I’ve read any number of posts from moderate Christians talking about their relationship with doubt. Most seem to consider it part of the package; faith and doubt just coexist together.
It makes me wonder if there’s such a thing as atheistic doubt. I tend to think not. Doubt and skepticism tear down rather than build up. I don’t think you can doubt your way back into a faith structure, with all its varied traditions and beliefs.
What about you? Do you ever doubt your atheism? Where would this lead you if you did?
I agree that doubt and skepticism tear down. But if one is not careful, that can quickly turn into cynicism. The true doubters and skeptics seek to build up what the journey tears down.
You will find that true with any great thinker in any school of thought (religious and non-religious).
I was fortunate enough to be raised an atheist and not exposed to any spiritual or faith systems until I was in school. When I finally heard what some of my friends believed, I thought they were kidding. It was like believing in Santa to me, and I am precisely as likely to start believing in a God as I am to go back to believing in Santa.
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard something like “atheists are so arrogant; they think they’re right!” Well no shit dumbass! If I thought I was wrong I would change my views.
Where’s the like button. Our whole rational says that if we doubt a thing, we can not follow it any more. It’s like Cyanide is poisoning me, but I will continue to drink it, because x bullshit reasons.
I’m curious about this because my 10 yo son is going through this very kind of doubt. He knows that his parents do not believe in god and he himself has made that choice also. BUT…his friend down the street is Catholic, goes to Catholic private school, and is religious to the point of doubting science. After many theological debates (really guys? Sure you don’t want to play some basketball?) my son has become concerned about what will happen if god were real. His concerns center around death, he apparently sees no value in believing in god when alive, LOL. So if god were real, and my son did not believe and died, would he then go to the hell that he didn’t believe in? He basically wants to figure out a way to hedge his bets without having to feel silly.
Any thoughts, ye free thinkers of the internets?
I’d explain that an all-loving, all-knowing, all powerful God would know exactly the amount of evidence for him to be completely sure of his existence, and is powerful enough to provide that evidence, and is loving enough to send his son to die on the Cross for his sins, and has provided evidence before(such as the burning bush for Moses, wounds for doubting Thomas, etc.)
This doesn’t make any sense. These are very contradictory views, and yet they are mainstream Christian theological ideas based on biblical passages. Therefore, the bible isn’t a trustworthy source for information about God.
The book “the history of God” might be a little above his head, but you can certainly try giving it to him, or reading it with him. It shows the origins of the Christian and Judadic religions.
Finally, these videos can help with fear of hell too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaL7CkQaQpU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbrQI0r1B7w
Along with these videos, I’d definitely recommend this one from TheraminTrees and QualiaSoup
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheraminTrees?blend=2&ob=1#p/u/18/fZpJ7yUPwdU
Does he need a Blankie, or Woobie, or (insert name of child companion object here) to get to sleep at night.
If no, ask him if he wants it back.
what kind of retarded comment is that?
why are you here if all you are capable of is making fun of child asking a reasonable about faith or the lack of?
the fact that he is even wondering without blindly following a given direction (like his parents atheism as most children would do) shows he is probably far more intelligent than you.
and i aplaud the parents for allowing him make his own choice. definitely not something you would find in a religious household. with them it’s my way or the highway to hell.
Tell him that it’s never a good idea to pretend to believe in something just to be safe. He should believe in what he believes in, whatever that is. After all, if his friend were not Catholic but, say, Hindu, he would surely be worrying about praying to very different gods.
Tell him about Pascal’s wager, love him support him, and freely explore thought with him.
I might even add discussing the suppression of questioning and thought among christians, and asking if his friends question and explore ideas, or are afraid to. He might come up with questions for his friends – about their reluctance to ask questions. Maybe he will find that his friends doubt. Maybe they will even learn from him how to explore and change beliefs.
A sore spot with me, since one of the worst parts of my short christian experience was the shutdown of questioning and thought experiments.
Give him an overview of all the worlds religions. Then remind them that even though they cannot all be right, they can all be wrong.
Tell him if it gives him comfort to believe, then go ahead and believe. The logic will bring him back around later, right now it’s more important to encourage him to explore anything he is curious about. My daughter ‘dabbled’ with belief for a while after her grandmother died. She told me she was going to believe in god because that meant her grandmother was now in a nice place. I told her that was just fine. After about a year, she mentioned that moment and said, “I knew it wasn’t true, but it made me feel better to think that. I don’t need to anymore.”
Don’t try to shut him down, teach him the proper way to explore a new idea. Buy him reading material, encourage honest, open dialogue, heck, even take him to a church service if he wants to go. The idea is to teach him how to evaluate the information coming in, not just disregard it. Walk with him on this journey and you will teach him a skill that will last a lifetime.
Exactly. Help him explore that which he’s curious about (or concerned about, as seems to be the case). Make sure he has the basis for making an informed choice. And should he happen to actually become a Christian, respect his choice.
I think it’s beneficial for all parents, whether religious or athiest, to let their kids feel doubts and let them explore their own beliefs—even let them explore (other) religion(s) provided they concentrate on informing themselves and not just focus on the romantic parts. In the meantime, I’d tell him that if God were real and all-loving and omnipotent and all that, he would probably be more concerned about whether or not your son were a good person, so he should just concentrate on that.
I was raised by two athiests, too, and I think I occasionally was curious about religion and if there was a god. The argument that always made the most sense to me was: Agood god cares if I’m a good person, and if God is so mean that he’d send me to Hell for not believing in him (not to mention all the other stuff He lets happen), then there’s no point in worrying about it because I’d probably already be going for some petty little thing anyway. And that’s no god that I’m going to waste my time worrying about.
Being a christian over 25 years of my life… When I became an atheist, I had doubt. I come to realize it was more being scared OR being scared back into religion by others.
I doubt all the time. I think it’s healthy; to go back and reevaluate, to consider, what if I was wrong?
But I always run into one massive blockpoint: if I am wrong, what is right? And more importantly, hopw can I tell? If there WERE a supreme deity, I’d have to think that he/she/it’d make telling which of the thousands of religions people believe in is the right one.
