My lack of belief in a higher being or anything presented to me through organised religion. Heck if you don;t believe, you don't believe

I don't see any reason not to be.

The fact that I didn't believe in God. There wasn't really a "Decision" involved, I just realised at some point in my childhood that I just didn't believe in God. The fact that my main experience with religion is from my fundamentalist Christian relatives, whom I realised at an early age are completely full of S*it, probably had something to do with it as well.

I have studied religion and i believe that christians ( all demominattions ) are the most judgemental and critical people on this earth. I have been hurt by more 'christians' or people who think they are 'good christians' then anyone esle in this world! even on here, i was hurt by a supposedly claimed JW who couldn't accept a decision i made about my life. so she targeted my questions and answers leaving nasty vindictive comments all other the place. my decision is made on my own life experiences, and there are many involving religion. i don't go round telling people they are wrong in there decision in what they believe in religion. it's personal, and that's what i believe. so i know what i believe in god and religion and i will keep it to myself mostly.

well I'm not atheist,but if i were it would be the lack of evidence and the thought of talking or praying to an invisible being,if you think about it,its kinda funny,but im christian,im just trying to understand everything and make sense of it all but like it says in proverbs"rely not on your own understanding"

The absence of evidence that was compelling to me, that there was any logical, moral, or spiritual reason not to be. The presence of many truly obnoxious self-styled Christians in my early life played a part too, no doubt.

I mean no offense to anyone of faith here, but ever since I was eight I've regarded faith in a benevolent higher power as kind of self serving. That said, it's not something I consciously decided on, it's more like something I discovered about myself. I'd thought I was Christian because my parents never thought to tell me that there was anything else to choose from. But there came a point when I understood that no belief is an option too. I don't think I could decide to believe in a 'higher power' anymore than people of faith could decide not to.

i am agnostic, not an atheist. i don't beleive in anything that can't be proven. i can't prove that god exists, but i also can't prove that he or she doesn't! (or they, in the case of polytheism)

One day I discovered I was a Catholic "going through the motions". I realized that I had gone up to the last Catholic Sacrament before the choice between Marriage or Priesthood, entirely because I had never been presented with an alternative. I hadn't received any kind of divine guidance or revelation. I was fair to religion, I gave it more chances. Clearly a couple billion people thought there was a Deity, I should probably put some research into it. I delved into other flavors of Christianity. I hit up Judaism, Buddhism, Hare Krishna (I donated $5 for the Bhagvad'Gita the nice orange-robed man was going to give me for free). I even dropped into Paganism for awhile. I never received any "ding!" moments indicating the presence of a Deity. The sculptures were beautiful and the comments in the religious books were often wise, but there was nothing indicating to me that a Deity existed. So I had arrived at proof that Deity did not exist. I had become an Atheist by looking very hard for a Deity and not finding one.

I was raised to be religious but as soon as I was on my own I rejected all organized religion. Then, much later, I found myself thinking that all the religious beliefs sounded kinda silly.

I never took that decision, and never will. My faith and belief in God resides within me, and nothing and nobody will take that away from me.

I don't remember making a decision regarding whether to believe in deities or not. Belief just never arose, and I never felt pressure to try to force myself. The decision to start thinking of myself as an atheist, however, was a conscious one. Before that, I called myself an agnostic. It happened when I realized that although I wasn't bothering to "sit on the fence" with respect to all the other various things I didn't believe in (like leprochauns), for some reason I chose to do it with respect to God. For the sake of consistency, at that point I abandoned the "agnostic" moniker.

Who said I was an Atheist? o.O

I studied theology and slowly worked my way to atheism because theology has so many weak spots in it. The one main epiphany I had which changed me to an Atheist was one question: "Why does Jesus Christ sit on his all-powerful, all-knowing hands and allow innocent children to be raped and murdered?" I though about it very hard, and my conclusion was this: "If a deity exists, then he is evil and doesn't deserve my worship and adoration. If a deity doesn't exist, then a non-existant deity doesn't deserve my worship and adoration."

