Happy Atheist Forum

I remember hearing this question, stop me if it has already been asked here;

Has anything made you question non-belief/atheism/agnosticism position?

Personally I faltered during Christmas, but realized I was just feeling odd/alone without God during the holiday.

Nope.

 

Not that I can remember, I have never seen anything and thought, "You know what, that really looks like god is the most likley cause of that"

Not since I quit referring to myself as agnostic.  No one has said anything new or offered any reliable evidence that would give me a reason to question my viewpoint.  I'm convinced that god either doesn't exist or doesn't want us to know it exists otherwise it would have made itself known in a real way.

I question myself all the time, but that's probably more just my nature I suppose.

No evidence exists for the supernatural, therefore there was nothing to ever test me. If there was some verifiable evidence for something supernatural, which defied any rational, scientific explanation, the best explanation would still be a natural one. There's plenty of science yet to be discovered.

Quote from: "Squid"I question myself all the time, but that's probably more just my nature I suppose.

I try to; because I really do think it is important to examine my own views critically.  For some reason I can't get very far with questioning my stance on god.  I hope I'm not turning into the atheist version of a fundie.     Well, I'd probably have to worry more about being called a hard fence sitting agnostic since some militant strong atheists don't even think I am an atheist due to my being willing to admit that a deist sort of god could exist and we'd never know.

The biggest threat to my lack of faith is the death of loved ones. I really wish I could believe that I'll see them again. I lost my mother two and a half years ago, and it sucked. I hate to think of losing any of my kids, or of them someday losing me, permanently. It is almost unbearable to think of. Despite that wish, I just cannot wrap my brain around the internal inconsistencies of religious dogma.

I agree with the inconsistencies of religious dogmas - that's why it should be left up to the individual and their own beliefs.

Nothing will ever be able to question my 'non-belief'. I survived two near-death experiences and I did not question it at all. My faith is in me - I say that at the risk of being egocentric. But I assure you it has everything to do with a new appreciation of life and learning to live life in the present moment and not to live life just in spite of it.  

fortunately nop

I have had a few experiences which could be called 'numinous.'  For some, that might be proof enough of a deity, but for me, they only convinced me that we are the universe experiencing itself, which is quite magical enough, in my opinion.  No need for any supernatural beings of any kind: nature, and our presence here, is sufficiently awesome.

If a new argument is presented (which is a rare find among cliche loving theists) then I enter with an open mind. The outcome always leads me to atheism though.

Perhaps the idea that maybe god does exist and he's just a mean bully screwin' with us could make one unsure.    "Let's program the universe so that to the logic of an intelligent human mind I couldn't possibly exist but then give them all a shocker in the end."

I agree with those of who you who say there is no evidence for that of religous dogma; therefore excluding the possibility of you not being a theist. I do not completely rule out the possibility of a deity (not neccessarily divine but a creator). The wonder that inspires me when looking at the beauty involved in this life has made me falter and consider an imperfect deity.

 My love of the complexity and wonder and lovliness of our existence,  of our universe, has much to do with design which, if considering an all powerful designer, is completely bunk. It is a terrible design, in fact if one has a rudimentary understanding of astronomy it is impossible to say that a designer, if he exists, is perfect. Failed solar systems. Super Novas. The fate "God's" Earth faces when the sun explodes before it withers. The chaos involved with the stars and the planets begs for an imperfect design which extinguishes my wishful thinking of a deity with us in mind. As imperfect a universe we live in, it does not fail in being absolutely extrodinary.

Of course we have Evolution by Natural Selection to explain the complexity of life, but even with processes like these the human being cannot but stand in awe and wonder wether something is behind it. I believe that because we are so ignorant in our understanding of how things came about in the beginning and before beginning we want to assert a creator; I believe that until we have satisfactory knowledge (which is nothing more than a possibility of gaining it) of our our cosmic origins we will always have the impulse to assert a creator or, if you will, a god. Perhaps we are created by a deity, I think not, perhaps we are a sub universe that found energy from neighboring realities and universes, we are too basic in our understanding to rule out possibility but too understanding to affirm such beliefs. I feel rantish for jumping too many topics when I really just wanted to transfer my falters in believing in no possibility of a creator....one main misconception of atheists is that we rule out any possibility of a creator, when we just feel that our knowledge of the universe are to basic to acknowledge one. It is better to accept no theory than a bad one.

when i saw that messenger was banned from the forum, i thought for a second that there could be a god.

Quote from: "Wraitchel"The biggest threat to my lack of faith is the death of loved ones. I really wish I could believe that I'll see them again. I lost my mother two and a half years ago, and it sucked. I hate to think of losing any of my kids, or of them someday losing me, permanently. It is almost unbearable to think of. Despite that wish, I just cannot wrap my brain around the internal inconsistencies of religious dogma.

