At what point did you realize that god is not real

[stephaniec]

as far as the question as to if there is a God why does not God intervene, to me the answer is simple, God created the best model for life to exist, the good the bad and the ugly. God's hand is there for everyone when their time is up. God so loved the world. You need Hurricanes to balance the forces of the weather . It's just all physics . God just happens to be a brilliant physicist. All right I'm going I think I'm derailing. sorry.

[Tysilio]

Stephanie, yes, you are derailing. We non-believers stay out of the religious threads as a matter of courtesy to those who post in them; I think we can expect the same level of courtesy from believers.

Thanks for understanding.

[DanielleA]

I came from an extreme religious family. My biomother forcefed it to me to the point of me rejecting it completely. From what I have heard, scientists found Jesus and Marys tombs so that part seems accurate but as for "god" bah-humbug! Religion is a man-made thing so "god" is too.

[Tessa James]

From what I have heard, scientists found Jesus and Marys tombs so that part seems accurate

With respect, I find such reports to be worthy of the supermarket tabloids.  For centuries churches and cathedrals were supposedly built with pieces of the real cross, saints bones, sacred relics and other weird items of veneration.  We still see "news" programs around easter and xmas that speculate on finding noah's ark and yes, the tomb.  They make for great ratings and maybe even entertainment but hardly true.

No scholarly evidence exists in the archeological record of the so called jesus character and he may have been entirely invented by a real chronicler from that era named Josephus Flavious in a campaign to evict the Romans.

Many very similar "prophets" preceded the jesus character in antiquity and virgin births were seemingly more common in those days too;D  I find jesus stories every bit as convincing as stories of zeus, thor, the easter bunny and santa claus and similarly relevant to today's concerns. 

[Nella357]

Hi,
Uhm well I guess this year I slowly started to question my beliefs to its core again.
I for much of my childhood only believed in God in reality as a hedge against going to hell, Besides for the Afrikaans culture being linked quite heavily to Christianity, I have always tended to dislike simple answers such as, cause its Gods plan, or God did it.
I probably became an Atheist back in 2009 I think and converted back into Christianity because being afraid of hell (though I never became a literalist), I think I maintained being a 'Christian' because you tend to think well everyone says they are, so maby it's a good thing, but I never really believed the Christian opinion as superior to modern science nor philosophy, so again its kind off my fear of hell I guess lol.

This year my tilting point was, I was discussing the body transplant with my father and he suggested it might not be Gods plan, I thought this to be a rubbish point and yeah it kind off went from there, reading and watching materials available to me swayed me back to agnostic atheism.

I am atheist to the Bible because simply, its texts are not more knowledgeable than modern philosophy, nor scientific and many things are just plain 'stone age' to the time we live in, so besides for cherry picked lines it does not add value to my life. I also reckon a truly intelligent God would understand full well I cannot believe just out of fear of damnation, this would not be sincere nor constructive to my life, I mean I don't obide by the traffic laws because I am afraid of getting caught, I do so because I understand that they are there to protect myself and the other parties involved.

I cant remember where I got this quote, but it sums it up I guess.
It's not free will when the choices are between heaven and eternal torture.

Nella357.

[Lebedinaja]

I for myself ever knew this "god" that people here talked of, and their religion ... thats sick and not real, so I never came in contact with it and never believed it is real ...

[Traci New]

When did i stop believing?   Around the age of 8, me and my sister used to go to the church down the street from us.  I would see all the neighbors there or most of them.  And i noticed they acted different at church then in real life.  I would go home and ask my mom why would people act really religious on sunday and not the rest of the week. She told me what a Hippocrate was.  THen as i got older and got into the 70's my hair was long and i was wild and care free.  One day me and my friends talked about religion and thought maybe we should go to church. We just picked a church and went that sunday.  When the preacher would see us long hairs sitting in the audience, they would always start the serum off with something about drugs.  Now these people didnt know us at all, but they would label us.  So we went to a different church, and another one and a another one.  Every one of the churches we went to, the sermon was always about drugs.  They labeled us because of the way we looked.  To me that is crap.   We just went to church to find out about religion not about drugs.  So i think if they was so blind that they couldnt see real people under that hair, so no they are not really regilous.  So this and reading how the god let hitler killed so many million of his people, and if he is a caring god then how come children suffer so much.  How can a caring god let things happen in this world like he does..    NO i do not  believe in a god or a greater being.  In my mind religion started when in the roman coliseum you was looking to get eat by a  lion, yes that is where god came from.   Ok enough of my rambling.

