Why are you atheist? (atheists only please)

If I told you that "The Lord of the Rings" actually happened and that Gandalf was my one true Lord, would you believe me?

If you asked me where my proof was and I responded, "I feel this clearly in my soul with all of my being," would you believe me?

If I told you Gandalf was with you right now But he was invisible, created no sound, had no scent, and could move at a faster than light speed to avoid detection, would you believe me?

If you answered no, you know why I am an Atheist And you should ask why you are not.

That is one hell of a high horse you're riding on. Actually according to research you are more likely to find religious people where there is less economic prosperity. Not to say that prosperity brings happiness but impoverished areas are generally more grief stricken.
Atheism for me came when I was old enough to realize that there were many many religions that exist and each of them claims to know the right path. And if you go back in history there are countless more. Believers of religion say that they have the answer without any proof based upon "faith". I believe science has the answer and does not claim the absolute. Scientific community regularly retracts or modifies theories based upon newly discovered evidence.
Humans sit on a rock that is less than the equivalent of a grain of sand on a cosmic scale. If someone holds the answer I sure as hell am not taking it on "faith".
And another thing is that saying my religion is right compared to the other...how do you know? Why is the idea of a tooth fairy ridiculous but yet a guy can walk on water and perform other miracles?

I wasn't raised in any type of religion really. The idea of church and god and prayer always seemed silly to me. It just didn't make sense in my brain.

For some reason my mom decided to have my older brother and I baptized. I was about 10 or 11 and hated every second of it. Sunday school and all that really pissed me off. I hated hated hated it. I remember one day we got to make things out of little pieces of scrap wood. I made christ on a cross then when I got home I painted it all red and put it in my window upside down. I was asked to take it down because it was at the front of the house and whatnot. Phooey.

No one I know has ever made an eloquent argument that justifies the existence of a god. I never was ecstatic about church. I found it unsettling when people would start crying when they ''felt" immense power from such a god and the indifference people displayed when I talked about something unaffiliated to religion. The last thing I mentioned happened with a family friend. I was discussing life goals and he hardly made any eye contact. If I had to describe the people I know who are religious bigots in one word, it would be "removed". I get that religious people try to do good in this world, but sometimes it'd be best if they were neutral because their idea of integrity seems to cause malicious emotional damage to people who aren't in their social circle. I recall a former youth group leader (let's call her Lauren) who still works with a lesbian. That lesbian's girlfriend contracted HIV; Lauren told them both to denounce their homosexuality because then and only then her god would lift the virus. It didn't end well.

When I was thirteen, I found a point-and-click game on the internet in which I played as a small demon. The objectives of the game were to find sins and to kill the sinner. Apparently a priest furnished liquor to a pre-pubescent boy and raped him. Seeing how the priest had to ring a huge bell atop a tower to signify the time for worshippers to gather for a church service, the demon made this an opportunity to make him fall to his death. The purpose of the game was to show even the most righteous people can be monsters. Coincidentally, a priest from the town I live in is currently serving six years in prison for charges that match the sins in the game.

All in all it's the hypocrisy and insensitivity of religious folk that led me to become an atheist.

Let me start off by saying that yes, I did have a difficult childhood. However, after I became an atheist I was still the same person I was as a Christian: the belief made no difference to my personality or mental health. I did get better after antidepressants and therapy, but that's another story.
As for why I became an atheist, well I guess its somewhat complicated. My family is very religious and attempted to get me to become a Christian. My rational child mind knew it was bullshit, but I was also terrified of going to Hell, so I tried my hardest to be one. (For example, at a Sunday School meeting, the teacher was explaining to us the power of Christ and how he was tempted by Satan.She asked us if Jesus could really turn stones into bread and immediately everyone started saying yes and shaking their heads. I was the only one who said no and changed my answer when I realized what everyone else was saying.) I got saved and born again several times, and constantly felt fear that if I sinned, God was watching me. By the time I was thirteen, the indoctrination had finally sunk in and I became a fundamentalist Christian.
Sixteen rolled around, and two major things happened. By that point I had taken to studying and studying my Bible. Then I came across this verse "Wives submit to your husbands for they rule over you" or something like that. I was shocked and confused. I didn't understand how my God could condone such a thing. We had to be ruled over just because we were female? I prayed day and night. There was no answer. I refused to face that there was no one there, and no one could hear me.
A couple of months later and I still hadn't figured out the question. I asked about free will and other questions but no one could give me a satisfying answer. Even worse, I had developed a crush on my best friend, a female. The ultimate sin in my community.
I don't know what happened after that, but suddenly I sort of snapped. The strange thing was that it wasn't terrifying like one would expect, but liberating to give up my religion. I had been told that atheists had no morals my entire life, and I realized I could do whatever I wanted now. I raced to the library and checked out as many books on Atheism and sexuality (a forbidden topic until that point) as I could find.
That was four years ago, and not much has changed. Not sure if that answered your question, but at least I tried.