I consider whether god might be real an awful lot for an atheist, I think. I feel like it’s a weird thing to take it so much for granted that it can never feel like he’s not there, like knowing you have parents or a home or milk in the fridge, even though those things can go away… just making an analogy to try to feel like something I know is not there is there. I’ve never not been an atheist so I don’t know what that feels like, only that I gave earnest effort to define possible gods and found the usual reason for god not to exist is “why would it?” There’s no evidence and no good reason. Then I remember how little education I have in the philosophies, so I always feel like I’m unable to be rigorous enough to dismiss all possibility of god. If I have any doubts, they are usually that I may be dismissing the existence of god without going over every minute possibility – the main reason I feel like I can dismiss it is that it would almost necessarily be more evident than it is, b) why should I prove there is no god, c) what difference does it make.
I mostly when I feel like there might be a god, am prone to emotional distress, personal loneliness, streaks of terrible luck, etc. to the point of a self-perception of punishment, karma, a serious case of the “why me’s” more often than I feel inclined to deserve, etc.
Putting all that on an imaginary figure can help, it is more that one imagines a real invisible friend to lay it on that is not where I end up, but you can also imagine an invisible box to pack it up in an invisible closet in your mind. Religions in these crises can provide a model exercise for relaxing and organizing your next steps, the approach to the problem, but if you say, put some faith in Jesus Christ and your life starts to change, then you think it is real. I don’t know what I’m trying to say, I guess I’m saying you can mimic that effect psychologically without belief in any supernatural beings and it still works. Humility is not all that bad, life can be suffering, taking big deep breaths stops the racing thoughts a while and helps bring them back to a manageable size, etc. So I don’t really have doubts, but in a pinch, religious thoughts can provide comfort. I don’t actually find comfort in an invisible friend like that, you almost have to think he’s real to feel that, but you can be a better friend to yourself and get a similar effect without full-on deluding yourself permanently, which I think is possible.
yeah, i doubt it on occasion, but even if i “rejected” my atheism, wouldn’t become a theist, probably a pantheist at the most religious. i’m not a theist because of a certain lack of evidence for theism. when i doubt atheism, i just have to go listen to a sermon. it helps me back on my atheist feet.
I’m with Zach. If my doubts led me away from atheism, they would most definitely not lead me to any organized religion. I’d be some sort of a vague pantheist believing in the God of the Gaps. The theology of the world’s religions are all just too incoherent to be true.
My ordinary doubts about atheism lead me to think how impossible all gods are, not just the ones that are popular, but aside from the occasional self-centered feelings that appeal to most religious folks (that they have a purpose or see signs or are going through a painful time to learn something), every once in a while, I get a sudden sense that there is something major and obvious that I’ve overlooked in my thinking. I generally resolve this by considering the mountains of arguments religious people make that do not approach this major and obvious possibility that I haven’t been able to consider because I hadn’t thought of it myself.
God would be obvious. People who believe in god consider that he is obvious in everything that we see and exists, but that’s a difference in perspective and definition.
Same here; I can’t ever imagine myself being a theist; there’s no argument to support it.
A while back, I went on youtube and looked for arguments for the existence of God. The first one that came up had a lot of views; I remember around a million. The argument was very compelling; He committed a lot of logical fallacies in laying down the foundation for his argument, and he worded it very carefully to support his Christian idea of God. The rest of his arguments sucked(he had 19 more, all just reiterations from ol’ Tommy A).
Well, a couple of weeks later, I thought about it again, and It sounds like his argument might be a good argument for deism(or a “higher power”). I’m not quite sure, and I wanted to get some other input on it, since my scientific knowledge isn’t very good.
Theists say “matter cannot be created or destroyed” and “it had to start somewhere” often. Atheists reply, “Well who created God?”. It got me thinking though; don’t our natural laws prevent matter from being created; the matter necessary for the big bang?
Wouldn’t it be necessary for something either:
A:not bound my natural laws
B:Outside of the universe(this was part of the theists argument; I don’t understand much about the definition of universe, so point A is going to be the main question)
The only thing I could really think of to refute it would be that laws might have been different prior to the big bang and that allowed matter to be created from nothing, and, while we don’t know where the matter before the big bang came from, its simply an argument from ignorance to say that a supernatural being had a part in it.
What do you people think?
Sounds like the so-called Kalam argument. There are various ways of approaching it.
Let’s disregard the problem that it doesn’t in any way justify belief in any specific God, and let’s also disregard metaphysical speculation about the rules of some pre-Universe.
To me, the main problem is that the argument sets up a couple of premises and then blatantly ignores those premises in order to fit God in. How come God is not required to obey the same limitations; how can he just pop up out of nothing? “Because he’s God,” is the inevitable reply. “God can do anything. God has always existed.”
But in order to accept God as the conclusion, you have to accept the idea of such a logic-defying God in the first place. It is an additional, implicit premise which the atheist is supposed to accept; otherwise the argument falls due to the conclusion violating the premises.
So basically the whole argument is redundant. The theist is just rehashing his view of God with no other justification than “God is God”. The argument is using its conclusion as its own premise. The conclusion – a self-creating God – can only become true if you assert such a self-creating God in advance.
Thanks; that clears it up pretty well. The theist must prove the supernatural before they can prove their God.
I didn’t word the argument very well; I couldn’t really put my thoughts together. I like your terminology better; so I’ll reword it.
“Our current natural laws don’t allow for things to create themselves (and possibly for things to have always existed)
Therefore,
A. For the original matter to be created, something(s) which was/were not bound by natural laws had to create it
B. The natural laws were different before or have exceptions”
Ok, B is the more rational decision, since there is no evidence for the supernatural. Thanks for clearing that up for me!
Your premise is wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation
Physics is far more weird than people imagine.
Similarly, Hawking argues that the Big Bang is an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11172158
Hm, not entirely true. Quantum fluctuation does create pairs of virtual particles (which are indeed real despite the name) out of the vacuum, and this furthermore appears to happen in a truly random fashion (meaning it’s an effect without a cause, which contradicts one of the premises of the Kalam argument). But the creation is only possible because the vacuum isn’t a true vacuum as we know it from mathematics. It has a ground state, a minimum level of energy which is above zero.
