Atheists/apathetics: What's kept you from truly Believing?

Great Debates
61

That’s very interesting and I appreciate the way you explained it.

Perhaps this is a bad comparison but I remember being amazed that Siamese cats would exhibit traits of their ancient Egyptian ancestors or certain breeds of of dogs would still have traits of hunters even though the breed hadn’t been used that way for generations. Is that similar?

It’s obvious to me that Religion is founded in large in our emotional subconscious.
If certain people are hard wired for it then how do we explain people who grow up in it but later reject it? Or those who have rejected it for years and then later in life have some epiphany and embraced it?

62

I think people can and do overcome certain instincts. So someone might have an inherent inclination toward belief or disbelief and be able to quash it.

As I said in the apostates thread, I grew up “believing” but it was an uneasy fit. I couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t think about it, couldn’t dwell on it, because my mind would completely shy away from that area. In hindsight, it seems obvious that it was denial, but while it was going on, I had no idea. I just thought that I found religion talk icky. So I don’t think that someone like me, and there are a number of us even if we didn’t all follow the same path, ever really belonged in the “believer” category.

63

That would appear to make you hard wired not to believe which is why it didn’t fit.

I believed but became much more content with my beliefs when I realized they were completely mine to choose and I didn’t need any person’s acceptance or approval to choose them.

Maybe that makes me hard wired to believe. The explanation makes good sense to me when we talk about the unconscious emotional aspect of religion. In the other thread I also was thinking about the aspects that organizations in general share with religious organizations, Isn’t flag waving nationalism the fulfill the same need as belonging to a certain church?

I’m thinking the emotional aspect of religion is not the same as the truly spiritual aspect but we as humans often confuse the two and cannot separate them.

Maybe?

64

My parents took me to church and Sunday School. I read the Bible and even won the RE prize at school.
When I was about 14 I asked my Sinday School teacher (a decent man) what the evidence was for God. He said it was just all faith.
That’s what I thought too - and since God (if He exists) didn’t give me any faith in Him, I became an atheist.

Given that the entire Christian religion rests on Jesus being resurrected, and that the only evidence for this is 4 chapters of the Bible written 30-100 years after the event (in which eye-witnesses claim to have seen Jesus after his crucifixion), I have no problem continuing to wait for better evidence.

65

It makes me wonder how many people are wired one way or the other but don’t know it.

66

You mean worshiping a treasonous carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago, and ritually cannibalizing him every week—and in some cases actually believing that the worshiper is eating his actual flesh & blood?

67

It all boils down to faith. You accept the teachings of the church to be true. It defies logic and requires you to ignore the accumulated wealth of these institutions which ask ypu to continually give them money. You have to believe Robertson ,Swaggert and tyhe pope have a pipeline to god and a special understanding that you cant comprehend. You learn that giving is for little people.

68

And I wonder how many people wired for reason, not faith, believe because they have never been exposed to the evidence against. I certainly didn’t believe in the Flood etc. as being true once I was exposed to history, but I did pretty much believe Moses wrote the Bible - until I read the real story in the introduction to a Bible!

It would be great if schools taught different views of the Bible, to allow kids to make up their own minds. But what a stink that would raise!

69

[QUOTE=Pazu]
Now that we’ve got threads for those who’ve lost or changed their faith, and for those who’ve kept and maintained their faith, I figured we ought to have one for those who never really had any faith and don’t see any reason to have one now.

Given that religion, in all its forms, is a fairly ubiquitous phenomenon in society, I would find it hard to believe that anyone could claim lack of faith due to lack of exposure.

So: was it upbringing, rebellion, apathy, none of the preceding? :)QUOTE]
I didn’t read any of the other responses because I didn’t want mine polluted, so please excuse me if I’m repeating what others have stated.

The idea of an omnipresent, omnipotent, invisible being who supposedly created us all simply never made any sense to me.

I was an antsy kid and became bored very easily. If a concept didn’t hit my always-running-on-eight-cylinders brain in just right away and at just the right time it never did.

My first recollection of understanding that people actually believed the god promoted by the Christian faith was was real was during preparation for my First Communion, or “First Holy Communion,” as my mother called it. I think I was eight. I remember it because it was also one of my first recollections of real fear.

My fear didn’t stem from the sudden realization that this deity was real; I’d been going to catechism and Sunday school for a few years by then, and God, to me, was more or less like Superman, not nearly as cool or as good as Superman, but just as imaginary. My fear came from the knowledge, which hit me like a wall, that all the adults I knew believed God was actually real. I was stunned. I went through the Communion ceremony with kind of a prickly-heat feeling all over my body. I couldn’t wait until it was over.

That was my turning point. I didn’t even believe in Santa Claus anymore (though I still wrote him wantee letters before Christmas til I was 10. Yeah, yeah, I know, but hey, why take chances?) but my parents, MY parents, whom I knew were smarter than any other two adults could possibly be, believed God and Jesus were real. It was like a giant fissure suddenly opened up in the Earth, with me standing on one side and everyone else on the other. I didn’t believe in God before this, but after this I wanted nothing to do with it. I continued going to Church for the next few years because my mother made me…thank goodness it was only for an hour on Sundays.

I’m much older now, and I recognize the ubiquity of religous belief systems. How could I not? I live in the United States in the year 2006 where the tendrils of Christianity are as pervasive, relentless and unforgiving as any virus known to humankind.

Because I realize that theistic faith precludes logic and reason (a point of fact not meant as an insult), I’ve adopted a personal doctrine of live-and-let-live. As long as adherents don’t try to shove their mythology down my throat I won’t embark on long-winded soliloquys of why I believe they’re not only easily and falsely led; willing impediments to the furtherance of human knowledge and scientific advancement, but borderline complicit with the evil commited around the world in their god’s name as well.

