Why Are You An Atheist?

I'm not dear, atheism has relied so heavily on logical fallacies over the last 20 years it would be embarrassing to self-declare as an atheist, if you ask me.

Because of bible history, and realizing people can believe in things that are not true. Why the website snopes.com was created. With the supernatural realm being completely silent, there is no good way to show it wasn't just a kind of urban legend that blew up into a huge much ado about nothing. I can believe the authors of the books of the bible believed what they wrote was true, but I also realize people can do that about things that aren't true. Especially when you are talking about things that don't manifest, such as spiritual things.

Anyway, seeing how the bible was put together, how it evolved over several centuries, with things being added much much later after the books were written, looked an awful lot like just men putting it together, not some spiritual beings.

Example, I know people who believe ouija boards actually work, I watch them use it and I don't see how they can actually think it's really doing anything at all, yet they still believe in it and use it based on such weak results.

I never believed in any gods - not the Greek gods, not the Egyptian gods, not the Hindu gods, not the Judeo-Christian god. My parents, while nominally Christian, never discussed it. Since I was never indoctrinated, the whole concept just seems bizarre and nonsensical to me - much like how those other gods must seem nonsensical to you.

There is no need for any gods in this universe. The more you study astronomy and physics, the less imperative a god seems to be. The universe seems to be doing just fine without divine intervention.

And then there is the source. All claims to a god are made by people claiming things from the distant past or some ancient book. Knowing how stories get corrupted over time, I would not trust an oral tradition. And the ancient texts are just rife with errors, lies, and just plain insane things that any sensible, objective person would immediately discredit. And it is always funny that these amazing things happened, but there is no evidence of anyone ever mentioning them or worshipping the gods in the archaeological evidence until generations after the events supposedly happened. The first references to Jesus came a century after he supposedly existed, and no one gave a crap about Jesus until 300 years after that when the Council of Nicaea put out the Bible.

And then there is the fact that there is not one shred of empirical evidence to support the existence of gods. Nothing that requires god, nothing that would tend to require a god.

And then, of course, there is the dead giveaway. People who believe in god don't really believe in anything substantial. Their definition of what that god is changes once logic gets in the way of the established definition. The concept of a god is truly meaningless, in that it is whatever is left over once a smarter person than I am has exhausted all of the undeniable arguments against what I originally began with. I have heard people call the Judeo-Christian God the universe itself (we already had a word for that, it is called the universe); an unseeable, unknowable man in the sky (so basically, if this God exists, we are no better or worse for it, so there is no point to believe in it); Jesus (a man who never existed, and even if he did died a horrible death and is now gone); love (once again, we had that before); a great and powerful alien (so, its just another animal-like being like every other one, except that he is a little more capable).

Don't even get me started on the things attributed to god that change when I point out their absurdity.

Why Are You An Atheist?

Christianity is based on the assertion that a things needs a creator in order to exist yet contradicts itself by saying that the Christian god did not have a creator.

Eliminating LOGIC by employing "special pleading" makes using reason as a debate tool impossible. Essentially, relgion renders reason ineffective and atheists come to the god debate with no collateral.

Religion and gods are faith based social constructs not scientific ideas. This makes them impervious to being debunked.

Even so, it doesn't change the fact that gods aren't real.

Said another way: gods may not be real but the concept of gods is very real.

Proving that the Christian god isn't real would be equally as challenging as killing Santa Claus because you can't destroy an idea.

My first clue that my beliefs

didn't make sense

was the realization that the hypothetical God,

that I had been imagining,

didn't measure up

to even my modest ethical standards.

This realization lead me to review

all the dogma I had been taught,

for a decade, in no particular order.

This took me a couple years.

I assumed that this effort

would help me discover

my misunderstandings

and clear up my concerns.

But it lead only to more loose ends, unraveling.

I had a flash of insight,

that all these problems

fit a much more reasonable story,

if this dogma was looked at

as a long effort of human imagination

and many accidents of history.