In other words, vacuum has energy. So it’s not really fair to say that something is created from nothing (which I’m guessing was your point). Pre-existing energy is what makes it it possible.
You may be right.
I’ll check.
As atheists, isn’t it assumed that we do question ourselves? It’s the mantra spoken by nearly every atheist I know: question everything.
If I didn’t question my beliefs when I was a teenager, I would probably still be like most of “real America” – a Christian that sort of believes but in a hedge-your-bets-kind-of-way that only goes to church on major occasions.
Keep your minds open. Doubt and question everything. It’s likely those thoughts that brought you to atheism, why would you want to stop them once you got here?
That’s pretty much why I feel like I cannot call myself “always been an atheist.” I grew up in a non-religious non-discussion kind of home where I didn’t really know what we were, the idea of religion seemed cultural and superstitious to me, but at some point in my late teens, or during or shortly after college, I gave the idea a lot more intense thought, worked it over for many years occasionally. I did not want to be like those people who grew up in a Christian household and just assumed what they believed was true without examining it to make sure it was at least true for them compared to everything else. I know a lot of people are just “raised that way” and assume at least there’s a god, and even vaguely, the Christian god of the bible, even if they’re not into their faith, especially if they’re not. Church doesn’t have a lot of appeal for at least many of my peers when we were younger, but once they had kids, they seemed to just think taking them to church was what they were supposed to do. I don’t get the impression people actively search themselves for whatever they take for granted, how they were raised, and I could have easily been that kind of atheist.
Strictly speaking, you have to be a skeptic, not an atheist.
There are a lot of atheists that go for homeopathy, astrology and woo in general.
Skepticism more often than not leads to atheism.
You chose to be a skeptic, and being also an atheist is a mere consequence.
It’s the mantra spoken by nearly every atheist I know: question everything.
Of course. If real evidence of a creator being showed up (Such as a giant, galaxy-long God poo) then it becomes important to reexamine the idea.
“If real evidence of a creator being showed up (Such as a giant, galaxy-long God poo)”
So THAT explains ken Ham…
Perhaps that’s where dark matter comes from.
100 Internets to Len.
It’s interesting reading these comments and realizing most people go to the default mode of contemplating belief in a/the Christian god(s). Having been raised outside any religion, I’d at least want to do a little forum shopping. I’ve studied comparative religion, and found Vishnu to have the most desirable heaven. Seriously, don’t limit your options. Make the salesmen show you all the features. Ask about financing. Haggle, people, haggle.
Do I doubt? Absolutely not.
It is beyond doubt for anyone willing to make a tiny effort of scrutiny that judeo-christianity is laughably false.
There may be some “superior being” or prime mover, but he/she/it is not divine, only more advanced.
Everyone has their doubts, we can be as wrong as we think Christians are. Although I’ll admit I don’t believe in god I’ll also admit that I can’t prove there is no god and that I could be wrong.
I doubt the non-existence of gods about as much as I doubt the non-existence of wyverns, griffins, the Lambton worm, Russell’s teapot and daleks. Gods are the maddest, most reality-contradicting concept on the list, yet they’re the only one anyone ever asks about. Where are all the griffin agnostics who insist we just can’t know whether winged lions exist, and that we should probably pour money into griffin conservation just in case?
I am agnostic. Griffin agnostic too. Maybe, somewhere out there, there are such things. Or perhaps there were, just very rare. What makes you so sure that there are not? I bet there are thousands of species that we have no knowledge of. Now this does not mean I think it likely they exist, I don’t. Nor do I advocate spending lots of money looking for them.
To answer your early question, of course the reason that they are the only one anybody talks about is it would be VERY important if god(s) existed, wouldn’t it?
A griffin in popular culture is a mammal (or is it a bird? whatever) with 6 extremities (4 legs, 2 wings). We don’t know any superior animal (not including here squids altought they are the pinnacle of evolution) with more than 4 extremities nor alive neither fossilized, so it seems less than likely that they exist. It seems that the basic plan of our bodies was stablished with the first fish that stepped outside the sea. In the same way, it would be pretty awesome to find a mamal with 3 eyes.
There is not any evidence supporting the existence of griffins.
So I am a Griffin atheist.
And you can imagine that I’m a gods atheist for similar reasons.
Agnositicism is the result of a lack of understanding of the basic concepts of logic and argumentation coupled with a total inability to commit. Sorry, agnostics – but learn about burden of proof and pick a side.
HEY!!! I resemble that comment!
LOL!
I am agnostic based on epistemology 101: Knowledge as justified, true belief (one doesn’t include the Gettier examples). It is an epistemological position, not a statement about my beliefs. A-gnosis means without knowledge, which I think is a fine designation for a person who calls herself a skeptic.
Francesc: Well, I could argue that tails could count as major extremities, but we are still one short. Yes the traditional version seems unlikely in the extreme. Perhaps there is was some bat like mammal that could use it’s wings as legs for ground locomotion. Point is we don’t know. Likewise the Christian god seems unlikely, but maybe there is some sort of “higher power”. Say for example that this is a computer simulation (http://simulation-argument.com/simulation.html) the programer or operator is, for all intents and purposes, god.
Custador: People like you are why others claim that atheism is just another faith based religion. I understand logic and argumentation and I certainly can commit if I need to. Why should I at this point. I live my life more or less as you do. I accept that, for the proposes of science, we have no proof of deity and so must go about assuming none. Because I cannot prove the existence of something does not mean it does not exist. I could as easily say, Sorry Agnostics but you are going to have to learn sometime that things beyond your imagination may actually exist.
If it was a bat, it wasn’t a griffin. And it wouldn’t be an awesome discovery, as we already know that bat do exists, people can made up stories and people tends to exaggerate in some circumstances.
So…when someone define what a griffin is, we conclude that it can’t exist (it is really unlikely).
