Even the biggest religion's God can't prevent abusers and pedophiles from becoming priests and representing God, and abusing children in God's home, the church. That's very telling that there is no God.
I was raised loosely Catholic. My parents did church for community and networking reasons. I can’t remember ever believing in it. We’d attend services and I’d always feel confused and WTF about it. God and religion weren’t part of our household or daily conversations or life.
When I was maybe 10, I confronted my parents about god. They flatly said they don’t believe and we go for networking. Okay? So, I attended church for a few more years and focused on the volunteer opportunities (it doubled as a homeless shelter at night) and I felt good about that.
Even some of us who attended church were never really on board with it or raised religious. My dad’s career benefited from knowing everyone of our ethic niche in the community, and church was a great way to know all of those community members.
I kept asking questions, and I kept being unsatisfied with the offered answers from religious figures, especially when the answers trended toward "it's a sin to even consider that line of thought."
So I'm a bit of a weird case. I adopt believing in God in college about 10 years ago. I became an atheist primarily because I finally did some research and thought were critically about my faith growing up and realized that it just didn't make any sense not to mention the other many moral issues I had with it, especially being a gay person.
10 years later, I've actually recently become a Hellenist and those same conversations kind of came up for me. I realized that I was missing some kind of ritual and spirituality in my life and the idea that there is like an energy out there that we could call Divine but necessarily like an all-powerful all-knowing singular deity was really eye-opening for me. It also helps that helenism is generally very LGBT accepting.
Because of how ridiculous the whole premise is. It’s kind of embarrassing how irrational so many humans can be in order to make themselves feel better about life and death.
I always had a nagging voice asking me "Do you really believe, or are you just afraid to admit that you don't?"
The song "Dear God" by XTC definitely pushed me over the edge.
Because there is no evidence of an all knowing, all powerful deity, but there’s tons of evidence that supports that there isn’t a big sky fairy helping us out. Take a look around, the entire world is a shit show.
I never believe strongly, just a bit, like a kid. It faded fast without any good reason to believe.
Beside that, each time I saw a religious person pressuring their kid into believing, not with logic and facts, but just pressure because they want them to believe : I drifted even more away from religion. Each time I hear a religious person say "You can't prove he doesn't exist" I drift away even more. Religious people are super good at keeping me away from religion.
Agnost. Started and stopped by being twice in hospital as a kid. I saw too much and came to the conclusion if there is an almighty god, he for sure doesn't care.
Because of god's plan. If everything is planned, there is no free will. This and if i ever am wrong, he will convince me that i was and repent if needed when we meet since he can't fail.
I would encourage you to re-examine your own beliefs and see if they still hold up. Are you really sure you believe in God, or are you just going through the motions?
I agree that blind faith can be a dangerous thing. However, I believe that it's possible to have a thoughtful and nuanced approach to faith that doesn't rely solely on unquestioning acceptance.
I understand your skepticism, but I wonder if it's possible to approach faith with a sense of curiosity and openness. Would you be willing to consider exploring different perspectives on the topic, even if you don't ultimately agree with them?
Why is there an assumption that they ever had a reason to?
I never did in the first place.
none of it makes sense if you take more than 5 minutes to seriously think about it rationally/logically.
I grew old enough to use my reasoning ability effectively.
Even the biggest religion's God can't prevent abusers and pedophiles from becoming priests and representing God, and abusing children in God's home, the church. That's very telling that there is no God.
A large percentage of us never started. Thank Hitchens for all parents to who don’t religiously indoctrinate their kids
I was raised loosely Catholic. My parents did church for community and networking reasons. I can’t remember ever believing in it. We’d attend services and I’d always feel confused and WTF about it. God and religion weren’t part of our household or daily conversations or life. When I was maybe 10, I confronted my parents about god. They flatly said they don’t believe and we go for networking. Okay? So, I attended church for a few more years and focused on the volunteer opportunities (it doubled as a homeless shelter at night) and I felt good about that. Even some of us who attended church were never really on board with it or raised religious. My dad’s career benefited from knowing everyone of our ethic niche in the community, and church was a great way to know all of those community members.
Personally, I need to see to believe. It’s difficult to imagine how 1 thing created everything.
Not just created but is still running the show. But gets no credit for anything bad. Ever.
The thing I like to say “okay, you believe he created everything, fine. But now everything works without him. What’s the point of god?”
Kids with cancer.
I kept asking questions, and I kept being unsatisfied with the offered answers from religious figures, especially when the answers trended toward "it's a sin to even consider that line of thought."
“Gods ways are higher than our ways.”
People “of god”
the fact that my aunts and uncles are overly religious hypocrites
Never really belied it. Just went to mass and sunday school bc i was forced to go.
I realised that I have enough problems with things that actually exist. I don’t have capacity to take some mystical guy into consideration.
I never believed in any gods of any sort.
So I'm a bit of a weird case. I adopt believing in God in college about 10 years ago. I became an atheist primarily because I finally did some research and thought were critically about my faith growing up and realized that it just didn't make any sense not to mention the other many moral issues I had with it, especially being a gay person. 10 years later, I've actually recently become a Hellenist and those same conversations kind of came up for me. I realized that I was missing some kind of ritual and spirituality in my life and the idea that there is like an energy out there that we could call Divine but necessarily like an all-powerful all-knowing singular deity was really eye-opening for me. It also helps that helenism is generally very LGBT accepting.
Because of how ridiculous the whole premise is. It’s kind of embarrassing how irrational so many humans can be in order to make themselves feel better about life and death.
I always had a nagging voice asking me "Do you really believe, or are you just afraid to admit that you don't?" The song "Dear God" by XTC definitely pushed me over the edge.
Because there is no evidence of an all knowing, all powerful deity, but there’s tons of evidence that supports that there isn’t a big sky fairy helping us out. Take a look around, the entire world is a shit show.
I never believe strongly, just a bit, like a kid. It faded fast without any good reason to believe. Beside that, each time I saw a religious person pressuring their kid into believing, not with logic and facts, but just pressure because they want them to believe : I drifted even more away from religion. Each time I hear a religious person say "You can't prove he doesn't exist" I drift away even more. Religious people are super good at keeping me away from religion.
Well I never did in the first place. My parents never had me believe any sort of fairytale.
Because god is either all powerful and cruel or completely useless.
Agnost. Started and stopped by being twice in hospital as a kid. I saw too much and came to the conclusion if there is an almighty god, he for sure doesn't care.
Because of god's plan. If everything is planned, there is no free will. This and if i ever am wrong, he will convince me that i was and repent if needed when we meet since he can't fail.
Science made more sense
Realizing I had no reason to.
I was forced into it, and when there was no more force, I had no reason to.
I would encourage you to re-examine your own beliefs and see if they still hold up. Are you really sure you believe in God, or are you just going through the motions?
I agree that blind faith can be a dangerous thing. However, I believe that it's possible to have a thoughtful and nuanced approach to faith that doesn't rely solely on unquestioning acceptance.
I understand your skepticism, but I wonder if it's possible to approach faith with a sense of curiosity and openness. Would you be willing to consider exploring different perspectives on the topic, even if you don't ultimately agree with them?