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Your conversion to atheism

Started by xXxWashburnxXx, January 26, 2012, 11:58:22 PM

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Asmodean

Quote from: Radiant on January 27, 2012, 03:41:30 PM
But, no, I'm not bisexual. I used to think I was, but you just can't convince yourself that you are something that you simply aren't.
*redneck hat on*

That blue pony. It's obviously gay. It's going to Hell, where it shall be penetrated by that rainbow-thing for all eternity.  >:(


*/hat*  ;D
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Traveler

I've never believed in any gods. I'm a second generation non-believer. My father was a Catholic until, as a young boy, he was told that he couldn't read particular books. As a very intelligent young person, this didn't sit well with him, and he felt that any religion that couldn't stand up to differing thoughts was full of it. He never looked back. My mom was raised Lutheran. She had a similar response when everyone told her she couldn't ask questions about god or the bible. I'm now in my 50s, and what I have seen throughout my life is that my parents are/were (my dad's dead) some of the smartest, kindest, most ethical people I have ever met. They seem to have their act together far more than their religious sisters and brothers and parents. And their ethics always seemed of the highest order. Protecting the planet, helping people in need, etc. Very giving people.

So, with that example in hand, and with no evidence appearing whatsoever that a god might exist, I never saw any reason to change my views on god and religion. We now have a third generation of non-believers, in my brother's children. They're in college now, and nicer, cooler, smarter kids would be hard to find. I can't help contrast that with extended family members who are still religious: many instances of teen pregnancies, drug use, suicidal tendencies, and many other problems.
If we ever travel thousands of light years to a planet inhabited by intelligent life, let's just make patterns in their crops and leave.

Tank

Quote from: Radiant on January 27, 2012, 03:41:30 PM
Quote from: Tank on January 27, 2012, 03:22:42 PM
Quote from: Radiant on January 27, 2012, 03:11:01 PM
Quote from: Thunder Road on January 27, 2012, 07:27:11 AM
Oh and not really related to the topic at all but I always get excited when I see female members joining (partly because most of the outspoken atheists are male and there is little representation from the female side) but mostly because on a Lutheran campus like where I am I haven't met a single girl who isn't outspokenly Christian yet and let's face it, I'm gettin' lonely over here.  The only reason I bring this up is because I lol'd when I read that you identify with the LGBT community and I was like "well, easy come, easy go".  

Now what exactly do you mean by that?
Let me guess. He liked the idea of a chatting up a girl, only to find out she was a lesbian?  :-[ That's what I took it to mean. Mind you, LGBT does include bi-sexual so he still could be in luck!

Oh, duh! This is probably why I fail at socializing and getting dates.  :-[

But, no, I'm not bisexual. I used to think I was, but you just can't convince yourself that you are something that you simply aren't.
The other issue is that the written word (as a means of interactive communication) can be awfully ambiguous. I read some research once that came to the conclusion that if you take a face-to-face conversation as 100% communication then the written word only rates 7%! You lose 93% of communication bandwidth on a forum. That's why smilies/emoticons are so important. The main problem with this degraded 'bandwidth' is that people unconsciously fill in the gaps. If a person who you like makes a given statement then you'll put a positive spin on it, while the same statement made by somebody you dislike (or don't know) may get a negative spin. In practice you fill in the gaps of a persona based on your own preconceptions/prejudices/experiences. Forum land is strewn with examples of miss-communication.
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Anne D.

I realized I was an atheist (wouldn't say "converted to atheism") mostly as a result of learning more about the scientific explanations for certain things I'd considered to be supernatural and for how the universe and life as they exist today came to exist. After a while, a belief in any supernatural being or force just didn't seem necessary or rational.

It seems important to make a distinction between a person's dissatisfaction with and rejection of his or her religion's teachings and a person's coming to the conclusion that no supernatural being/force exists. While the two often go hand in hand, they're really two different things.

Ali

Quote from: Anne D. on January 27, 2012, 04:27:00 PM
I realized I was an atheist (wouldn't say "converted to atheism") mostly as a result of learning more about the scientific explanations for certain things I'd considered to be supernatural and for how the universe and life as they exist today came to exist. After a while, a belief in any supernatural being or force just didn't seem necessary or rational.

It seems important to make a distinction between a person's dissatisfaction with and rejection of his or her religion's teachings and a person's coming to the conclusion that no supernatural being/force exists. While the two often go hand in hand, they're really two different things.

Ooh, I totally relate to the bolded.  To the first bolded, that's exactly how I feel.  I don't think that I converted to atheism, because conversion to me implies some sort of choice.  Like I woke up one day and consciously said "Well that's it!  I'm not going to believe in God any more.  Starting.....now!" 

I don't exactly know how I lost my faith in god.  It went in small ways, I suppose.  When I try to think of when I became an atheist, I fall into this kind of rough time period between 14 and 23.  23 is when I consciously identified myself as an atheist, but about 14 is when I started to question things, and started the very long (for me) process of pulling away from Christianity and then the notion of a god altogether.  It sounds strange, but I don't actually remember specifics about what started the process.  I guess maybe because I've been somewhere on the non-religious scale longer than I was ever religious.  Huh.  I think it was just a general sense of things not making sense to me, stories not seeming plausible.  I remember hearing a bible story about some guy growing feathers and claws (I can't remember who or what he did to piss off god) in Sunday School and actually looking around at my fellow students and thinking "Wait, you guys don't believe that literally happened, do you?  You do???  What????"  And I think it just kind of got to the point where the stories I had been told couldn't hold up under their own weight, you know?  Like the harder I looked at things, the less sense anything made, until the whole concept of a god seemed completely ridiculous.

I also agree with the second bolded.  I dislike some of the teachings of the religion I was raised (such as the persecution of homosexuals) but that's not why I'm an atheist.  It's just that once you start questioning religion and thinking about it critically, you often find things that you dislike as well as the things that you disbelieve.


Anne D.

Quote from: Ali on January 27, 2012, 06:33:47 PM
Quote from: Anne D. on January 27, 2012, 04:27:00 PM
I realized I was an atheist (wouldn't say "converted to atheism") mostly as a result of learning more about the scientific explanations for certain things I'd considered to be supernatural and for how the universe and life as they exist today came to exist. After a while, a belief in any supernatural being or force just didn't seem necessary or rational.

It seems important to make a distinction between a person's dissatisfaction with and rejection of his or her religion's teachings and a person's coming to the conclusion that no supernatural being/force exists. While the two often go hand in hand, they're really two different things.

Ooh, I totally relate to the bolded. To the first bolded, that's exactly how I feel.  I don't think that I converted to atheism, because conversion to me implies some sort of choice.  Like I woke up one day and consciously said "Well that's it!  I'm not going to believe in God any more.  Starting.....now!" 



Yes, definitely that, and also, to me, "convert to atheism" implies that atheism is a religion, and it irks me when people do that.



Quote from: Ali on January 27, 2012, 06:33:47 PM

I don't exactly know how I lost my faith in god.  It went in small ways, I suppose.  When I try to think of when I became an atheist, I fall into this kind of rough time period between 14 and 23.  23 is when I consciously identified myself as an atheist, but about 14 is when I started to question things, and started the very long (for me) process of pulling away from Christianity and then the notion of a god altogether.


These are the two things (1 - discarding belief in the teachings of and explanations provided by a particular faith and 2 -coming to the conclusion that no supernatural force exists) that I was trying to distinguish between, just b/c for me they were separate processes. (Discarded my belief in the teachings of the religion I was brought up in beginning as a teenager, but didn't lose my belief in some fuzzy supernatural benevolent force till a good ten+ years later.)


xXxWashburnxXx

#21
Like I said in the first post, I am new to atheism. I know almost nothing about it. I used the word "conversion" because I thought it fit, but apparently it doesn't.

EDIT: this should probably be moved to life as an atheist.
Evolution is JUST a theory. Ya know, like gravity!

Sandra Craft

Count me as another who didn't convert so much as realized I was an atheist.  I was raised around a number of conventional, and unconventional, Xtian religions (depending on how you view Mormonism) and liked them well enough except that they didn't make much sense.  The older I got, the more that bothered me so I decided to read the bible cover to cover as that was the recommended answerer of all questions.  I like to joke that I started Genesis a Xtian and finished Revelations an atheist, but in fact reading the bible only put an end to my Xtianity (which probably wasn't all that strong to begin with).  A few years of general religious searching later and it finally dawned on me that the reason nothing was taking was that I didn't believe in the god any of these religions promoted, and I really couldn't see the likelihood of any god at all.  The universe just made more sense without one.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Anne D.

Quote from: xXxWashburnxXx on January 28, 2012, 03:08:52 AM
Like I said in the first post, I am new to atheism. I know almost nothing about it. I used the word "conversion" because I thought it fit, but apparently it doesn't.

EDIT: this should probably be moved to life as an atheist.

I'm sorry--I didn't at all mean to sound huffy or harsh.  :) It's hard to communicate tone on the Internet. This topic (how one came to be an atheist) is a great one for discussion, however you choose to frame it.


