Questions for atheists

[redsturgeon]

I consider myself an atheist, although sometimes I dabble with the idea of pantheism and consider myself more aligned to that than to outright atheism.

My questions for atheists would be:

Did you ever believe in a god and if so at what age and what led you to not believe anymore? A supplementary question might be, were you brought up in a religious background?

Is there any time your atheism slips a little and your feel there might be something more?

Do you believe people have a choice in believing or not believing?

John

[hermit100]

Question 1: My mother was definitely a believer, of the CofE persuasion; I don't think my father was really but he went through the motions. We all went to church and we offspring had to go to Sunday school. I 'believed' it all when I was young enough to 'believe' everything that grown-ups tell you but when I was older I stopped believing it, probably around the age of 10.

Question 2: No

Question 3: Generally yes unless a person is truly brainwashed.

[redsturgeon]

Question 1: My mother was definitely a believer, of the CofE persuasion; I don't think my father was really but he went through the motions. We all went to church and we offspring had to go to Sunday school. I 'believed' it all when I was young enough to 'believe' everything that grown-ups tell you but when I was older I stopped believing it, probably around the age of 10.

Question 2: No

Question 3: Generally yes unless a person is truly brainwashed.

Thank you for you reply hermit100.

Regarding your answer to Q3. Could you start to believe in god if you wanted to? If not why not?

John

[gryffron]

1) No and no.

2) Something more? Well clearly there is more than science can explain yet. But IMO the key word there is "yet". I do not grasp at clearly inconsistent stories which purport to answer the unknown.

3) Interesting. Much of human behaviour is learnt rather than innate. Humans desperately need to belong to "tribe", a natural survival trait from prehistoric times. This need makes it easy to brainwash people to believe almost anything is "right" behaviour for their tribe. Look at the bloodthirsty religions of South America. Look how many non-nazi Germans were involved in implementeing the nazis "final solution". Kamikaze pilots, Suicide bombers etc etc. IMO all modern religion is part of this brainwashing.

But equally, there have been a huge number of spiritual and religious beliefs throughout the history of the world, which have evolved quite separately and independently of others. Maybe people need spiritual belief to fill in the unknowns. But since no one, afaik, has ever spontaneously come up with the same religious beliefs without learning from others, I still conclude that such spirituality is pure imagination. Surely "god", if it is real, could have communicated its existence, and desires for human behaviour, to unconnected peoples in Australia, South America, etc, without needing human messengers to convey them. Why does a global god only seem to send messages to people in a tiny area of the Middle East? Just another of the inconsistencies in the stories.

Gryff

[hamzahf]

Why does a global god only seem to send messages to people in a tiny area of the Middle East? Just another of the inconsistencies in the stories.

Local concepts about God stretch back into our early history and changed alongside the various cultures. What is striking is that the idea of a global religion (expressed in Christianity and Islam) takes hold as civilisations expand. This is how I understand the distinction between Judaism (a religion for a specific people) and Christianity (a religion for all mankind) when we talk of Judeo-Christianity.

It is a different shift in emphasis, but out of a very developed concept of God within Hinduism came the variety of strands of Buddhist thought. I view that as a global expression of religion as much as Christianity and Islam, so it is useful to reflect on the common strands that unite them. I have described elsewhere on TMF that I am struck by the many views of God way of thought expressed in the Perennial Philosophy of Religion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy

Can one choose to believe in God? From my personal experience I would say yes, but it is not simply an intellectual process and requires a much more difficult emotional switch to embed nascent belief (it took about 10 years in my case despite being open to the idea).

Regards
Hamzah

[redsturgeon]

Can one choose to believe in God? From my personal experience I would say yes, but it is not simply an intellectual process and requires a much more difficult emotional switch to embed nascent belief (it took about 10 years in my case despite being open to the idea).

Regards
Hamzah

That is interesting. What was your starting point?

John

[DiamondEcho]

- Did you ever believe in a god and if so at what age and what led you to not believe anymore? A supplementary question might be, were you brought up in a religious background?
- Is there any time your atheism slips a little and your feel there might be something more?
- Do you believe people have a choice in believing or not believing?

- No, I never 'believed'. I imagined it to you be true when that was what I was taught it as the truth as a child. But I have never had my own belief, and certainly no belief at all in the proposition beyond the age of perhaps 12-13, when I entered cogent/pre-adulthood.
My father is Christian but atheist [never really expressed as clearly as that though]. My mother is Christian, but brought us up going to church on Sunday etc., as that was what the community/society considered normal. For the same latter reasons I even got hauled through confirmation classes at c16 but by they then didn't take religion at all seriously. After studying biology, evolution, Darwin etc then any credibility for creationism was already as plausible as the existence of the Tooth-fairy.

- Only once, about 6 years ago when I was briefly and incorrectly diagnosed with terminal multiple-sclerosis. I prayed, a very tearful, angry and begging prayer that while I said it weeping, I was also laughing, as I knew it to be ridiculous and a symptom of hopeless desperation.

- I think some people believe because they perhaps genuinely do. Others do because society expects or even requires them to [this certainly applies with Islam in Islamic communities/countries where societal 'expectations'/demands are far stronger - IME! Similarly it also applies, though to a less zero-tolerance way, to some Catholic people I have known]. I think it telling that in societies where people are more free whether to believe, then less tend to do so.

- What would change my mind? Proof. 'Leaps of faith' in such weighty matters won't persuade me, ever.

[gryffron]

What is striking is that the idea of a global religion (expressed in Christianity and Islam) takes hold as civilisations expand.

I don't think that is particularly surprising. I view religion as a tool to control thought and behaviour. A universalist religion is a much better tool for binding together a nation, and instilling unity of behaviour and thought amongst the disparate tribes of a nation state or empire. The Romans did it once they adopted christianity, so did the expanding muslim empire, so did the European colonial powers. Helps define the "us". Much better than, say, a polytheistic state, where the various priesthoods might have different ideas spreading conflict.

Although interestingly, having had that thought, I'm struggling to think of any example ever, where a fight between polytheistic priesthoods lead to a war (anyone?). I suppose once you accept there can be multiple gods, there's no point fighting about them. Whereas squabbles between different strains of monotheistic religions have produced a huge amount of conflict throughout history.

gryff

[jackdaww]

My questions for atheists would be:

Did you ever believe in a god and if so at what age and what led you to not believe anymore? A supplementary question might be, were you brought up in a religious background?

NO
------------------------------------------------
Is there any time your atheism slips a little and your feel there might be something more?

NO
----------------------------------------------------

Do you believe people have a choice in believing or not believing?

I dont understand this question.

---------------------------------------
my take on this is to wonder what is the meaning of life , origin of the universe and all that stuff ( hitchhikers guide )

the wonder of the planet , it billions of people, myriad of animals, the galaxies , time and distances.

i ask the question - " whats it all about? "

the answer for me is simple -- I DONT KNOW -- and i dont think anyone else does either .



John

=============================

[seekingbalance]

Did you ever believe in a god and if so at what age and what led you to not believe anymore? A supplementary question might be, were you brought up in a religious background?

No, and no.

Is there any time your atheism slips a little and your feel there might be something more?

No, though I do read a fair bit about religion, mainly to counter American religious extremists in their constant dissing of evolution and Darwin. The more I read the less I feel inclined to slip.

Do you believe people have a choice in believing or not believing?

Hmm. An interesting one. I think in the main people can choose not to believe, certainly those who were forced into religion in the first place and never really believed anyway. But can someone choose to believe when they did not believe before? Yes, I think this must be true as people who proclaim they were atheists have been known to find faith.

What I find most interesting is that your birth place and your parents is almost a 100% indicator of which religion, which God, you end up believing in. What is also interesting, as someone else said, is that people who grow up in countries where religion is not forced upon them tend to not be religious, and don't usually choose to be.

[Stonge]

Have you read 'The Puzzle of God' by Peter Vardy?

I recommend it.

[RedSnapper]

Did you ever believe in a god and if so at what age and what led you to not believe anymore?

Hmm, quite a philosophical question that one. What is 'belief'? Do you mean child-like blind acceptance based on what you're told or considered acceptance based on your own evaluation of the evidence? I once believed in Father Christmas - simply because my parents told me he existed. I would say I 'believed' until my own critical faculties developed and matured sufficiently for me to make my own judgement. I would not however say that I actually ever 'believed' in a considered way.

A supplementary question might be, were you brought up in a religious background?

Yes - one parent strongly catholic, one atheist. Neither pushed their views and in fact religion was never discussed in the home.

Is there any time your atheism slips a little and your feel there might be something more?

