Try this too:

I agree with your conclusion, but your argument is bad.

Although virtually every premise or condition stated is faulty, "God wants people to be free from suffering" has logical problems that definitively invalidate the argument.

I just never got over the fact that all those kids my age in China and India were going to spend the rest of eternity burning in hell because they were born in a different part of the world.

My Sunday School teacher insisted they would have their chance to hear God's word... but, burning in hell for all eternity vs jumping on one time exposure to Christianity seemed unfairly scaled.

This was a big part for me too. Realizing that there was no reason that I was Christian other then because I was born in a Christian family was a huge step in the process.

My religious beliefs (raised Greek Orthodox) slowly melted away in grad school as I learned more about how the universe works and started applying the scientific skeptical approach* to things that I had previously applied to things like UFOs, psychics, ghosts, etc, to my own religious beliefs. When that happened, I realized the only reason I believed in the religious tenets that I did was because I was born and raised in it. There was no evidence for the supernatural stuff that went along with my religion, including a belief in a god, so those beliefs just melted away. I don't really consider it being a "choice", any more than not believing in Santa Claus or leprechauns is a choice. It just happened.

*skepticism does not mean automatically dismissing "supernatural" or "paranormal" things out of hand. It simply means accepting things based on evidence. Scientific skepticism

This is a first
Agree with greear! Wth is this doing here
Unless ofc there is no hell so wtf is this doing here

Well, this is the 'Religion, God and theology' part of 2+2, right?

Thank you for all your replies! :-)


great story this!

I went to church every Sunday until I was 19.
Then I studied history and classical philology.
My faith never had a fair chance.

Edit - I still don't know why we are here - there may just be a God out there.
But the existing religions are all man-made (and NO, not by some evil rulers, but by the people themselves).

Im an atheists because im prideful and dont like to follow Gods absolute rules he clearly laid out in his various holy books.

Society I was raised in and my family were not religious. I did read a children's version of the OT when I was a kid and really liked the stories (I always liked reading fairy tales). I was mostly undecided about this whole god thing until about 13-14 when we started actually discussing the idea of gods with my friends. There was also a fundie christian girl in our class who we tried to have discussions on the topic but who simply refused to have any kind of an argument.

So eventually I came to the conclusion that it's all stories just like other fairy tales or fables that illustrate some points and that's about it. I still had some deistic maybe tendencies inside which slowly disappeared the more I learned about the world around me over the next 10-15 years.

Actually thinking about it a little more - I read a ton of fairy tales - I just loved them, and I think because of that the fairy tale aspects of the bible stories immediately caught my eye even when I as a kid, and so I never really even contemplated them as true any more seriously than all the other fairy tales I read.

I can remember a time where I believed in God and even did some rough praying (I remember praying not to have nightmares, which I would do every night to avoid them. It worked too!)

But as I kept hearing these stories, something didn't jive for me. I just didn't buy them and they didn't resonate for me at all. I don't know when exactly I stopped believing but it was before I was 13. I've never been given a compelling reason to start believing again since then.

I don't think it was a "choice" to be honest, but then I don't know if ever qualified as "religious" or not. Religion just did not make coherent sense to me, and even when I tried to be religious, the best I could manage was some kind of quasi-spiritual belief that would have been counted as heresy by Catholic standards.

Read through the bible, took me a year or so of slow reading nightly, afterwards I just didn't feel compelled to believe a lot of the things I had read.

That was the end of my remote attachment to Christianity.

I don't really know if I'm religious right now, I identify with a lot of teachings from various religions, but don't identify with a single one enough to proclaim myself of that faith.

Raised Jewish, knew of the Old Testament. Around 16 I was getting heavily into higher levels of science and math and god and religion just made very little sense. I also have read the Gospels of Luke, John, Matthew and Mark and the Acts of the Apostles and Christianity was even more of a joke to me.

Can you illustrate how this statement is untrue/illogical. I have run this argument by many religious people and their objections are always nonsensical. (I am not implying that you are religious). Just curious.

****ing arrogant bastard! You piss in the face of God!

He asked for it. How can i not lust after this.

I can't remember if it was Steven Pinker who postulated that the commandment about not using the lord's name in vain was probably meant to prohibit people from saying things like, "if you don't do X, god will strike you dead," because obviously people know from experience that god won't actually strike their enemies dead, and so better to save face (for your god) and not put him in that position to begin with.

Along those lines, I was never religious, but as a child, the powers, curses, and desires people attributed to god(s), viewed side-by-side with the evening news, the public library, and my imagination, made religious belief seem utterly delusional.

God I love that pic. Should be in the atheists' pic thread imo.

After being able to discern for myself I chose not to be force fed false propaganda information by the powers who wish me to conform at a very early age to totalitarian governing.

I came to the conclusion,

There probably are creators, they will be exactly the same as you, me and the bungling scientists at CERN.

The universe we experience is likely to be an experiment by an equaly progressive alien race with atoms, particles and quark particle accelerators.

The very second we learn to create life we may destroy all present life, similar to hindu ethics that are based on the principles of lifes cycle, Shiva the destroyer and creator of worlds.

I know now there is no god, just us and the vast self replicating universe.

a college education...more or less

Epistemic humility.

The realization the the Bible is obviously not inerrant.

Didn't read op only read title, answer is girls

Is there anyone else who doesn't think being an atheist is a "choice," the same way sexual orientation is not a choice? Sure, choosing to participate in religious rituals is a choice, but I don't think I could ever "choose" just to believe in God, because it wouldn't be authentic belief.