In the past mankind explained everything it didn't know by means of gods and spirits. We couldn't understand how the sun moved across the sky, so we invented Apollo. We couldn't understand how the waves move, so we invented Neptune. More and more science is disproveing theories based on the predication that there are such things as gods and spirits. How many more theories do we have to disprove before we see a trend and throw out the entire predication? Just because we cannot explain it as of yet does nt mean that it is outside of the realms of science to explain it, just give us more time. 2147 years ago people believed the world was flat because that is what the holy books' literal writings suggested. What in these holy books can we take as literal truth and what as metaphorical? We know for a fact that it cannot ALL be literal truth (according to the Bible the universe is only 6000 years old but we also know for a fact that it is about 13.8 milliard years old) but can it ALL be metaphorical? If not then when does literal truth end and metaphorical begin? Is this not an indication as to how flawed rligion and perhaps faith is? Churba: "His Planetary Hypotheses went beyond the mathematical model of the Almagest to present a physical realization of the universe as a set of nested spheres" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy Not everyone belived that the world was flat because the most clever people in the world at the time used mathematics to disprove it! How many other descriptions/theories does science/mathematics have to disprove before we realize that all of the holy books were written by PEOPLE and not by God? People used common sense to explain things but common sense cannot explain the world and the universe, hence the explanations in these holy books are flawed.

In a nutshell. Firstly there is the simple principle that somebody can't claim with any credibility that something is true just because it can't be disproven. Religious ideas are born where man doesnt want to admit that we can not provide an answer to something, and we aren't so significant as we like to believe. Heaven is a concept that man came up with because death surely can't be the end of our life, an idea born both out of fear and arrogence that we aren't all important - I think this stands for a lot of religious teachings. To be honest, I imagine Farino pretty much summed up alot of atheists answer to this question with his responce.

A strong reaction against some teachings of the Catholic Church, where I was raised. But now I have changed and even if I am not following a special church, I consider myself as a spiritual man.

The dental plan.

The sex.

I find that Atheists like myself know more about Christianity then avid followers and even preachers of it. I spent 2 years as a history major with a focus on early Christian, late Rome, middle ages history(100BCE-1300CE) and after learning about the time period when Christianity sprung forth and it's beginning, I realized how hollow it was. It was simply just a mystery cult just like hundreds of other mystery cults at the time. Recycling the exact same stories of saviors and miracles but putting different names and places on them. It was common for a person to be a member of several different cults and nobody really minded or cared. But the Christian mystery cult(s) had one thing in common, they demanded worship to them and them only. Meaning that as people joined the Christian cult, they had to leave any other cults they were involved in. This made it grow. It started to have a following among the common non-roman and low low class roman people alike. They rejected the patriarchal and ultra masculine roman value system and took to Christianity's pacifist and what would be considered by today's standards anti-family-values values. Christianity was a doomsday mystery cult. They thought the world was ending soon so they advocated leaving friends, family, and everything behind for the faith. This message became popular among the lower classes. Constantine, a roman general and noble vying for power, capitalized on this and adopted the faith as his own, getting a great amount of public support for him. If it wasn't for Constantine winning the throne and bringing Christianity out of the caves and catacombs and basically romanizing it, it would of died out like the rest of the mystery cults. After Constantine, it is worth noting that the bible was formally assembled from popular Christian scripts. Of the 4 gospels that were picked, there were over 80 rejected. See the Gnostic gospels. Also worth noting that the first gospels don't start appearing until almost 100 years after Jesus was supposed to of lived... odd. Jesus in the bible never existed, he is simply a mythical figure used to teach about christian beliefs during early Christianity. Christians did not even all agree he really did exist as a person until around late 300CE! His story being similar if not almost identical to other mystery cult figures that had come before him such as Mithra, Horus, Osirus, Orpheus, etc etc. Many Christians do not realize the first easter was over 1000 years before christ was of supposed to lived. It was to celebrate the rising of the dead son of god Horus after 3 days, after dying on a cross. Egyptians refer to him as "The Lamb of god", sound familiar? The Catholic Church's formal answer to all of these mystery cults and religions so strikingly similar to the new testament? "The devil knew Jesus was coming, so he created these cults and religions in advance to de-legitimize Christianity." I'm not making this up, that is their ACTUAL answer. Just dig, and don't let your religion cloud your judgment or accept things you wouldn't normally accept without proof. People have been looking from proof of the historical Jesus for over 1900 years now. Too bad in the process many of them ignored the mountains of proof showing he was never a historical figure. The truth freed me from religion.

