As an Atheist have you ever believed in GOD?

It is a simple question and I ask it in sencerity. I will not attack you for your beliefs or non-beliefs I am curious what brought you where you are today.
So you know, I am one that was raise a Christian, became an agnostic and then after finding my faith again simply became a follower of Jesus. The reason I ask is I am curious as to how you came to your conclusion when it comes to a God and if you ever have second doubts (not to worry, I do not convert anyone that is not interested on their own, is not my thing). So, I would be very interested to hear your story, if you care to share it.
Thanks

Oh a question for the Christains that think they know their history, who was Casper believed to be. Clue we are not talking about the cartoon character but someone in Biblical history. I thought I would ask and see who does real research and who does not.

 

I'm agnostic.
1. If the God of the Old Testament is real I would want nothing to do with him because he's a blood thirsty maniacal self absorbed hypocritical bastard.
2. No proof that the God of the New Testament is real. No more or less proof than Zeus or Quetzalcoatl was real.
It is really kinda of stupid to use circular logic to prove your point. God is real because a book told me so. The book is real because God said so in that very same book.

A kind and benevolent God would not send you to hell simply because you refused to blindly follow what could very well be a fictitious book about fictitious people.

Thus, logic dictates, that the bible can't be real.

 

I believed in god when I was a kid. I stopped believing when I was about 8. There were just too many things in the Bible that I felt were ridiculous.

 

Yes. I believed in god until about the middle of my senior year of high school. The belief, however, was unfounded, lacking any qualified substantiation.

 

If you're agnostic then how can you believe Mohamed is a minion of Satan - cause how could Satan be real?

 

I've never believed in any kind of god. I never asked and my parents never brought it up. They also didn't go/take me to church, despite both being raised as some form of Christian. Both of my grandmothers are still pretty upset that my brother and I aren't baptized (he's an atheist, too, incidentally). I did give it some serious thought back in high school, and again a couple of years ago. Each time, though, I just didn't find any reason to believe in anyone's idea of "god."

 

I grew up a Christian with cognitive dissonance. Toward the end, the end being when I finally let go of the faith, I had conservative sola scriptura Christianity on the one hand and what science and sense were telling me on the other, which was that we're primates and that the Earth is most certainly billions of years old. One thing that really helped push me towards crisis was my experience with conspiracy theories of all things, because I came to see the similarities in creationist thinking and conspiracy theorising.. Both reject facts and expert opinions in favor of some emotionally driven view.

I could not go for a more liberalised Christian faith, because as I understand the faith, there are many absolutes to be either accepted or rejected. I saw and still see no middle ground the way the Catholics do, for instance. I recognise that as making it all up as you go along, either trying to fit the facts into an invented worldview that includes a supreme being or rejecting inconvenient facts altogether without any good basis to do so.

I now see Christians as smug.. They pretend to know all sorts of unfounded things, claiming that faith is a virtue and a reason to believe these things, such as that we are "sinners" and that a demigod was born of a virgin to get crucified like millions of other criminals in an act of atonement. The details of this demigod's life contradict according to the source, as do other elements of his story, and then there's the wee problem of his being undocumented by the Romans and bearing a painful resemblance to Mithras of Persia... Since leaving the faith, I've pursued the truth behind the bible and its thumpers a bit, and I've come to see that the New Testament was essentially a sun-based myth akin to that of Mithras, Osiris and other such characters of those times and that region of the world, and that it was basically grafted onto the core holy texts of Judaism in a narrative which combined that solar hero with the Jewish messianic concept. The Jews will tell you that Christians have misinterpreted a great deal of what they call the "Old Testament," but there you go - that's how cults go. It happened again later on in America with Mormonism..

 

I believed when I was a kid but even then I was always so skeptical about it considering the conflicts within the Bible and the conflicting "all loving God" my parents and pastor spoke of and the blood-thirsty, cruel God described of in the Bible. I stopped believing around 13 years old and allowed the suffocation of religion to leave me. It took a good year to get over the guilt that is so deeply indoctrinated into the children of believers but it went away eventually and I have never felt more free to be who I truly am now. I still get anxiety from time to time but I am glad now that I can say my anxiety comes from real world problems and not something that is in all likelihood fictitious.

 

I was raised as a Catholic and believed so firmly that for a couple of years, from about age 9, I not only attended Mass every day of the week, but planned on entering the priesthood.

