Why are you the way you are?

[navvelline]

I was raised Christian and phased out of it in my teen years. Mine was a more gradual process: theism to deism to a brief period of pure agnosticism to atheism. All that really happened is I started to notice the hypocrisy in the church, and really began to notice the lies they were telling. Not that they knew they were lies. They just don't look into anything outside the "bubble" of what they teach each other. So my story is rather cerebral and boring. I thought and read the Bible (and also began to put into perspective what a Hell, should it exist, would really mean). The end.

Your story sounds similar to mine, but usually it is a gradual process for anyone raised into a particular religion.
Someone previously mentioned it was like "losing a friend", I thought of it more as mourning a death. But unlike mourning the death of an actual person, you can get over losing your religion.

[Gawen]

I'm interested in how you've come to believe in what you believe.

Simply...I do not believe. I think.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I was raised a Southern Baptist Texan, but when I was 8 we moved to Teheran, Iran.  Because there aren't many Baptists there, I attended many different services from many different sects, and that was the first chink in the armor: I noticed they all claimed to possess the Truth, and damned each other to hell.  Even to my childish mind, the problem was apparent.

Then, in the late summer of '78, the discontent against the Shah coalesced into outright revolt, under a religious aegis.  After four months of riots, unrest, disturbance, dead bodies, and such, I stumbled onto the Problem of Evil, which haunted my faith for the next two years.

Finally, a silly incident at church choir -- getting sent home for "inappropriate" apparel, as if God cared more about my clothes than my heart -- caused me to realize that theism was nothing more than a lever of control.  And yes, it was hard to watch, between the ages of 12 and 14, watch my faith die.  Scary.  But I couldn't lie to myself: it was dying.  When it expired, I buried it and moved on.

[karadan]

Had it not been for her, who knows what I would have become? VenomFangX? I shudder at the thought.

I highly, highly doubt that Will. You obviously already had intelligence - something i'm not sure VFX is endowed with.. Had Ms. Rose not sowed the seeds of doubt in your brain, you'd have eventually found it another way, i'm sure.

[karadan]

I was raised in a secular environment. Dad was in the Army and mum was a nurse. My first contact with religion was Sunday school when I was five in Borneo. I'd actually asked my parents if I could go (I think someone had come to school in the week to ask which kids wanted to attend). My parents said I could go, so I went. I found it very boring and I realised very quickly that I'd prefer to be outside with my friends in the sun, finding scorpions to annoy (they can run pretty fast when pissed off!).

I had several clashes with other religious teachers over the years. I went to two boarding schools from the age of 11 - 18. The chaplain from the first school was actually a very nice guy and managed to get me semi-interested with various aspects of religion. My English teacher, however, was hulking great fool of a man. I was always a little petulant but I think that's just because I wanted to get facts straight in my head. If I didn't understand something, I'd keep asking questions until I did. Well, my English teacher did not like this - I've never been sure why. Anyway, we had an altercation one time and I think I said 'for gods sake', or something like that. Well, to say he overreacted is an understatement. He gated me for three weeks. To be gated was to have every moment of free time stripped from you. You'd have to sit on your own in breakfast, lunch and dinner with various amounts of ridicule coming your way from other kids. You weren't allowed any contact with family or friends of any kind. Losing your weekend at a boarding school was a very big deal for a twelve year old. Each night I had to write a four-sided essay on various aspects of religion only to have Mr Vipond (the English teacher) tear it up in front of me. Apart from the ordeal making me horrendously homesick for the first and only time in my life, it also sowed a very dark seed of hatred for the religion this English teacher said I wasn't supposed to be blaspheming about.

From there I went to the senior boarding school, four miles down the road. Within the first week, I was at odds with the reverend. I'd asked some apparently impertinent questions and was told I wasn't to be disruptive in his class any more. By my second year there, I'd stopped going to that class. This was completely against the rules but he never said anything to my boarding house master,

I only considered myself antitheist after joining this forum.

[ElizabethPeart]

I was raised Christian, and during my entire upbringing talking about God was as natural as breathing, and so I didn't question it, especially as I attended a fairly strict Christian set of schools and so being seen to upset people by asking questions wasn't a good idea.

  Now it was at uni I really began to really fall into my present state. Now whilst I was at uni I really began to up the religion. I joined the Christian Union, and also joined a fairly large church. I took part in evangelism events, volunteered for different things and even took up the bass guitar because I felt 'called' to play in the worship band. But at the same time, my study of ancient history took me to study things such as the history behind the organization of the Bible, the story of Dionysus and parallelisms between this and the Bible, as well as other historical fields. I began to notice a huge contradiction in my study of history, which required me to critically examine sources, check facts and back up assertions and arguments, and my acceptance of the Bible with none of the same study, despite claiming the Bible to be a perfect historical document.

 So this began a long study of the Bible, both in terms of history and also for its philosophical messages, the contradictions and issues posed by it. I also opted at this point to bother to learn PROPERLY about Islam and to read the Qur'an with help from Muslims and get their viewpoints and ideas. And so by doing this I pretty much threw out the Bible as a book coming from God, and the Qur'an too. For me, a being truly divine would NOT have made such a mess of writing a book should it choose to do so, and that what was in that book would be provable by empirical evidence.

  And so eventually I came to deism, and I began to accept that this was who I really was and am. I seriously wish I could take a time machine, go back to 1995 and hand my 7-yr old self a copy of The Age of Reason. I'd save myself a lot of pain...

 I must also give thanks for the internet. Without it, I would certainly never have found the group of guys who explained evolution to me properly (on another site. Cheers guys!). I would never have found out about deism or The World Union of Deists, and I wouldn't have been able to research Bible stuff as much as I did without it or find video channels on YouTube dedicated to deism (in particular the videos of deistpaladin who makes some excellent videos on Biblical skepticism).

[LegendarySandwich]

I was raised Christian, and during my entire upbringing talking about God was as natural as breathing, and so I didn't question it, especially as I attended a fairly strict Christian set of schools and so being seen to upset people by asking questions wasn't a good idea.

  Now it was at uni I really began to really fall into my present state. Now whilst I was at uni I really began to up the religion. I joined the Christian Union, and also joined a fairly large church. I took part in evangelism events, volunteered for different things and even took up the bass guitar because I felt 'called' to play in the worship band. But at the same time, my study of ancient history took me to study things such as the history behind the organization of the Bible, the story of Dionysus and parallelisms between this and the Bible, as well as other historical fields. I began to notice a huge contradiction in my study of history, which required me to critically examine sources, check facts and back up assertions and arguments, and my acceptance of the Bible with none of the same study, despite claiming the Bible to be a perfect historical document.

 So this began a long study of the Bible, both in terms of history and also for its philosophical messages, the contradictions and issues posed by it. I also opted at this point to bother to learn PROPERLY about Islam and to read the Qur'an with help from Muslims and get their viewpoints and ideas. And so by doing this I pretty much threw out the Bible as a book coming from God, and the Qur'an too. For me, a being truly divine would NOT have made such a mess of writing a book should it choose to do so, and that what was in that book would be provable by empirical evidence.

  And so eventually I came to deism, and I began to accept that this was who I really was and am. I seriously wish I could take a time machine, go back to 1995 and hand my 7-yr old self a copy of The Age of Reason. I'd save myself a lot of pain...

 I must also give thanks for the internet. Without it, I would certainly never have found the group of guys who explained evolution to me properly (on another site. Cheers guys!). I would never have found out about deism or The World Union of Deists, and I wouldn't have been able to research Bible stuff as much as I did without it or find video channels on YouTube dedicated to deism (in particular the videos of deistpaladin who makes some excellent videos on Biblical skepticism).

Just for curiosity's sake (I've never met a deist before), what exact kind of god do you believe in? Why are you a deist instead of an atheist? Thanks.

[Sophus]

Your story sounds similar to mine, but usually it is a gradual process for anyone raised into a particular religion.
Someone previously mentioned it was like "losing a friend", I thought of it more as mourning a death. But unlike mourning the death of an actual person, you can get over losing your religion.

I agree, except, also unlike mourning a death, part of me felt very excited and freed. I'll never forget the feeling.

[Inevitable Droid]

The earliest proto-atheist thought of mine that I can remember is, "You know, if I were God, I would want humans to study nature by the scientific method."

It was all a downhill slide to hell from there.

[tunghaichuan]

The earliest proto-atheist thought of mine that I can remember is, "You know, if I were God, I would want humans to study nature by the scientific method."

It was all a downhill slide to hell from there.

Exactly. Why give human beings free will and then punish them if they don't comply to a particular set of beliefs? That's just crazy.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The earliest proto-atheist thought of mine that I can remember is, "You know, if I were God, I would want humans to study nature by the scientific method."

It was all a downhill slide to hell from there.

Mine happened when I was 6, when a fundy televangelist in Texas talked about how planes might be sinful, that if god wanted men to fly he'd have given them wings, and I told my mom, "But he gave them the brains to invent airplanes."