Very occasionally, normally with the assistance of alcohol inducing a philosophical state of mind

Do you believe people have a choice in believing or not believing?

Yes, I do.

[hamzahf]

Can one choose to believe in God? From my personal experience I would say yes, but it is not simply an intellectual process and requires a much more difficult emotional switch to embed nascent belief (it took about 10 years in my case despite being open to the idea).

Regards
Hamzah

That is interesting. What was your starting point?

John

Here is a time-limited link on TMF from 2006, but it saves some typing. I have become more circumspect about writing about my faith on public forums, so don't propose to repeat the long expositions I wrote at that time.

http://boards.fool.co.uk/my-renewal-of- ... 36465.aspx

I guess I reached a low point (in faith terms) just after university where the attraction of non-conformist faith finally disappeared and all that was left was a mix of occult and outré thinking (Colin Wilson was a big influence at that time). Not at all an atheist, but very much at a point where belief could easily have slipped away completely and have no meaning in my life. To pick up on Diamond Echo's point, one can pay lip-service to being a member of a religion in a society that demands it, but that is real hypocrisy for a convert to contemplate in my view. I felt religious faith worth restoring in my life, but it did not come easily. Elsewhere I described it in terms of an energy curve; with effort one switched from one energy minimum to another (more stable one in my case).

Regards
Hamzah

[bungeejumper]

Familiar story from a near-atheist, probably. I was sent to Sunday school at age nine or ten (presumably so as to give my parents some much-need 'together time' on Sunday mornings ), and I tried my level best to make sense of the pretty peculiar religious stories that our local CofE priest was telling us. (He was a high-church diehard who still used some Latin, which wasn't terribly helpful.)

But TBH I always had to work hard at feeling 'religious', it all seemed so weird to a kid. I got as far as being confirmed (still vaguely wondering why), but as soon as puberty hit, that was the end of that, it just disappeared. Militantly atheist as a student; mellowed a little once a failed marriage had knocked some of the dogmatic corners off me ; and nowadays I hang out quite happily with the local CofE church, although I have no faith at all in the traditional sense of the word, and mow the churchyard and help them with fund-raising.

Of course, that might be connected with the fact that my wife and I bought the derelict old vicarage opposite the church. Village life can be like that.

BJ

[Sussexlad]

I was brought up by Christian parents, Sunday School, church on Sunday mornings etc. but I can't say that I've ever believed any of it. I do though still enjoy the organ and traditional hymns, so much so that I regularly watch the S4C programme 'Dechrau Canu, Dechrau Canmol', but that purely a musical thing.

I simply can't accept that there is a benevolent character looking out for us and having our best interest at heart. As I said, I have never thought that or seen any such evidence but I guess losing my totally undeserving fourteen year old son was the final straw, if there was ever a possibility. I think you have to see the world through very rose-tinted spectacles to believe that.

There may well be some all powerful individual running the show, I simply have no idea.

[Clitheroekid]

Did you ever believe in a god and if so at what age and what led you to not believe anymore? A supplementary question might be, were you brought up in a religious background?

Like most people I `believed' in the sense that I was told by those in authority that God existed and it never occurred to me as a child to question it.

However, also like most other people as soon as I developed the power of independent thought there were far too many inconsistencies and superficially absurd propositions to allow uncritical acceptance. But when, in good faith (so to speak) I asked questions there were no satisfactory answers.

Unusually, I can recall the exact time that what little residual faith remained disappeared. I went to a Catholic prep school and we were receiving religious instruction from a Catholic priest. There was a book called a Catechism, which was basically a book of FAQ's about the Catholic religion. We had to learn sections of it verbatim, and we would then be tested on them by said priest.

One section dealt with a rather bizarre concept called `indulgences'. In order to understand the concept you have to first understand that in the Catholic faith there are basically four possible destinations when you drop off your perch.

The preferred destination is obviously Heaven, but you are only fast-tracked there if you are sufficiently fortunate to die in a `state of grace', i.e. with no sins recorded against you. In practice, as there are so many things that are sinful this is only likely if you are leaving the church after confession (which clears the slate) and you immediately get run over by a bus without having seen any lissom young woman who's inspired lustful thoughts (a sin).