And my faith completely evaporated.

--

Regards,

John Popelish

Because there is not the slightest shred of credible evidence for the existence of a god or gods.It's the same reason that I don't believe in unicorns, leprechauns, or Russell's Teapot.

The only way primitive religion exists today is through the child abuse of forcing it into very, very young children but thanks to better education and growing intellects so many teens are able to discover the truth, throw off the indoctrination and step into the real world!

Atheism is not a conscious decision or a belief but a realisation, those that cannot escape remain prisoners of their conditioning!

The first person to produce a single tiny little piece of verifiable evidence for any god will become world famous and mega rich!

Academia states that in the absence of any sort of evidence of the existence of something it must be deemed not to exist until verifiable evidence is found - thus god is held not to exist pending some sort of verifiable evidence.

The bible is what is called "Faction” A fictional story set in a factual time and place. Thus the time, place and real historical characters are all correct but the fictional characters and stories are not!

There is not one single mention of Jesus in the entire Roman record - that is right - not one! At the same time as he was supposed to have been around there were a number of Jews claiming to be the messiah - all of whom are well recorded!

There is not a single contemporary record from any source and even the bible mentions of him like all other references were not written until many years after his supposed death!

He was supposed to have been a huge problem to the Romans and produced wonderful miracles but still not one contemporary record?

Even the bible mentions of him like all other references were not written until many years after his supposed death!

Pilate is recorded in the Roman record as a somewhat lack luster man but no mention of a Jesus, a trial or crucifixion that would surely have been used to make him look brighter!

At best he was an amalgam of those others but almost certainly never existed!

Not one word of it is contemporary with the period and was not written until several hundred years after the period the story is set in!! How did the apostles write their books more than a hundred years after they would have been dead?

Christianity is an invention of the Italians and that is why it came from the Holy ROMAN Catholic church!

Please realize that those claims for the Old historians are worthless since they were not even born until long after everyone in the stories would have been so long dead!

Josephus AD 37 – AD 100

Tacitus AD 56 – AD 120

Suetonius - 69 – 130 AD

Pliny the Younger, 61 AD – 112 AD

Justin Martyr (Saint Justin) AD103–165 AD

Lucian - AD 120 -180 AD but he was hostile to Christianity and openly mocked it.

Pamphilius AD 240-309 AD

Eusebius AD 263 – 339 AD

Photius AD 877 – 886 AD

Thallus - But there are no actual record of him except a fragment of writing which mentions the sack of Troy [109 BC] Showing that he was clearly not alive in biblical times.

Some even try to use Seneca. 4 BCE – 65 CE but as a Stoic Philosopher he opposed religion yet made not a single mention of a Jesus or Christianity!

Even funnier is trying to claim Celsus AD ? – 177 AD Who said that Jesus was a Jew who’se mother was a poor Jewish girl whose husband, who was a carpenter, drove her away because of her adultery with a Roman soldier named Panthera. She gave birth to an illegitimate child named Jesus. In Egypt, Jesus became learned in sorcery and upon his return presented himself as a god.

An ancient set of lead tablets found in Jordan in 2008 showing the earliest portrait of Jesus Christ have proved to be 2,000 years old and say that Jesus and the disciples tried to recreate a religion from the time of King David!

Research shows education reduces religious belief but each year of education more than the basic reduces it by 10%!

You have no answer to that - only fantasy and provably false claims!

Because that's what those that don't believe in gods are called.

Edit: Because I am an atheist.

I don't believe in God because God didn't believe in me, during my ballet recital there was always that one empty seat. B*stard never came :(

No but seriously, there is no evidence, everything in the bible has been proven wrong, evolution is a real observable thing that scientists have proven, and therefore God isn't real.

None of the thousands upon thousands of faiths practiced in human history since 38,000 BCE (when the earliest religion was documented) has been able to produce a single bit of solid, objective evidence that deities of any kind exist.