Come one come all, this be are little clubhouse so pull up a chair and let's talk about...uh...well let's talk about whatever it is we will talk about.

First on the list; when did you decide to become an Atheist/Agnostic?

Let's keep the questions and answers rolling people!

More or less I decided not to piss off one "god" by conforming to a specific religion. I'm open to all beliefs, I don't not believe in god, I just think that if there is a god we shouldn't have to go to an establishment to worship him/her/it. And, what if we end up in the wrong establishment? I mean if we are christians and die and come to find out buddists had the right idea?

OK, good topic. I knew there was a reason I Mutual Matched you!

I grew up in a home with no religion whatsoever. I can remember going to my aunt's wedding, in a church, when I was about 10; maybe one or two other times.

My grandmother gave me a Bible when I was 15; she knew I was a voracious reader. I don't think she was particularly religious herself, but she found it somewhere and thought I might be interested.

I read it, fairly quickly, cover to cover, realized I didn't understand anything, and started over.

I wanted to believe back then. I liked the idea of the omnipresent invisible friend looking out for me. I prayed. Once in awhile, something happened that, if I really tried hard and squeezed it into a small enough pigeonhole, I could convince myself that a prayer had been answered.

But I kept reading. Not just the Bible, but lots of other stuff. The Book of Mormon -- have you ever read that? There are three guys wandering around in Arizona right now who are 2000 years old, waiting for Jesus to come back. Amazing.

As I got older, and read more, I started to see problems with the whole thing. Judas dies two different ways in the New Testament. What, they didn't have editors?

Science became more relevant to me. Science SOUGHT explanations -- religion STARTED with pre-defined conclusions, and twisted things to make them fit, or ignored them completely if they didn't, and called them evil and demonic if they were contrary.

There's a saying that one of my atheist friends likes to use: "God is Santa Claus for adults."

Amen. (Can I use that here?)

Nietzsche helped me get through the babble, as did Michael Onfray. And Richard Dawkins.

We don't NEED God anymore. Back in 902 A.D. when they didn't know any better, maybe God seemed like a good explanation. Now, today, in whatever year this is, we have explored things, discovered things, and we have better understandings of processes and functions.

This really isn't coming out right. I've been up for well over 27 hours and my writing suffers when I haven't had any sleep.

But I think you know what I'm getting at.

I made a decision, based on what I SAW, what I could PROVE to myself based on my surroundings, my experiences. And I will be the first to admit that I could be wrong.

And if God shows up at my door with proper ID and a few gifts, I will gladly recant.

But not until then.

I got asked to leave Sunday school at 7 years old because I asked too many questions.

The one that they took umbrage too was "Why, when god is everywhere, do we have to go to church every Sunday and pay money?"

"Im sorry Belushi's mum, he is just too disruptive"

So I came to the conclusion that god didnt exist as no one could answer my question.

I have read the Bible a couple of times and the Qur'an and neither make any logical sense to me.

Im destined to be a godless heathen for the rest of my life ... thank lack-of-god!

There wasn't just one Kodak Moment(tm), it's more like a scrapbook of sorts. It started at age 4 when I started to read and my parents gave me this book of religious stories. One was about someone my age who was dying and told to hold his arm a certain way so Jesus would recognize him in death and come and get him.

Creeped me RIGHT out.

Follow that with overnights at my grandmother's, who told me stories of fire and brimstone. She was also an avowed racist.

Then I started reading ALL of the Bible and remember being shocked about what Moses allegedly did to the Midianites. That and all the other contradictions and consistencies struck me as being just the sort of thing extremely narcissistic human beings would come up with to justify their crimes against each other when they didn't get what they wanted.

After reading Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", I became convinced that I had enough evidence that religion was mostly superstition that, as an institution, wrote checks its phony altruism couldn't cash, so I identified as an Objectivist at that point in time.

Later, I moved on to Secular Humanism when Rand's followers made a religion of Capitalism.

After some closes brushes with death caused by a hidden congenital birth defect, I decided to stop living in fear. I think when you've done it for so long and know how it feels, you stop fearing the inevitable and make peace with the way of things in a way religion doesn't allow you to do, while what I call the Racial Memory _does_.

Still, I find some of the metaphors of religion beautiful and acknowledge that it can be a force of goodness and compassion in the world, even with its fatal flaws. Thinking that one can't prove a negative, I feel obligated to acknowledge there _could_ be a Chief Engineer behind all this, so that's the only reason I identify as agnostic instead of an atheist.

I have a feeling that being an unbeliever on a dating site is a definite handicap, but I couldn't live with the dishonesty of trying to be a Sunday-morning religionist. Ultimately my inability to do that was a factor in my Catholic ex's seeking a divorce from me and that was the final straw.


-Kerry O.

I dont think that being an unbeliever on a dating site is a handicap.

Being on a US dating site, where a lot of the members are xtian, is though. Especially the fundies we have on here.

Back when I was a member of CS, there was hardly any religion discussed.

It happens that the owners of the board have made a point that religion is a big thing.

Dont forget that everytime you post, they make money, so they keep religion in as it is contentious.

But not too contentious that it turns into flaming.

So, if you dont bring religion to your dates, then it doesnt become an issue.

... or maybe that is just me, and the one date I have had ... which turned out to be the love of my life.

I've moved through a number of religions, read about all of them as well; Buddhism, Satanism, Christianity, Mormon (didn't follow this one), Protestant, Hinduism, Maya/Aztec/Inca, Judaism (didn't follow this one), Taoism, Shinto. The one's I didn't follow are the one's I didn't try out, so as you can see I've been around the block so to say with religion. At about 16 (2 years into my life, long story) I took up Atheism and followed Atheism for about 3 years before taking up Agnosticism.

The main reason I chose to take up Agnosticism is to keep interpretation open, this way I could form and change my views...though in all honesty I lean more towards Atheism than anything I am still open to the views that religion puts forth.

One of the main reasons I took up "non-believing" was because of the inconsistencies in what religion teaches; one of the main parts is that religion (any aside from Buddhism, Taoism, and Shinto) teach that if you follow a certain path in life you will live with fortune (God being fortune and giver of good), however where this view fails is in the instance of a pre-born child's death before a choice is conciously made. Another flaw in what religions teach is that there is an almighty good and an almighty evil, as life will tell it anyone person in life has both of these properties about them they just may go about it differently; example of this is missionaries while doing good in spreading their religion they are doing wrong in defying one's wish to stay with their already established religion (evident in the preaching your recieve even after claiming another belief).

Is this a new forum?

Are you Agnostic or Atheist? If so, yes this is the new forums...each religion has their own section now (Christians have a Christian section, Mormon a Mormon section and so on and so forth).

And welcome to my clubhouse!

I guess I'm a lot like FnL on our path to unknown.
We diverge at agnosticism though. I can not accept the mystery. Without that acceptance there is no faith. I am Athiest.

Gods were created as ignorant explainations.
Priests (shamin,Witchdoctors,etc..) rose up to interpret God's commands and exert control.
Political/ military heads used the priests to further that control.

You see that to this day: Clergy on the pulpit telling their congregations how to vote, how to think, how to behave.

I don't need a god to tell me how to behave, nor do I need one to have a rich meaningful life, now. If my time is 70 or so years, so be it.

Thank you...that last line sums up what I believe as well. I do not need anyone to tell me how to live my life or set the standard for that which I hold to be morally sound. I will live a full and good life without a religious institution!!

We're not that different mate, I chose agnosticism for the open ended view...I lean more towards Atheism though.

Yip...

Feel the licks of HELL FIRE on your ass do you!? lol

I won't be shy about it - I'm generally not shy. I've said elsewhere that I was raised LDS. There were many stages for me.

1.) I'm raised LDS, everyone I know is LDS, so yeah, this must be right.
2.) My Dad is miserable and so is my family because of it - isn't God and church supposed to make us happy?
3.) GUILT, for everything, every little thought, every little misconduct - I can't even begin to describe.
4.) I'm afraid of my God. What if I'm not good enough?
5.) My "second" Dad started asking me a lot of questions I didn't know the answers to, so I went about seeking them for him. I was astonished to find none of my leaders knew either.
6.) In my research I discovered holes in things, pieces that were missing or scattered, a lot of things didn't make sense. I began to question my own faith.
7.) A Seminary lesson on polygamy in the Celestial Kingdom of Heaven. For those of you who don't know, the LDS have varying degrees of Heaven, and it's actually almost nearly impossible to find yourself in their Hell called Outer Darkness. Yes, even Hitler is going to the Telestial Kingdom. Sitting there perplexed and thinking, well, polygamy would be my own personal hell, I might as well merit it, that was the day my faith or what semblance was left had shattered.

