Discussion When/how did you become an atheist?

[Unattainable666]

That's horrible… I'm so sorry for your loss

There really isn't. Otherwise we wouldn't be here praying we die in our sleep so we don't have to violently take our own lives.

I agree with you 100%

 

[venin]

I was always an atheist, all my life but I still had some hope that there was some sort of higher power watching over us. I prayed every night that this higher power would make me more fortunate later in my life but it really didn't work. Maybe around 3 years ago I stopped praying and just dealt with the fact that all I'll ever do thats worthwhile in this world is ctb, and very soon, hopefully.

I hope you have a peaceful ending

I've always been one. My family tried to force me to go to church as a kid and I was having none of it. I'm about as anti religious as they come lol

This is music to my ears right now

What are your reasons though? I'm just curious

 

[アホペンギン]

I wonder if this discussion is relevant & appropriate in a "suicide discussion" section? Perhaps it would belong more in the off topic- politics & philosophy section

I think its relevant due to the fact that many people to this day are atheists because of loss of hope - the so called "God" did not fix any of their problems and consequently became suicidal.

By the way, do you come from a french speaking country? (Offtopic, I know)

 

[thgilrats]

No-one in my family believes in god, so in the childhood I, obviously, wasn't taught, that there's "someone up there who's watching you and judging you", so I wasn't religious in the first place, but I've certainly tried to believe in someone. But, funny thing, after each time I prayed to him/her/them, either nothing happened or everything became even worse.

I do not believe in gods, those are ridiculous to me, but even if those exist, they didn't even give me a chance to believe in them. Then why bother?

 

[Lost Magic]

I didn't become an atheist. I was raised Catholic and I do believe in God. However, I consider myself to be more spiritual than scriptural. God gave everybody free will and tbh humans (in my opinion) have failed as a species. It's not God's fault that we fucked up as a race. All we can do is work on ourselves and be the best we can be while we are still living this human experience. We are all one, but we forget sometimes. I hope I can kill or at least minimize my ego while I am still around. Peace X

 

[venin]

No-one in my family believes in god, so in the childhood I, obviously, wasn't taught, that there's "someone up there who's watching you and judging you", so I wasn't religious in the first place, but I've certainly tried to believe in someone. But, funny thing, after each time I prayed to him/her/them, either nothing happened or everything became even worse.

I do not believe in gods, those are ridiculous to me, but even if those exist, they didn't even give me a chance to believe in them. Then why bother?

Sorry for laughing but you really made me laugh and I've had an awful day, so thank you.

Yeah, it's just absurd. I think it's just lucky people calling luck "God" and unlucky trying to make it through another day without slashing their veins

I didn't become an atheist. I was raised Catholic and I do believe in God. However, I consider myself to be more spiritual than scriptural. God gave everybody free will and tbh humans (in my opinion) have failed as a species. It's not God's fault that we fucked up as a race. All we can do is work on ourselves and be the best we can be while we are still living this human experience. We are all one, but we forget sometimes. I hope I can kill or at least minimize my ego while I am still around. Peace X

I respect your opinion and if it brings you any kind of benefit it's good but…

What free will do you think a sexually abused child who commits suicide had?
If he was tormented by emotional pain, insecurity, ptsd etc. and just could not take the pain anymore. Is he to blame for that?

Do you know Adam Maier-Clayton's case?
He was one of many people to have psycho-somatic pain so bad that he felt like he was burning alive almost every second of the day. His sleep was really impaired etc. etc.
All in all, he went through excruciating pain for years, he did all he could, he was really an awesome human being, and ended up taking N.

What free will did these two people have?

It would be free will if everyone had the A - Z options.

But what if you have to choose between A1 and A2? Both being living hell.

What are the choices of most of the SaSu members?
Regarding what can we exert our free will?

A1. A life of pure torture

A2. CTB-ing

?

How have we failed as humans?


I realize that there's a big amount of people who have fucked up by making bad decisions, here and also in the rest of society, but if there's free will, shouldn't we all be able to exert it?

Where's the free will of a two year old who dies of cancer?


