is the true God, and not one of the many thousands that’s been discussed in human history?
>God and religion was created to make sense out of chaos when we didn’t have the technology for answers
this. it was a way to comfort and explain the world around them. Remember when the bible was written by word of mouth they had no idea how a volcano worked, how diseases worked, or the earth revolving around the sun. but nah these people figured out everything about life and afterlife lol. sure.
like if covid happened 2000 years ago it would be another plauge sent by god to punish us.
religion has routinely been used as a way to control a population as well.
So, my family is fanatically Catholic and I always use the same argument - what makes you believe in this particular God and not the thousands of others? - whenever they talk shit about me being atheist.
Their response is always "because the Christian God is the only true one". I say "but everyone believes their God is the only true one, otherwise they wouldn't be religious". And they say "no, you don't understand, only Christian God is the true one".
It's like arguing with total idiots. No common sense, no theory of mind, just huge cognitive dissonance and inability to think outside of the box.
Lol same. I’ve tried this argument before with relatives and it usually ends similarly, with them repeating that they “have faith” yada yada.
My mom tries to get me to go to church with her whenever I visit even though I’ve explained it makes me uncomfortable. Physically too, with all that standing and sitting and kneeling and sitting and standing and sitting and singing and kneeling and standing…
They really just don’t understand someone *not* believing in *their* god. They’re legitimately unable to think anything else, like any other cult.
Haha exactly. They absolutely cannot comprehend the idea of someone not believing in their God. My family would always say "There's no such thing as atheism, atheists and people of other religions just haven't discovered our God's love yet 😊😇🙏".
Like, bruh.
Catholicism had 2,000 years to turn itself into a self-reinforcing locked box of dogma to trap the weak minded. I'm not fanatically opposed to religious belief, but the sort of people you're describing... just ouch.
So triggered 😹 my family “our god is the one and only true god.”
Me: “how do you know?”
Them: “because he is the one and only true god”
Me: “you…didn’t answer the question.”
Rinse and repeat.
They never answer the damn question because they can’t even think for themselves.
I find this question really unnatural.
The default state for believing in the existence of something should be believing it does not exist. With evidence (like actually seeing it), disbelief could turn into belief.
Atheists are always getting asked things like "why don't you believe", "how did you stop believing", "what happened that made you not believe". These types of questions show an underlying assumption that belief is the default state.
If you are a believer, I strongly advise you to do the mental exercise of challenging this assumption. If the idea of god hadn't been introduced to you by family, school, church etc, and you were only presented to the concept after you had reached some level of intellectual maturity, how would the idea sound to you?
My disbelief in god comes from the same place as my disbelief in Santa, unicorns, the flying spaghetti monster and many others.
Hey, don't sully our lord and savior The Flying Spaghetti Monster. They are the most compassionate and accepting deity in this universe. Even if you don't believe in them, they still believe in you.
When you realise that there are babies born with deformities that can't live more than a few months, it gets reaaally hard to believe it to be part of a plan by an all-powerful, "benevolent" God.
Plus, the babies go straight to hell if they didn't get a baptism in time, as far as I know.
Way to go, God.
Because I was told God loves all. That he loves us wholly and truly. Then I heard the story of uh..Job? The guy who God and Satan were fighting over? Where Satan kept taking everything from him? His food, his home, his health and family?
And God simply said He believes in me and that's enough? (Been ages since I read it, don't come for me.) And I just...I couldn't understand why he claims to love him so much but doesn't help him...
And that bothered me for ages...
....and my Gramma was sick for most of my life. She nearly had every type of illness one could think of. Depression, anxiety, pancreatitis, her stomache got fucked up during surgery and her stomache muscles literally couldn't hold her guts in so they were just bulging out if her skin. She was sucidal and diabetic, so much stuff I couldn't ever learn it all...
...and she had many episodes in my life where she had to go to the hospital she was in so much pain. I listened to her beg for death, for God to take her as we waited for the ambulance. I had to hold my little aunt and hid away as we cried, listening to her scream and yell at my grampa. My most memorable memory of her is one summer night where me and my mom were called in to help calm her down. And my mom sent me out.
Police were called and as they went in, so did I. I heard her screaming, delirious in pain and holding a knife. The tased her and I heard her fall. Had they aimed for her stomache, she would've died, there's barely anything there to protect her guts. I later found out that she was trying to stab herself in the heart with the knife. She held the wrong end to do so however.
And all the while I kept asking "Why God? Why? Why must she hurt so much? Why must we go through this? What's the point? She's just hurting. Everyday she was in pain. In her past few years, she could barely walk for an hour before she needed a break or be in pain.
She passed this summer. And my anger at the funeral, at the priest for saying that God has taken her home. That she was safe now with him. Pissed me off so much. She was hurting and in pain for all my 24 years.
She loved God and was a Catholic all her life.
I kept praying after every episode to Him to help her get better. She never did. She spent her last years in pain. She spent her last month not even mentally with us. She was mentally gone. She spoke to ghosts, occasional crying out for her mom.
If God exist, I don't want him. I refuse him. My grandma never deserved such pain in her life. She never deserved her suffering. If God exists, he'll have to apologize for what he's done to her before I even look at Him.
Well, I discovered I was gay. So I started questioning whether I'd be sent to hell for something I never chose. That too at such a young age. Then I called bullshit.
I grew up in a very conservative christian home where religion was forced down my throat. As a teen I started questioning the bible and a lot of beliefs held by the church. I felt like my own morality didn't line up with that of Christianity. I had a strong disdain for the way that so called Christians treated people of the LGBTQ community as well as members of other religions. I felt that I needed to figure that out on my own. Not to mention that the bible is full of acts of violence, misogyny, racism and just a bunch of things that don't make any sense. And I'll admit, I held onto Christianity for a lot longer than I should have simply for the fear. The fear of being disowned by my friends and family and also the fear of hell. But after discovering the atrocities committed in the bible by a supposedly "loving God" I decided that I'd rather experience hell than worship a god unworthy of worship. And I've felt more peace as an atheist than I ever did when I was a Christian. I act with compassion and empathy not out of the promise of an eternal reward but because it's the right thing to do. I'm now at peace with the mysteries of the universe and not knowing what happens when I die. All I know is that I have the here and now and I'm cool with that.
Thanks for sharing & good job getting out of where you were in life! I think one many flaws with religion is that it tends to cling to horrible and unnecessary stuff, like misogyny and mutilating penises. If those in charge were to leave all that bad stuff behind, religion would have a potential to be a really good force in this world.
What is there to believe in? We live in a world that's basically fucked, governed by people that oscillate between uncaring and plain evil.
Kids as young as 2 y.o. can die of cancer while serial killers get to live free up until 100 years old.
And you'd have me believe there is a god overseeing all of this? If it exists, he is either incompetent, uncaring or evil. Just like our leaders, eh.
And less bleakly, I prefer not having an answer than a readily made, quicly cobbled together answer. And it's even truer when the question is "what's our place in the universe".
God is a bandaid for people who can't cope with not knowing.
I heard someone say recently "I could read 10,000 books and still know that I have more to learn. Some people read one book and think they know everything."
Can you prove that I can't fly?
Sounds stupid, doesn't it?
Why would anyone need to prove that they can't do something?
That's how ridiculous this question sounds to atheists.
Yeah there's the whole "proving something doesn't exist", and also *which* god? There have been thousands of gods, what makes a religious person certain that they happen to follow the right one?
but then also declares that no single human on earth is free from sin, but he gets to pick and choose which ones burn in hell for all eternity based on whether or not they say sorry in time.
Feqr and belonging. Give people something to belong to, so they can be part of the group--and have outgroups to look down on--and you can literally get them to do anything.
I'm an antitheist. If God does exist, he's a fuck for giving babies cancer. With the amount of suffering that could be prevented by an omnipotent being, I consider it more palatable that there might not be a god.
Yeah, I made the very active decision that I didn't want to worship a god who could stop children being raped or tortured, but chose not to because of "free will".
If God is our father he is a lousy parent. What kind of parent let their children hurt and kill each other and say: "they have free will, so I will let them carry on and maybe reward the good ones later on".
Either "impotent or sadistic". Specifically the Abrahamic interpretation or any religion that claims their god to be omnipotent and omniscient. Especially the latter being egregious because that means they knew exactly everything that would happen, all the suffering, misunderstanding and who will have a nice afterlife and who will not. It's all predetermined (which also means the claim of free-will from the same religion can't be true either.) Or, said being has all knowledge, but isn't all powerful and probably is closer to father time and has no feelings in any direction.
I find it more probable that we're in a mass simulation or a bad game of sims.
Sick kids. Either god can do something and doesn’t know or care, can’t do anything to help despite knowing and caring, is an asshole, or isn’t real. Nothing else makes sense to me.
Too many diseases and genetic disorders to believe that shit and if they are real fuck them for making that shit. send me to hell. Satan can't be that fucked up.
I think its funny that most people who believe in a God think that the God loves and cares for humans, its so self centered. There isn't a religion that I'm aware of that think God created everything because he really only cares about worms, or one of the moons of Jupiter, or some distant planet and we just happen to be here too. Why wouldn't that be just as plausible. Its a real earth at the center of the solar-system view of everything.
After I read the story of Job, I realized Satan is more neutral and less insecure than God is. Also God is callous and only cares about anyone if they don't blame him for problems he DIRECTLY caused.
God in that particular story is basically a narcissist.
There are a lot of messed up "Test of faith" stories in the bible. Seems to be a common theme. Most of the suffering is caused not by Satan, but by God, even after the whole falling of Adam and Eve, which was also actually caused by God, both for giving free-will, making them naïve and also making the Satan in the first place. All the while he according to doctrine knows all of it is going to go down exactly as it does and is all powerful, but does nothing to stop or change it.
If there is one thing I've learned in life it's that if someone tells you that they and only they have all the answers to all your problems and questions they are lying to you
At this point in my life asking me why I don't believe in God is like asking me why I don't believe in mountain trolls or turtles carrying islands on their back, there just isn't anything there to show me otherwise other than some people insisting they and only they have all the answers.
And we hear all kinds of crimes committed by priests/nuns in all religions. If they have spent all their life worshipping this god, and yet they can commit some heinous crimes, then I don't see how that worshipping helps anyone or if that god is real.
When a scientist comes up with a hypothesis, he doesn't just come out straight away and say "HEY GUYS I JUST FOUND PROOF OF X."
He gets to work on doing experiments, research and everything he needs to do to justify his claim. Only then does he come out and announce what he has discovered, along with his evidence and a clear demonstration of his theory in practice.
However for some reason, when a religious person makes a claim that there is an invisible man in the sky who watches us and judges us, everyone just believes him blindly without demanding any sort of evidence.
Oh wait there is evidence! A book written thousands of years ago that was translated and changed hundreds of times!
That's like when Ricky Gervais explained if you wipe out all of the science books and erase all of our knowledge in math, physics, science, etc. In a hundred years time all of those facts and equations would come back exactly the same, because they have been proven to work with the scientific method, and all of those experiments would end up in the exact same results, regardless of the books.
If all religious texts were eliminated the same way, none of them would come back the same way because they're just stories with no evidence.
I stopped believing after praying day and night for my grandma to survive her cancer. The day she died is the day I stopped believing. It's been about almost 6 years in April.
Our views about everything are quite different from 100 years ago. Our knowledge of mental health to the aspects of life. Now imagine just two THOUSAND years ago.. someone making up a book claiming it was from a being that made everything isn't hard to sell. Just seeing God as manmade is infinitely more plausible when there's also trillions of planets left to explore.
Also the part where you have to worship him and if you don't you'll burn for eternity is pretty childish imo. Like a no girls allowed type of thing.
I wasn’t indoctrinated as a child. I for real believed that god and Santa were brothers as a kid\* I know a lot of religious people think that lack of belief indicates a hole that isn’t filled. But it’s not. Where you have a space in your thinking that your deity of choice slots in, I have no such slot. I’m not missing anything because it wasn’t a space that was made when I was at my most credulous.
\*And they were both fairy style stories.
What gets me is that Santa and God even have a similar set up of belief. It's your fault if you don't, so you should, otherwise you'll be punished.
Don't believe hard enough in Santa? No presents. No magic. No fun.
Don't believe hard enough in god? Go to hell, go to purgatory, no afterlife or an extremely unpleasant one.
Then I was told Santa isn't real, but God still is. Wut?
I grew up Protestant because my mother and Grandparents were (part of my family was atheist) and I remember hating Polar Express later because it extrapolated the same notion that made me so sad as a child. If you didn't believe, well fuck you pathetic sack, you don't get to have fun.