[ElizabethPeart]

Just for curiosity's sake (I've never met a deist before), what exact kind of god do you believe in? Why are you a deist instead of an atheist? Thanks.

  Deists believe in a God who created the universe, and then put rules in place to ensure the smooth governance of the universe, and as a result the universe's set-up points to a Creator. Deists don't believe in any of the declared holy books (and their contradictions, errors and fallacies), although the consensus is that if God wished to do so, He/She/It could do so, without errors of basic philosophy, science and reason, as well as this revelation being apparent to all of mankind. The belief is (although this is not uniform to all deists) that God does not choose to intervene in the universe in the same way Allah or Yahweh is supposed to have done (which causes a load of issues of freewill among other things) and that nothing should be attributed to God which is not verifiable by reason, which discounts things such as turning water to wine and splitting the moon in half, or faith healing. Deists don't believe (for the most part) in prayer either, believing it to be wrong to dictate to God what to do.

  As to why I'm a deist over an atheist....I actually don't know. I just think that the universe points to a Creator...although I'm open to be converted by a good reasoning!

[LegendarySandwich]

Just for curiosity's sake (I've never met a deist before), what exact kind of god do you believe in? Why are you a deist instead of an atheist? Thanks.

  Deists believe in a God who created the universe, and then put rules in place to ensure the smooth governance of the universe, and as a result the universe's set-up points to a Creator. Deists don't believe in any of the declared holy books (and their contradictions, errors and fallacies), although the consensus is that if God wished to do so, He/She/It could do so, without errors of basic philosophy, science and reason, as well as this revelation being apparent to all of mankind. The belief is (although this is not uniform to all deists) that God does not choose to intervene in the universe in the same way Allah or Yahweh is supposed to have done (which causes a load of issues of freewill among other things) and that nothing should be attributed to God which is not verifiable by reason, which discounts things such as turning water to wine and splitting the moon in half, or faith healing. Deists don't believe (for the most part) in prayer either, believing it to be wrong to dictate to God what to do.

  As to why I'm a deist over an atheist....I actually don't know. I just think that the universe points to a Creator...although I'm open to be converted by a good reasoning!

I don't really see much difference between atheism and deism. Atheists think that no gods exist; deists think that a god exists, but didn't really do much else. As noted by Dawkins in The God Delusion, deism is really a watered-down version of atheism.

So, do you think that God is omniscient; Omnipotent; omnibenevolent; etc.? Or do you have no opinion on those sorts of traits?

I think that using a supreme being to explain how we and the universe got here is unnecessary; although there are many gaps in our knowledge, we can explain it through completely naturalistic processes.

[ElizabethPeart]

I don't really see much difference between atheism and deism. Atheists think that no gods exist; deists think that a god exists, but didn't really do much else. As noted by Dawkins in The God Delusion, deism is really a watered-down version of atheism.

  There really isn't that much of a difference between the two, they're both based on reason and scientific discovery.

The similarity between the two is so much that in the Renaissance, deists were (often and mistakenly) labelled as atheists, including Thomas Paine, labelled as 'Judas, hog, infidel and atheist' by his former friends for his criticism of religion shortly before his death.

So, do you think that God is omniscient; Omnipotent; omnibenevolent; etc.? Or do you have no opinion on those sorts of traits?

  Omniscience- seems to be both morally and philosophically impossible.
Omnipresence- there are some deists who believe that God created the universe and then BECAME the universe itself, which acts a sort of omnipresence. If you're talking about the classical religious omnipresence, then I believe it not to be the case.
An omni-benevolent God- I don't know. I believe in a God who is merciful to all regardless of belief, race, gender or anything else, and who has given us the gifts of consciousness, reason and intellect for a reason.

 

I think that using a supreme being to explain how we and the universe got here is unnecessary; although there are many gaps in our knowledge, we can explain it through completely naturalistic processes.

   I'm still studying this idea...I must admit there are HUGE gaps in my own scientific knowledge apart from astronomy.

[Croaker]

I had labelled myself a 'deist' for a while - it seemed an easy way out, I guess. As far as the term "watered down atheism," I would kind of agree. If the deistic god or goddess or whatever (not God, since at this point, he wouldn't be specific to any one religion, correct?) provides only one purpose, which is an explanation of where the universe came from, why not just knock it out with the Razor?

If deism is true, what happens when you die? I'm kind of curious on this, as I'm learning that my perception of deism may not be what it really is...