& if God created us from scratch are we to blame that he made us so flawed? If he's omniscient and omnipresent and atemporal and perfect, didn't he know we would get this fucked up from the beginning?

If he's perfect, why are we imperfect?

Why the free will? What's the point of it?

To test us? Why? Why not make us flawless from the beggining so we could just enjoy ourselves, and the planet and everything else?

I'm not in the best state myself so I don't know if my eloquence is the best right now, but I hope I've managed to express my opinion

 

[tpboy]

A couple reasons. If God really wanted us to know, love and follow him he would not make himself so hard to find. The ultimate game of hide and go seek. Secondly, if you are talking about the Bible it has mostly properties that men would need to control and subdue men. Mind control. There is no proof that any of those events ever happened. No proof of any miracles in the last 2000 years.

How did that happen?

A couple reasons. If God really wanted us to know, love and follow him he would not make himself so hard to find. The ultimate game of hide and go seek. Secondly, if you are talking about the Bible it has mostly properties that men would need to control and subdue men. Mind control. There is no proof that any of those events ever happened. No proof of any miracles in the last 2000 years. The only thing that keep it going is your parents, plain and simple.

 

[venin]

Chapeau to you, sir.

"ultimate game of hide and seek"

" if you are talking about the Bible it has mostly properties that men would need to control and subdue men"

I wish you nothing but the best

 

[tpboy]

The only real difference between God and Santa or the tooth fairy is that at some point we decide that they are not real. We are indoctrinated to all of them by our parents most likely. Why do we no longer believe in the Greek gods? Why do we not pray to Poseidon when we need rainfall? They are all bronze age beliefs. Fucking Gods and Deamons and spirits and supernatural occurrences. I find it difficult to believe people actually put faith in it.

 

[Tobacco]

And why did you eventually leave hinduism?

I just said in my first post?
Also, I remember reading this passage. I believed 100% of things that happened to people were because of karma (which now that I think about it doesn't make any sense either. How did stuff happened to the first beings if they had done nothing?). Then I read this explanation by my guru about how stuff that happens to humans is either by ACCIDENT or because of karma. That inmediately disturbed me. It meant that god let bad stuff happen to me and I was just going to be a victim of it, not because I did anything to deserve it. Which percent of things happened for accident? 40%? 50%? 99%?

 

[Gonnerr]

Very young , maybe 12, i did see the bullshit really young , sniffing it like crap.

 

[edu0z]

What did you feel?

I don't feel anything special... I saw things... that man tells me things about me that nobody could know (not generic things like the horoscope or that nonsense, specific and concrete things that unless he was inside my head it was impossible to know, and also things about my future that ended up materializing. Again, they were not generic things that you could know with psychology or by observing me, it was super concrete things that nobody would expect)... so I decided to give it a try... it's an expensive religion and I can't say specific things about what we do but you can research it. it convinced me in part because he doesn't get any money with it, you have to buy materials but the godfather doesn't earn anything with it.

 

[Kera]

I was already born as an atheist and I am one up to and including today. Nevertheless, I respect the faith of others.

 

[Veketal]

Christians and Muslims cause so much pain and harm to other people. I know that something built on hate, war, and greed can't be "divine", so there's really no reason to even humor the possibility of one almighty deity.

That being said, I love Mythology. One of my special interests. I just hate it when it's turned to politics.

 

[Takamagahara]

Every human is born an atheist. Some people just re-learn it.

Sophistry aside, and at the risk of coming across as a total neckbeard, it was a basic observation. The existence of a higher power is simply not self-evident, and any rudimentary study of religion as a cultural practice will reveal that the very concept deity is nothing more than a narrative tool used to either weave allegorical narratives or to fill gaps in epistemological and empirical methodology.

In other words: humans invented the concept of God(s) in order to tell each other stories or to teach people about things.

 

[Darkover]

there's no god that creates all this then just abandons it all
i think it's obvious there's no god at all

 

[Kera]

Every human is born an atheist. Some people just re-learn it.