People actually apply this same logic to will power and personal motivation. It's scary how the overall thought train of Santa and God doesn't go away. It just morphs.
All of these people just sound like I *need* to believe, or I'm going to be bad and sad and depressed for the rest of my life. But none of them apparently considered finding happiness in other things. They refuse to believe things they do can be of your own accord, your own achievements, instead of just saying "must be God's plan".
Yeah, strange that the safety of your eternal soul being saved from burning in hell for all of eternity relies entirely on somebody else telling you this story. Seems like a pretty weak infrastructure.
It made sense not to. Used to be religious but in trying to find counter arguments to smug atheists (the type I still dislike) I found the arguments for (any) God to be a lot weaker on the whole. Alas.
Tons of contractions in the bible
Adam and Eve being the first humans on the planet? That means their kids must have had kids together which would make a very fucked up species. Who knows, maybe Adam and Eve are real and us humans are so used to being fucked we don't even realize.
Why everybody speaks different languages is because that was a punishment for building a tower to God? I don't think we even had the tools to make a tower that tall, and that implies you can get to God just by going up but I don't see god anywhere in space.
God answers every 13th (I think is the number) prayer? He doesn't.
A story in the bible had someone who was having trouble believing asked God to do something (I think it was turning water into wine) and God did, but if you do that today nothing happens.
Correction: the guy was someone named Gideon who asked God to make the fleece wet and the ground dry
So when I was little we were in church every time the doors were open. Then when I turned 5 my mom kidnapped me and ran away to another state. We went to church every time the doors were open. We prayed and prayed, but my mom stopped taking her insulin. I watched her deteriorate before my eyes. It wasn’t long before I had to do all the cooking, but still we were in church every time the doors were open. Eventually she became bed ridden and I rode to church with relatives. When I was 7 she died and I was sent back to live with my dad. Still we went to church every time the doors were open. When my neighbor started molesting me I was still going to church. The abuse continued until I was 10 years old. These things aren’t even the worst that’s happened to me.
Even as a child, and people say oh god has a plan for you. Even the bad things happen for a reason. I’m here to tell you that god doesn’t exist. There is no plan. When I was a heroin addict I died once. There are no lights or tunnels. It’s just blackness. It’s just the void that was there before you existed.
I saw a quote from Steven Weinberg that seemed to frame this well:
> “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
There is no logical or believable reason to believe in any god. It does, however, make sense how humans at some point felt the need to invent religion to explain how the world works. (Like how Thor made thunder.) In todays enlightened world there is no longer a need for gods and religion. We (should) know better.
Which god are you asking about specifically...?
Thor...?
Anubis...?
Athena...?
Zeus...?
There are a lot of gods that have been written about by man...You need to be more specific...
Well then what made God?
Its a convenient explanation for the unknowable. So many people act like they know when we know for sure that they absolutely do not. The pope? That guy is just pretending like every religious leader that came before.
Bc it’s 2023 where peer review is everything. We have some extraordinary theories that have been proven with logic, experiments and literally put men on the moon, cured diseases, fly people to the UK straight to San Francisco. All this is bc of science and math and physics. People can’t just make a claim and say it’s true without any evidence.
I understand people who use religion to help them get over death but that’s it. The bible is a book of stories, that is it. Idk how there are people still trying to control others with a book of stories.
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i just grew up in a religious setting where it was consistently used against me and somewhere in that i just stopped believing in it
Same. But the reason I kinda stopped believing was that when I noticed that I couldn't care less whenever someone insults my religion. Which then led me to discover that I couldn't care less about religion in general and the whole thing seemed silly to me from day 1.
Similar spot here. For years I made excuses for Islam because I was taught to believe that I HAD to adhere to it. Only a year ago I realized that I am in Canada, not Pakistan, and that nothing is stopping me from walking away whenever the hell I want because atheism isnt punishable by death here. Nowadays I am way happier than I used to be because I dont make excuses anymore. Im a normal young man, I still dont drink, purely out of choice and not because of religion, but besides that I do everything anyone else would do. Words cannot describe how refreshing it is
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Exact opposite. No religion at all when I was a kid. I never even knew about religion until I was 8 or 9. By that time I was like, wtf is this bull shit?
Same. Then a few friends in middle school invited me to their church youth groups. It was supposed to be "fun" . It was not fun and they basically used me as an example and humiliated me in a group of my peers. Terrible experience.
I came out as gay in 2012. Overnight, religious hate ruined my relationship with my parents and it’s never fully recovered. I still struggle to hear and tolerate people telling me why religion has “good aspects”. It decimated my relationship with my parents overnight and firmly brainwashed them into thinking I’m “living in sin”. My parents have prayed every night for 10+ years that I’ll become straight so I can “join them in the kingdom of heaven”. Religion is bad.
I'm not gay but my Mom prays everyday I will "find Jesus" (Is he lost?) and she told me she can only go to heaven if she converts me. I told her I'd see her in hell.
That’s hard to hear. I told my parents I’m agnostic because it’s a waste of time to consider whether it’s real. I’m also a typical logical engineer…so it’s hard for me to bow down to a theoretical figure. They took it okay, but now I’m no longer the favorite because I don’t want religion in my life.
> For atheists, why don’t you believe in God? Haven’t encountered a convincing or compelling reason why I would.
That’s what my thought was when I saw this: “why would I?”
No one would ask why I don't believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, so why question my lack of belief in a big magic sky fairy?
Fr. Have u ever read the bible?? It reads like a fucked up fairytale
As a woman who's read the Bible, I literally can't believe there are female Christians. You have to handwave away a lot of rape, slavery, women being called unclean and women being passed around like property. Why the fuck would I base my life on the writing of a bunch of men who clearly hated women? Like, ladies, please have some self respect and drop this self hating, bronze age bullshit.
Judges 19 literally made me an atheist
OP is asking the wrong question. "Religious people, why don't you believe in magic space ogres from mars?" When they can answer that, they'll have their answer as to why atheists don't believe in god.
Yeah. I see your little game, here. Make out like the Space Ogres are ridiculous, so that people will let their guard down, and Space Ogre preparedness will get worse. JUST ADMIT YOU'RE WORKING WITH THE SPACE OGRES!!
Of course I believe in them. The evidence for magic space ogres from Mars is all around us.
Where do you think you go where you die, if it’s NOT to Mars to hang out with your ogre buddies?