[JHeron]

The moment I can recall is one in particular around age 9 when my father (whom I'd met for the first time a few years prior) gave me one of the usual beatings for idr but something like I didn't finish my plate or do the dishes. But basically I was in the corner of my living room/bedroom crying just remembering growing up with my mother and going to church praying that I'd meet my father one day. Ha i literally did that every Sunday until I met the man, that day for some reason I thought of that and couldn't understand for the life of me why God would answers my prayers with this animal haha. That was the first time I knew.

[Oriah]

When I lost it and started to hurt people on purpose and nobody stopped me.

[Matthew]

About the same time I realised Santa didn't exist.

[Tamika Olivia]

I didn't really. I'm not a strong atheist, I don't hold the affirmative position that God does not exist. I'm a weak atheist and I believe that all God claims yet presented have failed to meet their burden of proof. Until such time that a claim is sufficiently supported, I can't believe in a god.

That said, there are certain God concepts that I find facially impossible. The tri-omni God of Easter-Christmas Christianity springs to mind.

[Cindi Jones]

I grew up in a Mormon family in Utah... yeah the worst possible place for a transgender kid. I started frustrating my Sunday school teachers with questions that had no answers. Still, I became indoctrinated and eventually became a cult member of a church that isn't necessarily cultist... although I believe it is becoming more so every year. I even went on a mission for the church and served the worst two years of my life in Chile nearly handcuffed to another man 24 hours a day. That's how the missionaries are kept in line. They never leave each other's sight (except to bathe and attend to bodily functions) and if one does, the other reports it.

When I was outed, I was eventually excommunicated publicly. It was the most humiliating experience of my life. The management where I worked at HP in Salt Lake City were part of my church leadership so it affected my job. You will note that HP no longer has an engineering branch in SLC anymore. I believe it was my case that got them shut down. There were already two other discrimination cases in progress. Mine was the tipping point... pretty sure.

I could fully pass by that time. I had been going to work as myself. They were coping as only right wing bigots can. They hired a church shrink who told the plant manager that he should "reroute all my incoming calls, put me in an office with nothing to do. He'll commit suicide or quit within six months." I know this because the corporate lawyer who flew in from CO told me after I signed all the release forms. He was terribly embarrassed by the whole ordeal and gave me the truth straight up. I was shocked. I received three months severance with six weeks vacation pay (I was always a workaholic), promised never to apply with HP again for my lifetime for a job, and I moved to California.

I tried going to the Mormon church a few times down in the LA area as me but it hurt me so when I came home to my shoddy one bedroom flat. I felt lonely and guilty. They kept reaching out to me to receive the missionary lessons and I wanted nothing of that. I could repeat them word for word in Spanish!

Slowly, over the next two to three years, the questions I had as a child came back. I realized that I had literally been tortured, abused, and humiliated all in the name of God. I graduated from partly believing at that point to not believing by the time I moved to the Bay Area in 87. Now I have a total lack of faith.

FWIW I have been an electrical engineer and a professional astronomer (rather loosely on the latter.) I have been trained in the scientific method of reason and I've come to the conclusion that the existence of a deity is unrealistic. If god gave us brains to think then we should learn to reason. Reason leads to rational thought and already we have left the realm of belief.

I like to tell people that I'm a druid. It started as an excuse to get unpaid days off work every month to pursue astronomy on moonless nights. I soon became known fondly as the "druish princess." That was okay. When people ask me what I am I tell them I'm a druid. When they ask what it means, I tell them with a wink: "Witchcraft."

Cindi

[roseyfox]

I never actually truly believed in a god. I saw it as a ruse. A cruel joke played on the naive. Just a way for human to control human in such a horrid way. Through almost every religion, I always see the same faces of power and greed, Hate and ignorance.

Not to say there is not a god and every religion is bad. But those who follow blindly with no concept of the actual world sadden me with there hatred pass down through time. Just to try and control the idealism of humanity.  I would say i am a god hating agnostic. For if he/she be i hate him/her without guilt. If he does not then i have hate towards those that created such cruel and barbaric philosophy that drive people to kill and ostracize others.