Yes, I agree with you. I just didn't want to go into it.
My mother was Catholic and my father was evangelical. But they were only so in their childhood and adolescence.
You are born as a human being without faith in anything. You get to know the concept of faith only a little later. Depending on when and by whom, one has the chance to decide against it and then live as an atheist or one is indoctrinated early by parents and society and then has only a very small chance to decide against believing in a God through thorough reflection.

 

[Himalayan]

When I saw that my pp wasn't big enough

 

[Kera]

there's no god that creates all this then just abandons it all
i think it's obvious there's no god at all

The question is from a Christian, not from me: How do you know that there is no God? Just because you haven't seen him yet??

 

[Darkover]

The question is from a Christian, not from me: How do you know that there is no God? Just because you haven't seen him yet??

(1)there's no scientific evidence for god
(2)if there was a god where is he
(3)what kind of mad man that has the power to create heven send all his children to planet earth to suffer for no resaon other than to win the devil
(4)sorry to say but religion is man made if you can't figure that out for your self then there is no helping you
(5)it's clear something can come from nothing as there has to be start at some point some say god i say energy from nothing

 

[Kera]

(5)it's clear something can come from nothing as there has to be start at some point some say god i say energy from nothing

As I said, the question does not come from me! A fellow student asked me that question at the time.

Nothing comes from nothing, they say. But maybe this is not true at all. According to modern physics, what used to be unthinkable is apparently possible: things come from nowhere, without the intervention of a creator. Even the universe may have been brought about in this spooky way, some scientists believe. The cause for it are quanta, most tiny energy-charged particles. They stood therefore at the beginning of a creation from the nothing.

Oh God, now we digress from the topic!!! Sorry!!

 

[Already Gone6]

My dad is a hardcore christian as of 2 years now. You can tell he's a true christian too, he's always telling people they are going to hell. lol....

But yeah I don't consider myself an athiest, I believe in god, I just believe he's a seriously sick individual. I also never agreed with the idea of hell, I don't care what you do wrong in this life, nothing could deserve you burning in hell for all of eternity, that's just retarded.

 

[020x]

When I realised that, that shitty sadist has left us alone here to suffer with unlimited potential of pain and harm. That he allowed millions of people to be used as slaves, raped, tortured and killed.

 

[venin]

I don't feel anything special... I saw things... that man tells me things about me that nobody could know (not generic things like the horoscope or that nonsense, specific and concrete things that unless he was inside my head it was impossible to know, and also things about my future that ended up materializing. Again, they were not generic things that you could know with psychology or by observing me, it was super concrete things that nobody would expect)... so I decided to give it a try... it's an expensive religion and I can't say specific things about what we do but you can research it. it convinced me in part because he doesn't get any money with it, you have to buy materials but the godfather doesn't earn anything with it.

Why here then?

As I said, the question does not come from me! A fellow student asked me that question at the time.

Nothing comes from nothing, they say. But maybe this is not true at all. According to modern physics, what used to be unthinkable is apparently possible: things come from nowhere, without the intervention of a creator. Even the universe may have been brought about in this spooky way, some scientists believe. The cause for it are quanta, most tiny energy-charged particles. They stood therefore at the beginning of a creation from the nothing.

Oh God, now we digress from the topic!!! Sorry!!

Please do. You have some good info

My dad is a hardcore christian as of 2 years now. You can tell he's a true christian too, he's always telling people they are going to hell. lol....

But yeah I don't consider myself an athiest, I believe in god, I just believe he's a seriously sick individual. I also never agreed with the idea of hell, I don't care what you do wrong in this life, nothing could deserve you burning in hell for all of eternity, that's just retarded.

Even flawed humans give second chances. Wouldn't perfection be at least as a poor human?

 

[Captive_Mind515]

I think its relevant due to the fact that many people to this day are atheists because of loss of hope - the so called "God" did not fix any of their problems and consequently became suicidal.

By the way, do you come from a french speaking country? (Offtopic, I know)

You know what I find really strange?

I was raised in a religious family, in a very religious country. My parents were not fanatical about Religion, but they were committed and obedient in terms of going to church and following other traditions. And my grandparents were very devout believers.

