Former theists turned atheists: what arguments were most effective in turning you?

Great Debates
101

Not only am I a bit late to the party, but I don’t suppose (at least by some definitions) that I am an atheist. I believe in some conjunction of scholastic theism and absolute idealism. Can’t put my finger on the proportions, however, and I firmly disbelieve that anything like a personal deity—a guy-in-the-sky with human emotions—exists. Since that is what most people mean by “god”, I’m quite comfortable with the title atheist and self-identify as such.

Disclaimers out of the way, like many here I can’t recall a specific argument that shocked me into considering the nonexistence of god. My eldest brother was an atheist, however, and I had religious discussions with him starting when I was about ten and he eighteen. I think it was much less the arguments and more his example that drew me to disbelief; he prodded me into the right direction by bringing ideas to my attention that I would otherwise have not encountered. I don’t know when I first realized I was an atheist, but by thirteen or so I actively lobbied not to be forced into church attendance. It was a bit of a struggle but my parents were more open-minded, perhaps, than others.

(With a great deal of embarrassment I admit some quite brief, and primarily rebellious, excursions into neopaganism when I was fourteen. I got better.)

Really? Not trying to be snotty. I almost always take “atheist” to mean—and mean it myself—nothing more than that one either lacks a belief in god or affirms the nonexistence of any god. There are atheists who believe in the supernatural, for instance, and while that may be kind of weird I don’t think it’s a contradiction.

And similarly, I almost always take “agnostic” to mean that someone believes the proposition “god exists” is not amenable to proof. For many popular or facetious conceptions of “god”, cf. Russell’s teapot, this is undeniably true even if it isn’t very profound.

102

Perhaps. But I don’t really see the point in belief without knowledge. I’m more at a place in my life where I think there might or might not. Functionally I would probably fall in the atheist camp (That is to say, I principally live as if there are no supernatural beings) but intellectually, but don’t know for sure either way and after years of study am not sure I really even care any more.

103

I didn’t really need turning. I just admitted to myself what I already knew. Which is probably why I didn’t really feel any different after becoming an atheist.

104

Right. ‘Atheism’ is like ‘cool’: Not only does the definition shift, in connotation and denotation, with passing generations, it has different meanings to different people and groups of people at the same time. Silly of me to try and define the word we’re almost all using. :wink:

Anyway, my philosophy:
[ul]
[li]There is no evidence for the existence of the supernatural, deities, or anything of that ilk.[/li][li]The burden of proof is on those who make claims that the supernatural exists. They have repeatedly refused or failed to meet even basic standards in that regard.[/li][li]The Abrahamic deity is logically inconsistent. The problem of evil and the problem of omnipotence are both insuperable barriers to its existence in any logically consistent universe. Since our Universe has shown itself to be logically consistent, that is a huge strike against the existence of the Abrahamic deity.[/li][li]However, we don’t have absolute knowledge of the outside Universe. We only have absolute knowledge in the context of axiom systems, which may or may not usefully model an aspect of the physical Universe.[/li][li]Therefore, there’s probably no such thing as the supernatural, so relax and enjoy yourself.[/li][/ul]

I have no idea what that makes me according to anyone else’s definitions, but I call myself an atheist.

105

That’s fine, and of course pinning down definitions is commendable, particularly in discussions about hazy concepts like religion. But it’s also important to ensure that our definitions match up with those in general use, and yours do seem rather idiosyncratic to me. I’ve never encountered anyone else using “atheism” to refer to a general lack of belief in the supernatural; dictionary definitions, encyclopedia articles, and philosophical references all take “atheism” to refer specifically to belief in deities.

But that’s a hijack, sorry, and I really don’t mean to be confrontational.

106

Ex-Catholic here. I dropped all religious belief about 2 years ago.

It came about in stages, but there was one thing that started the ball rolling. I was at a friend’s house and somehow the topic came to religion. My friend asked me why I believed the Catholic doctrine. I responded that it was because I was raised that way by my parents. She then told me that she would never believe in any religion without first investigating it herself.

That conversation led to me seriously looking at the tenets and history of Catholicism. Up to this point, I already had a skeptical mindset when it came to things like homeopathy, psychic mediums, crystal healing, etc. So I started applying my skepticism to Catholicism. That was when I started having doubts about religious faith. Then I went broader and investigated all religion. I investigated and researched and eventually came to the conclusion that there is just no evidence for the existence of any god. I remember sitting here at work and literally telling myself out loud, “I don’t believe in God.”

The problem at that point was how to deal with the rest of my family. For awhile I figured that I will just go through the motions at church, but that didn’t last for long. I began to not recite the prayers, then not sing the songs, then not go up for Communion. Surprisingly my wife (a hard core Catholic… she even teaches 1st grade religion class) never noticed the change in my behavior.