I can see how that could be an issue, or trying time.  I think that is part of the wish fulfillment hole that religion helps to fill.  I can speak from experience on losing a child, and it only strengthened my non-belief but it sure would be nice to be able to think of it as a good thing "she's gone off to be with God floating around being cared for" but in reality I deal with the fact that she's gone, and it hurts, and it's really just my memory of her that continues.  It never makes me want to dig into my imagination and pull out a fairy tale of ever seeing her again though, it just never occurs to me as feasible.  Makes me feel like a cold person sometimes, no warm and fuzzy delusion to wrap around myself.

Quote from: "4DeepThought2"Has anything made you question non-belief/atheism/agnosticism position?

To date no because I take the philosophical position that whilst there are things we cannot explain there is an implicit "yet". Also the thought that there might be a deity (at least any of those so far described to me) is so bloody awful in any rational sense I won't let my mind be perverted by the possibility and it stays an abstract possibility and as such can be easily destroyed by reason.

Kyu

I would have to irreducible complexity. I mean, every time I try to wrap my head around the subject, I feel God's warm embrace getting tighter as I begin to realize more and more that we had to have been create.....NOT!!! Michael Behe is a douchey windbag. He attempted to disguise the fact that his "irreducible complexity" argument was just Paley's "watchmaker" argument in a large-worded, harder-for-the-laymen-to-understand dress...and lipstick...something about a pig....whatever.

Now to really answer the question. Absolutely nothing. In fact, even the reason some have stated (loss of a loved one) just reaffirmed my non-belief.

Oh yeah...being raised (and still living) in a Christian household and constantly told "God be with you" and "I'm praying for you" makes not questioning my non-belief difficult. (But going to church this passed sunday did confirm my non-belief) so it's all good.

Quote from: "4DeepThought2"Has anything made you question non-belief/atheism/agnosticism position?

Simply put, no. A few of my life experiences since I have become an atheist have reaffirmed my conclusions.

The only thing that would make me question myself would be if a god physically appeared before me (and at least a few other witnesses) and either performed a real miracle or explained to me why there was absolutely no proof of his/her/its existence.

Not really, though the argument from faith has given me pause, simply because of Pascal's Wager and it's implications. I know very well that it's a horrible argument, though.

Titan got me to question it for a few minutes last night.  I was sleepy, his argument was unsound, and now I feel quite bad about letting it slip by and taunt me for the better part of thirty minutes.   :D

(For those curious, I let him undermine the Law of Non-contradiction, stating that it was accepted by everyone on faith.  I didn't realize just then that a proof is out of the question, but it is falsifiable and rather representative of everything we've seen up to this point.  No single object may occupy two distinct places in space, and no two objects may occupy the same space, for example.  Likewise, nothing we've seen was simultaneously fully black and fully red, or fully 10,000 degrees C while also being fully 2 degrees C.  I'm normally better about the "proof" thing, but I was a bit taken aback by his willingness to gun for one of the most fundamental concepts of our existence.  Dumbstruck, as it were.)

I was an atheist until I encountered this argument:

If external rationality is rejected (since it's just another point of view and therefore should be questioned) the fact that Christianity is so internally consistent has made me question:  i.e.  "If the Christian God does exist, then I should look at the world through a Christian point of view.  When the world is looked at through a Christian point of view, the entire Christian worldview makes sense.  If I look at the world through an atheistic point of view, the Christian worldview is wrong, but according to Christians this is because I'm not looking at it from their point of view."

I've run into a great big inherent logical falacy:  Reality is the scope through which one views reality.  It's like trying to look at a microscope through the same microscope.  It threatens to lead us into the deep abyss of absolute relativism, stating that what is true day to day really just depends on your mood when you get up because one day you're going to die and it either won't matter at all or it will matter supremely, but there's not a darn thing you can do about it now and it's impossible to discern one from another because of said logical falacy.  see:  Descartes demon

Of course, I'm sure there's a name for this since someone has probably thought of it before, but I'm really too lazy too look it up.

So...I just quit worrying.  I'm agnostic now.  I hope that one day when I die, if God exists, he's decent enough to talk this through with me.  If he's not, I want nothing to do with him anyway  ;)

The only thing that made me question my atheist world view was religious instruction at school. I was too young to have been taught about skepticism and science and yet I was apparently not too young for religious indoctrination. When I started out at school in Scotland the subject was still called religious instruction rather than religious education and it was taught by a member of the clergy, who would "teach" us by reading scripture. We also had to sing hymns and pray. For a brief period I tried prayer outside of school. It didn't work so I stopped. Once I was old enough and educated enough to think in rational terms and understand what it means to think rationally I have not doubted.

There are still questions I have pondered though like:
Am I an atheist or a nontheist?
Should I be a moral person? (I tried on nihilism for a while)
What is morality?
Does life have a purpose?
Am I a spiritual person?
etc

Quote from: "NearBr0ken""If the Christian God does exist, then I should look at the world through a Christian point of view.  When the world is looked at through a Christian point of view, the entire Christian worldview makes sense.  If I look at the world through an atheistic point of view, the Christian worldview is wrong, but according to Christians this is because I'm not looking at it from their point of view."