I had nobody in my life that would have influenced me to become a non-believer. Nothing on TV, nothing in my community. And yet I can never remember a time, even as a young child, when I believed in any of it. And also, I can never remember any moment where I felt compelled to pray to god to help me with any problem I had... or even blaming god for my problems. It was just never a thing in my mind. So I never really ever had any crisis of faith that you see many people experiencing, before they abandon religion.

It's like I was just born as a natural non-believer agnostic/atheist - whatever term you choose to describe it. I can only remember finding the whole thing a bit curious and amusing, with all the strange customs and traditions. I would frequently get chastised as a kid for making fun of these things, and just generally not taking any of it seriously. I wasn't even strongly opposed to taking part in things until later on near my teen years, but even then it wasn't some big drama where I rejected god/religion etc... I just had zero interest in any of it and stopped participating.

I just remember very strongly, this sense that I felt everyone was just going along with things to fit in and not become an outcast in the community. And I found this to be very fake and insincere. And to this day, I still really hate any sort of behaviour that is fake or insincere. Anyone just going along with something, in order to fit in or be popular... it turns me completely off, and I will actively avoid those people and things.

 

[venin]

You know what I find really strange?

I was raised in a religious family, in a very religious country. My parents were not fanatical about Religion, but they were committed and obedient in terms of going to church and following other traditions. And my grandparents were very devout believers.

I had nobody in my life that would have influenced me to become a non-believer. Nothing on TV, nothing in my community. And yet I can never remember a time, even as a young child, when I believed in any of it. And also, I can never remember any moment where I felt compelled to pray to god to help me with any problem I had... or even blaming god for my problems. It was just never a thing in my mind. So I never really ever had any crisis of faith that you see many people experiencing, before they abandon religion.

It's like I was just born as a natural non-believer agnostic/atheist - whatever term you choose to describe it. I can only remember finding the whole thing a bit curious and amusing, with all the strange customs and traditions. I would frequently get chastised as a kid for making fun of these things, and just generally not taking any of it seriously. I wasn't even strongly opposed to taking part in things until later on near my teen years, but even then it wasn't some big drama where I rejected god/religion etc... I just had zero interest in any of it and stopped participating.

I just remember very strongly, this sense that I felt everyone was just going along with things to fit in and not become an outcast in the community. And I found this to be very fake and insincere. And to this day, I still really hate any sort of behaviour that is fake or insincere. Anyone just going along with something, in order to fit in or be popular... it turns me completely off, and I will actively avoid those people and things.

Good read

 

[nyapoka]

i

That is something as a Christian I struggle with as well. The no true Scotsman fallacy levied on those who are suffering and pray. I do believe miracles but I think God rarely intervenes. I too am a victim of God ruthlessly not answering my prayers. I prayed and read the Bible every night... The issue with prayer is the more you pray the more you believe and it is circular.

For me there's too much evidence God exists. I'm not sure however if he is a good God...

feel this too. im back and forth between if he exists or not, but if he does, he cant be a good god):

 

[LaVieEnRose]

Neither my prayers for my suffering eased nor death were answered, so the conclusion was obvious.

Also this quote: "The idea, therefore, that the whole system of nature from the remotest eons of the past--from the very first appearance of life upon the earth--has been founded upon destruction of life, on the daily and hourly slaughter of myriads of innocent and often beautiful living things, in order to support the lives of other creatures, which others are specially adapted to destroy them, and are endowed with all kinds of weapons in order that they may the more certainly capture and devour their victims,--all this is so utterly abhorrent to us that we cannot reconcile it with an author of the universe who is at once all-wise, all-powerful, and all-good."

I could literally make up my own theological system from my imagination and start preaching it with sincerity (or seemingly) on street corners and door-to-door and maybe even amass a sizeable following.

As part of that system I could make up my own pantheon based on SS members. For example:

@Pluto : the god of wisdom
@Forever Sleep : the goddess of art
@jar-baby : the goddess of technology
@ThatStateOfMind : the god of love
@KuriGohan&Kamehameha : the goddess of medicine

 

[venin]

I'm kinda convinced now it's just gibberish but I've had some years when I went back and forth.

Neither my prayers for my suffering eased nor death were answered, so the conclusion was obvious.

