let me enlighten you with my story. i was born into a christian family, did the whole "received the spirit" routine, and everything else.
i'm an atheist now because the more i read the bible and studied other religions, the more i realized that they had all evolved from earlier forms and that there was no religion that was truly unique in the world. the more i studied science, the more i realized that the deific hypothesis was untenable and untestable, and even if testable, it provided no predictive capability.
As far as spiritual [belief], i have none. people may say, "well, you believe that when you sit in that chair, you believe it will hold you." that's not belief in the sense of holding something as true without evidence, all the past times i sat in the chair it held, and i tend to sit carefully in case whatever chair it is, does happen to collapse.
there are three things i hold as valid, but i do not consider them 'true'. in fact, because they are axiomatic, that means they cannot be proven. they are simply the rules of the game, as it were:
1. mathematics and logic are valid. truth is an inherently logical proposition. without logic, the truth-value of any fact could never be known, there would be no way to distinguish between a true fact and a false fact. Without logic, knowledge would be unattainable.
2. observations, unaided and aided, are valid. however, aided observations must be supported by prior observations and mathematics. for example, before the theory of optics was discovered, a microscope would have been invalid; but through study of unaided observations of lenses and beams of light, the theory of optics was mathematically formulated, so the microscope is valid. a crystal gazing ball is still invalid, but if a way to define the effect mathematically and in a way that could be verified with unaided observations was found, it would become valid as well. without being able to trust our observations, we could acquire no data on which to operate, and thus knowledge would be unattainable.
3. the supernatural, if it exists [no statement is made of its existence or non-existence, just a conditional], does not in any way interact with the natural world. if a supernatural involvement can be had, then nothing can be assured as true. if the deity that oversees gravity decides to change the universal gravitational constant, for example, all things we know will suddenly be invalid, and thus knowledge could not be attained.
you have to understand though that it is important to recognize that none of these things is considered true; they are axioms. An axiom is a statement that must be accepted or not accepted on its own merits. however, as each of them can be shown to be necessary for knowledge, one must either accept these three things, or, one must accept that nothing at all can be known, let alone known to be true or false. so these axioms must be [accepted] or [held] to attain knowledge, even though their axiomatic nature means they themselves cannot be proven. now let me enlighten you even more with some questions which made me realize that there was no god.
1.) is the bible from god?
2.) how can you be sure of that? because it says so?
3.) does a catch-22 provide a logical foundation of beliefs?
4.) can you distinguish this faith in jesus from my childhood faith in santa claus?
5.) were the authors of the bible guided by the holy spirit?
6.) can those claims be legitimately verified?
7.) i could write my own bible and say i was guided by the holy spirit...does that make me a liar or a saint?
8.) does the perfect harmony of the bible's collected works prove it is from god, or have these collected works been edited and polished over the last two-thousand years by a variety of religious committees?
9.) is archaeological proof valid, or has it been manipulated to prove bogus claims?
10.) do the fulfilled prophecies from the bible prove that it is from god, or are they so vague that they would've had to come true eventually?
11.) should i just trust my father and his father before him and his father before him, or should i take a forward step?
12.) is it not our right as human beings to question the world around us, to rationalize with our "god-given" talent, to have faith in reality and preach against disillusionment, to reject a false sense of security used to comfort and control the masses?
if you can answer my questions then you can call me a christian, until then i'm an atheist, so don't mix me up with your labels.