If a “griffin” doesn’t have any particular properties, we can’t say anything about it. Nor can I disprove it neither can you use the definition to any purpose.
If there was a large(ish) bat like creature that walked on its wings like legs and had a beak like mouth it would clearly not be just a bat it would be something else again but bat like. Why not call it a griffin? If you wish to define griffin as actually lion with the head and wings of an eagle, then yes the likelihood of that is vanishingly small. Shall we decide that they must actually fly? Even more unlikely. Still there is some possibility of it existing so why must I disbelieve? I don’t carry a shield about in case of griffin attack. It does not effect my life. Why must I take a stand on this?
But why are we speaking about your everyday griffin when the awesome Platypus actually exists?
According to your definition of your agnosticism, what is the difference between your beliefs and atheists beliefs?
uhm… I should replace “beliefs” in that sentence but I can’t write it properly in english.
Are you agnostic about leprachauns? About Russell’s Teapot? About faeries who live in hollow toadstools? About flying horses? About a magical book made of gold that you have to read by looking through a magical stone? About the Earth being flat? About the universe only being four thousand years old? I’d bet you’re not. Why not? Is it because there’s no reason or evidence to believe there’s even the slightest possibility that they exist? Likewise God. The scientific position relies on evidence, whereas the theistic position relies on threats and semantic trickery; inability to discern the superior viewpoint of the two is a character flaw.
I like Custador.
Well said.
“Are you agnostic about leprachauns? About Russell’s Teapot? About faeries who live in hollow toadstools? About flying horses? About a magical book made of gold that you have to read by looking through a magical stone? About the Earth being flat? About the universe only being four thousand years old? I’d bet you’re not. Why not?”
No because those are things in the natural universe whose existence can be investigated. God is a supernatural being (supposedly), whose existence cannot be investigated unless it interferes in the natural world. The evidence clearly shows that God does not interfere in the natural world. This in no way negates the existence of a supernatural “God”. That “God” could still possibly exist, leaving the universe to unfold as it will. Hence, I don’t know… I’m agnostic.
… but isn’t that god as a concept not god as defined by mainstream religion? Even taking your point, why does the we can’t know anything about him god get better treatment instead of say some other non-powerful, non-creator entity that also exists outside of our time/space etc.?
Right— clearly all of the mainstream religions have gods that can be logically discussed and dismissed. This still doesn’t negate the possibility of the existence of a “God” that is not described by any of the religions. This type of “god” is the only god that I consider possible as the evidence against all of the other “gods” is too damning.
I don’t understand what you mean by “better treatment”… could you expand on that?
Please explain how god (as explained by all major religions) does not interfere in the natural world. He supposedly created the world and all the beings living with them. Not only that, throughout the Bible he has shown himself to, like, 500 different people. Why doesn’t he show himself to us anymore? He meddled directly with this world according to the Bible, and yet, there is no proof whatsoever of his existence?
You say “God is a supernatural being (supposedly), whose existence cannot be investigated unless it interferes in the natural world. The evidence clearly shows that God does not interfere in the natural world. This in no way negates the existence of a supernatural “God”.”
I say: There is no evidence of a god-like creature interfering in the natural world. This most probably means that there is no god-like creature.
What would this god-creature be if he/she/it didn’t interfere in the natural world? a body-less mind scattered around the universe? an idea?
@LRA
The “better treatment” part is based on if you if you said that you believe, as in it’s a fact, that an entity exists outside of our own space-time or indeed our space-time was created as part of an experiment by entities in a different version of our Universe, you would be rightly asked for the evidence backing these facts up. If on the other hand you believe, as fact, that the god of a mainstream religion exists any call for evidence is followed by calls of how you are disrespecting the faith of believers. So I wasn’t disagreeing with you put just stating a point i.e. gods that can easily be dismissed are part of mainstream religion, and all that implies, but the god we can know nothing about aren’t.
Astounded… I’m sorry, but your book of myths (aka the Bible) doesn’t count as evidence of natural phenomena. Just because a book says that 500 people saw Jesus after the resurrection doesn’t mean it happened. The Bible also says that the first born boys under 2 in Judea were all slaughtered by Herod and we KNOW that didn’t happen, so meh.
Secondly, a “god” could have been an unmoved mover in the causation of the primary event that set the universe in motion. As such, we know that spacetime only refers to space and time as it/they exist(s) after the big bang (talk of spacetime before the big bang is rather meaningless). Such a god would be outside of our universe’s spacetime with it’s *only* interaction being the event that set things in motion (this is deism, btw). Or the material universe may have the quality of coming into existence from “nothing” (what physicists mean by nothing) or may be “eternal” or self-generating… these are all possibilities. We don’t know.
That’s the point. We don’t know. I don’t know, therefore I’m agnostic. Even if physics figures it all out concerning the big bang, I’m not sure they can answer all questions of existence/ontology/metaphysics.
For me to say, “I don’t believe in “God” (as in, the philosopher’s “God”) is a difficult statement for me to make because, IMO, it doesn’t really *matter* what *I* believe. To me, it matters what I *know*, here. There seem to be equal possibilities for/against the existence of this “God”/ supernatural force/ whatever.
When we talk about the gods of the myths (religion), I’m comfortable saying, “I don’t believe in Yahweh because clearly and logically Yahweh is a mythical figure just as Zeus and Thor are.”
Actually, I’m a passionate atheist, so the bible for me represents simply a story book of genocide and misogyny. Since you previously hadn’t described your vision of god, I assumed you were talking about some Christian-like god. The problem with your definition of god, as you explained it in your later comment is that this type of being would not provide any answers, simply more questions. But since I’m not a physicist, I wouldn’t enter into the whole big bang theory thing…
Oops! Well, your comment was confusing. Anyhow, I’m not defending any kind of “God”, I’m defending agnosticism.
For some reason (that I don’t understand), some atheists get really irate at us agnostics, as if we are sitting on the fence about God.