Also this quote: "The idea, therefore, that the whole system of nature from the remotest eons of the past--from the very first appearance of life upon the earth--has been founded upon destruction of life, on the daily and hourly slaughter of myriads of innocent and often beautiful living things, in order to support the lives of other creatures, which others are specially adapted to destroy them, and are endowed with all kinds of weapons in order that they may the more certainly capture and devour their victims,--all this is so utterly abhorrent to us that we cannot reconcile it with an author of the universe who is at once all-wise, all-powerful, and all-good."

I could literally make up my own theological system from my imagination and start preaching it with sincerity (or seemingly) on street corners and door-to-door and maybe even amass a sizeable following.

As part of that system I could make up my own pantheon based on SS members. For example:

@Pluto : the god of wisdom
@Forever Sleep : the goddess of art
@jar-baby : the goddess of technology
@ThatStateOfMind : the god of love
@KuriGohan&Kamehameha : the goddess of medicine

Nice quote. Ty

 

[Pluto]

@Pluto : the god of wisdom

You mean the underworld. ;)

I can share a perspective on this topic but it won't align with most people's desire for black-and-white logic. (Hence why I usually don't engage at all.)

The Christian God
As someone who experienced some religious child abuse, I am an unsympathetic critic. The important point is that, as the saying goes, 'you don't see things as they are, you see things as you are.' Hence, this God was invented by men as a reflection of themselves. Male, angry, insecure, vengeful, cruel and dramatic. Doesn't that sound more like the expected qualities of a Devil, if there were one?

One can quickly deduce the sort of man who invented this patriarchal God as a means of compensating for his feelings of being small and powerless. What's remarkable is that this primitive idea caught on and now it refuses to die, even as our technology enables craft traveling even beyond the other Pluto.

This God has been debunked from many sources. First of all, take a look at a Hubble telescope image and tell me that this breathtaking vastness is the work of an angry insecure little man in the sky. Secondly, NDE experiencers routinely describe a experiencing a divine light that they often call 'God', yet it bears absolutely zero resemblance to the Christian God. The legendary theological book, Conversations with God, presents a far more enlightened interpretation of the concept of God, and has influenced comments I have made here.

Hindu Polytheism
The ultimate God in the Hindu tradition is Brahman, which can be described as the sum total collective of all that is. Just as the human body is a collective unit made up of trillions of individual cells, all 'souls' are really a single mighty entity. Hence the highest teaching is that individuality/separation is an illusion and the goal of spirituality is to realise our true nature as Brahman/God. Practical methods are offered to achieve this state of enlightenment and a number of people have done so.

(Understood correctly, this also validates Jesus' teachings about being one with God, of overcoming the world and the Kingdom of heaven being within you.)

So what then of the polytheism? Of Ganesh and Shiva and Vishnu and Lakshmi and Krishna?

There is a simple explanation. Because Brahman is infinite and all-encompassing, it is impossible to speak about it in words. Language can describe things, but not the ineffable source from which all things and living beings emerge from, and return to in so-called death. Hence, practitioners may worship their favourite deity as a part of a process of achieving spiritual maturity, but in advanced states of consciousness, it is seen that Brahman alone is real. The Gods have a purpose analogous to training wheels for a child learning to ride a bike; very necessary until it is time to move on.

Buddhism
The core teachings of Buddhism again align with an enlightened understanding of Jesus' teachings and the fundamentals of the Hindu tradition. But this time, there is no God in sight; the highest reality is sunyata, the void. Sometimes the Buddha himself, or various enlightened masters, are deified for similar 'training wheels' reasons to the above.

The process of surrendering completely to a spiritual authority - though it carries a huge risk of being corrupted by narcissists and perverts intent on manipulating people, as has happened in huge religions and small cults alike - is a legitimate spiritual task, purifying the mind in order to prepare it for the profound shift in identity that is spiritual awakening. When all layers of ego identity are shed, what remains is an indescribable singularity of nothing and everything. It is written of profoundly in the heart sutra, though be warned that the result will sound like gibberish to the uninitiated, hence effort must be directed towards spiritual progress rather than debating intellectual concepts.