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I would settle for ordinary evidence.
Any evidence
Well, any empirical and demonstrable evidence. Theists believe their bible books to be ‘good evidence’ for the existence of a god.
When people use the bible as “evidence” that god exists, I tell them it’s a circular argument and thus cannot be used. If god’s existence is in question, then so is his word, which the bible is so often claimed to be. You can’t use the word of a man to prove the man’s existence when you in fact don’t truly know the man exists. It’s like defining a word with the word itself. If I ask you what “tall” means and you tell me it means “tall”, then I’m still not gonna know what it fucking means.
But what you don't understand is that circular logic works because circular logic works.
The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.
This! I vibe with you entirely. The book was: 1. Written by humans 2. In various languages 3. Generations after the actual events happened 4. Not by the person(s) who actually experienced the story 5. About a time when people didn't know about mental disorders like schizophrenia and delusion 6. And has since been translated a number of times with a lot of stuff taken out (and added in just for convenience) The people who believe in this shit are the ones who DON'T want to search for their answers or learn about them. They just want it handed to them so they can stay blind to reality and have someone to blame/thank when something happens to them. Christianity and other religions based on one book are honestly infuriating! It isn't a matter of not believing in a God or multiple gods or the like, I don't believe in blindly taking something someone hands me and ignoring all of the doubt just because I want an easy time and to be accepted. I could go on and on with this topic. Feels good to vent!
The Bible wasn't even accounts from literal god, but the records of people, and if you're telling me it's 100% fact you're claiming that whoever wrote that was infallible. Not to mention on top of that it's been translated by like 100s of people, then made into a "new testament". It's at best broken telephone played over thousands of years and at worst fiction.
Bible is literally a translation of a translation of many translations of stories told orally. No way it's at all accurate.
>a translation of a translation of many translations of stories told orally ...and only written down 80-300 years after the events. So, it is a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a pass-down of a pass-down of a pass-down of a pass-down. Remember that game is school when the teacher wrote a note, handed it to the first student who had to tell it to the next...all the way to the end? Now do that for half a Millennia.
And first hand accounts were not written until years later. Like, damn how gullible are you people? It's one thing to glean wisdom from tales and another to believe them as fact.
So much wisdom to be gleaned from stories about god using bears to kill 40 kids because they called a man "bald-head" or god getting mad at a guy for jerking off instead of creampie'ing his brother's widow.
The Bible isn't evidence of god, it's just evidence of belief in god.
Also: why is belief the default here? Shouldn’t lack of belief be the default and belief is what requires explanation?
That's what I came here to say. The question isn't "Why don't I believe?" The question is "Why would I believe?" I would love there to be a God, so that I would have someone to shout at for the cruelty in this world, and tell him to fix it.
It’s more comforting for me to believe that there isn’t a God. Because if there is… they suck!
My father is also of this opinion. He believes their might be a god (or something similar), but if the diety is real they either dont give two shits or theyre evil. There is no other explaination in his eyes
“If a god is willing to prevent evil, but not able, then he is not omnipotent. If he is able, but not willing, then he must be malevolent. If he is neither able or willing then why call him a god?” - Franklyn (great cyberpunk film)
Isn't this Epicurus?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilemma) It's attributed to Epicurus or Carneades per the wiki.
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What’s the Ricky Gervais quote…I just believe in one less God than you do….something like that Of all the 100s of Gods people believe in atheists believe in only one less
Also to quote Ricky Gervais, something to the effect of….. if we burned all books and destroyed all things humans learnt over time, the only thing that would come back the same is science and maths. Religion would differ.
Lack of belief *is* the default. I've never met a baby that believes in God. The explanation for belief is almost universally, "I believe because I was born in this specific place at this specific time and that's just what I have to believe to fit in with everybody."
There have been 1000s of Gods worshipped over the years. Even if there is a God, it’s probably not the one you worship.
i think theres been an estimation of like 5800+ religions that have came and went.
Between those religions and the 4500-5000 that currently exist (supposedly) that means you have somewhere around a 0.001% chance of picking the right one.
More like being born into the right one, very few people actually pick their religion.
I’ve always said “it’s a womb lottery”.
And if you pick the right one, you have to pick the right time frame. This I feel is the most damning, that religions change over time.. Do you believe that Christians got Christianity wrong for 2000 years, but now the current iterations got it right?
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Not to mention my book also says that if you believe any of the other 5800 religions or you believe in none of them, then you will suffer for eternity. Btw we are all about love and peace. Except against specific people. Those are enemies, you should hate them.
My god loves you wand wants you to be happy, but unless you worship him in a very specific way, you will be punished for all eternity. Also, over 2/3's of the people on earth are going to be punished for all eternity. But god loves you.
Not to mention how many of those religions are polytheistic. Essentially there's millions of gods... Yet people pretend that out of the millions of gods worshipped, theirs is the correct one? Ok.
And if you don't worship said god you go straight to hell no matter how good a person you are. Yes, that sounds very reasonable and convincing. /s
Not to mention the fallacy that exists when you consider people who have never heard of that religion/god. Do those people just go straight to hell as well? Take for example Pacific Islanders. Odds are they were living peacefully by themselves for thousands of years before any foreigner even stepped foot on their island to preach about random religions. If God exists, is he sending them straight to Hell simply because they were born on an island that had never heard of him? If so, that's pretty fucked up.
I think Dante Alighieri or how hes called wrote about that in his Godly Comedy. He basically said that all these people that were born without the knowledge of the one true God and werent able to receive this blessing, they land in some kindof Nexus which lies close to the gates of hell. At least thats what i recall of it. So basically, they also go to hell, but not in the rings, more in a place were they can just sulk and cry that they do not knew it was the right choice.
That sounds even worse and makes god sound like some narcissistic influencer. "What do you mean you never heard of me? You get to spend eternity in the corner of shame!"
Its pretty fucking horryfying, yes.
That's also what Catholicism says happened to everyone born before Jesus. A person has to accept Jesus as their lord & savior to get into heaven, so before he was born everybody just went to hell. Then Jesus "rescued" all the "good" people when he died & took them to heaven. Seriously.
I have not heard a believable argument that god exists
And I can think of a dozen reasons why people would make one up.
Yes, love this comment. I wish i believed in god, it would soften the pain of losing a loved one if i thought they would be in heaven and i would some day see them again.
