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CatsAndDogs
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So, what initially “converted” you to being an atheist from what you were before you were an atheist?
The answer: “I was always an atheist before becoming a non-atheist”, is not an acceptable answer.
:shamrock2:
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The answer: “I was always an atheist before becoming a non-atheist”, is not an acceptable answer.
:shamrock2:
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Amy_1610
Guest
Oops…not sure I explained myself very well…
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I was an athiest in the sense that I had never known anything else and nothing had ever forced me to question what i thought was true about the world and religion. As a child you are told in school about science and the big bang creating the world and the such like - when your younger they cant afford to confuse the issue by including creation stories and the such. Also, the media is always talking about science latest discover and how science explains everything. Also, like i said, none of my family was religious - i went to a church twice for weddingings and nothing more. I was never shown religion in a way that made belief in it reasonable.
Maybe not the most helpful answer, but it’s all i got… …
…I was an athiest in the sense that I had never known anything else and nothing had ever forced me to question what i thought was true about the world and religion. As a child you are told in school about science and the big bang creating the world and the such like - when your younger they cant afford to confuse the issue by including creation stories and the such. Also, the media is always talking about science latest discover and how science explains everything. Also, like i said, none of my family was religious - i went to a church twice for weddingings and nothing more. I was never shown religion in a way that made belief in it reasonable.
Maybe not the most helpful answer, but it’s all i got…
…
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CatsAndDogs
Guest
No, you explained yourself quite clearly.Oops…not sure I explained myself very well…
My response to your post was my usual “slightly provocative” poke-in-the-side-with-a-pointy-stick that I use as an “open question” to dig into what you’re thinking.My point was that I believe that no one is truly an atheist, unless they are actively “converted” into (so-called) atheism by actual people promoting/proselytizing atheism.
I was never an atheist, but I was never “religious” as a kid (and young-to-middle adult). I always knew there was a God. It was always just a question of what God was “like” that confused me, until I discovered I was Catholic.
Actual atheists are not a-theists, in reality, but rather anti-Christian.
People throughout the world who we (westerners) describe as atheists are worshipers of some “greater power”. They are not truly a-theist. Only those people who have been heavily influenced by western “post-modernism” (scientistic materialistic quasi-rationalism), which LOVES syncretism by the way, have “lost” their worship of their “greater power” so that they can be “free” to worship themselves as gods.
So, what was your “greater power” as you were growing up? Mine was “beauty and order” (artistic and scientific) which I “worshiped” as the “thing” that was the organizing principle, and origin of the beauty of the world.
It’s only been in the last 3 years that I discovered (not “decided”) that I was Catholic, which gave me the true reality of what God is.
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Amy_1610
Guest
I guess my ‘greater power’ was science, but i can see what you mean bout the beauty and order including the artistic things - i am a musician and have always had a great intrest in it, and i think this had alot to do with the way i see things.
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JVSantos
Guest
No, I don’t have any athiest friend, I can tell you this,
While in Kuwait waiting orders to invade Iraq back 2003, several people in my unit says they are atheist and don’t believe in God, when we reach Baghdad we have zero atheist in our unit. Go figure…
JVSantos
While in Kuwait waiting orders to invade Iraq back 2003, several people in my unit says they are atheist and don’t believe in God, when we reach Baghdad we have zero atheist in our unit. Go figure…
JVSantos
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hecd2
Guest
That means that all atheists can trace their atheism back to some First Atheist who was the only guy smart enough to figure it out for himself and that no-one else can reach the conclusion of atheism for themselves.
Really? How do you know that? I perceive some atheists to merely lack belief in a personal deity and others to do that AND to oppose the philosophy and influence of all religions, not just Christianity, in society.
Alec
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tobinatorstark
Guest
Yes I have personally known an atheist. I know this because they admitted it to me.
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CatsAndDogs
Guest
That’s quite right!
The first atheist, or rather self-deifying ME-worshiper was Satan.
If one is an atheist, then one is a Satanist.
You may “perceive” what you like.
Today’s so-called atheists are the direct descendants of the various anti-Christs that have been “bothered” by the strictures of true freedom (freedom from rampant evil) imposed by Christianity on majority-Christian societies.
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JDaniel
Guest
Yes, and so have I.No.
