Why I am an atheist – LL

My rational journey began with my grandparents oddly enough. My grandfather was a Jewish journalist in Nazi Germany. Through an amazing stroke of luck, he was on holiday in Switzerland when the entire paper was shut down and employees shipped off to concentration camps. His sister sent him a simple telegraph saying “don’t come back”, and although he managed to get his parents out, he never heard from her again.

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Why I am an atheist – Jennifer

When I really look back and think about where I started becoming an Atheist, it’s a bit funny. I never was raised explicitly Christian- I did go to a Methodist preschool, but I didn’t retain a thing save for the fact that there was apparently a God and Jesus, which I never questioned- it was just a thing that was true and mentioned very rarely, as we never went to Church after I finished preschool. Nevertheless, I certainly was Christian, if only because I didn’t know there was a choice.

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I’m rubber, you’re glue

Why do cult leaders and religious fanatics try to insult atheists by comparing atheism to a cult and atheists to religious fanatics?

Zealous atheists resemble religious fanatics.

Rabbi Dow Marmur

#Atheism is a cult with a small following.

Deepak Chopra

I really don’t get it. It’s as if I were to sneer at creationists by calling them scientists, or clobbered seminaries by referring to them as research institutions (those are things I would not do, by the way).

Rabbi, you’re a guy who has dedicated his life to learning arcane and largely irrelevant nonsense from holy books. You go through weekly (probably daily) religious rituals, you believe in improbable foolishness, you wear special garments — you’re a religious fanatic. My profession is educator: I spend every day putting together information and evaluating the work of my students. I dress as I will. I have no rituals, other than the deadlines dictated by the academic calendar. That I reject your brand of theology (and all brands of theology!) does not make me religious, nor does it make me a fanatic.

Chopra, you’re a guy who peddles feel-good woo to the gullible. You’ve got bizarre, unsubstantiated beliefs about a conscious universe that aspires to fulfill the desires of individual humans; you rake in big speaker’s fees and sell empty fluff in books to the fools who follow you. You’re a cult leader. Atheism tells people to think for themselves and learn about reality; we have a few people who rise to prominence in the movement by their words and actions, but they aren’t exactly leaders — they get barraged constantly with criticism by their fellow atheists.

So I’m a bit lost at what point those two loons are trying to make. Their comments don’t seem to fit atheists or atheism at all, but do apply with a vengeance to themselves.

Congratulations on the divorce, Norway!

Divorce is a good thing: when a couple can no longer find happiness with each other, there’s no point in clinging to a damaging relationship. Move on. Especially when one of the partners in the relationship is a deranged fabulist with a long history of abusiveness, separation is the only reasonable choice.

So I’m happy to see that the secular Norwegian government has moved to sever its long historical ties to that psycho, Lutheranism.

All parties stand united when the Norwegian constitution is changed, so that the state will no longer be a part of the Norwegian church. The amendment is to be presented Tuesday.

The amendment which will be passed later in May, historically changes the state’s relationship with the church. Parliament will no longer appoint deans and bishops, and Norway will no longer have one offical state religion.

Why I am an atheist – Celeste Morgan

I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, but not into a Mormon family. My parents could both be best described as agnostic. I was encouraged to attend the Mormon church by my many friends as I grew up, but I usually refused because the services were so deadly dull. However, this did leave me vaguely believing in the idea of god and heaven.

At the age of 10, I was playing dangerously in my backyard and my father yelled out the back door at me to stop it. I remember the conversation very clearly because it was the start of my atheism. He asked me, “What if you fall off that thing and die?”

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Why I am an atheist – David Rutten

Having grown up in secular Holland in the 1980’s I don’t need a reason to be an atheist. One’s an atheist by default. Those attending church on a regular basis are either few and far between or tend to live in the heavily segregated villages in the Dutch ‘Bible belt’. The only interesting question that pertains to my situation would be; “why didn’t I become a Christian?”.

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The bottom of the barrel

Some of the sleaziest people I know are creationists (not all of them, of course). There’s something about holding an irrational, unsupportable belief that makes them desperate to find vindication by any means possible, and that justifies lying, cheating, and thoroughly reprehensible behavior. “By any means possible” is their motto.

I got a long email from some people who had tried to deal with Eric Hovind and Sye ten Bruggencate — I know, all I have to do is mention those names and already everyone knows the story that follows will be slimy — and rather than try to paraphrase it, I’ve just posted the whole thing below the fold. The Hovind/ten Bruggencate pair are really the very worst of the creationists I’ve encountered — Ray Comfort is dumber, Ken Ham is more conniving, but these two…they truly inspire deep fountains of disgust.

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Why I am an atheist – Modulous

My parents were Church Of England, mildly practicing (more my mother than my father). My grandparents were strongly practicing C of E (as strong as that gets anyway – that is they went to church every week and all that).

However – my father works in oil and his job took him around a lot of places including the Middle East, the Caribbean and now, Louisiana. So there were lots of ideas flying around when I was a kid. My first school was a ‘Gospel School’ (I was the only white boy in the whole school!), and my leaving present was the Good News Bible with a picture of the island the school was on.

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Why I am an Atheist – Alex Manuel

I believe two varieties of atheists exist, which I call “small-A” and “big-A.” Small-A atheists comprise more or less ALL atheists; small-A atheism is simply the fact of not believing in any gods or practicing any theistic religion (at least, not with the understanding that any of it is real in any sense but cultural).

All big-A Atheists are small-A atheists, but only some small-A atheists are big-A Atheists. To be a big-A Atheist is to embrace the counter-culture surrounding atheism, to recognize it as a part of who you are, and to be as outspoken about it as is comfortable for each. The big, red A that so many of us display in our various corners of the social network, on our cars or cubicle walls (for those living in states where such wouldn’t get you lynched) – that’s one good example of what represents big-A Atheism. It is not only a lack of belief, but a form of expression for the sparse few of us dotted like lighthouses around seas of theists, cranks, crackpots and the terminally incurious.

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