Personal Experiences that Led you to your Atheism

[SteveB]

Are you suggesting some sort of Kristie tug-o-war?

I outweigh you.

[Bella Fortuna]

Are you suggesting some sort of Kristie tug-o-war?

I outweigh you.

Wanna bet?

[JimC]

I was raised with nothing, got into pagany crap for a few years, and then left that behind when I came to my senses.

Well that's not very interesting.

Do Pagans still worship cake?

I think Bella's version involved naked dancing in the moonlight...

[rasetsu]

Wow, Animavore, what a hostile little cunt you are. I try to add a little spice by providing some of the scientific research regarding religion and you go all medieval on my ass. What the fuck is wrong with you? Did your mommy not love you enough?

Jesus bloody Christ. In case your pea brain has forgotten, this thread was created by Nibbler, for his benefit, to help him write an essay he apparently has been assigned. But by all means, keep on going and showing what a self-centered, stupid and reading comprehension challenged dick you are. I didn't realize you were such a big asshole, but thanks for the information.

Rasetsu - A reminder that personal attacks are against the rules (one of the very few we have). The rule concerned is here should you wish to check it out: http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3449 (second bullet point..)

Shove it up your ass.

[Rum]

Lol! No problem mods.

[HomerJay]

I didn't have anything to do with religion, raised in a third/fourth generation atheistic household. If it wasn't for school I'd have never been inside a church.

Only religion I heard of was at school, everyone laughed at it. Never really knew any Christians. Knew of one jew and a jehovahs witness and a Gideon when I was young ( I didn't know they were Gideons til I was 11 and I got a free bible off the dad at school but we didn't mix any more by then).

We have a church at the end of my road and I've outed a couple of visitors, one was our childminder! The other is a really quite hawt mom I know from school, lovely long tightly curled red hair all the way to her bum. But they're Methodists so I cling to the hope one day she'll reveal her true desires for me and expect hot, passionate, illegal in 48 states kind of sex.

Another one I know is from a sporting thing our kids do. I only know they're Christian because she mentioned Lent in a strange way that sent off my spidey sense and when I was in their house I was looking for signs and spotted a Jesus Loves You fridge magnet. I've known them for a few years and let them look after the kids all day sometimes (we take each others kids to sporting events to save the driving). But apart from the Lenten slip, they've never ever mentioned Sweet Jesus.

I think sometimes it's difficult for merkin types to realise, that we've established that Christians in the UK are too fucking embarassed to discuss god and all that shit. So religion is a private thing, people keep it to themselves. The way it should be.

[SteveB]

Are you suggesting some sort of Kristie tug-o-war?

I outweigh you.

Wanna bet?

I still weigh more, no amount of sexual experimentation will change that.

I was raised with nothing, got into pagany crap for a few years, and then left that behind when I came to my senses.

Well that's not very interesting.

Do Pagans still worship cake?

I think Bella's version involved naked dancing in the moonlight...

I should hope so.

[pcCoder]

I don't think I had any direct personal experiences. I just gradually learned about other religions, how to think and analyze, some basic science, psychology, etc. It seems that there isn't much debate among people about psychology and the effects of conditioning and social groups reinforcing ideas and thought processes, except when the use of those ideas from psychology are applied to religion: the tendency of people to adopt the religion that they have been most influenced from, the tendency of people to believe and rationalize that their religious beliefs are correct and others are incorrect reinforced by social groups and such, regardless of any truth or not. I eventually realized a form of blindness stemming from the more devoutly religious. Similar to an experience I had the other day. I went to church, and after church I was talking to my girlfriend's father. We talked briefly. Some of his statements included:

"There is no such thing as millions of years, if you read the bible at the beginning you can add the generations..."
Talking about how old the earth really is.

"How can you know what happened millions of years ago..." Well how can you know what happened thousands of years ago? "We have the record of it in the bible..."
Apparently any form of evidence of anything else is wrong unless it goes along with what his bible says. The lack of evidence for a mass exodus, pillars of fire, global floods, etc, as well as simple explanations of how such stories could have developed, is irrelevant.

"Other religions worship a dead god, the Christian god is the living god..."
Sound like a he-said-she-said thing Christian: I'm right and my god is true, your beliefs are wrong. Other: No I'm right and my god is true, you beliefs are wrong,

"Other religions are tricked by the lying one...", How do you know your religion is not the trick of a lying one? "I have felt the holy spirit..."
I felt like asking how he could tell that it was a true holy spirit and not a trick of the lying one. After all, if people of other religions feel something holy, it is a trick of the lying one. So how can he be sure his feeling of something holy isn't the same as their feeling something holy?

"You can disprove them other books, but you can't disprove the bible".
I asked how this meant is was true. He basically said if you can't disprove it then it must be true. Sure, you also can't disprove The Cat in the Hat, so surely that is true as well, and the author must have been inspired by His Feline Holiness to write the book. This is beside the fact there there are plenty of obvious problems in the bible and that the explanations I've heard for those problems seem like nothing more than hand-waving the problem away. Often there is no evidence for their explanations and they sound made up just to keep things sounding good to them, but sounding like b/s to me. In addition, they expect their explanations of the problems of their book to be taken as is, but dismiss any explanations of problems of other holy books by people of other religions.

"But the prophecies show the truth. The preacher was just talking about Israel getting attacked from the north, south, east, and west and how it was predicted in the bible..."
Well it seems that the prophecies that I read have plenty of room for interpretation. As for a country surrounded by other countries having conflicts, this doesn't seem to be grand revelation, but common sense that over time countries have conflicts with their neighbors and sometimes even battles between them.

The above are based on a collection of texts being accepted as absolutely true. This sounds like ideological blindness despite their hymn going "once blind but now I see". Now anything that could show something in their text is wrong is actually wrong itself, even if it isn't and their text is. Not all are as bad as the above; some are at least open to the possibility of being wrong but see no reason to change. Some are so closed off to the possibility of being wrong and what they sometimes say manages to show such ignorance that blind is the only word I can think to describe it. Anyway I started realizing such things early on, and slowly overcame my religious belief.