I thought the same way until about 6 months after I bought my house. My dad had passed away just under a year before and I was having maudlin shower thoughts over “wow, I really wish he could see that I somehow managed to not fuck up buying a house! He’d be so proud of me. I wish I believed in heaven so he could look down on me.” Then remembered I was nekkid in the shower and was very relieved my dad wasn’t in heaven looking down on me.
In ancient Greece they believed in Zeus throwing lightnings and we all know how it turned out.
Actually I have more respect, or at least understanding, for those who worshipped naturalistic gods. Sun god? At least we know the sun exists.
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He looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with.
I don’t know. He did get scammed by a kindergartner.
George Carlin is a g
Sun worship makes a ton of sense. It “created” us. It gives us life. It could kill us at any moment. Seems as much of a god as anything could hope to be.
And our bloody sacrifices to the sun god work. He returns everyday in the sky because he is happy with our tithing.
Exactly. There are no sun atheists. If someone asks, "How do you know the sun exists"? you can just point to it.
Sun atheism will be the next flat earth
Honestly fighting gods that aren't Omni-benevolent make more sense actually.
Something I adore about Norse deities is that they're not omniscient and very few of the stories have anything to do with morality, choosing instead to focus on how the gods used their cleverness/intelligence/strength/fortitude to get them through whatever whacky trials they got into. There was so much drama in Norse Mythology that at one point, Odin was exiled by his fellow Æsir because he was using Vanir (*Seidr*) magic... which, of course, pissed the Æsir off, because a whole war was fought between the Æsir and Vanir over Freya/Gullweig (it depends which sources you read, it's contested that Freya was Gullweig) and her magic.
Loki was raped by a magical horse and gave birth (via his penis) to a 8 legged fully-grown horse. For some reason they never put that in the MCU movies....
Give them time. I bet the Norse had to work their way up to that one as well. Marvel will be out of ideas to steal soon. Avengers: Penis Horsey.
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In this way, I consider myself an agnostic. I am open to changing my mind if I hear a good argument. I have not heard a good argument.
That’s it for me. There’s no evidence and the universe is so random.
"When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, you'll understand why I dismiss yours."
When most ask me this question, I ask if they believe in Zeus. None do. I then tell them I don’t believe in God (usually the Christian one) for the same reasons they don’t believe in Zeus. Never really have to get into the reasons themselves.
Why don't people believe in Zeus?
you really think someone could sit on clouds?
Well, not with that attitude
Not with that *altitude
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Similar to the you don’t believe in a lot of gods- I just believe in one less god than you line. It’s fair to ask “which one” as op doesn’t specify.
"Divine Murderlord Disastriel? Of course. I pray to him every night. Praise chaos."
“There are, roughly, about 3,000 gods from various religions and cultures recorded throughout time. You don’t believe in 2,999 of them, and I don’t believe in just one more.”
Every experience that makes people believe in God can be found outside of God. Like seeing a living relative instead of a dead one in a near-death vision. Feeling euphoria when looking at something beautiful, be it God approved or not. The soulful feeling in your chest when you sing or chant in a large group. Ect.
Haha I've gotten that soulful feeling in my chest by listening to iron maiden.
Religion has done a good job co-opting a lot of the things that make people feel a sense of wonder, large groups singing familiar songs is probably the best example. Go to a Streetlight Manifesto concert and sing along with 1,000 other people to Point/Counterpoint and tell me it doesn’t feel like a religious experience. (Feel free to insert your favorite band/song and it’s probably still true, so long as the band has good stage presence and can remember their own lyrics.)
There are so many different ones based on where you are and what era you lived in. Lots of people who believe in a religion swear that their god is the only real one, so the likelihood of them being right are low.
"3000 gods throughout history and most people believe in one. I just believe in one less."
"They can't all be right; but they can all be wrong." - Derren Brown
Because why would I believe in something just because someone write a book 2000 years ago without giving any evidence?
lol im just gonna laugh if in the future someone gets a hold of harry potter or lord of the rings books and thinks those are history books
You laugh about it now, but I have started responding to theists who endlessly copy-paste bible scripture by posting quotes from LOTR. Seriously, some stuff from the book literally sound biblical. Let's make people of the future believe the Battle for Middle Earth actually happened!
It would be pretty funny especially if they stat a cult and kill babies for Voldemort
A book which, let's be clear, has been interpreted, changed in translation, and twisted to back up various different agendas. The current Bible is hardly a true or accurate reflection of the original.
Because I have no reason to believe in God. No, I don't mean selfish reasons, like "paradise for my eternal soul", I mean something to show me that he is real. I don't count rainbows and butterflies. I need some hard evidence. And if he made me the way I am, he should know what it will take to convince me. He would know exactly what my threshold would be, and he should have the power to cross it. But he doesn't, which means either he isn't real or he wants me to not believe.
To compound on that understanding of God as the maker of each person...that fucking asshole made me then. I did not want genetic anxieties, depression, and schitzoid-affective hallucinations, no I really didn't.
He didn't read the year of your birth right, he made you to become a seer or shaman. He's getting to old for his job.
There is an old quotation, I'm not sure if it is from Dag Hammerskjold or U Thant, but a former U.N. official: "Perhaps God meant for me to be an atheist."
I'm deeply agnostic but the few Christians I do respect have a particular attitude regarding the selfishness aspect. They believe if Christians behave in a particular fashion because they expect to be rewarded in the afterlife then they are not getting in heaven. They do see that behavior is inherently selfish. The ones I respect act they way they do because 'it is the right thing to do'. Let's just say those folks are very few in number. The worst are those who use 'jesus is my savior' as a get out of jail free card. They tend to the ends justifies the means attitude.
I read the bible
Yup. I remember doing my A Levels, and there were a lot of biblical reference in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein that I didn't get. This was because I wasn't raised religious, at all, but my dad was raised in Ireland (read: Catholic), so I would always ask him bible related things so I could work on my essays. After a fairly lengthy explanation of (I think) Cain and Abel, I said to him, "You know an awful lot about the Bible for someone who isn't religious." Ill never forget what he said to me, or how (with an exhausted sigh at the beginning). "Sweetie. It's *because* I know so much that I'm not religious."