I’m not sitting on the fence. I clearly don’t believe in any god of religion. Neither do I dismiss possibilities where they may occur. If someone gives me a really good argument/ evidence to dismiss completely the possibility of a “God”/ supernatural force/ whatever, I will consider myself an atheist at that point. When it becomes illogical to even consider the possibility of the supernatural, then I will call myself an atheist. Until then, I remain agnostic.
Custador:
Are you agnostic about leprachauns? About Russell’s Teapot?
I am willing to admit the possibility of tiny roughly anthromorphic creatures having existed at some point. As you get more in to the magic aspect of their tales the likelihood of existence gets rapidly more absurd. I am willing to admit the possibility of a teapot in orbit around the sun, but it seems unlikely. The earth being flat, no because this is a measurable, demonstrable thing. There is no reason for me to disbelieve the former two examples, but that said I don’t walk around looking down to avoid steping on gnomes and I don’t carry around a cup in case of extraterrestrial beverages. I don’t prepose scientific inquiry take in to account brownie’s behavior (aside from brownian motion). But I don’t dismiss out of hand things that I have way of knowing about. Why do you? On the other hand, I don’t defend the traditional christian beliefs because they contradict things we do know and can measure. The inability to accept that others may also have a valid view point is also a character flaw.
Francesc:
According to your definition of your agnosticism, what is the difference between your beliefs and atheists beliefs?
I cannot say that a god does not exist, somehow in some form. I have no knowledge of that and no way to gain that knowledge as far as I can see. An atheist, as I understand the term, denies the existence of god. Because he cannot measure it, it does not exist. And btw I don’t believe in platypus ;)
LRA:
Preach it sister! Oh…er, I mean, right on. I would only disagree in so far as where you say, The evidence clearly shows that God does not interfere in the natural world. , that if a god does interfere it is subtle and not frequent enough that we have any evidence. Certainly not the waters parting burning bush talking type we are led to believe.
I much prefer the idea of dragons. They’ve existed in ancient civilisation myths and legends since way before people were able to get around and spread stories. The only (simple) explanation seems to be that it was the dragons themselves who spread the word.
Another explanation is that people found dinosaur fossils and tried to imagine what they might have been like. Seems like an extremely likely explanation to me; find a t rex skull, a pterodactyl wing, and use your vivid, pre-historic imagination to dream up terrific creatures. That’s how most, if not all mythological creatures came from. The cyclops; a giant, one-eyed, brutish beast was probably inspired by the dwarf elephants skull, pictured here.
http://listoffigures.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/dwarf-elephant-skull-ghar-dalam-museum.jpg
There must have been an awful lot of giant flying lizards around the world then. Kind of like, er, dragons.
You only need find one T.Rex skull per culture to have evidence of there is/was something big and scary around. Add in a little anatomical knowledge of reptiles to make the connection that they were similar and there you have dragons. Tales grow in the telling, as might wings and fire breath, one could well imagine. Learned, smart people could see and touch real dragon skulls. Take away the wings and fire and what is the difference between dinosaurs and dragons?
In case you haven’t ever studied greek mythology, Len, people have an astonishing ability to make up really complicated shit.
@Dan: One T-Rex skull per culture. And how did they get around everywhere (from China to Japan to Europe, etc)? Or maybe one flying lizard (skeleton?) per culture would be enough. ;-)
@Danny: Yes, people can think up really weird stuff. Must be just lucky that they all thought up pretty much the same weird stuff, without being in contact.
Maybe I just like dragons.
Did you see the TV “documentary” in the UK a few years ago: the Last Dragon? Excellent.
You know about Pangaea right? Second, the Chinese serpent-like dragon isn’t really like the European four-legged, winged dragon. As for fire breathing; fire has always been a mystical thing to people. A lot of mythology incorporates fire into their outlandish stories(Christianity and Islam come to mind, as do Wiccan affinity for candles and bonfires).
I can possibly see examining dinosaur skulls and coming up with the idea of dragons.
Note that Eastern and Western dragons are not very similar. The Eastern ones, for example, are associated with water, not fire, and don’t have wings, which suggests separate origins.
Interesting, also, that there are no dragon legends in Native American cultures, in the part of the world where the T. rex fossils are to be found.
I fall in the camp that assumes dragons are inventions of the human imagination, at least until we find actual dragon bones in deposits that are contemporary with human cultures that developed dragon myths.
I believe in Daleks.
They’ve been on tv since 1963. (Obviously, the TV never lies.)
Plus, the documented proof is a lot older than the people claiming that Daleks don’t exist, so its “closer to the truth.”
I agree with you about the rest though.
There is lots of monster woo in the world. Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Champ, Skunk Ape, etc.. There’s not much evidence for any of those, but they have their ardent believers and, people who don’t believe but haven’t ruled it out. In other words… Skeptics.
You can’t doubt your way into believing a vast supernatural mechanism formulated in the bronze age. How would you go about choosing which one?
Doubt is good to stay healthy.
An old trap is to ask “so, are you SURE you doubt yourself?”
Answering “yes” means that we have already something that you don’t doubt about yourself.
Lately however, I think that, at least for me, “Yes” is a perfectly reasonable answer.
Why?
Because I find a lot of wrong idea that I have, ideas I am in love with and find hard to accept as wrong, but have to correct nonetheless.
So, “do I doubt myself?”
“Yes.”
“Do I doubt myself ENOUGH?”
“I do my best.”
I think, as humans, we have to learn to accept that often times we are wrong, and that’s nothing bad with it as long as you are willing to correct your ideas or to consider them less reliable.
It is also perfectly ok to be ignorant of something as long as you acknowledge your limits.
Just learning the multiple ways that our brains can be fooled or fool themselves would be a huge step ahead.
Having come from faith, and wandered around a great deal before realizing that I was an atheist, I have to say that I don’t experience doubt any longer. It’s a relief to know, not just believe. It’s a relief to be able to say “I don’t know, but I bet someone has found out, or is in the process of learning.”
I’ve thought about what it would take to make me believe again, and honestly I don’t feel that there is anything that could possibly happen to me that I would look at and say “It MUST be God to the exclusion of all other possibilities.”
