So, was it evolution or (as Joshu implies) a disgruntled experience when you were younger that made everyone choose to be athiests ?

I was sitting in science class one day. My teacher started talking about Darwin- the first I’d ever heard of him- and when she got to the finches, it all fell into place.

“Ahhh!” I screamed, knocking over my desk and throwing my Bible at the wall. “It’s all a lie! There is no God”

I went shrieking out of the room to discuss this with the school therapist.

Later on, friends told me that the teacher sighed and mentioned my reaction was an annual occurance.

So, was it evolution or (as Joshu implies) a disgruntled experience when you were younger that made everyone choose to be athiests ?

The taste of freedom was worth my religion.

Out of curiosity, is the theory of evolution the main reason y’all are atheists ?

No. I had never heard of the theory of evolution when the concept of God was first introduced to me. The priests and religion class instructors just never gave me a good justification for their claims – unlike history, or science, or math, etc. No reason to believe = no belief.

Shimon said,

March 20, 2008 at 7:58 am

So, was it evolution or (as Joshu implies) a disgruntled experience when you were younger that made everyone choose to be athiests ?

Since you asked nicely twice…(I apologize to the community if I’ve fallen for a troll…)

It’s different for different people. Some always knew that religion had nothing more than personal faith/feelings to back it up. Others figured that out during the course of their former religious lives. Essentially it all comes down to two steps:
1) realizing there is no proof of gods
2) realizing that religious feelings are no substitute for the aforementioned lack of proof

Arguments about evolution are just semantics.

P.S. I don’t know if every atheist would say that it was their ‘choice’ to become atheist either. Some people simply cannot accept religion whether they want to or not–no choice about it. I was raised religious and realized eventually that feelings can come and go and felt no differently when I ceased participating in religion so I chose to find out why. I did not necessarily choose to become atheist, but I chose to seek the truth and here I am…and here we are.

What’s so bad about capitalising Atheist? It’s even listed as an article submission guideline for the American Atheist Journal.

They also call “Atheism” a “doctrine” so I don’t trust their standards:

http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/

Why would you capitalize “atheism”? Wouldn’t it be silly to capitalize “theism”?

“If you believe in a god, you are a Theist.”

Doesn’t that look weird?

“I’m more athi than you”
“Uh uh no you is not. I am the athiest.”

It is out of respect for Hemant, not for some third party. The difference is that ray’s reason for creating the rule is to show respect for someone other than himself. It is his blog and he has the right to enforce any rule he wants to, but there is a significant difference between not allowing swearing because the blog owner doesn’t like it and not allowing “god” or “jesus” to be written because “God” or “Jesus” might be offended.

This is true, but we’d do it out of respect for Hemant, who doesn’t want swearing. It doesn’t matter WHY he doesn’t want swearing, he would just prefer we don’t.

It is the same with Comfort. He doesn’t want God or Jesus to be offended, but that, in the end, is irrelevant to us the atheists posting on his blog. He’s asked us as a matter of respect (and respecting the rules on his blog is respecting him) to capitalize names which are proper to him. I don’t particularly care why he wants us to, but that, specifically, is important to him.

I’d like to think that most intelligent, atheist debaters would be interested in showing the proper respect due in a man’s own yard, but when you read the comments on his blog… it really is amazing how much some people want to fight him on every little detail.