Just responded to an email from someone asking me my views on atheism and how they came about. I thought I'd share :)

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I was brought up Catholic up until I was about 6, then my mother became Pagen(quite a jump, right?) and ever since then I was quite confused as to what was really going on outside of the physical plain.

I suppose it was a bit of a shock to be told at such a young age, "Oh yeah, we don't believe in what we've been telling you is true anymore".

Honestly, I really don't remember my initial reaction to it all, but later on in life I went on a quest for "God", researching different religions and what not, and literally came to absolutely LOATH organized religion for a number of different reasons.

I eventually decided that if I was supposed to know, I would know, and if it was imperative to how I would spend my afterlife, that some fat guy in an Armani suit and $5,000 watch asking me for my money WAS NOT going to be the one to dictate that.

I neither denounce god or acknowledge his/hers/their presence and figure IF they are out there/here/all around us and if the do want some sort of acknowledgment, they'll let me know.

On another note; if I was the almighty creator, it would absolutely bug the crap out of me to be held responsible for anything negative that goes on in any such persons life. IE: "It was gods will." Uhh...yeah, I TOTALLY caused you to drive 100+ miles on the free way while talking on your cell, causing you to slam into a van carrying a family of 7, killing 3 and putting the other 4 in critical condition.

Quite frankly, I think its a cop out.

Same goes for anything positive. Give yourself some damned credit. "Oh, thank God I got this job."...Cause the 8 years of schooling and your over all talent had NOTHING to do with it.

Now, I understand those are both extremes, but you get what I'm saying.

Well, I think I've rambled enough for now. How about you? What are you beliefs?

~L

I have none.

My motto is: Religion is just superstition with better packaging.

Welcome to the community!

I think many of us have similar stories and came to similar realizations. I think to be intellectually honest is to remain somewhat skeptical of any claim that cannot be readily demonstrated and causally explained.

I'm reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" right now, and it really crystallizes the arguments in favor of atheism. I've admired Dawkins ever since I read his "The Ancestor's Tale," and since I found out he was friends with the late Douglas Adams AND is married to Romana from Dr. Who!

I agree. Hitchens' God is not Great does a great job of giving modern examples and using wit to expose agenda.

I understand your extremes: a god is always this first to blame and praise for the events the occur in one's life. It 's really so much easier than finding a mirror and discovering the true source of one's circumstance. True there is a hand your dealt, but we can always try and pick another card. As for my beliefs, I find it hard to fathom that this one planet contained in a universe so large that we can't concieve or even see the ends of it, is the absolute center for some moral playground where we try to gain the grace of an entity which purportedly made us and already loves us, with a handy structured set of expected actions already printed out, that has I'm quite sure an authentic claim of authorship. If you do these things this way, say these things that way, then you've got it made, you're "saved"? And that's what I'm expected to believe, that there is no other purpose for my life and my choices. Is that what I'm being "saved" from, that all my questions are already answered? I guess it would be kind of a let down...and that's religion: something to keep you busy, give you something else to do so you don't have to worry about feeling bad about being let down. I won't believe that organized religion can solve my questions about life, I place much more faith in our continuing quest for knowledge.

I hear you completely. religion is just one of 3 vices people pick. Drugs, sex, and religion. obviously one of them is absolute ********. People use it as a crutch for bad things happening. "It was gods will" they say. So god will is to see people starving and people dying at young ages? It's his will to make giant waves and hurricanes destroy towns and thousands of people's lives? Seeing the shape of how the world is was really an eye opener for me. I had a christian upbringing but when I started bringing my gameboy to church when I was 10 it was pretty obvious I didn't agree with what was being said.