As long as there is even a possibility that another explanation, however unlikely, could exist for any given phenomenon, then I doubt god, and not my atheism.
For example, if I were standing under a cliff, and the rocks above began to fall, and I closed my eyes only to open them again to find myself miles from the cliff and safe, then I can come up with at least three equally plausible explanations. 1: God did it. 2: Aliens from another world used a matter transportation device to save me. 3: A freak wormhole opened in space-time via a previously unknown mechanism to move me instantly and coincidentally to safety.
I admit, all three of those circumstances are not terribly plausible, but they are all equally implausible. And since that is the case, God is just as unlikely to have saved me as aliens.
With that in mind, I don’t think think that I will ever doubt my atheism, as long as I have a reasoning mind.
… unless God is also an alien.
I know someone who believes this- that God came from the heavens… and earth of another planet, by ship. They* are also responsible for many technological advances of ancient civilizations and for some of our grain crops.
*God is apparently also a plural word, much like “fish” or “deer.”
But if god’s an alien, then why aren’t anal probes in the scriptures?
I have no doubt whatsoever. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I don’t accept the possibility that I’m wrong. I’m just certain that I’m not.
Up until this post I never realized that an Atheist could have doubt.
I’m pretty sure that I have no doubt.
the first step to knowldge is to question it
Unless you are a creationist, those should just GTFO.
I’ve asked myself if I could ever get involved in any religious activity again, usually just after seeing some colorful Buddhist or Hindu rite or festival, but the answer is always no. Not even for awesome curry. I don’t think I’m being hard-headed at all. As I’ve repeatedly said, I have no problem with the idea that somewhere in the universe there may be a being with what one would consider god-like power. Just not around here.
I do have doubts about if a god or gods exist. But I have no doubt that they or it are not from bible, koran or any existing cult around gods that we currently have. In my opinion real life is too contradictory to any of the ones currently being presented as religions.
Indeed. I cannot exclude the theoretical possibility of a Philosopher’s God, or a incomprehensible eldrich abomination God, but it is easy enough to exclude by simple observation and argument any already proposed God that people actually bother worshiping.
Yep. Better for a god to remain vague and indeterminate. The moment you start attributing certain specific qualities to a deity is the moment it starts having trouble conforming to our expectations and our observations. The Biblical God is a mess of inconsistencies and paradoxes that are ultimately “resolved” by pointing out God is unfathomable and works in mysterious ways.
Not to mention how anyone studying the history of Christianity and Judaism will find that various traits and stories have been appropriated from other cultures, which, along with the human propensity for making shit up, makes it more than plausible that Bible God is a fiction. The same goes for Allah, Vishnu, Odin, Zeus and all the other specific gods.
Honestly, I almost couldn’t process the question “Do you ever doubt your atheism?” (In my case, not self-identifying as atheist, I think of it as disbelief in christianity, and the other religions and mythologies.)
That is probably because I am fascinated with doubt and belief, and think that belief is “something accepted as real”, and that doubt is part of any and all belief. High-quality, high-repeatability, high verification ability and proof move beliefs closer to knowledge. Proof probably takes them out of “belief” (or nearly so) into knowledge. But even science (science best of all, actually) keeps disproving or improving on old knowledge with more research.
(xians, do not try to use this to “support” your emotional storms and written nonsense.)
I went through horrible angst-ridden doubt when I believed christianity. I emphatically do not believe it now. (“Emphatically” means “I consider it bunkum” with a few wisdom tales thrown in like every other mythology.)
I am still learning to examine and live with uncertainty. No doubt (ha) my certainties will be challenged. Just as I’ll think of something else I wanted to say the red-hot instant I hit the “Post Comment” button.
Ooh, ooh, I know, I know! See? Now I remember what else to say.
It’s been said so many times on this blog – especially by Daniel every time a fundy pulls that “it takes more faith to be an atheist” bullshit – that all I can do is say it again in a different way.
Atheism – a- “without” and theos “god” – is a function of doubt. It’s already a doubt! Yah, sure, it’s good to leave room for uncertainty in your doubt, to have some willingness to have doubt about your doubt, sure. But Daniel and other former believers on this blog tell fundies all the time that they’re willing to accept a god, or even *gasp* a God, if he would just show up and present even a few shreds of evidence that he (male, beard, patriarchal bullshit “He”) exists.
But that hasn’t happened, isn’t happening, and shows all signs of ever shall be unto eternity not happening.
So I’d call that solid doubt based upon continued lack of evidence.
I went through a devout Christian phase as a kid. A big part of what makes me so anti-religion is the feeling that many adults tried to convince me into believing that unprovable myths were true. I can forgive things like Santa & the Easter Bunny because they eventually let you in on the gag, but with religion they’re still trying to convince me.
However, I still occasionally wonder: What if I’m wrong?
Perhaps this questioning comes from growing up in one of the more religious parts of one of the most religious Western countries (I’m a liberal from Texas). Even though my parents were never religious, they let me search for my own truth. Unfortunately, most of their relatives are deeply religious (& many of those are fundies), so it was those family members who introduced me to religion.
Long story short, I consider myself a “recovering Christian.” My doubt is probably a form of relapse.
LOL! I’m a liberal from Texas too.
The “what if you’re wrong” question is a form of Pascal’s wager, which is very poor theology indeed! It assumes only two choices and doesn’t take into account the many thousands of religions (and theie various sects!) that exist, have existed, and will exist. In those terms, what if Christians are wrong? What if the One True Religion (TM) worships (as Dawkins put it) the “Juju at the bottom of the sea”?
Thus Christians don’t have a 50/50 chance, they have a 1/10,000 (just guessing) or maybe even 1/100,000 (again just guessing) chance of being right among religions.
Also, when I say poor theology, I generally think that just about all theology is intellectually “poor”, just to be clear.
I haven’t doubted . . . but I have, very rarely, wished I had some sort of faith or belief. I’m just perfectly aware that it would require some sort of brain damage, so I could forget everything I know — and my intrinsic curiosity and questioning nature.