I did not make a decision to be an atheist. I have learned what I can about religion, have been involved in a few (not Christian... Wicca and Druidism), I have read, asked, searched, etc. all of my life. The end result of my search for learning is that I do not believe in God. My opinion is subject to change at any moment, if the appropriate information is provided to me or if my own feelings on the matter change. I do not hold blinders on my eyes about anything.

Nobody except Atheists could agree on anything

I took a look at all the evidence for or against all types of religion and decided I would go with the ONLY thing that has ANY evidence, ie. No God!

due to the fact the concept of a "god" is a fundamental flaw, and as well as, "god" is simply the concotion of the human mind to explain the unexplained, such as life's meaning,our being, and the planet's existance etc. When we actually stop and think, this "being" has not showed us a discernable shred of evidence to the validity of said higher being's existance. If we are to worship anything it is the atoms of which all matter consists of, or maybe even further to what makes up them.

I was never raised religiously. My parents never told me about religion. So I wasn't a believer going on Atheism, I never believed in the first place. It was not a decision, it just came naturally. That is not to say I haven't explored religion, or other beliefs, but I've just never found them compelling.

I never believed there was a god. I wasn’t raised religious. My family never even mentioned the word “god”. I have a lot of aunts and uncles, so I had tons of cousins. We grew up seeing each other almost every day. Most of my family never went to church. I had a preacher uncle, so his kids went constantly. Another aunt and uncle sent their 4 kids to church every so often. They never talked about belief around me… not even the preacher uncle. The only thing I knew by age of 7 was some Jesus songs sang from the church bus as my cousins were returning home. One day my mom told me that my cousin’s church was having a fun-day. There would be toys, coloring, singing those Jesus songs, snow cones, and other kids. She said some of my cousins and some neighborhood friends were going, so I shouldn’t be nervous and I’d probably have fun. It was pretty fun. When it was time to color the church lady gave us bible story pictures and told the stories as we colored. That would have been totally ordinary except she told us the stories really happened. I thought there was something wrong with her because she was an adult who didn’t know the difference between make-believe and reality. No other child seemed fazed by it. I suddenly didn’t feel so safe there. I never spoke about it, but I told my mom I’d rather not go again. When I was 9 my teacher began to teach us about the old gods of polytheism. I laughed and began asking how those people could have been so foolish to believe all of the miraculous things these gods supposedly did. The teacher seemed very uncomfortable with my questions and the other kids weren't amused. I felt the same feeling I had in the church 2 years earlier. By the time I was 18, I knew bits and pieces about Christianity, so I figured I’d check it out. After all, there had to be something to the bible since it was so popular. I was a little excited to get a bible and maybe discover something amazing. Well, I read it. I was amazed alright. I was amazed and confused. Why did people believe this stuff? Did they really even believe it? I had always been interested in what makes people tick, so I had a new interest… what causes people to believe? Every other description of God I've heard just doesn't ring true. None have evidence and the world just makes more sense without a god. So, I never really decided I don't believe. I was never a believer and nothing has given me a reason to believe.

I've always lacked belief in god.

I didn't decide. I just didn't believe.