When did you stop believing religious stuff without evidence ?

[Telstra]

I only stop believing stuff when i have knowledge about the topics,
otherwise i have no opinion about the topics.

Thats what you called "sheep" when you don't know about things.
So at what point in time did you stop believing in things with no evidence ?

 

[unloadonme]

I was never prepared to believe religious stuff without evidence and I've never seen a shred of evidence. For as long back as I can remember, I've always regarded the Bible as a work of fiction.

 

[Dolmance]

I was never prepared to believe religious stuff without evidence and I've never seen a shred of evidence. For as long back as I can remember, I've always regarded the Bible as a work of fiction.

Ditto. Never been a believer, never had to be; never seen any good reason to be. The various stories and traditions of mythology are utterly fascinating to me, by turns brutal and beautiful; brilliant and barbaric; they express so much of what is essentially human; our base, biologically ingrained tribalism; our desire to transcend that state.

But I think that to regard any one as fundamentally and literally correct is to miss the point, to poison the well, so to speak; it is capitulating to the very tribalistic weakness; that need to synthetic self definition determined by what one's tribe is and what it is not that is so utterly damaging to humanity on an individual and culture-wide level.

 

[Kabluey]

Don't think I ever really believed in anything, went along for the ride for a while though I guess

 

[Telstra]

I was never prepared to believe religious stuff without evidence and I've never seen a shred of evidence. For as long back as I can remember, I've always regarded the Bible as a work of fiction.

But when you were young, you just listen and obey because you didn't know about the topics.
You only stop believing when you understood about the topics.

 

[unloadonme]

But when you were young, you just listen and obey because you didn't know about the topics.
You only stop believing when you understood about the topics.

Sorry, I don't accept that.

I don't come from a religious family and I was never made to obey in that sense. My parents both firmly believed in letting their children make their own minds up. I made my mind up very early on that religion was complete mumbo jumbo.

Even if I had been made to obey, I couldn't have been made to believe, so I would never have reached a point when I stopped believing.

 

[Telstra]

So, this is the place where you explain all the proof that your belief in astrology and demonology is well-founded?

I don't understand your question.
I think youtube videos/debates have more impact on people not to believe in religion.

 

[levenshulme31]

I went to Catholic schools but we were never a really churchy family.

I'm pretty sure I started to doubt the veracity of the religious teaching I was being given from about the age of 8 - for example when they insisted that the communion host was the actual body of Christ, I couldn't help wondering how big he must have been to have provided nibbles for hundreds of millions of catholics for nearly 2,000 years (yet he looked so skinny up on that cross of his).

Ironically the one teacher who convinced me it was all claptrap was the most pious of the lot - she used to question the class on a Monday morning asking which mass we had been to on Sunday - and you would get in trouble if you admitted not going. I distinctly remember lying about going only to be caught out when asked which of the 3 priests had taken the mass I claimed to have gone to, and picking the wrong one. I got in trouble for not going to church and for lying.

I only wish at the age of 10 I had had the sense to tell her that what I did outside school hours was none of her fucking business.

The final nail in the coffin of my faith came a couple of years later at high school when another RE teacher (who was a great teacher by the way) told us that the literal interpretation of the bible we had been taught at primary school was to be taken with a pinch of salt and that the bible was more allegorical. I simply went one further and became convinced that it was just a bunch of old myths, legends and wildly exaggerated historical stories.

 

[quasar]

Up until the age of 19 I was going to be a priest. The turning point for me was not necessarily that I stopped believing in God as such, but more that I had issues with the way that the messages within the Bible were being presented.

For more than two thousand years religion hasn't adapted to the pace of change - resulting in it being viewed as irrelevant in today's world.

A few hundred years ago we though the earth was flat - and although we now know it isn't, it doesn't change the fact that the earth is the earth.

The Bible with the messages it contains (like all religious books) can be considered to be a set of guidelines about how to live your life and treat others - although it was primarily used as a means of controlling the behaviour of the populace.

Do I believe in God? Not as descibed in the Bible, no. I believe in a 'force' of some kind. Do I believe in the Resurrection, Virgin Birth etc. No. Do I believe in the 'teachings' of Christ. Kind of, I believe that the overall message is how we should treat others and our planet.

At the end of the day, religion is like democracy. It's a nice idea that got taken over by megalomaniacs...

 

[mygaybuffet]

Two words:

Richard Dawkins

 

[quasar]

Two words:

Richard Dawkins

But of course it could be argued that he, and other scientists, are merely providing complex scientific explanations of what God has created....