I realized that I couldn’t keep this to myself and only a couple of months ago started telling her about my problems with the church, religion and faith. I’ve been taking it kind of slow with her because just dropping the “A” Bomb would have been devastating. She’s now realizing that I’m probably an atheist and is slowly coming to terms with it. I know it breaks her heart, but she still loves me, and that is what is important for me. The next step will be how I inform my kids.

Sorry to ramble, but this issue has been in the forefront of my mind for awhile.

So it was basically one question about why I believed what I believed that caused me to start thinking rationally and critically. From there it snowballed.

107

Read some Dawkins or another of the New Atheists. Or just read up on what P.Z. Myers has to say about ‘dictionary atheists’ here and in this post over here. I think my definition is mainstream in the group I tend to follow, so someone trotting out the obsolete dictionary definition sounds like someone trying to insult me by calling me ‘godless’ or something.

Here’s what Myers says in specific:

That is what I’m talking about. It’s also what a lot of other atheists are talking about. Dictionaries are simply obsolete in this matter, by and large.

108

The Straight Dope actually had a lot to do with it.

109

Much as I like PZ, that was pretty feeble. Dictionary atheism is kind of a minimal requirement. PZ seems to be saying in the first link that we shouldn’t accept people who are atheists for stupid reasons. I think you can say that everyone should examine his belief of lack of belief as deeply as he does without raising the bar. I’m Jewish, and while studying the Torah and other holy books is a wonderful and well supported thing, it does not set the standard of who is a Jew.

When you said Dictionary atheist, btw, I assumed that was a reference to many dictionaries who seem to consider people atheists only if they believe no god exists or even claim to know no god exists.

110

I think his thesis is more along the lines of, “Atheists in this time and place have a shared culture and worldview, more than just skepticism of things others take on faith, and denying that is misguided at best. Embracing it is a lot more human.”

I think he doubts that anyone actually is a dictionary atheist. I could be wrong.

Similarly, merely not believing in deities doesn’t set the standard of who is an atheist by the definition of the word when someone like Dawkins or other influential Western atheists use it. Myers is making that point in his typical forceful fashion.

This angers me, because it’s often used by people to claim that I’m driven by faith just as much as the average fundamentalist and, therefore, claiming exact equivalence between the real world and the universe Jack Chick comics are set in. I can deny it and try to explain myself, but they point to those faulty definitions, stick their fingers in their ears, and jump up and down screaming “ALL SAME! ALL SAME! ALL SAME!”

It is greatly annoying. Honestly, I’d rather the dictionaries defined atheist as “Godless fuckhead (see also: asshole)” as opposed to that nonsense.

111

If I understand you correctly, I meant just the opposite. Someone with no belief in any deity is an atheist, period. Now, you could say that this person is not a thoughtful atheist, not a logical atheist, an atheist for reasons not nearly as good as those of Myers and Dawkins. I’d agree with that.

Me too. It seems to me that half the dictionary definitions are written by theists who don’t get it - and then copied over by theists who tell us what we should be not believing.

112

The most illogical thing about the use of the “dictionary atheist” claims is that thsoie who make the argument seem to assume that if they can convince atheists of their preferred definition (that “atheism” is positive assertion of “no gods”), then atheists will then somehow be convinced that this is how they’re self-identifying. Quibbling over the definition is not going to convince a debate opponent that they hold a belief they don’t hold, so why waste the time on it?

113

Thanks for this story. My wife and kids are Catholic too. My wife has always known I’m a non-believer (we came to an agreement long ago to live and let live on the issue), but I still haven’t told my kids yet.

114

Ehh. As long as you make your meanings clear, fair enough, have at it. But it’s a mischaracterization to say that I was merely pointing to a dictionary definition and saying that’s that. (And it’s certainly not true that I was using a discussion of definitions as some rhetorical device to paint you as “godless”.) I also linked to Wikipedia and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, but more generally, anywhere I have seen discussions of atheism and philosophy (both of religion and more generally, in a gazillion and one such discussions in person and on the internet), atheism meaning something like “lack of belief in or positive denial of the existence of a deity” has been presupposed.

If there is a subculture in which “atheism” means something different, there’s not much I can do about it, obviously. But I would argue that using “atheism” for something broad like a scientific worldview not only doesn’t match the definition in overwhelming use, but makes the word less useful. How are we to refer to those who don’t believe in any god but don’t have a scientific worldview, who may believe in ghosts or that vaccines cause autism or that NASA faked the moon landings? These people exist and I think we have a perfectly good word to refer to them when considered as religious nonbelievers.

I’m by no means a prescriptivist. If this meaning of “atheism” had spread beyond the subculture, it would be another matter entirely. That doesn’t at all seem to the case, and for that reason alone calling the widely-used definition obsolete causes me to scratch my head. As gaudy a term as Dennett’s “bright” is, at least it doesn’t confiscate an existing, related word in a way that may confuse those not in the know.

