God and religion were not a part of my upbringing, my parents are agnostic/disinterested. School Christmas plays and religious instruction at a young age passed over my head – I never questioned the story of the Noachian flood, but recall being worried about the amount of mud there’d be afterwards. It was only at the age of about 16 that I realised there were religious people out there and they had an impact on my life. My AD&D group fell apart under pressure; I actually listened to the occasional sermon I had to attend; friends’ parents imposing biblical rules on their children.
So having realised there was something to worry about, I did. The Gideons gave me a bible (thank you) and I read it – didn’t do much. At about the same time, my brother was ‘born again’ and I spoke with his friends. They told me how wonderful it was, if only you made the leap of faith (and held on to it). I tried in my head – nothing.
Then university and a girlfriend who tried her hardest to help me understand. I loved her. I wanted to share her experience. We went to church together. We talked about Christ and how important he was to her. I could see how happy it made her. Still nothing clicked inside.
An attack of utter exhaustion alone on a mountainside made me pray seriously for the only time in my life. Give me strength, I need to be able to move. Please. Nothing. Gradually with the rest, I regained enough energy to walk the last few kilometres to the mountain hut. No vision or burning bush led me there – only me.
Sex, drugs, rock & roll, education, politics, friends, enemies, enthusiasm, laziness, joy, hurt, desire, love all had an impact on me then and still do to this day. Influences were and are everywhere. They all have a memory, an effect, a cause. God on the other hand – nothing.
That was over 20 years ago now. There’s never going to be a sign is there?
Since then Richard Dawkins & Pharyngula showed how agnosticism has no basis and led me to understand why that is important. Steven Pinker, Jared Diamond and a scientific education taught me some of the things that can be explained rationally. Talk.origins revealed the opposing forces of imbecility. Intellectually, I am an atheist because there is no god necessary to explain anything. Emotionally, I am an atheist because there was no god to give me the revelation I looked for as a young adult. I am an atheist because there is no god.
Blattafrax
Switzerland
Blattafrax, it is wonderful that you are one of us.
To believe there is no God is the only logical way, the people who believe in God is, well, silly. It is more likely that the world just came into existence and that apes randomly became Humans then silly things like, I dont know, believe in Creation and God.
I am 100% behind you.
Bob
Fixed that for you Bozo Bob. You can’t even get a coherent idea together. Where is your eternally burning bush? Oh right, it doesn’t exist. You can’t put up, and you can’t shut up. That puts you in the land of liars, bullshitters, and proselytizing godbots.
So glad you didn’t get sucked in. There were a few moments there in the story when emotion might have overridden reason, and wishful thinking might have prevailed.
Oh, look, a godbot’s feeble attempt at sarcasm.
The thing is, you forgot a couple of silly things, bub.
Talking snakes.
Giants. Unicorns. Zombies. pi = 3. A guy living in a giant fish. A global flood. That the entire world’s animals would fit on a wooden hand-crafted boat. That the entire human population with all its genetic diversity comes from just 2 people.
Blattafrax, it’s like growing up and realizing there are no ghosts in the closet nor witches under the bed, so we don’t need to be afraid of them any more.
Bozo Bob: straw man fallacy.
I don’t know if I can bear much more false witnessing from Bob Stevensson.
Most atheists not only don’t believe in god(s), we don’t feel the need to believe in god(s). There’s no god-shaped hole in our psyches crying out to be filled.
That’s something folks like Godbot Bob don’t understand. When he’s witnessing to atheists, he’s attempting to convince us that something we cannot see, feel, hear, or otherwise partake of any empirical evidence of its existence, exists. He’s asking us to buy on faith that living a life based solely on faith may one day reward us. That’s difficult enough. When he adds to this the point that he’s not only selling us something he can’t prove exists, but which we don’t even want, things turn from difficult to impossible.
Uh, wow you guys are slow. I said earlier I was just like you believing there is no God and yet you believe I nelieve in God.
Irony of ignorance. Anyway better just to ignore the stupid people.
Bob,
We know you’re a fuckwitted lying bigot. You’re also a bore.
That’s you Bozo Bob. You think you are funny. Pathetic is the proper description. And when you deliberately lie, it is even less funny. Any stupid person would know that. So, why don’t you???
Aww, it thinks we can’t detect irony. How cute.
I know, I know, average people try this kind of thing when they’re around ten.
But even trying for irony with a bad case of god virus is quite an achievement.
Here’s a cookie.
Bob, does it bother you that the atheists you are sneering at are fundamentally more ethical people than you are?
Because if I was as dishonest and bigoted as you, I would be deeply ashamed.
You realize, of course, that the average believer will see this as an affirmation of their faith. You asked for strength and you received it (after some rest). Sadly, this is the kind of mindset we are up against.
When I looked back upon the path I walked, I saw that sometimes there were two sets of footprints in the sand, but sometimes the other set of footprints would wander off under a bush, where a pile of dog shit would lie cooling, and I said, “God damnmit, pup, you know I have to bag that.”
The burning bush was just relatives trying to help the old geezer find his way home.
Thanks for recounting your life experience to us Blattafrax. I imagine that people like you really get under the skin of theists. There seem to be plenty of people who’ve shaken off religious or similar fantasy belief at some point in their lives but relatively fewer like yourself who’ve just never felt the urge to partake of the god fantasy. It’s as if you don’t have a genetic susceptibility or have had some form of vaccination as an infant. Now there’s an idea, a vaccination against religiosity….
#16 Gary: You’re most welcome, although I have comment envy as far as you’re concerned. I’d go for a combination of genetic insusceptability (I’m pathologically lacking in empathy), no family tradition and a high nerd count.
#13 Joshua: It’s a single data point. No conclusions possible. One of the points is that I learnt a lot more about myself than god. That’s been a lot more useful than anything that came from a brief flirtation with Pascal’s wager.
#1 etc Bob: Your opinion would be laughable if it was amusing. Displaying it here is a waste of electrons.
Excellent
Excellent story Blattafrax, glad you’re on our side. Especially since someone named Blattafrax obviously has a death ray of some kind, so I’m glad he’s one of the good guys… ;)
I think I mentioned this in some previous blog thread a while back:
Please, please, could PZ or someone with the appropriate expertise (and any legal necessities) collate these personal stories in some sort of volume, either in print or e-version, to which we could have access?
( Imagine sitting in a rocking chair, reading these experiences to a room full of ‘faith heads’ sitting cross-legged on the floor, like a bunch of school kids……..
I would love to have a volume or two or three of these collections, to have on hand as an effective arguementative counterweight/educational source for any theo/fundies one might come across. I think many of these personal expressions might be potentially valuable pearls of wisdom and influential, since they aren’t all delivered from the ‘Ivory Tower Elite’
(as expressed by detractors). This may encourage the average ‘faith head’ to re-examine their belief system, and perhaps take atheism/agnosticism more seriously, coming from more social, educational equals. Comments?