The one thing that religion and science have in common is that neither of them have come up with an explanation for what was there at the very beginning of time. Something must have been there to create the Big Bang, and something must have been there to create God - so at the moment, there has to be a degree of blind-belief without proof on both sides.

 

[Dolmance]

But of course it could be argued that he, and other scientists, are merely providing complex scientific explanations of what God has created....

The one thing that religion and science have in common is that neither of them have come up with an explanation for what was there at the very beginning of time. Something must have been there to create the Big Bang, and something must have been there to create God - so at the moment, there has to be a degree of blind-belief without proof on both sides.

Not necessarily; one side simply admits ignorance where there's ignorance and attempts to genuinely explore what possible explanations there may be, whereas the other pretends absolute knowledge.

 

[fersity]

All credit to my parents for never giving us any doctrine. If pressed, we would have said we were Christian, I suppose, but it was never a big deal. I was never expected to believe anything and although at school, there were prayers in the morning, I think I just accepted that without question. I certainly never believed.

As an adult, I can safely say that an imaginary friend and a book of fairy tales is a f*cking ridiculous basis for anyone to live their life by - or indeed have actual faith in.

I'm so glad I was never forced to try and take any of that crap seriously.

 

[Telstra]

Up until the age of 19 I was going to be a priest. The turning point for me was not necessarily that I stopped believing in God as such, but more that I had issues with the way that the messages within the Bible were being presented.

For more than two thousand years religion hasn't adapted to the pace of change - resulting in it being viewed as irrelevant in today's world.

A few hundred years ago we though the earth was flat - and although we now know it isn't, it doesn't change the fact that the earth is the earth.

The Bible with the messages it contains (like all religious books) can be considered to be a set of guidelines about how to live your life and treat others - although it was primarily used as a means of controlling the behaviour of the populace.

Do I believe in God? Not as descibed in the Bible, no. I believe in a 'force' of some kind. Do I believe in the Resurrection, Virgin Birth etc. No. Do I believe in the 'teachings' of Christ. Kind of, I believe that the overall message is how we should treat others and our planet.

At the end of the day, religion is like democracy. It's a nice idea that got taken over by megalomaniacs...

I guess you still believe in some sort of "higher power".
It will take time for that "higher power" to disappear from your thinking

 

[palbert]

When the Church abandoned auto de fe as a test of belief. Unless you're willing to self-immolate there is no commitment.

 

[barnbuddy]

sometime in high school -

and I always was skeptical even when I was going to Mass each Sunday

 

[jdbadboy]

When I was twelve I met my first young earth creationist. Up until that point I didn't even realize that some people interpreted the Bible that way. This was the early 80s so soon after that I was exposed to the Christian response to the AIDS crisis. So basically I spent the rest of my teen years losing my religion.

 

[matty20]

Never. I am not that religious, but I definitely believe in God.

 

[Dolmance]

When I was twelve I met my first young earth creationist. Up until that point I didn't even realize that some people interpreted the Bible that way. This was the early 80s so soon after that I was exposed to the Christian response to the AIDS crisis. So basically I spent the rest of my teen years losing my religion.

I was 22 before I even realised biblical literalists and young earth creationists existed. I come from the U.K., where traditional, proscribed religion is all but dead; we do have creationists and fundamentalists here, but they are such a small minority most people don't even know they exist. It wasn't until I got to university and started talking with American students that I realised there really were people who took what are, to me, evidently mythological stories, completely literally. It came as a very, very unpleasant shock.

 

[bankside]

But of course it could be argued that he, and other scientists, are merely providing complex scientific explanations of what God has created....

...to which Dawkins would reply "Show me the evidence for a divine creator! Show me it is more likely that biblical history, literature and its beautiful inspirational stories that sustained people in grim times and sang in unison with their joy, were all founded on the inspiration of a divine voice, rather than the human imagination.

Show me that the human imagination is so dim that it could not possibly have been responsible for these stories. And show me, against mountains of evidence, how the whole enterprise of religion is not mostly about the cynical profiting from the gullible.

Show me it is more likely that there was a god to do all this, rather than that it just is."

Or something along those lines.

I explored religion on the same terms as any other story told to a child, the same way I read Panda Cake. I always enjoyed stirring the imagination, but I could never understand how adults could take things so far. I was young when my mind grew in freedom and I enjoy seeing with my eyes open.

My atheism, as a positive identity, was awakened not so much by religion's exaltation of imaginary gods as by its debasement of humanity. When you have known the kindness of humans, you have little time for the imaginary gods of human religions. And when you have seen their cruelty, you have little time for their demons either.