What are your reasons for being an atheist?

A german satirical magazine once reported that earth must be taken to a childrens home and god will lose custody for not caring for his creation

 

Atheism is the default position to take. Remember, atheism isn't saying there is no god, it's saying there isn't enough evidence to justify belief and so we remain unconvinced. Furthermore, all theistic claims have failed to meet their burden of proof.

All children are born atheists. Belief in God is something that is brainwashed into them.

Happy days

 

I'm an atheist because I'm just pretty sure there isn't a god. More and more things can be explained rationally, meaning there is less reason to believe in God. It just seems so primitive.

 

I disagree a bit. If all children were born atheist, who invented religion? If you left a child alone without science the kid would probably invent pagan gods as an explanation.

 

I'm an agnostic atheist. I don't believe in God or anything like that. I just believe that when we die, we turn into nurture for trees, animals, and other organisms while our mind will be gone forever. The existence of a godlike creature seems illogical to me. I am also one of those people that prefer to know things. I don't like the idea of worshipping something whose existence isn't proven. Or who, if it exists, doesn't seem to care about the planet because humans are destroying it.

 

I'm an atheist. I can't really explain why, the fact is when I look at the world I just think, I can't imagine God existing. It's not because the world is horrible or anything, but I just can't imagine something like God existing in it. I can't find him in me or the world around me.

 

Can you please explain why truth is an end in itself? I've always believed that truth is generally important because it's usually beneficial to believe it, but sometimes it's useful to believe an untruth, so practicality should be prioritized, and truth is arbitrary in that particular instance.

 

Because science, space etc etc is so much more interesting. Besides, I don't feel like spending time on something that doesn't make any sense to me (personally)

 

I believe you aren't going to be truly happy until you live with integrity. Lying to yourself is called delusion. I don't believe there is any benefit to believing lies. Honesty is the best path. In a world where no one ever lied, most problems we face today would be outright gone. I'm just stating my beliefs. I think Socrates was on to something.

 

I grew up in a non-religious home until i was like 10, at which point my mom converted to Christianity and made it her mission to convert the rest of the family, too. I didn't really know any better so i went along with it. I was fine with it but as i got older i stopped believing in it. I dont think i ever actually believed in it so much as i liked the idea of unconditional love and support. Just being brutally honest, the whole concept doesn't make sense to me and just doesn't seem logical, reasonable, so i don't believe in any of it.

 

As someone who believes in god, I myself say this, where the is smoke there is fire *Yes then the tooth fairy is real to...but no..just no..this is an older fire * but I do not know what is right and what is wrong. And who tampered with the religious books in the meantime. I do not trust people enough to blindly believe.

I just listen to my heart and hope my heart tells me the right thing to do or not do.

But the argument, look at the world around us I think is to easy. U can also say, god gave life and look what we did what those life's. Kill, and destroy and suck it dry ?

 

Lack of any evidence.

As mentioned above, even if there were a sentient creator, I wouldn't automatically worship it, the same way I don't worship my parents. I'm not really grateful for having been born - but rather for being looked after and raised, my Mum and Dad did that...not God.

I like Christopher Hitchens' writing (I disagreed with some of his views), but he was the main proponent of my atheism, things like Occam's razor and various contradictions and paradoxes of all forms of scripture also played a role.

Obviously we can't prove there's no God, but we can't prove a lot of things (like, if the universe exists, seeing as though we are inside it, we can't test it out of the context of being part of it), but we do know things like there can't be an afterlife, or ghosts, or anything like that - just because of how consciousness is maintained (without a working brain, there's no consciousness). If you have to 'take something on faith', why bother? Why not just not have an opinion (or just accept not to know), science doesn't know how exactly the universe started, or what about 90% off it is actually made of, or what makes up the tiniest sub-atomic particles. Why say 'God did it' when you can just say 'too big, don't care'. It's not the most satisfying answer, but scientists are working on it.

And if they do find a way to utilise dark matter, it'll probably be after we're all dead from old age.

 

Scale. The universe is so large that, even if a supreme being existed we'd be insignificant from its point of view.