As I learned more about the Church and it's teachings and also about science, I became increasingly sceptical of Catholicism and had departed the Church by the age of 14, completely rejecting the Christian God.

I retained some kind of belief in a 'higher power' that created the Universe for a few more years. These days I will acknowledge the remote possibility that such a being might exist, but I have no belief in any gods.

 

Yes, the guilt! How any religion that describes itself as 'loving' could allow it's children to be so tormented by guilt is beyond my comprehension. It's simply an unacknowledged form of child-abuse.

 

I'm positively envious of people who break free of that stuff at such a young age. I feel like a dope by comparison.

 

I come from a long line of non religious folk, on both sides of my family. Religion played no part in my upbringing,, but family, education and work ethic was drummed into us.

When in high school (late 60s, early 70s) we used to have one period a week where religious instruction was compulsory. We were placed in denominations,, Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Church of England etc. I couldn't even name my denomonation so I was placed in the non denomonational group. At that time I was into sports, especially surfing and I knew about "Hughie" God of the Waves (just a surfing term). We had a young Baptist minister who attended our group, who was also a keen surfer and most of the boys in the class surfed. Even the minister admitted he would pray to Hughie in the hope of finding good waves. He told us, everyone needs to find their own faith and spirituality, in whatever form it takes, but naturally he did believe in God.

As time went on, our group grew and grew, mostly being attended by the surfing fraternity. We would discuss surfing and occasionally a surfing film was shown.

Religious instruction in Australian public schools was eventually canned.

 

There's nothing dopey about it. Not everyone was indoctrinated to the same degree and some indoctrination just takes longer to overcome. I'm happy for you that you made it out of the quagmire.

 

My parents are very religious so i was going to the church and Sunday schools until the age of 16 , then i decided that i didn't need a god , rejected church and religion as a whole without rejecting the existence of a supreme being, i became an atheist when i was like 19 or 20.

*please do not use a capital a for the word atheist

 

I remember saying my prayers each night, when I was very young, as my parents taught me to do, then wondering if they would come true. I suppose I was looking for some sort of evidence, but none was ever forthcoming. So I'm not sure if I could say for sure that I did ever believe in a god, but I did consider the possibility.

Aside from going to church once a week, my father saying grace before Sunday dinner, and my mother being involved in various church related organisations, my family was not what one would call ''religious.'' To date, only two friends I grew up with that I know of still believe in the Christian god, and they both came from stricter religious families than I did.

Sunday school wasn't too bad, singing songs and drawing pictures of Noah's ark etc, but when I outgrew that I didn't like the sound of Bible class, so my parents allowed me to attend the main (protestant) church service with them instead. Which seemed like the lesser of two evils as I was only obliged to join in with 'singing' a few hymns, saying a few prayers, then it would all be over for another week. I stopped going when I was deemed to be old enough to look after myself for a couple of hours each Sunday morning, probably when I was 13 or so, and have never looked back. I simply didn't want to go to church because I didn't enjoy doing so, and there was no point in doing so as far as I was concerned. By that time, I must have long given up any belief that there really is a god, due to lack of any evidence.

Nowadays, being aware of the history of religion, there is no chance that I could believe in any particular god, as described by any particular religion. I can neither ''choose'' to believe in, or ''accept'' something, that I do not believe exists.

Dusty

 

this is one of the best threads as far as honest responds in this section.


I like it when people represent as an I.

 

Parents were not religious, the whole Christian thing seems kind of exotic and weird.
I feel very fortunate not to have had the whole god-heven-hell thing to overcome.

 

I grew up singing happy birthday to Jesus every Christmas. As a child and even as an adolescent believing in God wasn't an issue. It's easy to accept all kinds of things when there is no opposition to it. I didn't start doubting it until I read the bible. The more I actually learned about religion the harder it was to accept. After that I wasn't anything, I didn't know much about the different labels because by then I was busy having too much fun to care about boring things like politics and religion. I was certainly an Agnostic before and Atheist and still am to this day.

When it comes to God I am an agnostic because the definition is so broad it could really be applied to anything beyond our current comprehension. However I am an atheist when it comes to the religions of the world.

It's one thing to think it's possible that there is something we could call God but to state that not only is he real but we know his name, his likes, dislikes, where he lives, etc. is indicative of the human imagination.