All so-called atheists I’ve ever run into were really self-deified gods, whom they themselves worshiped of course, which makes them self-defined non-atheists.
I’ve had many self-deified gods as friends, though, if that’s what you’re REALLY asking.
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JDaniel
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That’s an interesting attribute/definition of Satan. As a fallen angel, he’d be pretty “smart”. He also knew what God was trying to do with His creation, so, one good method of undermining God is to undermine His “Godness”.
JD
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Starwynd
Guest
Why not? We are not born believing in God. Believing in God is something that is learned and is not instinctual. So therefore, the default position of people who just have never ehard about God is an atheist because they simply do not believe. How can they believe in something they know absolutely nothing about?
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Fran65
Guest
Actually that is not my experience. I have always (apart from when ill with severe depression) ‘known’ that there is ‘something’ greater than me that created me and this universe. I learned to call it God and learned how to develop my relationship with Him. There may be isolated tribes who do not articulate their feelings or yearnings for God in ways that we recognise, but that is because they do not have the language (vocabulary, grammar) to verbalise them.
Its a deep psychological recognition and desire, innate and God given. You can ignore, suppress or defy it. That’s free will.
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hecd2
Guest
It is not logical to claim that one’s refusal to believe in one pretty figment of our imagination is caused by another ugly figment of our imagination.
Atheists do not necessarily worship themselves, but then you have such a skewed, self-satisfied and uncharitable view of them that that you wouldn’t know that.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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hecd2
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JDaniel
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survive
Guest
I admit to not reading the whole thread; it’s long, and early in the morning for me, and I want to comment on the shock I feel at the thread title and OP. I intend to read it all later when I feel more awake, really.
Is it possible that you didn’t know half of us used to be atheists, and a majority appear to have spent some time in public schools, where atheism is enforced in some subjects, at least in these parts?
My feelings about atheism come from a lifetime of having that belief system forced on me and being accused of “not thinking for myself” when I dared question it (typical example of the deceptive maneuver called reality reversal); arguing with friends, family and loved ones who scream at me for trying to point out gently and with understanding every step of the way that they are using a foregone conclusion, circular reasoning, and therefore are the ones who need o start again with an open mind; defending the faith gently and patiently to people who come up to me in public laughing at me and smirking about how I must be “doing this Christian thing to make my ex-bf mad or whatever” and how I just need a good dose of… get ready… Dan Brown.
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crowonsnow
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Religion is certainly not the sole repose of altruism. That much is certain. And no doubt there are tax incentives. Churches, on the other hand, don’t have to worry about gaining tax incentives because they don’t pay taxes.
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Shannon9791
Guest
I actually left seminary for an atheist, how wonderfully ironic is that? I had to power through several rounds with her and her friends wailing on me with their atheist nonsense. Throughout the course of our relationship though, I think the logic behind her atheist “theories” fell apart. She also saw how intense I was in my faith, and eventually began to go to mass with me. In the end it wasn’t meant to be, and I don’t speak to her anymore, but I think God has something for her. So to answer the OP, yes, I have personally known an atheist.
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CatsAndDogs
Guest
It IS logical, though, to claim that one’s refusal to believe in the totality of reality is caused by allowing oneself to be mislead by a malignant subset of reality.
Atheists ALWAYS worship themselves, as they have nothing else to worship (as nothing else is “real” to them), and one of the primary functions of the human being is to worship.
I’m quite charitable toward “atheists”, in other words I love “atheists”, and I do so so much that I’m not afraid to explain to them that which will send them to eternal torment if persisted in.
I love the people who behave atheistically (satanically), but I vehemently hate, with all my heart, their acts of atheism.
So, sue me!
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Starwynd
Guest
Now that’s just silly, wrong, and highly prejudiced.
I can just imagine myself as an atheist making prayers to myself. Having a little altar with pictures of myself where I pray to. Then I have a Rosary with myself as Jesus in which I pray over. Oh and I go to a church that I dedicated to myself on every Sunday.
Give me a break.
I have nothing but rude and crude gestures for that junk.
Oh wait, anything that dares question the will of God is from Satan. Got it.
I’m so tired of the constant demonization of atheists. That’s all junk like this is, is demonization.
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