The universe's radius is in the 10^27 m vicinity. (That's an 1 followed by 27 zeros). A person would be in the 10^0 m (1 m) order of magnitude, therefore, from the point of view of an universal-magnitude being, we'd be as small as a 10^(-27) m entity; that's about 10,000 times larger than the upper limit for the size of an electron. Even if we took the whole Earth as a reference it would be smaller from the supreme being's point of view than an atomic nucleus is to us (and that's 1,000 to 10,000 times smaller than a whole atom!)

It is very hard for us to meddle with specific atomic nuclei even if we wanted to. Of course, we can start nuclear reactions (those usually involve, paraphrasing Carl Sagan, billions and billions of atoms. Well, maybe not billions, but millions.) Again, even if we took the Earth as reference, try to imagine a person dedicating all his creative power to a single, specific atomic nucleus; it wouldn't make too much sense.

Then there's time. We have existed for such a short period of time when compared to the age of the universe, that the entire collective existence of humankind would be to the supreme being, about as "long", comparatively, as a few minutes are to us.

If the supreme being existed he could maybe make decisions which roughly affected the Earth, but he's unlikely to care much for us in particular.

 

Honestly, even when I was little I never bought into religion, I was born a skeptic. Now that i'm older I have come to realize just how nonsensical and harmful religion is, how they discourage and actively oppose both social and scientific progress, how scientifically inaccurate all religious texts are, how they all claim to be the 'one true' religion, and that all man made gods are much too small and insignificant compared to the vast and beautiful universe we live in.

 

Almost through and through, it's been a morality issue; how it's an insult to me to worship something that let's rape, child abuse, natural disasters, corruption, enslavement and so on happen. What kind of loving god would allow any of that to happen?

I saw no reason as a kid to respect a being that would let clergy men get away with sexually abusing children; let alone allow wars to happen in their name and ignore the cries of the less fortiunate happen, while answering the trivial prayers of bigoted politicians and monsters.

 

We are calculating tracks of planets that supposed to be farther away in time, quantum physics etc. etc. while we don't know half of what is in the ocean. I am just not convinced Maybe because scientist are sooo convinced of what is going on. I know they do use logic so thats helping. But still a lot of those logic is a guess. Nobody will confirm or deny it yet, with actual real proof. Not attacking you.

I know religion is not making sense at all in that point of view of course. But to me it does, but I am not sure I would be the same way religious if I wasn't raised religious....and that reason is one I struggled with years ago.

But I do understand though, I understand being atheist.

 

As a few others have said - it's a lack of proof.
I'm scientific in my view of the world and of the universe.

I lodged with a Christian family when I was 22.
They were Evangelical.

We were talking about religion and why I don't believe and I saw then that they have a predetermined answer for every question thrown at them. Like call-centre staff reading from a screen.
We were talking about sexuality, gambling etc and he said how it was a sin and that the lottery was included in those sins.
I asked why God would let people die in 'plane crashes etc and he said that God doesn't interfere in free will. "So, surely it's a persons' free will to be gay, gamble on the lottery etc?"
"Ah, but that's a sin!" He said.

Just no reasoning, which drove me further away from religioun.

 

There will be hot fire waiting for me then, as the promoter/licensee of a church lottery... even worse, a gay promoter of a church lottery. :evil:

 

See I would answer, because people have free will? If he says, it is a sin...that is not really an answer?

What annoys me is that people selectively believe, where is the, thy shall not judge, only god may judge stuff ? Or if someone commits a sin according to them, they still need to love them because we are all neighbors ?

Nobody has to agree on everything, but we have to agree that what in front of you is "divine" (god created) ? A human being no matter what ?

Okay in that sense you an extreme narrow minded christian says , so killers to ? Or thieves? I would say in a sense yes, but killers can take life...

A thief can still save your life, any sinner that does not kill could.

Just...be good to eachother dangit ! ARG!

 

Well firstly no religion feels quite right for me.
And secondly because (to me) it seems safer to assume that there is no higher power or anything. That way if you are wrong it doesn't matter too much, as you haven't being relying on god (or who/whatever you believe in) to make thing turn out alright. One the other hand if you have spent your life relying on god and he/she/they turns out not to exist, then you've probably made quite a few mistakes because you thought someone in the sky had your back, when you were actually alone the whole time.