Because god is a fairytale.

I haven't been indoctrinated into a religion as a child. And if you are not, it's much easier to see the silliness of it all.

The hypothesis of the existence of god is like a house of cards, it falls apart at first critical look. That is why I haven't picked up a religion later on.

I have never believed in any god. There was no religion in my parents home one way or the other, though they were both raised in religious households.
The belief in god makes absolutely no sense to me. No religion makes any sense to me and their complete hypocrisy leaves me absolutely furious that they could dare preach to others, when they do not follow their own tenets.
Religion and the belief in god, any god, is the one true sin, IMO.

I always wanted to become an Atheist but you guys put up a worse argument than a Christian.
The Bible - Ancient and Modern translation combined, Chinese whispers x 1000, 1900 revisions and a billion different interpretations. It's just a book. God cannot be understood or comprehended by a mere human being so I don't no why we try let alone seek or feel the need for proof. The bible basically states that no man-made structure can be a true house of God, you are more in Gods creation under a tree or on a lawn or garden, so I don't no why Atheists get hung up on the Church thing. There is far more beyond this life, that's all God is about. A higher power in which we shall be judged for our actions. Call him Jesus or Alah, Buddah or Monk. Be good to one another.

God is the best-est ever imaginary friend! Some people truly need that connection. Be gentle with them.

PS. There may be some grand rationality to the universe, but it doesn't care about you.

Hahahaha

Thanks op I needed a good laugh

I never believed in god. Why would I? My parents weren't religious either. I used to think there might be some sort of afterlife though. But I gradually realized it didn't make sense, mainly because (warning: depressing) people often lose their minds before they die. If your mind has disintegrated, what's left to go to heaven/rebirth/whatever? This doesn't rule out the possibility of some sort of soul, but if it's not the part of me that thinks it seems irrelevant.

Honestly it started out me being a rebellious little teenage twat but since then I simply haven't found any valid reason for going back. In fact I've found plenty more reasons to despise religion to its very principles. I've been doing a lot of learning since my initial drop out of religion. As harmless as it seems it puts a very dangerous mindset in the hands of gullible people and gives an excuse for people to do harmful and dangerous things to themselves and the people around them as well as doing harm to the country that they live in. (America specifically since that's where I'm from).

Thing is when people are religious they make decisions base on religious principles factoring in fictitious things to real life scenarios such as health and the rights of others. It's just a dangerous thing to be supporting on a grand scale not to mention it's the reason that dramatic and terrible acts are caused all across the world. You can't ignore that even if there are others that are less harmful it only gives reason for the harmful ones to act out even worse when their rights are being choked out more than the rights of the seemingly harmless while the seemingly harmless religions get more and more freedom to influence everyone else.

I'm a strong agnostic, so from my point of view, you can neither prove nor disprove the existance of a creator, because science dictates that we cannot know what the universe was before the beggining. Therefore, both theistic and atheistics beliefs are equally faith based.

However, as I've said many times, as long as one's beliefs make them happy, and they keep it to themselves, then it's alright with me :)

I'm disabled. It'll go away, and if it doesn't then it's part of God's plan. I'm not even the worst off; there's a young man here with it who can't eat/drink, use the toilet normally, speak. He just makes noises. My best friend here struggles to talk so I interpret for him. A lot of people are afraid of him because he's got a bit of a temper on him. Who on earth would plan for someone to live like that? If God's able to heal pain why not do it now?? It doesn't make any sense. I *want to* believe, but can't.
.

Actually, I'm a pretty spoiled kid who was born into a rich family (top 1% of America). My parents, unlike 50% of American couples, are still together after 22 years. They hardly ever fight. No one close to me has died. I haven't ever had a school bully. My parents don't beat me. I was never molested or kidnapped.

I'm a pretty lucky teenager.

The reason I'm an atheist is because, when I was eleven, had a revelation. That an omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God was simply absurd. I did used to go to church, but I stopped since becoming an atheist.

No one is born believing in any religion. Religion is taught. Both of my parents aren't religious. Both of them grew up going to church, but both decided that they didn't believe in Christianity by the time they were around 9 or 10.

My parents decided that their children should grow up having the choice of what to believe in. They didn't push us either way. When we'd hear about "God" from other kids, we'd ask them about God and what it meant to sin, etc. My parents always told us that if we wanted to start going to church, we could, but we never did want to. I can't remember a time when I didn't equate religion with fairy tales. It was just something implausible in an old book.

I have an early memory of me talking with my grandmother about how I thought that religious people only believed in God cuz they didn't want to face nothingness after death. My grandmother was both offended, being religious, and impressed at my maturity in coming up with such a theory at such a young age.

Maybe this answers your question. I think people come to Atheism in mostly the same way. When you're mature and intelligent enough to start questioning things and forming opinions, the rational mind realizes we can only know what's knowable, and that everything else is up in the air. Some people, like me, believe anything's possible and choose an agnostic viewpoint, while others choose to believe in science and the provable phenomena and also choose to disbelieve in anything unprovable or implausible. Sorry if this offends, but I believe that only desperate, weak or irrational sheep choose staunch, orthodox religion.