I only wish their imaginary relationship with doubt would wake them up from their imaginary relationship with Jesus.
i doubt all the time. I envy the religious their peace of mind, but I don’t envy their lack of logic and reason. Logic and reason are what generally push the doubt from my mind. Part of the problem is that I am surrounded by the religious. There is no escape for me.
Also, my brain doesn’t work as well as it once did. I just don’t think that well anymore, and have trouble digesting any but the simplest concepts.
My atheism arose from being exposed to conflicting christian beliefs – Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic. I went through both a hyper religious phase and then a searching of faiths to find one I believed in. This led me to understand that all of them were manmade fables to control people and to build the wealth and power of the leaders. I learned first to doubt my Baptist roots as well as the new exposure to Catholicism. Then I looked at eastern religions but now I looked with a critical eye. In the end I saw a repeating pattern of a congregation looking for answers that were beyond their science and clergy, prophets and messiahs who gave them answers that sounded plausible at the time while demanding alms and obedience. The death cults that were based in the Bible – jews,christians and muslims – had the added safety of mainly predicting what happens after death, insulating many of their teachings from disproof. This is why they so often butt heads with science which continues to grow in knowledge and the wrong guesses of the prophets are revealed, causing ministers to decry science as in the current debate over teaching evolution.
Just wait until we discover the Babel fish!
I don’t have doubts about atheism, but I wonder how we can continue to progress as long as large percentages of the population embrace fairy tales rather than science.
I have never and will never doubt my disbelief in gods :)
Up until around age 8 my parents took me to church and sunday school. I think “we” were presbyterian. They weren’t very religious and never pushed it down my throat. They were logical people and I believe had doubts, therefore, eventually distanced themselves from religious activities. We never really discussed it much. They were more like “You’re smart enough to make your own decisions now”. I decided what was being taught to me in church just didn’t make much sense, even at that age.
I remember having a class in the sixth grade (age 11) studying Greek mythology. That class is what convinced me that ALL gods were conceived from the minds of people that had no other explanation for what was happening around them. As time went by, these gods were eliminated one by one by way of science, logic, and rational thinking.
Through common sense, deductive reasoning, and years of learning, I do NOT doubt my atheism.
I don’t think I’d call it “doubt”, but occasionally I do get nostalgic for how participating in religion made me feel – purposeful, peaceful, connected to a strong community, part of the winning team with all the right answers, etc. Granted, my participation in religion also made me feel a lot of other things that I don’t miss at all- shame, despair, guilt, powerlessness. Sometimes I miss the thought that a greater power knows what’s going on in my life and has a plan for my life. However, I know that’s all just sentimental bullshit, and feelings like that usually come when I have to make difficult decisions and am wishing for an easy way out of it :) My life seems to turn out much better when I’m making my own logical decisions about my future rather than praying about it and waiting months for an “answer”.
As far as “doubting my way back into belief”, I really don’t see how that would be possible, although if I ever found some sort of proof for actually believing in something, I’d be open to it. Will it be mainstream evangelical Christianity? Definitely not.
I wouldn’t say that I doubt my lack of belief in a deity. However, the thought of dying and then passing into non-consciousness scares the hell out of me. I cannot comprehend not being around…but when I think about it, it still doesn’t send me back to believing in a deity.
It’s interesting to read everyone’s view on this topic.
I myself was brought up with religion, but with much freedom to discuss and explore the big questions in life. From teenage years on, I tried very hard to live life without my faith. It came around full circle many years later, and I finally admitted to myself that I do believe and accept the faith I was brought up in. I don’t think it’s a security thing or a fear of death, etc. I simply find the existence of a supreme being to be the most logical conclusion I can come to when contemplating the great questions of life. BTW, I’m in no way a creationist or believer in “sola scriptura” interpretation of the bible, but I do take my faith very seriously.
I have known others, normally brought up either more liberally, or more conservatively than I was, who ditched their faith altogether. Some is probably doubt, but some is probably a reaction to some of the rules they’re expected to live by.
But I have honestly met former athiests who have come to a faith. To be fair though, mostly their “conversion” has come from an extremely moving, shocking or awakening experience. Not because of a general questioning of their stance on their own athiesm.
One thing: While some athiests may have ditched their faith due to just general doubt or as a reaction to rules, many of us are athiests for the same reason you went back to your faith—we find it to be the best, most logical conclusion when contemplating the big questions in life.
Certainly, I’ll agree with you here. I believe a great many people come to their conclusion with much contemplation and thinking about the issues. I also think this is the best way to come to a decision, regardless of what that decision may be.
My biggest gripe in these discussions are 2 camps: blind religious and lazy atheists – the former being those who have a faith but are so convinced everything outside their own teachings can only be wrong, and never think to look over the edge of the box they’ve grown up in; the latter being those atheists who disregard any kind of faith simply because it’s easier to do what they want in a world without a deity, and because it’s simply less socially acceptable to be a person of faith these days.
Those of us who have taken the time to question, discuss, read and research the topics can have amazing discussions and debates someone comes along and ends up trolling the discussion.
missed a word. I meant to write:
[...] UNTIL someone comes along and ends up trolling the discussion.
I agree about those two groups being the worst and annoying.
I’m noticing that the idea of ‘wanting to do whatever you want’ is coming up again, though, and while I can’t speak for all athiests, that’s a pretty common misconception among the faithful about athiests. For one thing, it assumes that some thingsuniversally right and wrong, or good and bad. While you might find a consensus that coldblooded murder is bad, certainly you couldn’t argue that people become athiests because they want to murder people. What’s left are things that are immoral by dubious and usually religious standards: cohabitation, substance use, premarital sex, etc. The argument risks becoming tautological: those things are most abhorrent by religious standards—so obviously if someone who rejects God is also doing those things then you’ll come to that conclusion.
I’ll agree that “wanting to do whatever you want” is very vague and may sound like a cheap argument.
I’d just like to stress that it’s not meant to be a general assumption about all atheists, only a few, and that it’s meant in the sense of not caring about what kind of consequences one’s actions may have on others, even indirectly, when mainly focusing on fulfilling one’s own desires.