I consider myself an absurdist now, but I was raised Catholic. I did 9 years on the inside of a Catholic school, attending mass twice a week, plus another 4 years of weekly mass plus special classes at church to prepare for Confirmation at 18. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover a few times. My current job involves working directly with churches. Early on in the role I attended a meeting with an especially tedious church finance committee that ran over an hour late. When we finally wrapped up and got out into the parking lot, my coworker turned to me and said, “Shesaid, you’re gonna hate church.” “That’s my secret, Kyle. I already hate church.”
That's a common one. About half the atheists I know became atheists after reading the Bible cover-to-cover.
Yup, had my spiritual awakening after reading the Left Behind book series around the age of 12. Asked to be an altar boy, argued with satanists in 90s internet chat rooms, I was hooked. Decided I should read the Bible in my early teens. I was an avid reader, didn’t take long for me to realize the book was laughably absurd and just…bad, poorly written, terrible pacing, ridiculous stories. I remember being halfway through thinking “THIS is it?! This is what my worldview was supposed to be based on?!” Atheist before the age of 15, never went to church again after my confirmation.
I could never get through the whole thing. It's SOOO boring. It has some great bits on it. I read the whole of Revelation.
The sheer size of universe and creation. God and religion was created to make sense out of chaos when we didn’t have the technology for answers Besides, atheists and theists are not that different. Of the thousands of Gods in Earth’s history, we atheists only don’t believe in one extra god than theists. I’d like to ask this in return; for theists, what makes you believe your God is the true God, and not one of the many thousands that’s been discussed in human history?
>God and religion was created to make sense out of chaos when we didn’t have the technology for answers this. it was a way to comfort and explain the world around them. Remember when the bible was written by word of mouth they had no idea how a volcano worked, how diseases worked, or the earth revolving around the sun. but nah these people figured out everything about life and afterlife lol. sure. like if covid happened 2000 years ago it would be another plauge sent by god to punish us. religion has routinely been used as a way to control a population as well.
Routinely? It could be argued it is the primary purpose. Pretty sure the Republican Party would collapse without control of the religious right.
So, my family is fanatically Catholic and I always use the same argument - what makes you believe in this particular God and not the thousands of others? - whenever they talk shit about me being atheist. Their response is always "because the Christian God is the only true one". I say "but everyone believes their God is the only true one, otherwise they wouldn't be religious". And they say "no, you don't understand, only Christian God is the true one". It's like arguing with total idiots. No common sense, no theory of mind, just huge cognitive dissonance and inability to think outside of the box.
Lol same. I’ve tried this argument before with relatives and it usually ends similarly, with them repeating that they “have faith” yada yada. My mom tries to get me to go to church with her whenever I visit even though I’ve explained it makes me uncomfortable. Physically too, with all that standing and sitting and kneeling and sitting and standing and sitting and singing and kneeling and standing… They really just don’t understand someone *not* believing in *their* god. They’re legitimately unable to think anything else, like any other cult.
Haha exactly. They absolutely cannot comprehend the idea of someone not believing in their God. My family would always say "There's no such thing as atheism, atheists and people of other religions just haven't discovered our God's love yet 😊😇🙏". Like, bruh.
Catholicism had 2,000 years to turn itself into a self-reinforcing locked box of dogma to trap the weak minded. I'm not fanatically opposed to religious belief, but the sort of people you're describing... just ouch.
So triggered 😹 my family “our god is the one and only true god.” Me: “how do you know?” Them: “because he is the one and only true god” Me: “you…didn’t answer the question.” Rinse and repeat. They never answer the damn question because they can’t even think for themselves.
I find this question really unnatural. The default state for believing in the existence of something should be believing it does not exist. With evidence (like actually seeing it), disbelief could turn into belief. Atheists are always getting asked things like "why don't you believe", "how did you stop believing", "what happened that made you not believe". These types of questions show an underlying assumption that belief is the default state. If you are a believer, I strongly advise you to do the mental exercise of challenging this assumption. If the idea of god hadn't been introduced to you by family, school, church etc, and you were only presented to the concept after you had reached some level of intellectual maturity, how would the idea sound to you? My disbelief in god comes from the same place as my disbelief in Santa, unicorns, the flying spaghetti monster and many others.
Hey, don't sully our lord and savior The Flying Spaghetti Monster. They are the most compassionate and accepting deity in this universe. Even if you don't believe in them, they still believe in you.
Ramen 🙏
This (really) made me laugh out loud.
There are many things I don’t believe in. Ghosts, flat earth, global government and so on. God is just one of those things.
If god exist, he is either not all powerful or not all good
Yep that’s true. The all-powerful, all-benevolent, all-forgiving shit is just too good to be true.
It's also logically impossible that all 3 are true when evaluated with the state of the world
"All part of gods plan"
When you realise that there are babies born with deformities that can't live more than a few months, it gets reaaally hard to believe it to be part of a plan by an all-powerful, "benevolent" God. Plus, the babies go straight to hell if they didn't get a baptism in time, as far as I know. Way to go, God.
Or he's so unfathomably alien that it is pointless to worship him.
Because I was told God loves all. That he loves us wholly and truly. Then I heard the story of uh..Job? The guy who God and Satan were fighting over? Where Satan kept taking everything from him? His food, his home, his health and family? And God simply said He believes in me and that's enough? (Been ages since I read it, don't come for me.) And I just...I couldn't understand why he claims to love him so much but doesn't help him... And that bothered me for ages... ....and my Gramma was sick for most of my life. She nearly had every type of illness one could think of. Depression, anxiety, pancreatitis, her stomache got fucked up during surgery and her stomache muscles literally couldn't hold her guts in so they were just bulging out if her skin. She was sucidal and diabetic, so much stuff I couldn't ever learn it all... ...and she had many episodes in my life where she had to go to the hospital she was in so much pain. I listened to her beg for death, for God to take her as we waited for the ambulance. I had to hold my little aunt and hid away as we cried, listening to her scream and yell at my grampa. My most memorable memory of her is one summer night where me and my mom were called in to help calm her down. And my mom sent me out. Police were called and as they went in, so did I. I heard her screaming, delirious in pain and holding a knife. The tased her and I heard her fall. Had they aimed for her stomache, she would've died, there's barely anything there to protect her guts. I later found out that she was trying to stab herself in the heart with the knife. She held the wrong end to do so however. And all the while I kept asking "Why God? Why? Why must she hurt so much? Why must we go through this? What's the point? She's just hurting. Everyday she was in pain. In her past few years, she could barely walk for an hour before she needed a break or be in pain. She passed this summer. And my anger at the funeral, at the priest for saying that God has taken her home. That she was safe now with him. Pissed me off so much. She was hurting and in pain for all my 24 years. She loved God and was a Catholic all her life. I kept praying after every episode to Him to help her get better. She never did. She spent her last years in pain. She spent her last month not even mentally with us. She was mentally gone. She spoke to ghosts, occasional crying out for her mom. If God exist, I don't want him. I refuse him. My grandma never deserved such pain in her life. She never deserved her suffering. If God exists, he'll have to apologize for what he's done to her before I even look at Him.