I should also point out that I think one can be both rational and spiritual. Some people can take comfort in things that "might be" not only things that "are". Everyone should believe what makes them feel good and what seems "right" to them.

Prove why the Greeks had false gods, I'll just use that technique do disprove yours.

I was raised a hardcore, Bible-is-inerrant-word-of-God, rapture-believing Christian. Around the time I turned 16, I learned about the theory of evolution, as well as how the religious-right and other assorted whackos are always purposely misrepresenting evolutionary theory in order to confuse people and dissuade their followers from considering it (my school gave people the right to opt out if they wanted, and my parents made me do so). I read books and watched videos about it on my own time, which led me to believing in evolution. I started reading more around this time (Nietzsche, Camus, Dostoevsky, and all that other angsty teen lit) and I believe that this may have further solidified my beliefs in regards to atheism. Though evolution may have influenced my decision to become an atheist, it should be noted that the majority of Christians actually believe in evolution (the Catholic church, the Eastern Orthodox, and the United Methodist Church all have no scruples about the theory of evolution being true or accurate, and often encourage their followers to see it as God's handiwork; most Christians, as it were, are not biblical literalists). Most of the arguments I've heard put forth by atheists almost seem to strawman Christian and Muslim theology, treating the bottom-of-the-barrel literalists as though they spoke for the entire religion (of course, you don't need religion to believe in "god," just define what you mean by "god" first).

In regards to some of the posters above, I really don't think that being an atheist makes you any more intelligent than anyone else (I've met Catholics and Greek Orthodox Christians who I would say are much smarter and less mentally-lazy than I am). Sure, maybe smarter than your average fundie, but that's no great feat of intelligence or anything. Plenty of atheists (particularly those dumb "New Atheists") seem to subscribe to a rather naive and antitheistic view in which humans were a perfectly reasonable and pure species before they tasted the fruit of religion (hmmm, where have I heard this before??) and that if we were to find salvation from the corrupting influence of religion, we would be whisked away from the darkness that surrounds us and into a new world where the light of discovery would dawn upon us and the forces of "Science, Logic, Reason FTW" will reign supreme and establish a kingdom on Earth for a millenium until religious fundamentalists will wage war upon us once more, only to be defeated once and for all.

I've also met atheists who believe in a plethora of other dumb things; chem trails, Randian Objectivism, race realism, "Men's Rights," transphobia, red-pill 'philosophy,' evo-psych, reptilians, biological determinism, white-nationalism, anarcho-capitalism, you name it. I've met plenty of religious folks, however, who don't believe in these things.

There is just overwhelming evidence against anything being true in the bible, against creation. It makes no sense which is why I haven't believed in God since I was 10. I love nature, love the way our world has slowly been building and its all thanks to Evolution and the creation of our Universe.

If there was one single shred of proof I would believe it but since this fairytale all began there hasn't been a single solid piece of evidence in the thousands, upon thousands of years religion as been formulated. However, there IS outstanding proof that Christianity is fabricated.

I would love to know why you are religious when science has advanced so far. I understand faith can be a good thing for some, but I find it so much more beautiful that the world wasn't just plopped into our laps but has been steadily fighting, changing, and morphing into what it is today.

Are you so unhappy with your life you have to rely on some magical thing in the sky that will always make your life better? I mean, so long as you worship him unconditionally. Otherwise you burn forever in some pit of despair along with un baptisted babies..

I'm going to reply to each line you wrote in order.

It is not reasonable at all to believe in a god.
Most kids who believed in a god did so because their parents did. Ironically kids always believe in the same god as their parents! So the god they believe in also depended upon where they were born too.
I became atheist at age 9, I was quite late in reasoning out that there is no proof of a god. I feel this is because there was not enough information freely available at the time.
Atheism is about people opening up their minds and seeing the truth. It is not a bad thing! Atheists tend to think.
Atheists DO believe in other things, like humanitarian life full of peace and natural understanding for all people, I 'believe' that this won't fully happen until at least religion is mostly gone.
God belief is nonsense.

If I Were The Devil.

<a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Az0okaHig" rel="nofollow" class="ui-link">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Az0okaHig</a>

Just no physical evidence just a book written by different people.

The first thing that made me question religion was the fact that there are so many other religions. Who's to say which is real? I then started learning more about Christianity (the religion I was apart of) and other religions as well. I learned that much of what I believed came from other religions. I started listening to Atheist talk on you tube (also, I had this really awesome Atheist professor) and I starting looking more into evolution and how the world was made which completely contradicted anything the bible taught. It took me a while. I started saying I was Agnostic and pantheist for a while (although I still haven't completely ruled out Pantheism, honestly) and in the end I started calling myself Atheist. It certainly wasn't something that happened over night, but I'm pretty glad it did.