Thunder Road

Quote from: Tank on January 27, 2012, 03:22:42 PM

Let me guess. He liked the idea of a chatting up a girl, only to find out she was a lesbian?  :-[

haha yup.  How's that HAF Dating Site coming along, Tank?  ;)
"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see." -John Lennon, Strawberry Fields Forever

Freshman Meteorology major at Valparaiso University in Indiana and fan of exclusively classic rock.

Tank

Quote from: xXxWashburnxXx on January 28, 2012, 03:08:52 AM
Like I said in the first post, I am new to atheism. I know almost nothing about it. I used the word "conversion" because I thought it fit, but apparently it doesn't.

EDIT: this should probably be moved to life as an atheist.
I think you started this when you had 9 posts so I left it in the LBL. I'll move it now.
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

pytheas

Quote from: xXxWashburnxXx
I was once a hardcore conservative christian
when to a blind man the sight comes back, he does not convert to binocular vision, rather the ability in restored.

We all are born and able, supposed to get along without any fucking "jericho trumpet" interventions

If you were once a hardcore junkie that now sobered up and cleared out, I would treat you with more respect, as I  would know that some permanent biochemical alterations have taken place and compromise thereafter your morality to intense rigidity and self-purgatory stoic hardline black and white fixation. what is commonly called "once a junkie always a junkie" not however with the same junk.

hence beware considering the rational correspondant society that atheism implies,  a conversion into a different coloured coat, some may see it as an insult, albeit a shallow and low-impact one.

consider everything you learned in the bible as a crime against humanity, and the people who support it, dodgy
"Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance."
"Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency"
"Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little."
by EPICURUS 4th century BCE

xXxWashburnxXx

Quote from: pytheas on January 28, 2012, 05:57:09 PM
Quote from: xXxWashburnxXx
I was once a hardcore conservative christian
when to a blind man the sight comes back, he does not convert to binocular vision, rather the ability in restored.

We all are born and able, supposed to get along without any fucking "jericho trumpet" interventions

If you were once a hardcore junkie that now sobered up and cleared out, I would treat you with more respect, as I  would know that some permanent biochemical alterations have taken place and compromise thereafter your morality to intense rigidity and self-purgatory stoic hardline black and white fixation. what is commonly called "once a junkie always a junkie" not however with the same junk.

hence beware considering the rational correspondant society that atheism implies,  a conversion into a different coloured coat, some may see it as an insult, albeit a shallow and low-impact one.

consider everything you learned in the bible as a crime against humanity, and the people who support it, dodgy
I hate the person I once was. I was a terrible person. I blindly followed a work of fiction from the bronze age and I regret every day of it. I see the world from a different perspective. There is no justification for the bloodshed and bigotry that the bible, or any other "holy book" has caused. There is no justification for the terrible things I said and the awful messages I spread while a christian. I know what I did was just terrible and if I could take it back I would, but I can't. I hate the ignorant, stupid person I once was and the mistakes I made as him.
Evolution is JUST a theory. Ya know, like gravity!

Harmonie

Quote from: Asmodean on January 27, 2012, 03:46:55 PM
Quote from: Radiant on January 27, 2012, 03:41:30 PM
But, no, I'm not bisexual. I used to think I was, but you just can't convince yourself that you are something that you simply aren't.
*redneck hat on*

That blue pony. It's obviously gay. It's going to Hell, where it shall be penetrated by that rainbow-thing for all eternity.  >:(


*/hat*  ;D

Actually, according to the book Heaven is for Real, she exists in heaven with Jesus.  ;)

QuoteJust as I was processing the implications of my son's statement--that he had met John the Baptist--Coulton spied a plastic horse among his toys and held it up to me to look at. "Hey, Dad, did you know Jesus had a horse?"
"A horse?"
"Yeah, a rainbow horse. I got to pet him. There's lots of colors."

:D

(Oh, and apparently she changed sexes on the way up there.  :P)

Icon Image by Cherubunny on Tumblr
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

Sandra Craft

Quote from: xXxWashburnxXx on January 28, 2012, 11:39:38 PM
There is no justification for the terrible things I said and the awful messages I spread while a christian. I know what I did was just terrible and if I could take it back I would, but I can't. I hate the ignorant, stupid person I once was and the mistakes I made as him.

I generally don't go in much for forgiveness (I go in for it some, just not much) and self-forgiveness often seems to me like issuing yourself a "get out of jail free" card but in cases like yours I think you're entitled.  You did what you did (you'll forgive the expression) in good faith and you honestly didn't know any better.  Once you did, you stopped and that could have been no easy thing -- upending everything you'd believed to that point.  So I say good on you and give yourself a break, at least on this one.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany