A young woman I know, raised and home-schooled through high school in an ultra-religious family but became non-believing when she went to college, had an aunt tell her, “Well, it’s okay if you don’t believe in God, as long as you’re not an Atheist!”
There are people who honestly believe Trump won the election and will be reinstated this summer. There’s no accounting for some people’s belief systems.
I can detail the WHY exactly. At age six, a little neighbor girl and I were playing on the swing and she mentioned Jesus, whom I had never heard of. I asked who Jesus was, and she pointed at the blue sky and said “He’s right up there, and he sees everything we do.” I gave the sky a visual once-over and drew a blank. I decided that, until I had evidence to the contrary, I’m putting Jesus down as imaginary.
That’s exactly the problem with Trumpers (and Trump himself), theists and many others. They substitute their own subjective beliefs for facts of reality.
Which leads me to ask the OP: What makes you so sure of ANYTHING? Why is God a special case?
The other thing that bothers me is the use of the term “believers” and “non-believers” in many circles. This is presumptuous. Just because someone doesn’t believe in God doesn’t make them a non-believer. They could believe in other things, like honesty, perseverance and the importance of hard work.
Believers are the useful rubes.
I’m nor sure either and I don’t believe that any viewpoint is the correct one. IMHO, there can be no final certainty when dealing with intangibles and metaphysics.
I did not grow up with a religious background, my parents were not religious, my mother was a militant atheist, which just put me off militant anything. At school there was a certain amount of conventional religion, but really not much. I am just so glad that I did not grow up in a strictly religious environment, and above all, not in a Moslem one, where observance is required.
Beyond that, I don’t care much. I prefer things where some sort of proof can be found, and religion is notoriously slippery in that respect. On the whole, the situation here in Europe suits me just fine. People can follow whatever religion they want, but privately. And don’t tell me about it.
And on occasion I have found Gandhi’s remark to be very applicable: “I like your Christianity, but not your Christians.”
It’s just shorthand, no one using the term “non-believer” is asserting the person doesn’t believe anything.
To me religion is bases on 2 things. One is the principal of seek (God) and you shall find (God). This is a universal thing. Any person can do this at any time in any culture. It is God who makes it successful.
However as I stated above the finding God is personal, relationship based, and not evidence based by God’s design. And we don’t like that, so we (those who have not found God yet) ask questions about what is God like, and what God wants, etc as we want rules of how to worship God. This tends to form and shape religions around what people think a God would desire.
Since almost every religion has seekers it contains some truths (via seek and you shall find), even intentionally made up ones like Dianetics or Scientology will have true aspects in it. And while no religion has anything to do with the relationship itself, each one is a pathway to that relationship with God. Every single one, as all that is required by design is to seek.
As all religions contain info about God in some respect, they can be put together in a certain way to distill the meaning behind the religious beliefs, basically distilling/filtering out the man induced ‘dogma’ to get the aspects of God that are in them. In that many religions have what I call universal truths and why things like what many call the golden rule is in almost every religion in some form and even many atheists abide by it as well.
And you are correct in your statement, if you disqualify any belief (even atheist) you discredit your own. It is akin to a saying that I use why addressing a mixed faith crowd when talking about matters of faith. I love taking about faith and God to those of different faiths as I learn about God from other points of view. It is wonderful.
So all religions are all valid pathways to God but all imperfect and have the trap of getting stuck in the Dogma of them.
I used to be incredibly religious in my youth (grew up Mormon). By about 25 I serious doubts about the church, and the church has this funny teaching in it: If it isn’t true, no church is.
So after I finally decided the church was B.S., I had to take it a step further, so I wouldn’t go back, on the logic that, if I didn’t even believe in god, that would extinguish all doubts about the church in the future. I watched pretty much every episode of the Atheist Experience at the time, and became a pretty solid atheist after a while.
As the years have gone by, I’ve kind of softened about it. I like the idea of an afterlife, and that some people will be rewarded, and some evil scumbags who got away with it on earth will get their comeuppance eventually. I don’t know if I believe it, but I like the concept at least.
I don’t believe, for my own mental health, that it’s a good idea to spend a lot of time thinking about a being who could potentially talk to you (aka a delusion), so I don’t. At the same time I’m perfectly fine thinking there might be a god and an afterlife out there.
Modnote: People are going to make statements about religions in this thread that are offensive to some of the religious. Some religious folks are likely to make statements offensive to atheists.
If the offensive statements are in general and not targeting a specific poster, we won’t be modding this thread for what can be interpreted as insulting generalizations. We will stop personal attacks and posts that derail the thread.
So if someone says Atheists are godless fools or Believers are fools, don’t bother reporting it.
If someone goes after What Exit? for being a useless agnostic, please flag it. 
I’m as certain as one can be that the basics of my faith are true. That there is a God, that God has revealed Himself to humanity, that He did so in the flesh, so to speak, and that through God, and His Church, we can know some (not all) things about Him, the universe in which we find ourselves, why we’re here and where we’re going.
“Sure” might not be the right word. As so many people with religious beliefs know, faith can come and go, wax and wane. I guess there’s enough of a spark there even at the low points to stick with it until it comes alive again.