I look at people strung-out on methamphetamines and they just don't make sense to me, it's pretty clear to me that they're ruining their lives. If I started using meth, I could see their point of view.
I don't want to do that for the same reason I do not want to see the world from a religious p.o.v. Using my rational mind, I'm convinced it's wrong, so I'm not going to join them.

I've had a period of time where I believed in a god (but never specifically a christian god because the only reason I saw to become one is that everyone else was, which is shit) but it was a time of vulnerability and ignorance on my part.  I had read Lee Strobel's The Case For a Creator and I just decided to believe it without looking further into the subjects.  I won't lie, the whole believing in god thing was comforting but that didn't make it right.

Nearbr0ken:  Negative.  There are certain truths more foundational than the ones Christians claim, and that even they accept (most of the time).  Science has the virtues of being repeatable, logically consistent, and time-tested and continually proven.  Religion, especially Christianity, lacks thee qualities.  The "absolute relativism" you speak of only applies to things we take to be truly subjective, but things that are experimentally verified cannot be subjective lest we bastardize the meaning of the word.  These are external truths, not subject to the mind and its whims.  Things that don't go away when you stop believing in them, like gravity, not internal truths such as my views on purpose and life.  I'm all about getting as much external truth as possible and keeping the internal truth to a minimum as I have no one but myself to rely on for it.  I find keeping Occam's Razor well-honed is a good policy, but that's just my opinion.  

Anyway, if you don't believe in God, you're still an atheist.  Saying she might exist doesn't mean anything, as I'll tell you the same.  Agnostic just means that you don't claim knowledge, and most atheists are in that boat.  Now, if you actually believe in the Christian God, well, then you're an agnostic Christian, but just from your post you ought to realize that with the logic you used to justify it, any religion would become equally valid.

You make some interesting points, PipeBox.  You've got me thinking.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not too sure, but I always end up getting over those moments. Mexico is a really supersticious place... so sometimes you can't help but think to yourself things like "well... what if witchery actually works?". My main reason for being an atheist is the fact that I don't believe in anything that can't be scientifically proven, but sometimes living exclusively among believers can prove difficult. Anyway, I've yet to see something supernatural, and that includes anything God-related.

I put God on the same level as the Tooth Fairy and the Boogyman.
The chance that I might turn to God is about the same as the chance that a Christian will call of the Tooth Fairy for help.

nothing but being touched by his noodly appendages or feeling the presence of her great invisible pinkness

Quote from: "Wraitchel"The biggest threat to my lack of faith is the death of loved ones. I really wish I could believe that I'll see them again. I lost my mother two and a half years ago, and it sucked. I hate to think of losing any of my kids, or of them someday losing me, permanently. It is almost unbearable to think of. Despite that wish, I just cannot wrap my brain around the internal inconsistencies of religious dogma.

I'm with you, Wraitchel.  It would be nice to be able to fool myself into believing that "they're in a better place" and that I'll join them somewhere in the universe when I die.  But I'm just not equipped for that.

my friends main argument for getting preachers to shut up is 'so why would i want to go to heaven if i have to put up with people like you for all eternity?', it works a treat  

Nothing has made me question my rationality. In fact, once the veil was lifted, I haven't looked back because the lies had been discovered.

~C

The chance that I might one day believe in God is about the same that you will one day believe in the Tooth Fairy.

Should be a lot of questions, in fact there are just go to wwgha, they got a lot of questions and then when you try to give them answers, they think your trolling or spaging, whatever that means. They don't even want to listen to what might be some ansewers with a little openmindedness. Seems to me there are a lot more questions for an atheist than for a theist.
I have quit asking the big "why" questions all the time. Mostly because I had the feeling it was not getting me anywhere, doesn't mean I don't still question, it's in our nature. But all the biggies I don't personally think we'll ever have the answers to.

Quote from: "reynolds"...they think your(sic) trolling or spaging, whatever that means.

I think that "spaging" would more properly be spelled "spagging," as in what a spagger (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spagger) would do.  They are insulting you, I believe.

Quote from: "reynolds"Seems to me there are a lot more questions for an atheist than for a theist.

I agree.  While it's a generalization, and therefor not entirely accurate, it seems obvious that the average atheist is willing to entertain, and must confront many more questions in life than the average theist, who after all has most of the important questions answered for them by the dogma of their religion.

Quote from: "reynolds"Seems to me there are a lot more questions for an atheist than for a theist.

Yep. And that's fine by me.

Quote from: "Charles Bukowski"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Not really. I like to compare my beliefs to things I hear on TV, or read, or watch, but I never really question my beliefs.

I guess the only time(s) I really did was when I was turning more towards agnostic/atheism, but not really since then.