So, there you have it.

70

Non-exposure kept me from believing. Where I hail from, roughly 85 percent don’t believe in God[1]. Roughly 80 percent is also members of the former state church[2]. I am too, and I keep paying the fee/tax despite not believing in God.

(In all fairness, another survey[3] has 23% of us believing, 23% not believing, and 53% somewhere in between.)

Don’t believe such a wierd place exists? Ask any Swede or check my references.

Anyhow, noone convinced me to believe in God when I was young - noone even tried. None of my friends are religious afaik, and I didn’t find out my father believed in God until my adolescence. We don’t talk about whether we’re religious or not - religion is private in Sweden: Something between you and God and noone else.

I’m not “religious” about my non-believingness, though, and would not be too surprised if I would become a believer in my autumn years. I don’t attend church regularly, but enjoy the atmosphere there on the odd occations I happen to be in God’s house.

Slightly on topic: The state television host is at this very moment preparing for the imminent football game against England by reading a special football version of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Forward, who art on the field, blessed be thy game” and so on in all its intranslationableness. And forgive me any protocol errors (I’m new here) and keep me from language ditto (English is like a second language to me :slight_smile: ).

[1]Davie, Grace. 1999. “Europe: The Exception that Proves the Rule?” pages 65-83. in The Desecularization of the World, edited by Peter Berger. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

[2]Church of Sweden, Membership Statistics 2004.

[3]Eurostat “Eurobarometer” poll 2005

71

Lots of things for me: lack of evidence, too many unanswered (unanswerable) questions, inconsistency within individual faiths, similarities in world view of faiths that are supposed to be extremely different, disgusting behavior from many of the true believers, and knowledge that what the followers are taught is not necessarily the original intent of the faith.

But I suppose as much as anything, it’s that I just don’t feel anything that makes me think it’s more than wishful thinking and fairy tales. Religion is appealing in many ways–the rules are all laid out for you, god watches over you and takes care of you, someone always loves you, and if you’re good, you can go to heaven and see all your loved ones when you die… It sounds nice, but I just can’t honestly find it within me to believe.

So I guess all the reasons in the first paragraph are my rational reasons, but the real truth is that when I think about religious faith, I don’t feel exalted or full of wonder. I feel nothing. Even if I wanted to ignore all my rational reasons and embrace a faith, I couldn’t do it.

72

I tend to suspect the case for “nature” (i.e. a genetic predisposition for faith, or not) may have some veracity, but there’s a paucity of strong data to support it. My experience, FWIW, was that faith in the religion in which I was raised never took root. I was bored by religious instruction when I could not question it in any mature sense, and by the time I had the presence of mind to contemplate matters of faith in a manner worthy of the term “contemplation”, I realized I did not find the Catholic belief system at all compelling. Nor did I find any other system of belief attractive beyond an interest in history, and the works of art and literature the sundry faiths inspired. I never felt a numinous presence, never yearned for spiritual communion, and to this day I cannot in any way empathize with those who do. When I hear confessions of faith and spiritual epiphany, I find the testimonials utterly foreign to my experience, even disturbing at times. What keeps me from believing, perhaps more than any other thing, is my complete inability to experience the way the faithful claim to experience. I am either handicapped, or they are hallucinating. I suspect it is the latter, and that is as far as my understanding will probably ever progress on the subject, or my interest in exploring it for myself.

73

The best one-line summary of my thoughts on this subject:

74

You’re looking at it backwards.

75

Religion is a interesting topic. What puzzles me is the appeal of religions that make very specific promises…like Christian Science (the healing power of prayer). It seems to me that the truth or lack thereoff of this cult is pretty self-evident-people do not believe it, and the church is dying out. Religions that make promises that can only be delivered on after death is an entirely different matter. One hopes and belives, with no way of knowing.

76

I don’t think so. I think I’m just looking at it differently.

77

The appeal of specific promises is quite clear once you’ve seen them demonstrated, and people can demonstrate whatever they want if they have control of the demonstration. Can I get a cite for “the church is dying out?”

78

It was just so apparent that belief in God is sustained entirely by the desire that it be true.

79

I hope I don’t sound like a jerk for saying this…but…
The real depressing thing is that there aren’t more people who don’t believe. So much human suffering and waste.

80

I am an atheist as well, and have been from a young age. I was baptised Anglican, and went to sunday school (my mom was the teacher). From what my parents tell me, one day they just stopped believing. I have a feeling that being baptised was for traditions sake, more than for saving my soul.

During my teens I was agnostic. I had plenty of offers to join many different religions, but none of what the people witnessing to me made any sense. After a while I became more cynical and thought that organized religion was just a business preying on the fears of it’s followers. I kept that theory pretty much to myself though.

In my twenties I was interested in religion and politics. The most influential book for me during this time was The End Of Faith by Sam Harris. That book really spoke to me, and scared the hell out of me. The more I learned, the more disturbed I became with the fact that the world is essentially run by deeply religious people with little room for reason. This is not to tar all religious people with the same brush, I know many that are more liberal in their religious views.

The reason I was never religious, beyond not being able to believe in the stories, was that I didn’t want to change who I am. To me, being religious would take too much away from my life that I like. No more heavy metal music, no more collecting videos of oddities, accidents, archival videos of disturbing experiments, etc.

I know I probably have the weakest reason for not being Christian here, but damnit, I love (safe) premarital sex! :stuck_out_tongue: