Why Am I An Atheist?

[ItsjustMe]

[Farmer-Rick]

1. I cannot pin point the reason for my atheism

Even as a Catholic kid going to Catholic school I thought there was something fishy about the whole Christian story.

I always had this doubt about religion. I never trusted the clergy or their stories. I always hesitated about full on believing. When my spouse stood up at a Baptist service to accept Christ or whatever they do. I stood aside watching, feeling left out of this magical belief.

Many years later, the final nail in the coffin was the death of my spouse of 37 years. If anyone deserved a miracle at the last moment to save their life, or even to make their passing easier, it would have been my spouse.

In the end all we have is death. So, make the most of your time by believing in something real.

[Walleye]

2. The thing that makes us human is the awareness of our own mortality. Religion tries to destroy that

[LakeArenal]

3. I can pinpoint exactly when I became an atheist.

Every summer my parents sent me to a different Christian Bible School.

Every one of them had different “rules” especially about the treatment of women. The last one was evangelical and the worst in regards to humanity.

I realized each one was making up its own rules. That it’s a man’s religion. Nothing in it for women.

When you start hearing anyone not buying into it goes to hell???? That’s bullshit.

[Auggie]

4. Mom

Mom encouraged my brother and I to read and be curious. We delved into science, and loved reading about evolution—dinosaurs and early hominids especially. There was no room for faith as I embraced facts over myths. Around the age of eight or nine I morphed from "agnostic" to "atheist," (a term I don't care for BTW). Ironically, my mother has been a devout Christian for most of her 93 years.

[Warpy]

5. Mom

was an Irish Catholic who never missed Mass, but it was as much a political statement as anything else.

She confessed to me when I was old enough that she was an agnostic who believed in the Irish flavor of reincarnation.

I suppose that's where I got it. I know by the age of 10 I knew there was nobody at the other end of the prayer line and that the religion that tried to tell me someone was there was utterly repellent.

My mother finally read the bible in her 70s and I think the explosion could be heard all the way to the Vatican. She never set foot in a church again.

[Chainfire]

6. I was raised in a Southern Protestant church.

I was baptized before I was old enough to understand what it meant. Religion was pushed hard by community and (public) school. I had to go to Sunday school and church, and still, it never caught on with me. I even tried to believe for a while. I guess I was a cynical old bastard even as a small child. Religion just never made sense to me, however, as a young person, I knew better than to express my feelings about it. Maybe some of us just question everything around us, we have to sniff everything we come across to see if we can detect the smell of bullshit. As I see it, faith is the intentional abandonment of reason.