Is it normal to not believe in God?

75% Normal

19 Comments

You are not alone. I believe in God though but not really in organized religion and yes I do have people breathing down my neck about it too. I just do not feel the need to sit down with a bunch of morons who tell me the "backslider" that I'm worse than they are because I have a child out of wedlock yet they cheat on their wives and husbands, look at porn, lust, envy, lie, or are gluttons backstabbers, pedophiles and I think you get my drift.

Unfortunately in the United States religion is still mostly dominant, but it is slowly but surely changing. Of course I would not want religion to completely disappear, but it would be damn nice if I didn't get judged for the rest of my life for something I did when I was 19 years old. If religion did not exist however some would argue that immorality would destroy the world. Maybe the religious people balance everything out. Who knows, just know it is completely normal to question what people tell you to believe in. Go with your instincts.

You are completely normal. I am an atheist and in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with it. I believe in science, and while I respect other people's beliefs, I think religion causes a lot of stife.

Immorality can't be committed by religous people? BS.

your normal
there is no god
and the people that believe that there is one are stupid
i mean really... an invisible man that created everything.
your normal. but the people who believe god arent normal.

:)

Feilli-chan Doesn't believe in god either. Feilli-chan's friends believe in god but feilli-chan doesn't xD

I don't get why everyone has such a problem believing in God. Maybe it's all the things that "followers" of the faith do, but God shouldn't be judged on the people who follow him, it's a personal relationship and they have nothing to do with him. We're all sinners right? So how is saying, "That priest raped that little boy, so I'm not going to believe." okay at all? That makes no sense.
Also, people for thousands of years have agreed on a "higher power" whatever they choose to call it, and only recently has science come into the picture at all. I think maybe all the pictures of God on a cloud and all the holy rollers shouting and crying "Jesus! Oh my Lord!" and what not throw people off. God simply made everything, and isn't that as easy to believe as a big cosmic explosion? Maybe everybody's just afraid that there is one, and when they die they'll be f***ed for forsaking him. Isn't it just easier to have FAITH?

(OP here)
I've heard about these "relationships with god." I suppose to someone who has been raised christian, it might be a little strange to hear, but I have no relationship with him. Not a bad one, just a lack of one. You can't have a bad relationship with someone you've never met.

I have never spoken to god, never heard him. When I first heard about it I thought the people were nuts- talking about god as if he were talking to them on a 2 way radio, and then I realized that for many people this was indeed the norm.

I don't disagree with you Johnny. Gandhi once said, famously, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." So following that logic, it makes sense that one should not judge a religion entirely by its followers.

I'm not sure I follow your logic past this point. Born Sinners? "Priest who raped that little boy so I'm not going to believe?" I haven't believed in God for years. Years up to and before the first scandals broke the news, and it wasn't due to any particular single shocking event or trauma. I went to a private academy.

I'm not going to touch the church abuse case with a ten foot pole for this discussion, for the sake of keeping it civil, but I will say that I do not think that it is a leading reason for my lack of faith- least of all my own. I'm not sure that people *have* agreed on a "higher power" for thousands of years. Epicurius of the ancient Greeks is an example, if one is looking for an impressive date. Science has been around for millenia. The classical model for the scientific method was invented by Aristotle.

I am not making any of this up- there have been people burned at the stake for not believing for years and years. I'm quite glad those days are over, or else there would be a me-BQ, and I doubt that I am anywhere near as edible as the symbolic body of Christ.

I am not expecting a big show from god, nor am I expecting...well, to be honest, I don't believe, so I do not expect anything at all. I simply have no relationship whatsoever. I'm not saying this in order to be a jerk, I'm saying this because it is the truth in my case.

You make it sound as if I made a choice in having no faith. I did not. My faith comes as naturally as yours, though that may be hard to understand, and even harder to accept, but I assure you that it is true.

I assure you, I am not afraid of the prospect of there being a lack of an afterlife. Besides, whatever happened to an honest mistake?

My question was "is it normal" and I do not think you have answered that in your question, so I ask again: do you think it is NORMAL? It isn't in reaction to anything, nor taken up. To my knowledge at least, I am the only non-believer of all my friends, some of whom are very devout.

I'm just curious.

It is normal that you do not believe in God. A lot of people do not believe in Him. I believe in Him, but I understand that alot of Christians tend to judge people so harshly and then they are messed up themeselves. I do not judge you or anyone else no matter your beliefs, sexual orientation, etc. I do believe in the morals that the bible teaches, but I believe God will judge and not me. I am a HUGE sinner so I can't say nothin but try to do best.
But ya in our society it is normal for you not to believe in God. My bf doesn't believe in God, but I think he really does just that he is mad because of the life he had to live. 10years in prison a very harsh life and alot of things done in there that are bad. I wish he would believe though. But I am not trying to force it just hope it will come to him one day.

