Hi, I'm looking for answers

[Jocenel]

Hi, I was raised to be strictly religious. Me and my husband went to some Christian forums and asked some questions. I don't really know that we had them answered. So I am coming here. Me and my husband are kind of borderline right now. We believe theres a god maybe, but we are not sure that he cares or has the right motives etc.

My husband feels like god is playing the biggest mmo ever . That we are all just a game. I kind of agree with this. I feel very distraught because my mother who is the a very sweet pentocostal woman lost her husband and father recently. She lost her job had to move in with us. She has a very rare disease called Dystonia (like Parkinson's but worse) amid other aliments. When they eliminated my mothers position she looked at me and said maybe god has eliminated me to.... I'm just very angry that someone (God) would do this to her. I just don't understand.

I also, feel like some things my mother thinks are sinful are not. I feel like if we have to follow the Christian religion it would be impossible this day and time with all of the temptations and horrible things going on.

Anyway mainly I wanted to give you some of my background. I want to see why all of you choose atheism? Why do you feel like there really is no god? If there isn't I know that sucks, but a lot of things in life do...

[philosoraptor]

Why would it suck if there was no God?  In the absence of God, we only have to answer to ourselves.  We are responsible for our successes and our failures.  We are responsible for living our lives in the now, and not with the expectation of what comes after death.  We are responsible for looking out for ourselves and each other, because no one else will.  If anything, the absence of God liberates us to make our own choices and take responsibility for them, to live our lives to the fullest because the now is all we have, and to be good to each other because we all have our humanity in common.

I am an atheist because I believe in truth and fact.  There is no empirical proof for the existence of gods, and indeed the world we live in is quite incompatible with the omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipresent God described by the Abrahamic traditions, let alone the various gods described in polytheistic religions.  Use Occam's Razor-the simplest example is often the one that is correct, and in this case, it is much more simple to live in a world free of Gods than to try to reconcile all the different, conflicting, and contradicting beliefs held by those who do believe in higher powers.

[i_am_i]

I'm an atheist because after a long time of looking as deeply as I could into "all things God" I came to the obvious conclusion that God is just made up. God is a figment of the human imagination, God is an idea that goes back thousands of years, right back to primitive man when someone decided that there had to be some sort of human-type guiding force behind the rain and the sun and the moon and the changing of seasons, God was what made the hunt go well, God was what made a good crop grow, God was what caused bad things to happen when he was angry.

God is an idea, and ideas come from no place other than the human mind.  

Once I became convinced of that the rest was easy. Over time I came to see just how amazing it is to be a human being in this mysterious and beautiful universe, I began to marvel more and more at human ingenuity and achievement, and now every day is one more adventure, one more chance to be the best human being I possibly can be, to leave as many smiles behind me as I can and to treat other humans with dignity and respect.

I'm free from all that religious/superstitious cosmic despair, free to explore my humanity in my own way and so are you, so is everyone.

[joeactor]

Hi Jocenel - Welcome.

Sorry to hear about your Mom.  It's good that she's living with you now.

Well, I'm not an atheist, but I do hold a lot of the same views.  The universe is a pretty wonderful place, and science is the best way we have to try to understand it all.

I'm an "Agnostic Theist". I separate Belief from Knowledge.  I still believe there is a god... of some kind.  However, I think it is pointless to try to define god in any way.  After all, if god could be defined, he'd cease to be "supernatural".  He'd just be another part of the known universe.

Each of us must find their own way to truth.  You may end up becoming an atheist, or just an agnostic.  Perhaps you'll even choose to follow a different faith all together.  As long as you keep searching, you'll find the path that works best for you.

Feel free to discuss whatever you'd like.  There are folks with a variety of views here, and most are very willing to engage in cordial discussions...

Cheers,
JoeActor

[McQ]

Welcome to the forum, Jocenel. I'm sorry to hear that you're going through difficult times, and I hope you can really help your mother, as she will certainly need your help. Most important right now for you is to simply be a good person and good daughter to her, and that you give her the support and care she needs.

As for questioning your faith, I understand. I was raised Roman Catholic, but also spent much of my life in fundamentalist baptist churches. In all the time that I felt a strong belief in god, I never got answers to the types of tough questions I sought. Truth is, that the more I learned about christianity, god, the bible, etc., the less I believed that any of it was true or could possibly be true.

I would really call myself an apatheist, a term I use to describe someone who doesn't believe in a god, but can never know for sure, and who doesn't care one way or the other.

As for trying to answer all the questions that must be buzzing through your mind now, I could only help scratch the surface of the answers. But think about a few things. For one thing, if there was a literal being that had all the powers of the god of the bible (all knowing, all seeing, infinitely powerful, etc.), then why would he leave no actual evidence of himself? If we are the creation of such a being, then why did he create a world that is physically at odds with the bible's stories?

Think about it. Is there really some guy with a long white, flowing beard, sitting up in a literal heaven, looking down at everything that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD IS DOING at every moment in time, since the beginning of time? And stay with me here. With all the power available to change any part of history at any time, but has done nothing to stop war, famine, poverty, evil, etc. all through human history? If he was so powerful, he could do anything, yet never once, EVER, did something that should be trivial to him, like having an amputee regrow a severed limb. In all of human history, yet again.

If there really was such a being that infinitely powerful, he would have to be the most evil thing in existence for not preventing the suffering of his creation. The fact is, no such being exists. Humans created gods of all sorts to help them deal with things they could not explain, or that they feared. The god of the bible is a creation of people over thousands of years, cobbled together from stories and cultures, borrowed from even older god myths and tales.

Living without a god doesn't mean in any way that our existence is futile. If anything, it makes life even more special and important. We get one life, one shot to experience this world and reality. No do-overs, and no eternal afterlife sitting on a cloud somewhere.

Hope this helps answer some of your questions as to why some of us don't believe in gods. Please feel free to ask more!