And certainly I wouldn’t say that religious sure-ness is the same as scientific sure-ness. I am “sure” that water will boil at 212 degrees in a different way than I am “sure” of God’s presence in the Eucharist.
As to how I got here, I was raised as Catholic. For a time, in my twenties, I fell away from faith. I wouldn’t say that I became convinced that there was no God, just that it stopped being important to me whether or not there was a God, or whether my church had the best grasp on the nature of that God.
And then faith returned. I can’t say I really know why.
As to how I’m “sure” that my religion is truer than other religions, I am, but I don’t know how I’d convince those of other faiths. I don’t try, any more than I’d proselytize to atheists. Within Christianity, certainly, I’ll debate (in the best sense of the word) various points with members of other Christian denominations. If they’re interested, of course, and in a friendly spirit. I think I’m on pretty solid ground there. But not with a Sikh, or a Zoroastrian, or what-have-you. I don’t think there’s enough in common for the debate to be productive.
So there’s my answer. Best I can do.
I am sure-ish in my faith (Lutheran Christian). I think a healthy dose of doubt is healthy, FWIW. I was raised Muslim and by the age 20, I was an atheist. I was an atheist for 10 years until my conversion. It was in a Pentecostal Church and I had what can only be described as a religious experience. I wasn’t logic-ed into faith, I was emotion-ed into it (an overwhelming emotion that touched me to my core). And then afterwards tried to read and consume as much about this new thing that was acting deep inside of me (yes, my convert zeal manifested in reading). So, the logic part of me tends to ask questions about my continued experiences and that push-pull keeps asking me questions while being relatively sure.
I’ve heard, many times, “So you don’t believe in anything, right?” I then have to explain that not believing in a supreme being doesn’t mean not believing in anything.
Despite being an atheist, I don’t rule out some kind of afterlife.
I mean, waking up outside of “The Matrix” in some kind of “Zion” would be a kind of afterlife, so you don’t need to posit magic or a supernatural realm.
The concept of judgement used to appeal to me on some level too, but the more I thought about it the less sense it made. This life is not a good test of who is good or evil, since the duration of our lives and the opportunities for good / evil differ a lot from person to person. Furthermore, libertarian free will makes no sense, so what would you be punishing?
Some form of rehabilitation / realization might make some kind of sense, but not punishment or judgement.
I haven’t read every single reply since almost all of them are There’s No Evidence Therefore I am an Atheist (save Kanicbird and a couple others).
I am with Kbird more or less. I have always, since earliest memory, felt the presence of I guess you could call it ‘spirit’. It has taken a number of forms through my life, although since I became a Catholic almost 30 years ago it seems to have settled on Jesus. However in recent years I have drifted back to the simpler state of my youth, which had no book, no dogma, no coreligionists, no buildings, no rites. Just a sense of some one – an entity – which not only has consciousness but also is consciousness, who is aware of me. Did this being – being is too small a word by far – “create the world”? That’s so … time-oriented. It is the wrong question. The most accurate word for God is NOW. God is now.
There is no “evidence” for this, nor could there be, nor do I have the slightest need for any.
I will say that my home in any organized religion is tenuous to say the least. I find religion the best description of what I know, but it’s still extremely narrow, culture-bound, prescriptive, and always contains so much foolishness and elaboration. For most people it’s a social club with a fairytale premise and set of rules, bound together with archetypes. Which is fine! But that is not the heart of it, for me.
It’s because religions aren’t much about the supernatural stuff. They are actually cultures.
So the aunt was OK with the girl not believing in their deity - deep down I suspect many religious people know it’s all fairy tales - but her concern was with the possibility that the girl’s identity had changed.
[quote=“Velocity, post:44, topic:943328, full:true”]
Thanks. I think we have enough responses from atheists/agnostics by now (the comments from the atheist side outnumber the Christian side about 40 to 1 so far.)
Still waiting to hear from theists.[/quote]
I’ll dip my toe in here, though I’ll probably regret it.
I am an Orthodox Jew. (Those who have been here a while know me, and know that.) At the heart of our belief is that our entire nation of ancestors - six hundred thousand men over the age of 20, plus women and children - experienced a clear, direct revelation from G-d, and entered into a covenant with G-d to be a holy nation that would display the beauty of his ways among the other nations of the world. This initial revelation is the cornerstone of our faith - an entire nation testifying to their children and they to their children for over three thousand years. Included in this testimony is the fact that the nation then entrusted Moses to be the bearer of future such clear messages from G-d, and that the Torah that he wrote is such a message.
How can I be so sure about it is the question put forth in this thread. I’d say that there are a number of statements written in the Torah on the subject of the mass revelation which make sense to have achieved nationwide acceptance only if they’re true. The alternative would require some sort of nationwide fraud intentionally perpetuated by all those alive - of varying generations - on their children and descendants to come, for no obvious gain.
Ok, this post alone made it worth coming back. (Oh, hi, I’m back. Sorry, no pie.) Pretty much exactly what I was thinking after reading that post, but much more succinct and humorous than I would have managed.
I understand we’re able to “like” posts now 
but I haven’t “progressed” that far just yet…
ETA: I have no idea which “topic” I’m supposed to pick to reply to, but here goes nothing.
Especially the part about, “Well if you don’t believe in God, what makes you do good?”