Normal isnt the word I would use. I would have to say that if you dont beleive in god, your not really the "norm" actually. Your right, But your not the normal. Most people on earth beleive in some "god". The fact that you dont just means that your not as scared as them of the unknown. So, no your not normal, but your not in the wrong.

I never said it couldn't, because I know all too well how BAD religious people can be. But the religious do at least put on a facade when it comes to morality.

Its completely normal. Some people might give you a hard time, but pay them no mind. It is certainly the more difficult path considering how much we are ostracized.

You win. However there is no prize.

ok, i can understand where people are going with the, you think some invisable man made everything is coming from... but really, is that any crazyer than the big bang? a whole bunch of stuff just floating up there in space, then after eternity, (btw, where the hell did it come from to begin with) it just blows up, and we just happen to be lucky enough to be alive, on the only inhabitable planet in existence!? BULL!

im not gonna shove a bible down your throat, im just pointing out that people should realize that what they believe in is just as crazy as what we do... so instead of telling us that we are all nuts, just say you dont believe in it. and this is to all the commentors, not the writer.

Well, you do raise some interesting questions about the big-bang theory- questions I should have asked. They're fair. However, let me ask: "only inhabitable?"

Strictly speaking, there is a limited window of space at which a planet can be in orbit around a sun and be habitable at all in the first place, and even then it has to be gravitationally acceptable as well- if Jupiter was standing in the place of Earth, I'm fairly certain that there would be nothing alive in this solar system. A place as close or far as Mercury or Saturn simply couldn't sustain life, its atmospheric temperature would be... inhospitable at best. So even finding a habitable planet is hard- but we're at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, spinning around its core. There's nothing, absolutely nothing stopping there being another hospitable-to-life planet in the galaxy, or in the next, or the one after that. Planets are literally beyond our ability to comprehend, as far as numbers.

But I admit, I've gone off topic of god and onto the ability of a planet other than Earth to sustain life- I'm just trying to say that you make such a claim without cause. There are almost certainly other habitable planets.

And it's fair enough- I think that too many commenters have said that religious people are crazy- some take god to be an imaginary friend, and I have heard of some religious people making him out to be precisely that. My girlfriend, for example, has a "relationship with god," and asks him questions pretty often. I am not quite certain what to make of this, but I wouldn't call it crazy.

I've noticed that religion often wishes to make humanity sacred. This can be a good thing, and a bad. It can be a good thing for instilling values such as "thou shalt not kill," because life is sacred, or it can be bad, because it leads to conflict with reality. For example, it was easy for the church to say that man was literally the center of the universe. This symbolism, made by God, made mankind seem all the more sacred. However, the problem is that we all know that we, and the planets in our solar system, rotate around the sun, which in turn rotates around the center of the milky way galaxy. As a result, many scientific discoveries have made the church uneasy, because they seemed to indicate that Mankind was just another organism. Evolution, the human genome project, cloning, stem cell research, astrology, and more have all had the unintended implication that mankind is not sacred. That doesn't imply that it's okay to mistreat or murder, based on such findings. But it does imply that the reasons not to are less divine and more practical. Perhaps the reasons to not murder or steal are also unquantifiable (for now) because the human conscious is so hard to measure.

There is a passage in the Bible that says faith comes from grace and grace is only given by God. I take this as God has choosen his followers.

I didn't grow up religious and I have always believed in God, even as a small child. I believe in evolution and am a biologist and it does not make me think there is no God, it just reafirms its. I know is the opposite for some.

If I was you I wouldn't push myself to believe in God, if something happens in your life and your feelings change, so be it, go with it.

God didn't make us to condemn us as long as you are not hating people for their beliefs I say to each his own.

im not sayin its ok to bag on religion but has "god" ever helped you? if not fuck it. people WILL judge you and criticize u for not believing. just lie to make them feel better half of them dont even believe in it themselves

I grew up believing in God and had all the faith in the world... but at this point in my life I find it hard to put my faith in someone who I don't remember ever really being there no matter how hard I prayed to, believed in, witnessed for, and testified for. You're normal. At least you were not raised with it and then continuously let down.

The comment "Anonymous" posted about the big bang... The way I see it is if Earth just happens to be in the right place from the Sun to sustain life, then isn't it only logical that this is the only place where primitive life forms lasted long enough to evolve? because they didn't freeze or burn to death during the first few minutes of existence.

No, not really, that's not logical at all. You're making the assumption that life existed on every planet spontaneously, and that life continued to exist only on planets which were capable of sustaining life.

I'm afraid that's incorrect. Were this true, the Mars and Lunar landings would have proven it. The surface of the moon does not degrade, and its craters remain millennium after millennium due to a lack of atmosphere. We would have seen signs of life. The concept of Deep Time is quite hard to grasp, yet easy to understand.