If you've committed a mortal sin and have failed to have it cleared by confession before you croak you're unfortunately destined for Hell. I'd forgotten the definition of a mortal sin, so Googled it and came up with this rather alarming list - http://www.saintaquinas.com/mortal_sin.html

I have to say it's really not a good outlook for gays, who seem to be pretty conclusively classified as sinners, and as they will presumably never `repent’ it looks like they’re doomed to the eternal fires!

I was advised at the time that most people died having only committed venial sins (though looking at that list I'm by no means sure) and they were therefore allocated a ticket to the third destination, Purgatory. This was basically a department of Hell, but with the knowledge that your time there was limited, and that once your sins had been purged you were released and taken up to Heaven.

The fourth destination was Limbo, a weird, undefined place where people went who had never sinned but had never been baptised, either and were therefore denied the entry visa for Heaven. In practice, as the Church took the view that people started sinning as soon as they were capable of conscious thought this only in practice applied to young babies who died. (En passant it's interesting to speculate as to whether non-baptised people who had only committed venial sins also went there after a spell in Purgatory ...)

Anyway, the bottom line was that for the vast majority of people the most likely destination by far was Purgatory. And this is where indulgences came in. They were basically a `Get out of jail free' card, which were awarded in return for certain tasks. I can't now recall the details, but there were different types of indulgence - presumably the harder the task the greater the reward.

My moment of truth arrived because one of the indulgences mentioned was a 365 day indulgence in return for saying a specific prayer, the Salve Regina. I must have been about 9 or 10 at the time, and having mugged up on indulgences the night before something was troubling me.

So on the Friday morning I determined to ask the priest, in the hope of enlightenment. What I asked was effectively, "I can receive a 365 day indulgence for saying the Salve Regina. But how can I judge whether this is a worthwhile exercise when I haven't the faintest idea what my sentence in Purgatory will be? If it's a 10 year sentence then getting a year off is obviously well worth the modest effort of saying the prayer. But if it's a sentence of 100,000 years it's a waste of time."

Quite a reasonable question one might think. But by way of an answer the priest came over and walloped me soundly, calling me a "cheeky little corner boy" (a peculiarly Irish phrase used by several of the priests).

I was genuinely shocked by this - I can remember it vividly even today. I had not, as he seemed to have believed, been trying to take the proverbial - it was a genuine question and I'd expected a reasonable explanation, not a clout round the ear.

And it was that clout that knocked out whatever residual faith remained. I took the view that if the people who purported to be God's messengers couldn't answer a straightforward question they were charlatans, and not worthy of any credibility.

Is there any time your atheism slips a little and your feel there might be something more?

I wouldn't describe myself as an atheist, as I don’t completely deny the possibility of a divine being; it's just that I've never been presented with any remotely convincing evidence of it. As I mentioned in another post recently (I can't recall in what context) the sheer incomprehensibility of the universe as disclosed by modern physics means that if such things as dark matter, wormholes, parallel universes and so on are possible then the existence of a divine being is also a theoretical possibility.

Do you believe people have a choice in believing or not believing?

No. Belief / faith is something that you either posses or don't possess as an innate condition. If you have it you can no more consciously cease to believe than you can change your DNA, and vice versa.

Of course you may lose or gain it during your lifetime, but again this is something that happens at a sub-conscious level, not as a result of a rational decision.

However, I think there are many people who have decided they want to believe, and many of them may have convinced themselves, at least at some level, that they do. Organised religion can be very useful for a lot of different reasons. For desperately poor people who endure miserable lives it gives them something to aim for, and a reason to carry on. For many middle class people, particularly the stereotypical WASP, it performs a very valuable social role, in cementing their status as a member of a self-selected local community with all the advantages that brings.

I suspect that in both examples the people involved are deeply conformist by nature, and not possessed of much capacity for independent thought, so that although their `belief'' may originally have been to some extent adopted for functional purposes it's become a sort of habit (perhaps that's where the word came from) so that after a time, as with any other brainwashing, they may well believe that they believe it (which is not quite the same as actually believing it).

Despite my lack of belief, I have nevertheless resorted to prayer in times of extreme pressure or misery. I mentally begin the prayer, "Dear God, without prejudice to the question of your actual existence, please could you sort out this problem for me?"

I also find myself thanking God for small favours, like keeping the traffic light on green when I'm in a hurry. It's quite bizarre really, but it undoubtedly helps me to act as though there is some external deity that can sway things in my favour even if I don't actually believe it in the cold light of day.