 

This ^^^^ plus all of the contradicting parts, and the scientifically false parts. I realized I didn't feel god and never found him answering any prayers or speaking to me in any perceivable way. I realized it was just my imagination encouraged by brainwashing.


The sexism is really disgusting as well. I was raised a YEC. Do I doubt god's non-existence? I'm an agnostic Atheist, so I take a neutral stance. However, when it comes to the major religions, I don't think it's possible for any of them to be true.

 

Sure. I went to a Catholic school as a kid. It took me... maybe a couple of months after graduation to lose any belief I did have.

 

My parents weren't religious, they didn't mention God or religion at all unless someone else brought it up. At school I was made to recite hymns and attend church but my teachers never really explained why, either they assumed I had been told by my parents, or they were just paying lip service, I'm not sure which.

Anyway, eventually I wondered what all this boring irrelevant nonsense was that I was forced to waste time on, so I asked my parents, and they explained, and I went along with what they said. At several points as I grew up I did wonder if they were wrong, and I've looked seriously at it several times but always came to the conclusion that there's no god.

 

I grew up being shuffled between the local Methodist church (where my mother was very active in the church) and the local Episcopalian church (which my maternal grandfather's family helped to found). My father's family were Baptists, but he always attended church with my mother, becoming more actively involved over time.

I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior at an early age, and like my parents attended services faithfully, read the Bible, sang in the Methodist church choir, and served as an acolyte in the Episcopal church.

It was only after I left the "echo chamber" by leaving for college that I really began to learn more about the history of Christianity and the Bible, and began to consider other points of view. The more I learned, the more there was to question, and I began gradually to shrug off various parts of the beliefs with which I had been indoctrinated as a child.

Eventually there was nothing really left of my former faith, and today I take an agnostic and deeply skeptical view of religion in general. My family, however, remain very much believers, and while they know that I no longer attend services, they think I'm still a Christian at heart, and I see no point in shattering the illusion.

 

I grew up Christian and remained so until I was about 22 or 23 years old (I'm 31 now). I distinctly remember walking to church by myself, from a very early age, when my parents didn't feel like going, and while my parents and grandparents were Christian, they never particularly forced us to believe one way or another about spirituality. I come from a varied religious background...Dad grew up in the River Brethren tradition, Mom and Grandpa were Methodist, Grandmother was a Quaker, etc...so I don't know if that had something to do with it or not.

Just to put my beliefs into perspective, I was a Christian until later in my college years when I really began to look into scripture and question my beliefs. I was a member of FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) in High School and Christian Challenge while in college and attended several different churches during that time (Methodist, Baptist, Zion, etc.). Heck, the first date I ever went on with my wife we ended up going to a Christian Challenge meeting in the basement of the student union...LOL. I even remember telling my own sister she was "going to hell" at one point because she was questioning her faith and getting into Wicca and the like, which I regret saying and doing to this day. I point all this out just to give examples of exactly how much my beliefs influenced me throughout the years.

After trying to reconcile some of my own thoughts and feelings on science and other issues with those found in the Bible, I decided that the Bible no longer fit in my scope of rational and critical thinking. That is not to say that biblical teachings are not rational or that they don't require critical thinking, but they just don't fit in with my "own" personal beliefs on issues anymore. I still don't know if I fit more in the scope of an Atheist or an Agnostic, and at this point in my life, I don't really care about defining myself as one or the other.

I still don't understand why people bash religion and spirituality though. Most, if not all, are just everyday people with their own problems and issues who seek answers to these problems in a different context than Atheists do. Most are very giving people who would go above and beyond to donate their time and/or money to other people, with very little to nothing in return for their help. My Grandpa is a perfect example of who I see as a true Christian...hardworking, faithful to family and friends, will help anyone in need, reads and tries to understand the Bible on a daily basis, and never tries to force his opinions on anyone else.

 

I would just add that for me this was a very long process - well into my 40s.

 

That is the biggest contridiction found in the bible.

God's love is unconditional and he loves all of his creation, and yet if you do not worship him, he sends you to hell, even if you live a good life, exactly the way the bible says to live. God demands worship on threat of punishment, while at the same time claiming to love everyone.

If god loved us unconditionally, he would not have the condition of worship. Punishing someone for not bowing down to you is not love. The god of the bible is a whining (*)(*)(*)(*)(*) with several emotional issues that leads to to send anyone who does not worship him to hell.