As for the guilt, I've gone to the other extreme. Instead of feeling guilty for everything, now, I have a hard time feeling guilty for anything.

I however define myself as agnostic. I don't believe in the traditional sense of the word God, but I do believe there is some underlining force. My "God" if I can define it is such is energy. I am spiritual. It's something which can be measured and seen. It comes mostly from my martial arts training. You literally take kinetic energy from the ground and it amplifies through your muscles to form an explosion when you strike. For me there is a flow, a current, and when we die we just return to that current. Of course, this is my own personal view and I let others take to what they will or won't. My spirituality has no real right or wrong when turned into good or evil. Things just are. It also moves into what I see as positive and negative, people have the ability to affect that flow and I try to affect it to the positive.

In a nut shell, it works for me, and in the end, that's all I need.

The difference between Atheists and Agnostics..

One has a belief that there is no god, the other has a belief that there is (not maybe) an entity or group of entities (whether they have conscious control over matters, or not, does not distinquish a difference in this belief), which are not defined by the obviously flawed and vast amounts of religious sects. Religious sects that, although their ideologies are quite different, all commonly place their structured faith specifically on human preservation and interpetation of the definition of their gods through man written scriptures. Which is, of course, a giant leap of faith to believe in, in its own right. The illogical nature of these existing structured faiths are what has forced me to deny them.



to not accept a mystery is to deny a mystery exists. Unless you know 'how and why' the universe exists at all.. there is still a mystery to you, hench you accept a mystery. Meaning, you are not faithless, by your own equivalence. For something to exist without meaning is a greater mystery that cannot be explained, and therefore must be accepted on the faith that 'it just does'.

Now you're either going to claim 'it just does' without meaning, hench no god, atheist, or 'it just does' and the meaning is yet another greater mystery, and then.. you're agnostic. A logical minded person would never truely be an atheist, for it is illogical to say something exists without meaning.

Note, www.religioustolerance.org/atheist.htm defines Atheism as the lack of belief in God or active disbelief in God. Which is the most equivocal (This is like ambiguous, but with more than one misleading notion, which is denoted by the 'or' in the statement) definition of atheism I've ever read.

WOW !

Not "WOW" Wrenches. It's simply vacuous syllogism.
I took out the "or" a long time ago and accepted the fact that that peoples views about most everything differ to varying degrees. My views don't factor in gods. Maybe I shouldn't have capitalized the "A" in atheist. That may be too brazen for some or the issuance of a challenge to others.

I don't want to wear atheist as title either, because it isn't my sum. I really consider it a small part of who I am. Words and deeds are what makes up the person: don't you think? I try to live a life I can proud of and look back some day and I did what I could to make this a better place. How different or unique is that from anyone else?

From here on, i shall live in the lower case.

I logical minded person would always be an atheist. It is illogical to believe in ANY higher power without proof. Even if it might be possible that there is, the lack of current proof justifies a lack of belief.

Just because the meaning to something doesn't currently exist doesn't mean we need to posit something we also have no or little proof of. It's most logical to hold no belief in such a thing until proper evidence is shown.

Also you don't need to accept something or believe in something for it to exist. If you don't believe in gravity, then too bad for you who jumps off of cliffs.

If you have to believe in it for it to exist, then chances are it never existed in the first place.

I practiced Jediism when I was 8 but I got tired of playing Luke Skywalker waving my lightsaber around. I wanted to be Hans Solo. So I gave that up real fast.

and yes Jediism is a real religion today. Over a million followers.

Then I was to be baptised once but a terrible thunderstorm happened and a tree blocked a road to the church. (This is a true story by the way). So my parents postponed to baptise me and at the end they where to lazy to go to that church again, so I was never baptised to any mediterrenean mythology.

I lived a life non religous but very spiritual just because it makes me feel good. I am a mixed mut when it comes to belief systems. I like to use my imagination and often use mythologies to create fantasy stories.

In the end I am human and get silly at times. Some days I am a druid or a warlock, the other day a prophet, and then some days I like the stories of demons and devils.

In reality I have been a humanatarian for over 15 years before a accident occurred.

I would say being a humantarian is my true calling in the end, but I couldn't find a thread for that alone