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Why are you an atheist?

Were you always an atheist? Were you at one point in time a Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc.? What made you stop believing?

I'm sure we could all give voluminous answers to why we don't believe in a personal god including, but not limited to: Personal, philosophical, scientific, historical, etc. reasons; which are all perfectly valid. But I want to know what spurred you to question your former beliefs and become an atheist.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Johnson on July 11, 2008 at 9:11am

My answer boils down to this: I was sick of compartmentalizing. The objective evidence wasn't there, nor was there really any subjective evidence available to me other than the insistence of my peers that they felt "His presence."

My extended deconversion story

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Permalink Reply by Sarah on July 11, 2008 at 9:46am

My parents didn't attend church but we were Christians. When I was in middle school I wanted to go to church with my best friend. I was there to see cute boys but I'd come home asking about Revelations and my mom told me I couldn't go to church anymore. She never explained it, just I couldn't go. Then, as a young adult I was having a conversation with my boyfriend (now husband) about my grandmother being in heaven and he asked me why I thought that. Did I just need that comfort of her "looking down on me" or did I know she was there? What was it? I couldn't get that question or many more that he asked out of my head over the next couple of years and the more we talked about it, the more unlikely god and heaven and all that seemed. I found out recently that my mom has doubts but she's not ready to give up believing yet. I guess she's had doubts for a while since one of the things I always think about is how she pulled me out of church the second she found out I was learning about the rapture. Isn't that one of the most persuasive parts of religion, the fear?

I consider myself an atheist but my husband prefers agnostic.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on July 11, 2008 at 5:39pm

Technically, atheist and agnostic aren't mutually exclusive. Agnostics are atheists too. ;)

Theism & atheism are about belief, while gnosticism and agnosticism are about (claims of) knowledge.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah on July 11, 2008 at 6:30pm

Yeah, I know. I was just mentioning we use different words to describe our views now.

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Permalink Reply by FreeThinker on February 10, 2009 at 4:22pm

Not all agnostics are atheists. One can be an agnostic theist (believe in God, but believe it is impossible to know for sure God exists).

I call myself an agnostic atheist, which I think is equivalent to what Dawkins refers to as a
"weak atheist".

Now, most agnostic theists would probably disassociate themselves from the term "agnostic" because in the minds of many, an agnostic is the equivalent of being an atheist. However, as was pointed out, agnosticism makes no statement on belief, only about the availability of knowledge regarding the existence of a diety.

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Permalink Reply by Ruth Dickson on July 15, 2008 at 8:54pm

According to Stephen Colbert, agnostics are atheists without balls. Just sayin'.

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Permalink Reply by Dennis on October 18, 2008 at 10:10am

My brother gave me a different definition; an agnostic is someone who has thought about religion/god, an atheist is someone who has thought about it more.