At what point did you realize that god is not real

[FTMKyle]

OMG! Other atheists exist? I don't really call myself an atheist because its not a term I really think about too often, but I don't believe in god. I was actually wondering a couple of days ago if I was the only one in the world who didn't believe in god because I've never met anyone else. Well, I could count my dad, but even he will say he's not sure.

So, how many of you really don't believe in god, and how did you come to this conclusion. Please talk to me. This is like discovering that I am not the only human in a world among elves. Or maybe it's the other way around.   

[Alice Rogers]

Whereabouts in the world are you? Some places are a lot less religious than others.

[Tossu-sama]

I think I've always known there's no god, or at least I can't remember believing in such soncept at any point. Always preferred the theories and explanations science provided.

[JessicaH]

You don't have to DISBELIEVE in a god to be an atheist just not actively BELIEVE their is a god. I have no reason to believe there is a god (much less a specific god or belief system that goes with that). Sure, their are things in the universe that are unexplained or may even seem miraculous but just because we don't know the answers yet to mysterious things, doesn't mean there is a super natural answer.

There are many assumptions that have to be made to get to a belief in a particular god or religion
1.- Is there a god? if so, how is he defined?
2.- Did it create the universe or is it just another powerful being that we don't understand?
3- If it created us and the universe, does it give a rat's ass about humans?
4.- If it cares about humans (because we're so special) does it care about us as individuals or mainly as a species?
5.- If it cares about us as a species or individually, what does it hope or expect from us?
6.- If it cares about us individually, does it care or desire of us to spend our time and resources praising it?
7.- Has it ever communicated with humans? It seems that if it created us, it could program our DNA to have desires for things it wants. For example: Humans are repulsed by rotting flesh, diseases, etc.,     because those things would have killed our ancestors if they had not been repulsed.

And the list goes on and on.  So many things you would have to believe (without any evidence) to get to the point of believing an entire religion.

[Jo-is-amazing]

Aaaaaaah, this old question 
I I'm more closely aligned with atheism than just about anything else, buy I have to ask where did you get the idea that God/or Gods and goddesses don't exist?

I personally believe there is no divine and that deity's are of human origin but does that make them any less real?

If a billion people believe in the same god and ideals that that God represents the influence of that God is still very real and thus that God is still very real, even though only exists in the minds of its followers. In my eyes it's better to treat religion as a very powerful and very real force, even if it is not divine

[suzifrommd]

So, how many of you really don't believe in god, and how did you come to this conclusion. 

Well I have to confess not to know for sure. I mean if there were an omnipotent being he could easily make it look like there was no god. But if I had to put my chips on one side of the table, I'd bet heavily that there is no god.

Why do I think that? Because we typically don't observer supernatural events. We hear all sorts of tales from all sorts of people, but they all seem to occur in situations where they can't be objectively verifiable. In objectively verifiable situations, things seem to behave according to very strict rules of cause and effect and no cosmic intelligence is in evidence.

I do have my doubts about atheism, however, when I look at the delicate nature of life. In order for life to perpetuation, it needs a genetic code (like DNA), a way to extract that information without destroying it (like RNA polymerase) and an aparatus complex enough and reliable enough to create a new copy of the life form from the genetic code (like a ribosome). When I think of the chances of those three entities simultaneously coming about randomly in the same place, some form intelligent intervention starts seeming plausible in comparison.

[JessicaH]

I do have my doubts about atheism, however, when I look at the delicate nature of life. In order for life to perpetuation, it needs a genetic code (like DNA), a way to extract that information without destroying it (like RNA polymerase) and an aparatus complex enough and reliable enough to create a new copy of the life form from the genetic code (like a ribosome). When I think of the chances of those three entities simultaneously coming about randomly in the same place, some form intelligent intervention starts seeming plausible in comparison.

But that would beg the question, "where did that intelligent intervention come from"?

[suzifrommd]

But that would beg the question, "where did that intelligent intervention come from"?

Well, that's the problem with atheism, isn't it? Makes it much harder to answer where any of it came from. Not sure which is harder to swallow. That the universe was created by some intelligent being of indeterminate origin, or that it just "came about".

[devention]

I stopped believing when my father died when I was 15. I hadn't been devout, but I'd believed there was a God out there looking after me. But, despite being raised catholic, I have doubts ranging back to age 7, when I had my first panic attack over what happens when you die and the fact that everything ends.

[Pikachu]

Poor thing. You must be from the same sort of place I am. I often feel like I'm the only atheist in the entire state, lol.

I've never believed, despite being around it plenty growing up. It just never made sense to me, and for a long time, I thought adults didn't believe it either. That it was something like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. Something they just told kids to give them an incentive to behave.

[Blue Senpai]

I had doubts, I was dragged to church every Sunday and I'm sure that this tired me out further with religion. I told my dad I'm not Catholic anymore and I haven't went to church since with the exception of going to my grandma's 1 year death mass. I expect the next time I'll be there is when someone dies.

[Delsorou]

I believe in possibilities.  It is possible, that any or all of the gods and/or goddesses of established religions exist.  But the religions themselves I largely view as social clubs more than related with the divine.  I respect the good works done by some of them, and the good people who are members of some of them.  But I can't in all good conscience imagine joining one.  And I abhor the damage their existence does and the hatred spewed in the name of religion.

Myself, I am a spiritual person.  I have reached out before and thanked a perceived presence for things that have happened.  Was that presence my imagination, or the spirit of my father, or warrior from a spirit realm, or a 2000 year old flying carpenter?  Dunno.  No evidence either way, but I was still grateful.

If there are spirits in this world concerned with human events however, I think they must be human created.  And therefore definitely not its creators.

Nice to be able to talk freely about this.  I usually avoid religious topics like the plague.

[LatrellHK]

I personally don't care. I don't exactly believe, but I don't think about it either. I just don't care. I think people believe in God just to give them a sense of stability in that, "where do I go when I die?" set of mind. It helps them make sense of the world and stay calm. I stopped believing, however, when I started learning about the Big Bang just around the same time people started shoving, "God created the universe" in my head. I couldn't believe, in no possible way, some flying guy on a cloud created the entire universe in six days and took one to rest. Science backs up the Big Bang, religion doesn't have anything to back it up. I honestly believe religion came from a time when people were a bit stupid and believed anything (Salem Witch Trials for example) and some smart guys decided to write a "Holy Book" called the Bible and told people if you don't believe this you'll go to bad place called Hell and if you do you'll go to some great place called Heaven and they were believed and hence religion was born.

The main reason I don't these days is because of the anti-gay stuff. If God created EVERYONE as they are and makes no mistakes and the things that person does and the paths they take are all in Gods plan, why are they homosexuals if it's such a bad sin or abomination? Either there are supposed to be homosexuals and people need to stfu or someone seriously butchered that part.

[Pikachu]

I wouldn't exactly call people back then stupid, it's just that religion originated in a primitive time, when science and technology were in their infancy. People understood very, very little about the world they lived in, and therefore they were more inclined to believe supernatural explanations for the things they witnessed. It's a lot easier to dismiss the possibility of an afterlife now that we know about things like evolution and neuroscience, but back then, people didn't know how any of that worked. Back then, people didn't even know what the brain's function was. The expressions we use now about feelings being in our hearts came from a time when people literally believed all their thoughts and feelings came from their heart and not their brain. Needless to say, we've come a long way since those times.

I don't care if there's a god, either. I see no compelling evidence to suggest there is, and I don't see the point in believing in something just for the sake of believing. If there is a loving god out there, it wouldn't care how often I read some religious text or went to a church or any of that other stuff. It would only be concerned with how I measured up as a person. And I believe I am a good person.

[QuestioningEverything]

I never really believe in a god growing up and honestly finding out that santa didn't exist probably pushed me over the edge into atheism. Although I did go through a period where I believed in supernatural powers! lol Im embarrassed to admit it but I kind of thought for a while that I had physic abilities! But after multiple failed attempts at levitation I pretty much gave up and became a skeptic! A great quote that basically sum up why I'm an atheist is by Tim Minchin "Throughout history every mystery ever solved has turned out to be not Magic." Thats by his song "Storm"

[TinaVane]

Never believed in that crap even sitting up in those pedo's church as a kid if I was not lmfao at those nuts to falling asleep in those hard wooden pews from boredom.... It was comedy to me


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[Sephirah]

This is kind of complicated for me. I think that god exists subjectively, but not objectively. That is to say that I think that for those folks who choose to believe in a creator figure, their teachings, and live their lives accordingly... they make that figure real. For them. But in terms of an objective "This chap made everything you see around you and so on and so forth..." no, I don't subscribe to that view. I am more inclined to believe that people make god in their own image, rather than the other way around.

As far as what point did I believe that... pretty much my whole life.

[Kaylee2140]

I remember sitting in church while I was 8 years old wondering if God was just another Easter Bunny or Santa Clause. My faith didn't really start dying until I was about 15 years old, even then it went kicking and screaming. It wasn't until recently that I have atarted calling my self an athiest.

[Tysilio]

My parents had me baptized in the Episcopal church, but they didn't take it too seriously: one of my godmothers was Swedenborgian, the other was Jewish, and my godfather was Russian Orthodox.

We never went to church, but my older brother went through a religious phase in his teens and went every Sunday for a while. He insisted on dragging me along once when I was five. I don't remember the service, but I vividly remember what happened in Sunday school. We were modeling animals with clay (this was in California ). I had been reading The Jungle Book, and the one animal I could actually make from that was Kaa, the snake. The teacher came along, got all excited, and started telling me some story about a garden, an apple, and two kind of dumb-sounding people. I got on my five-year-old high horse and told her that had nothing to do with MY snake, Kaa. She insisted on going on with this stupid story about a "serpent" which was supposed to be evil.

I was furious, and when we got home I told my parents that I was never ever going back. That was the end of religion for me.

And yes, God is exactly like Santa Claus and the Easter bunny -- just not as cuddly.

[Jill F]

I'm not exactly an atheist, but there are certainly plenty of gods and deities that I don't believe in. 

While I was a cultural anthropology major in college, I studied religion extensively, as culture and religion go hand in hand.  One human universal is that we all question where we came from and where we go after we're gone without enough evidence given for definitive proof.  The fact is that all of mankind shares an origin and fate, yet there are likely as many nuanced religious views as there have been human beings that have ever walked the earth; therefore I can respect everyone else's religious convictions as long as they do not call for sanctioning others for being in disagreement.  I'm a "live and let live" kinda gal.

So, put me down as atheist/agnostic/science fan/pagan.   Legends, mythologies, blind faith and things that get lost in translation just don't do it for me. 

At least I'm convinced that the earth exists and that we should take far better care of it.