[Pax Fidelis]

I can't even remember a time where I did believe in a god. I went to a Catholic school, and whenever praying went on I always just felt like I was faking, playing a part, talking to walls. I couldn't understand why I couldn't seem to feel anything when everybody else seemed convinced of some sort of presence. I continued to pray for some time to see if I could get some sort of sign, something to convince me and help me believe. Obviously I never did. If I cannot see, hear, smell, touch, feel, or percieve something in SOME way, shape or form I am forced to conclude that this aforementioned thing doesn't exist. So here I am.

[Frae]

 Wow it's amazing how many people grew up in Theist homes! I grew up in an Atheist home, my parents always maintained that my siblings and I could believe anything we wanted but that they didn't believe much of anything.

So I never really believed in god? I gave god a go. I prayed the same way I wished on birthday cakes and it had the same effect.

As I grew up I never really saw any reason to think otherwise. I met lots of people who believed all manner of just as unlikely things. The sky is the skull of an ice giant. You were someone else in a previous life. Everything was made by a magic man in the clouds.

And on top of that there was the Trans stuff So yeah for as long as I remember the idea of a god or gods seemed very unlikely.

[Black Arrow]

Never believed in one. My parents have some vague spiritual ideas but never forced them upon me, so I was lucky enough not to be indoctrinated with cultural Christianity and could decide without an ingrained bias. As it is quite clear to me that there is no reason to believe any supernatural being exists, it's logical that I'm an atheist, and have been from my birth. Later, as I've learned, as I've observed the role of church in defending existing social order, how religious belief seems to "strangely" correlate to national borders, how churches try to cover up the failures of the religions they are built upon, it all became even clearer.

[jbb-ftm]

I stopped believing when I was very young. The concept of this invisible "god" just never sat right with me. Ever. Short and sweet answer. Glad there are other atheists here!

[Paige_tara]

I've been brought up as Christian, and whilst I respect the values that religion instills in people, the scientific way my brain works does not allow me to believe in such beings as a God. However, this also means that if some concrete evidence was provided (the Bible not being one of them, if it was written today it could be considered fiction, with no referencing or evidence of observed events), then I would be happy to believe and accept.

If you want a solid reason to not believe in a God, explain what 'Greater Being' would have created the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus, have a read about this curious organism here... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis

It's a strange world, and in reality we know very very little about it. So unfortunately no one can ever say for sure.
Still, it's nice to wonder

P x

[LizK]

I was bought up in Catholic Church and at about 13-14 I realised the majority of people I knew were hypocrites including half the priests...this set me to wondering what it was all about and I found that I didn't like the catholic church or what it stood for. It was just another set of fabricated yarns to keep the natives happy at night. I have nothing but contempt for organised religion, I don't believe "god" per say as we view him exists and I suspect the early peoples of the earth mistook visitors form other planets/solar systems as the gods. By about 16 this all made much more sense, besides what god allows a paedophile to molest a young boy for a year while his wife looks on and says nothing...good Catholics they were too. I guess I am a touch more bitter about this than I remember.

[Black Arrow]

I've been brought up as Christian, and whilst I respect the values that religion instills in people

What would those be? Because the only value I can think of that religion (in general) teaches is uncritical subservience to higher authority. Sure, some of the religions preach love and tolerance and all that, but then some also preach homophobia, sometimes even at the same time. I cannot think of a single positive value that only religion is able to teach, or a single religion that only has positive teachings. I mean, I'm used to religious apologists pretending that religion is the sole source of morality (as if an irreligious or pre-religious society would descend into a total mayhem of murder and looting), but it is interesting to hear an atheist essentially repeating this argument.

If you want a solid reason to not believe in a God, explain what 'Greater Being' would have created the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus

See, the thing is, religion can be used to explain pretty much anything. Even though the traditional creation myth has been disproved, creationists can choose from an infinite number of other explanations, since it is impossible to make a disprovable claim in the realm of the supernatural. The simplest explanation is the deistic/Old Earth Creationist argument of "God created stuff and let it evolve", but you could just as well say stuff like "God micromanages every step of our lives and is just trying his hardest to pretend there is no god and everything is the result of a natural process", or whatever else you can think of. As to the motives, "we cannot understand god's will" is always a perfect, unbreakable copout for anything.

Do not try to disprove God. It is impossible to do so. Instead, wait for the religious to prove something. It's funny... Christianity has existed for two thousand years, with a rich religious tradition and more than 2 billion adherents, yet not a single shred more evidence to it than the Flying Spaghetti Monster...