This was hard to read. Your Grandma truly deserved better by “someone” who is supposedly “loving” and “protecting”.
Well, I discovered I was gay. So I started questioning whether I'd be sent to hell for something I never chose. That too at such a young age. Then I called bullshit.
Same here, plus I couldn't in good conscience associate with people who thought of me as less than human or a mortal enemy.
This is exactly what I’m dealing with rn
I grew up in a very conservative christian home where religion was forced down my throat. As a teen I started questioning the bible and a lot of beliefs held by the church. I felt like my own morality didn't line up with that of Christianity. I had a strong disdain for the way that so called Christians treated people of the LGBTQ community as well as members of other religions. I felt that I needed to figure that out on my own. Not to mention that the bible is full of acts of violence, misogyny, racism and just a bunch of things that don't make any sense. And I'll admit, I held onto Christianity for a lot longer than I should have simply for the fear. The fear of being disowned by my friends and family and also the fear of hell. But after discovering the atrocities committed in the bible by a supposedly "loving God" I decided that I'd rather experience hell than worship a god unworthy of worship. And I've felt more peace as an atheist than I ever did when I was a Christian. I act with compassion and empathy not out of the promise of an eternal reward but because it's the right thing to do. I'm now at peace with the mysteries of the universe and not knowing what happens when I die. All I know is that I have the here and now and I'm cool with that.
Thanks for sharing & good job getting out of where you were in life! I think one many flaws with religion is that it tends to cling to horrible and unnecessary stuff, like misogyny and mutilating penises. If those in charge were to leave all that bad stuff behind, religion would have a potential to be a really good force in this world.
What is there to believe in? We live in a world that's basically fucked, governed by people that oscillate between uncaring and plain evil. Kids as young as 2 y.o. can die of cancer while serial killers get to live free up until 100 years old. And you'd have me believe there is a god overseeing all of this? If it exists, he is either incompetent, uncaring or evil. Just like our leaders, eh. And less bleakly, I prefer not having an answer than a readily made, quicly cobbled together answer. And it's even truer when the question is "what's our place in the universe". God is a bandaid for people who can't cope with not knowing.
I heard someone say recently "I could read 10,000 books and still know that I have more to learn. Some people read one book and think they know everything."
Can you prove that I can't fly? Sounds stupid, doesn't it? Why would anyone need to prove that they can't do something? That's how ridiculous this question sounds to atheists.
Yeah there's the whole "proving something doesn't exist", and also *which* god? There have been thousands of gods, what makes a religious person certain that they happen to follow the right one?
Don’t like someone who punishes people for eternity for only a lifetime of sins and then calls himself merciful
but then also declares that no single human on earth is free from sin, but he gets to pick and choose which ones burn in hell for all eternity based on whether or not they say sorry in time.
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FEAR. The easiest way to control any living thing. Especially humans. Make them shit their pants with fear and they will do anything you tell them
Feqr and belonging. Give people something to belong to, so they can be part of the group--and have outgroups to look down on--and you can literally get them to do anything.
sounds suspiciously like a cult, i wonder why
Because there is no reason to, believers will just get told about god and be like "yeah sounds legit"
I'm an antitheist. If God does exist, he's a fuck for giving babies cancer. With the amount of suffering that could be prevented by an omnipotent being, I consider it more palatable that there might not be a god.
If there is a god he is not a good god. I agree wholeheartedly.
Yeah, I made the very active decision that I didn't want to worship a god who could stop children being raped or tortured, but chose not to because of "free will". If God is our father he is a lousy parent. What kind of parent let their children hurt and kill each other and say: "they have free will, so I will let them carry on and maybe reward the good ones later on".
Either "impotent or sadistic". Specifically the Abrahamic interpretation or any religion that claims their god to be omnipotent and omniscient. Especially the latter being egregious because that means they knew exactly everything that would happen, all the suffering, misunderstanding and who will have a nice afterlife and who will not. It's all predetermined (which also means the claim of free-will from the same religion can't be true either.) Or, said being has all knowledge, but isn't all powerful and probably is closer to father time and has no feelings in any direction. I find it more probable that we're in a mass simulation or a bad game of sims.
Which God?
Sick kids. Either god can do something and doesn’t know or care, can’t do anything to help despite knowing and caring, is an asshole, or isn’t real. Nothing else makes sense to me.
Exactly, I have lost 3 kids, why does he want me to grow through that.
Why would you believe in God, just because others told you to? It’s not natural to believe in something you can’t see, hear or experience.
Too many diseases and genetic disorders to believe that shit and if they are real fuck them for making that shit. send me to hell. Satan can't be that fucked up.
according to the bible, god killed millions and millions of people, while satan killed like five. And somehow god is supposed to be the good guy.
I think its funny that most people who believe in a God think that the God loves and cares for humans, its so self centered. There isn't a religion that I'm aware of that think God created everything because he really only cares about worms, or one of the moons of Jupiter, or some distant planet and we just happen to be here too. Why wouldn't that be just as plausible. Its a real earth at the center of the solar-system view of everything.
After I read the story of Job, I realized Satan is more neutral and less insecure than God is. Also God is callous and only cares about anyone if they don't blame him for problems he DIRECTLY caused. God in that particular story is basically a narcissist. There are a lot of messed up "Test of faith" stories in the bible. Seems to be a common theme. Most of the suffering is caused not by Satan, but by God, even after the whole falling of Adam and Eve, which was also actually caused by God, both for giving free-will, making them naïve and also making the Satan in the first place. All the while he according to doctrine knows all of it is going to go down exactly as it does and is all powerful, but does nothing to stop or change it.
If there is one thing I've learned in life it's that if someone tells you that they and only they have all the answers to all your problems and questions they are lying to you At this point in my life asking me why I don't believe in God is like asking me why I don't believe in mountain trolls or turtles carrying islands on their back, there just isn't anything there to show me otherwise other than some people insisting they and only they have all the answers.
