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ReasonsPeople become atheistic for many reasons. A popular misconception among theists is that we have some terrible experience (lose a loved one, for example) and ask "How can I believe in a God that allows this to happen?", or start to hate God for allowing it to happen. It should be noted that in order to hate God, you actually have to believe in Him. People who claim to hate God (for whatever reason) are not, by definition, atheists. An atheist may hate a religion, or hate what people do in the name of a God, but an atheist cannot hate something that she does not believe in (it would be like hating dragons for eating princesses). Another misconception is that people choose to become atheists. It's as though we say to ourselves, "Well, I really do believe in God, but I'm just going to pretend I don't believe.". Atheism is not a choice - you don't wake up one morning, flip a coin, and declare yourself to be atheist. It is not a teenage fad, nor is it a rebellious act (although some people are driven to atheism by constant preaching - see below). It is not an arbitrary decision - "What shall I have for breakfast today? Erm... toast. What colour carpet should we choose this year? Erm... green. What god should I believe in? Erm... none." - it doesn't work like that. The idea that atheism is some sort of rebellion is a common one, but also quite absurd. I often receive emails saying that I'm rebelling because I don't like the idea of "something bigger than me", or I don't want to be accountable to a higher power, and so on. If that was the case, then I would not be an atheist, because I would still believe in the God I was trying to get away from! I do not merely say I am an atheist in order to make life easier for myself - I actually am an atheist. I do not believe in the gods of the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and all the rest. If I was just rebelling, then surely I would know that God would still be there, waiting for me when I die. The accusation of rebellion seems to come from theists who are simply unable to accept the fact that there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who just do not believe in their god, or anyone else's. The idea that "everyone believes in something" is so deeply ingrained in their psyche, and their own belief is so deeply held and important to them, that the only way they can deal with non-belief is to deny that it actually exists (or they start saying that atheism is itself a religion). It's funny, but I've never heard of a Christian saying to a Hindu "Ah, but you really do believe in Jesus Christ, you're just in denial. When are you going to stop pretending? All this worship of Vishnu is just rebelling against what you know in your heart is true!" People do not choose atheism - they realise that they have lost their faith and have therefore become atheist (some even fight against it, and it can be traumatic to lose your faith if that faith has been a major part of your life). One of the common reasons for this is that people simply realise that (for themselves, at least) better, more complete and coherent explanations about Life, The Universe And Everything can be found outside of religion - the universe just makes a lot more sense without any sort of God involved. We see no evidence of a Creator in cosmology or biology (which covers just about everything); nothing is known to exist or happen for which the only possible explanation is Divine Intervention. Many, if not all, of the answers given by religions range from vague and ambiguous, through incoherent and contradictory (unless you just have "faith" that they are correct), down to ad-hoc explanations which cannot be tested (or are easily refuted and demonstrably false pseudo-science). Many of the rules and regulations laid down by religion tend to be arbitrary or irrational, and those that are not do not appear to be Divinely Revealed anyway. People lose their faith when their religion has nothing substantial to offer, and better answers, philosophies and ways of life can be found elsewhere. It should be remembered that everyone, you included, gentle reader, is born an atheist - babies do not believe in God. Your religion often depends on your upbringing - if your parents are Southern Baptists, you will probably also be a Southern Baptist. If your parents are Muslims, then you will probably be one also. Which God do you believe in? I'm betting it's entirely dependent on geography. It's a bit of a lottery, isn't it? Aren't you lucky to have been in a country that just happens to worship the One True God? =)
Why am I an atheist?I was brought up as a fairly generic Christian (Church Of England). We never went to church (except for the usual weddings, funerals etc.), we never said grace before a meal, we were never threatened with HELLFIRE! It was just sort of assumed that God/Jesus/Bible was the way of the world, and as a little kid you don't know any better - you believe what the grown-ups tell you. In school we had to say prayers at the start and end of each day, and I suppose we thought everyone all over the world did the same. Everyone thought that bad people go to Hell and good people (like us) go to Heaven. Religious Education at school was based almost entirely on the Bible - the stories of Abraham, the tribes of Israel and so on - other religions were mentioned in passing, but the Jewish/Christian mythology was the only one studied to any depth (naturally, the atheistic viewpoint was never mentioned, and the atrocities and absurdities in the Bible were either avoided entirely or glossed over). Christianity was always there, in the background of our lives. I had a Bible in my bedroom and even read it on occasion (gasp!).When I got older, at about eighteen, I began to question my beliefs. I had learnt about many other religions (not in great detail, but I had a fair idea of what they were all about) and started to wonder why I believed the things I did. My head was full of all these odd notions that had accumulated over the years and didn't quite seem to match up to the real world. I reviewed what I knew of the world - geology, biology, evolution, cosmology etc. and realised that religion didn't explain things anywhere near as well as science. It was all too vague and fuzzy and implausible. The inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible made me doubt it - if I had a physics book that was as full of glaring holes as the Bible is, I would have thrown it out. I couldn't help but wonder why, if there was a benevolent God looking after us all, did so many people suffer and die all around the world - He didn't seem to be doing His job very well. (The religious answer was that He was doing his job, but He was doing it in a Mysterious Way, incomprehensible to mere mortals - scoring an 8.5 on the Sagan Baloney Detector.) I also became quite suspicious of organised religion in general. I would often hear preachers asking people to believe things that I knew were simply not true. I noticed that many people appeared to believe because they thought it was expected of them (If you ever watch TV Evangelist shows, you'll see this happen. Nobody ever jumps up and says "Hang on! That doesn't make any sense at all!" - everyone sits there, nodding and Amen-ing at everything the preacher has to say. Don't talk while the vicar is speaking, don't question, just listen and accept it. Peer pressure is a wonderful thing). I noticed the way that religions discouraged people from thinking too deeply about them, or from asking tricky questions. I noticed that Christians were not the only people who deeply and sincerely believed in a deity - these conflicting religions could not all be correct, so why should we believe one and not the other? All the religions claimed a monopoly on Truth, Love, Happiness, Justice, Morality. It slowly dawned on me that maybe they were all wrong... I began to realise that the world (and indeed the universe) in which I lived was entirely consistent with one that has no God, no Creator, no Guiding Intelligence. There was no valid reason to believe that any sort of a God existed. God became just another supernatural critter that people seriously believed in despite the lack of evidence, like Bigfoot, alien-abductor and lake monsters. I don't necessarily think that all religious people are deluded, irrational nuts (although a minority certainly are - see my feedback pages). I just think they're mistaken, and may very well hold perfectly rational and coherent reasons for their beliefs. I saw that many people had different reasons for believing in Gods, including (somewhat over-simplified):
So, I questioned my beliefs and they didn't stand up to much scrutiny. I abandoned religion as it had nothing to offer me (it had never really played a big part in my life anyway) and set off down the Road Of Truth.
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