If I had to justify it I suppose I'd say that God might exist, so it can't do any harm, but I'd be the first to admit that this is hardly a compelling argument, and unlikely to win many converts.

And of course the one question I sometimes ask myself is would I want a priest at my deathbed? And the answer is that if there was one handy then definitely yes, on the basis that it would be stupid to ignore the chance that they'd been right all along!

A very interesting thread.

[RowdyReptile]

I consider myself an atheist, although sometimes I dabble with the idea of pantheism and consider myself more aligned to that than to outright atheism.

My questions for atheists would be:

Did you ever believe in a god and if so at what age and what led you to not believe anymore? A supplementary question might be, were you brought up in a religious background?

Is there any time your atheism slips a little and your feel there might be something more?

Do you believe people have a choice in believing or not believing?

John

A very good start to this board with good questions and interesting answers so far. Since it was directed at atheists, I am a bit hesitant to reply, but I could turn around one of the questions and ask, "Is there any time your faith slips a little and you feel that it is, maybe, not exactly accurate or eveb complete rubbish?"

Yes, at times. I did depart from the species of my parent's faith, but did not leave the kingdom, although they thought differently. All of us were influenced by our surroundings when we were young.

As far as if I believe people have a choice in believing or not, well I certainly hope they do!

RR

[jackdaww]

we humanoids have difficulty conceptualising the idea that either the universe has always been here for ever or emerged from nothing/zero .

we just may not have the intellect to grasp this , perhaps just as the worm may not grasp quadratic equations etc.

it has been said that if god did not exist we would have to invent one - which the case for many people.

for me, ideas and debate are the way , not belief.

.

[redsturgeon]

Thank you for all of your posts so far in answer to my questions. Many of you show a similar journey to my own, beginning with the usual attempts at indoctrination at school, with compulsory religious worship every morning: prayers and hymns and bible readings for seven years of primary education and in my own case then on to a cathedral school with more hymns and prayer and a sung Latin mass twice a term in the cathedral.

My parents were not religious, neither were they overtly atheist and when asked to give a religion on official forms, like most of the population would write "C of E"...christianity-lite if ever there was such a thing. My mother with a Chinese background was different in that she was clearly not christian but never displayed any religious behaviours at all although she certainly believes in ghosts and spirits and culturally has an ancestor worshipping background.

I guess I never really believed in any proactive way in any god, in that as soon as I was old enough to think about religion in any critical way I rejected, first the idea of heaven and hell and life after death and then any creator.

As to my question of choice, perhaps the above suggests that I chose to not believe but like other non believers I would maintain that deep down I believe in what I believe based on my life experiences and my critical assessment of the evidence. Even if someone was to convince me that I must believe in god, on pain of death, or to save my soul, I don't see how I could easily change my fundamental disbelief to belief and thus I find it difficult to understand how I have any choice in the matter.

My understanding of human psychology does tell me that I could probably use strategies and behavioural techniques over a period of time that might trigger some sort of faith in the almighty but that suggests a desire to do that which I do not possess, so perhaps in some sense I have made my choice, and in some sense the believers could argue that I have taken the easy way out.

Hopefully I have triggered an enquiry that, by way of sharing mutual experience has cast some light on this subject, I thought it was probably easier to ask the questions of fellow atheists in the first instance but of course believers are welcome to addd their own thoughts on the subject. I hope this new forum will provide a space to have a conversation which enlightens rather than divides and shares rather than harangues.

John

[Stonge]

Most people would consider me an atheist. This is because I don't believe in whatever religion they believe in. This includes Christianity (various branches), Islam, Hindu, Judaism etc.

I'm not sure what the OP is trying to find out here.

I do believe that religions exist. One question is 'Why do religions exist?'. There are two main possible answers: 1. They exist because God exists; 2. they are made up by humans. Debate...

The question 'Do you believe in God?' is very difficult to answer. An atheist would probably say 'No'.

However, are you using Univocal language, Equivocal language, or Analogical language, when you talk about God?

Do you mean an Eternal God or an Everlasting God?

Is your concept of God more like Plato's Demiurge (i.e. did not create matter) or Aristotle's version that has heavily contributed to Christian and Islamic theology.

There are many other questions about whether your concept of God is sensible or logically possible.

Sweeping statement - In my experience most people who believe themselves atheists are not - and most people who believe themselves believers are not. This is because they have not examined what to talk of God really means, other than in a very childish way.