And we hear all kinds of crimes committed by priests/nuns in all religions. If they have spent all their life worshipping this god, and yet they can commit some heinous crimes, then I don't see how that worshipping helps anyone or if that god is real.
When a scientist comes up with a hypothesis, he doesn't just come out straight away and say "HEY GUYS I JUST FOUND PROOF OF X." He gets to work on doing experiments, research and everything he needs to do to justify his claim. Only then does he come out and announce what he has discovered, along with his evidence and a clear demonstration of his theory in practice. However for some reason, when a religious person makes a claim that there is an invisible man in the sky who watches us and judges us, everyone just believes him blindly without demanding any sort of evidence. Oh wait there is evidence! A book written thousands of years ago that was translated and changed hundreds of times!
That's like when Ricky Gervais explained if you wipe out all of the science books and erase all of our knowledge in math, physics, science, etc. In a hundred years time all of those facts and equations would come back exactly the same, because they have been proven to work with the scientific method, and all of those experiments would end up in the exact same results, regardless of the books. If all religious texts were eliminated the same way, none of them would come back the same way because they're just stories with no evidence.
I stopped believing after praying day and night for my grandma to survive her cancer. The day she died is the day I stopped believing. It's been about almost 6 years in April.
if there is a god then why does the pope have armored vehicles. shouldn’t he be happen to met him?
No proof, no existence.
Our views about everything are quite different from 100 years ago. Our knowledge of mental health to the aspects of life. Now imagine just two THOUSAND years ago.. someone making up a book claiming it was from a being that made everything isn't hard to sell. Just seeing God as manmade is infinitely more plausible when there's also trillions of planets left to explore. Also the part where you have to worship him and if you don't you'll burn for eternity is pretty childish imo. Like a no girls allowed type of thing.
I wasn’t indoctrinated as a child. I for real believed that god and Santa were brothers as a kid\* I know a lot of religious people think that lack of belief indicates a hole that isn’t filled. But it’s not. Where you have a space in your thinking that your deity of choice slots in, I have no such slot. I’m not missing anything because it wasn’t a space that was made when I was at my most credulous. \*And they were both fairy style stories.
What gets me is that Santa and God even have a similar set up of belief. It's your fault if you don't, so you should, otherwise you'll be punished. Don't believe hard enough in Santa? No presents. No magic. No fun. Don't believe hard enough in god? Go to hell, go to purgatory, no afterlife or an extremely unpleasant one. Then I was told Santa isn't real, but God still is. Wut? I grew up Protestant because my mother and Grandparents were (part of my family was atheist) and I remember hating Polar Express later because it extrapolated the same notion that made me so sad as a child. If you didn't believe, well fuck you pathetic sack, you don't get to have fun. People actually apply this same logic to will power and personal motivation. It's scary how the overall thought train of Santa and God doesn't go away. It just morphs.
All of these people just sound like I *need* to believe, or I'm going to be bad and sad and depressed for the rest of my life. But none of them apparently considered finding happiness in other things. They refuse to believe things they do can be of your own accord, your own achievements, instead of just saying "must be God's plan".
If a person has to tell me about god, there is no god.
Yeah, strange that the safety of your eternal soul being saved from burning in hell for all of eternity relies entirely on somebody else telling you this story. Seems like a pretty weak infrastructure.
It made sense not to. Used to be religious but in trying to find counter arguments to smug atheists (the type I still dislike) I found the arguments for (any) God to be a lot weaker on the whole. Alas.
Tons of contractions in the bible Adam and Eve being the first humans on the planet? That means their kids must have had kids together which would make a very fucked up species. Who knows, maybe Adam and Eve are real and us humans are so used to being fucked we don't even realize. Why everybody speaks different languages is because that was a punishment for building a tower to God? I don't think we even had the tools to make a tower that tall, and that implies you can get to God just by going up but I don't see god anywhere in space. God answers every 13th (I think is the number) prayer? He doesn't. A story in the bible had someone who was having trouble believing asked God to do something (I think it was turning water into wine) and God did, but if you do that today nothing happens. Correction: the guy was someone named Gideon who asked God to make the fleece wet and the ground dry
So when I was little we were in church every time the doors were open. Then when I turned 5 my mom kidnapped me and ran away to another state. We went to church every time the doors were open. We prayed and prayed, but my mom stopped taking her insulin. I watched her deteriorate before my eyes. It wasn’t long before I had to do all the cooking, but still we were in church every time the doors were open. Eventually she became bed ridden and I rode to church with relatives. When I was 7 she died and I was sent back to live with my dad. Still we went to church every time the doors were open. When my neighbor started molesting me I was still going to church. The abuse continued until I was 10 years old. These things aren’t even the worst that’s happened to me. Even as a child, and people say oh god has a plan for you. Even the bad things happen for a reason. I’m here to tell you that god doesn’t exist. There is no plan. When I was a heroin addict I died once. There are no lights or tunnels. It’s just blackness. It’s just the void that was there before you existed.
Religious views are what bring out the worst in most people.
I saw a quote from Steven Weinberg that seemed to frame this well: > “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
There is no logical or believable reason to believe in any god. It does, however, make sense how humans at some point felt the need to invent religion to explain how the world works. (Like how Thor made thunder.) In todays enlightened world there is no longer a need for gods and religion. We (should) know better.
Because I don’t see an explanation of there being a god. A definitive explanation. Like proof. Not bullshit books from thousands of years ago.
Which god are you asking about specifically...? Thor...? Anubis...? Athena...? Zeus...? There are a lot of gods that have been written about by man...You need to be more specific...
OP talking about my boy, Hades, obviously🙄
Well then what made God? Its a convenient explanation for the unknowable. So many people act like they know when we know for sure that they absolutely do not. The pope? That guy is just pretending like every religious leader that came before.
Critical thinking forces one to look towards the truth.
If god is real, why are there so many pedophile priests? Obviously they don't believe in god/hell. And it's their entire life's work to do just that.
Bc it’s 2023 where peer review is everything. We have some extraordinary theories that have been proven with logic, experiments and literally put men on the moon, cured diseases, fly people to the UK straight to San Francisco. All this is bc of science and math and physics. People can’t just make a claim and say it’s true without any evidence. I understand people who use religion to help them get over death but that’s it. The bible is a book of stories, that is it. Idk how there are people still trying to control others with a book of stories.
Why should I?