115

Well, let’s see. Looking back, I think I was a natural skeptic from the get-go. By age 7 or 8, I was already thinking to myself in church: “Does repeating this same stuff over and over every week really make God happy?” Thus was the seed planted.

I went to a Catholic high school, took religion classes for 4 1/2 years, read the Bible cover to cover. Still, I never really felt like it was a part of me, and after I graduated, I started calling myself a “non-practicing Christian”.

Then I went to college, and the turning point was probably when I flunked out of engineering classes. I changed majors to computer science and signed up for some electives to fill out my schedule, including an “Intro to Ethics” philosophy class, taught by the head of the department, one of the smartest, nicest, gentlest people I’ve ever met. Ethics, of course, is the study of what makes right things right. In the first few weeks, he introduced us to the Divine Command theory.

In a nutshell, the Divine Command theory of morality states that right is right because God says so. That is, stealing is wrong because God has told us that stealing is wrong, and therefore the right thing to do is not steal. But is that really true? That is, suppose God had told us that stealing was right; would it then be right? After all, if God is the source of morality, there’s nothing compelling God to say that stealing is wrong; God could just as easily say that murder is right, and it would be, since God’s command is what makes right things right, subject only to his command and will. “But,” some argue, “God would never say that!” Well, why not? If there’s no reason to choose not-murder over murder other than God’s own command, he can say whatever he likes. But if there is some reason that stealing and murder are wrong, and God was just passing that information along to us, then we should be able to figure out that reason, without bringing God into it.

Shortly after that came the Problem of Evil. I don’t know how everyone else heard it, but in my class, it went something like this: Imagine that there is a building, with a baby inside. The building is on fire. Outside, there is a man, who knows that the baby is inside. Furthermore, the man knows that he could rush in and save the baby at no risk to himself. However, he chooses instead to watch it burn and allow the baby to die horribly in the fire. Anyone with moral sense would say that that man was evil, since he made a conscious choice to let a baby die when he could have saved it quite easily. Essentially, that man is God. Every day, babies die in fires, and God, whom we think of as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, chooses not to save them, though he has the power to do so. Some counter, “But maybe it’s part of God’s plan!” Sorry, but any plan that includes avoidable suffering is an evil plan. The only conclusions that can be drawn are: God doesn’t know babies are dying in fires, God knows that babies are dying in fires but doesn’t have the power to save them, God knows that babies die in fires and can save them but chooses not to, or there is no God.

It was a pretty short trip from there to admitting that I didn’t believe in all that God stuff anymore.

116

I never claimed you did. I think you attributed Myers’ little rhetorical flourish to me on that point.

I never claimed you did, although I am, in the literal sense, quite godless. Here, you took a rhetorical flourish of mine and unfairly pinned it on yourself.

Lacking a belief in a deity isn’t the same as lacking a belief in the supernatural. However, how many self-described atheists do you know believe in an afterlife? That’s part of the Myers position, anyway: Atheism is, in practice, a package deal, where you lose the faith in all supernatural junk and pick up some skepticism. Those who believe in religions without deities don’t call themselves atheists, so those who are like me are more-or-less free to pick up the word and make it our own, and if we can distance ourselves from the woo-believers in the process so much the better.

But we’re fighting over connotation and denotation here, with you defending the strict philosophical definition (denotation) and me trying to inject what the word means according to those who actually tend to use it (connotation). This isn’t, actually, a conflict, it’s just what happens to some words that sees extensive use.

117

Attended eight years of Catholic grade school and four years of Catholic high school. Went to mass on a regular basis, was an altar boy, got the T-shirt, etc. Had Catholicism shoved down my throat, in essence.

I’m now 44 years old. I haven’t been to Mass in over 10 years.

Over the past couple of decades I have questioned everything that’s been taught to me. Most (if not all) of it sounds like BS to me now.

Despite this, I’ve never been able to call myself an atheist, even though I probably am. Not sure why. Maybe I’m just holding out a little bit of hope that the Big Man in the Sky really exists. :frowning:

118

Reading back, that was perhaps a bit more impassioned than I intended, and I took offense where none seems to have been meant. Apologies.

119

Started out as a devout Catholic. I changed beliefs a number of times before I settled on atheism. My move from Roman Catholicism to non-practicing Catholic was influenced by my reading the Bible. My move from non-practicing Catholic to pantheism was influenced by the Problem of Evil. My move from pantheism to atheism was influenced by Occam’s razor and the lack of any evidence for any god.

120

For Jews, (in the US anyway) we’re surrounded by Christians who seem to sincerely believe things that we just don’t think are true. Small leap from that to realizing that all that crap we’re supposed to believe might not be true either.