For those who don't believe in a God

I'd like to know why you don't, and especially if you used to believe but changed your mind. This thread is only for stories of those who don't believe.

Believers, make your own thread...: )

I'll post mine later.

Ok back from the cinema (cowboys and aliens).

I have thought long and hard about this topic, and even the numerous debates here have sharpened up my personal feelings.

I think having religious faith is very much like being in love. You can't be debated or convinced into love, you either feel it or you don't. Facts and dates don't really cut it, for or against.

I've never experienced the sensation/presence of a God, and so to me, there aren't enough holy books in the world to make me feel like it's a real thing.

Put simply, I'm not in love with God and without some divine intervention that makes me feel more than I can doubt, I never will be.

This is something of a personal revelation for me, as it doesn't just explain my lack of faith, but it also explains how powerfully those who do believe defend their faith, and their God.

They are in love.

I remember i was really young when i stopped believing in god, my motherand father were divorced, and my mother had me going to church every sunday you see, so the question of god was never posed. church was, among other things, incredibly boring, particularly because i didnt have a full understanding of what was going on. the seats were uncomfortable too. one day the preacher was really hard to hear, and i didnt know the words to any of the hymns, so i thought about what i knew about the religion, noah's ark, garden of eden, moses, etcetera, and it didn't quite add up. i was young enough to still believe in magic a little, soo i didn;t disbelieve it outright, but it made less and less sense the more i thought about it. then i started thinking about god, and after a point, god started making less and less sense also. i was in 4th grade at this point, old enough to ask questions, so i asked my mother. she didnt have all the answers, and she encouraged me to ask me questions and keep thinking about it. little by little, my resolve that god didn't make much sense at all grew, and i became agnostic. so many people followed the idea, there had to be something in it i wasn't seeing. then my father happened.

born again christian to the 10th power. fanatical enough to blow up a bus if his religion was challenged. all i had seen before was this.... disinterested march of minds, stumbling to follow the words of a long practiced and disheartened minister. this was totally different, father was militant in the ineffable correctness of his believes, violently so. my brother and i were forced to church twice a weak where we saw some horrific things that i can only describe as brain washing. separate indoctrination facilities for newborns, pre teens, and teenagers with focus specifically on those groups to morph them into obedient followers and tithers. on wednesday there were no teenage sermons, so we had to go to the main church with my father. my brother had long hair and could conceal ear-buds in his ears, he spent most of the sermon listening to bob dylan in one ear. i had no such luck and bore the full brunt of it.

i remember one sermon in particular where the preacher was talking about the bible phrase "and they laid their power at the feet of Jesus Christ. everyone say JESUS." <JESUS> "in this translated text, power can be interchanged with money, they laid down their money to the feet of JESUS Christ."

i couldn't listen any more, there was nothing holy about this man, it was exploitation pure and simple and it would take a fanatical man or woman to listen to him and believe he was a word of god. later my brother may have discovered that this particular preacher may have been doing cocaine, but we lack evidence to truly back that up, my brother only heard him, he didnt see anything.

i had seen the two extremes of christianity and i was really only 14 or 15. these tainted any faith i could have in the christian religion as a whole. slowly that bled into atheism over the next three years. and thats why im not christian.

^That is some scary shit right there. I think you hit on the two extreme negatives associated with organized religion: Lukewarm, mediocre "belief" that you have simply because you were told to have it, and a system of power and oppression that is defined by fanaticism. I'd like to think that religion is not limited to those two extremes, but it is certainly vulnerable to them.

"I think having religious faith is very much like being in love. You can't be debated or convinced into love, you either feel it or you don't. Facts and dates don't really cut it, for or against."

^I think you've got that way right, Kev. It would be hard for me to understand someone who became religious due to, say, scientific facts.

I'm not sure whether this thread is, despite it's title, strictly about religion or god. Anyway, since both were discussed I'll mention both.

I think it's really bad that most people ''inherit'' their religion, or their family's more like it. Perhaps that's the worst thing about the whole process. I've been born into a Muslim family that treats religion like some sort of study at best. I've learnt it growing up but it wasn't forced down my throat when it came to believing or practicing.

Sometime back I pretty much gave up on it all. The idea itself didn't make much sense to me on different levels. I later, much later, sat down with myself and did a whole process of rethinking everything separately and attempting to rationalize it (which was more of arguing with myself, to and fro, trying to make sense of one side if you ask me). To me not believing, at that point, was just as irrational as believing, both didn't make sense. Perhaps the idea of God is a bit fairy tale-ish but the thought of everything being for nothing and leading to nothing was, to me, equally absurd. I had to reach a solution that to me, and me alone, seemed ''it'', I didn't want to cheat myself or my mind into fitting in one of the existing sides that are either black or white. I later came to conclusion that I won't state here so Kevin doesn't feel bothered since it's more of believing than not believing.

Still, I think the religion and God through out history and especially now is pretty much used as a weapon of a mass destruction. Not because of fault within it itself, but partly because it is in our nature to turn and twist and interpret things to fit us.

At the end of the day be you a believer or not, it doesn't make a difference. As long as your conscious is clear and you practice what you believe to be right/good then you wouldn't have problem with a God or the lack of him. Beliefs, after all, come from inside.

''Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.'' -Voltaire