I’m not really sure where this mythical atheist comes from. I think they might actually exist, in that churches teach you this is what atheism is, so some semi-indoctrinated young people go through a stage where they leave the church behind and go nuts, they don’t care as much about people, get cynical, and generally feel invincible, rebellious, and less interested in consequences. When they reach the limit of this behavior (if they do), without ever having really questioned whether there’s a god or not, start to straighten themselves out and are as susceptible to the BS they were taught as children, or a similar version of it, as they were when they left. They never actually stopped believing in god, they just didn’t care for a while. I do believe people like this exist. We hear from them every once in a while, the “I used to be an atheist, doing drugs and sleeping with lots of women, but then Jesus came into my life.”
They defined themselves as atheists per the church they left or the church they later joined, but they never really did the work of thinking it through. I wouldn’t say they weren’t “real atheists” and commit a no true Scotsman fallacy, but I wouldn’t use this definition to categorize atheists and what their motives generally are either. Atheism isn’t just a rejection of one church or even one warped version of Christianity. It’s entirely possible for people to grow up in a strict home, dislike the rules, rebel, think the rules are rotten and ridiculous, and reject that home life for yourself in a radical departure while later considering a more palatable version of Jesus, in the meanwhile you were unaware of.
Here is an analogy: your parents send you to a strict private boarding school, and you hate it. You have no idea there are other schools, and you think all schools are like this one, so you drop out as soon as you can or get yourself expelled, and don’t try to get into another school. As far as you’re concerned, school sucks because your school sucked. You find that life is hard without an education and things get worse, maybe a life of crime or drugs or hanging out with uneducated people, or just taking any crappy job you can get while your terrible attitude increases and you keep getting fired. Eventually, you may meet someone who tells you all about their childhood and the nice school they went to. Instead of giving you a hard time, they see you need a friend, and makes you want to go back to school, and be nice and successful like them.
I don’t know, that’s kind of a bad analogy, but people do turn away from their rotten religions for reasons other than lack of evidence – they really are angry with the rules and eventually settle down and find one with more accommodating rules and kindness. It’s not really a coincidence that a lot of programs for the down-and-out people are Jesus-oriented and attribute people turning their lives around to this particular Jesus, rather than kicking bad habits and getting good mental health and off habitual drug use that’s keeping them out of the good circles in life. That’s really all that happens, and the “branding” of that type of help as associated with Jesus is just making Christianity seem attractive again – the person is susceptible because they are vulnerable, and they probably never left god in the first place.
“less socially acceptable to be a person of faith these days.” I don’t think so; at least not in America. Its less socially acceptable to be a fundamentalist, at least in the media, but where I am, people often describe a person’s character by how often they read/know the bible and/or go to church. If one were to take the most socially acceptable position, they would go about the Oprah-type belief in God. A higher power, who silently intervenes in things, and who is present in artforms, and who interacts with humans who pray, and who acts as a kind of “karma” and who allows all good people into heaven and only punishes the bad people with hell(but not eternal torture), and who blesses countries and helps them in war. That kind of person won’t draw much ill-will from atheists OR christians. Atheists on the other hand; there’s never been an openly atheist president, there are no openly atheist people in congress(there’s one who has said before he doesn’t believe in God, but he still goes to a church and is officially affiliated with the Christian religion.)
I don’t think social pressure is a reason people become atheists. Non-Christians maybe, or liberal Christians, but not atheists.
Yep, I know things are different in the US. I grew up there, and now live in Germany.
Here, to be a 20- or 30-something that goes to church regularly is quite uncommon, even in the very conservative area I actually live in.
The priest asked me and my wife once, “so you really take your faith seriously?”. We’re such an oddity, even the priest is surprised. :D
Thanks for your kind and honest answer, its nice to hear input from theists.
I don’t think atheism is a result of anything to do with the rules they’re expected to live by. There are thousands of active denominations, and even within the denominations people disagree. If someone doesn’t want to go to church every Sunday, they’ll find a rationalization for it. (I don’t need to go to a building to worship God, the preacher is boring, I can pray and read the bible myself, I can spend time with my family, God wants me to get work done to make a better life for my family, etc.). Its pretty easy to rationalize anything, given the vague, often contradictory message of the bible, and lack of input from God.
I certainly think hardship can make people question their faith critically, and all things. I think it might be an evolutionary thing; when your unhappy, see what is making you unhappy and if it’s worth it. There’s a study that supports this:
http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/lernerlab/media/why_sadness_is_good.php
The road that eventually led to the death of my own faith was the result of a very heated, traumatic argument from my parents, where they both talked of divorce and my mother tried to drive away(while intoxicated from post-surgery painkillers). I had to stand in front of the car, late at night, and beg her not to leave, for about 10 minutes before she went inside. Before, I had prayed for about 20 minutes straight for God to help my parents. Then when things got really heated, I intervened, and tried to act as a neutral mediator. Things worked out after an hour, and they made up. Once I realized the problem was solved, I had a very odd feeling. I normally thanked God, but this time, it felt like I was responsible for the argument ending. I just had a hunch that the argument would have ended whether I prayed or not; God had nothing to do with it. That eventually led me to question my own faith more and more, before deciding Christianity wasn’t true, and then leading me down the road to skepticism and ultimately naturalism.
I hate to discredit atheist conversions, but “extremely moving, shocking or awakening experience” that sounds an awful lot like emotional reasoning. I’m wary when I hear “former atheist”. I want to avoid the no true scotsman fallacy, but I do often wonder how “atheist” these people were. Did they just drift away from their Christian faith when they moved out or grew more independant, and the lack of perceived divine involvement in their life made them just decide God didn’t exist? Did they hear an argument for atheism when they had already week faith, and then later find a rebuttal, or where their parents just apathetic about religion and they later changed their position?
Its not my place to ask, and you’re certainly not obliged to answer. My skeptic creed prevents me from making assumptions one way or another, so silence will be treated as silence, and not a confirmation.
Its just hard for me to imagine a fairly devout theist deconverting and then reconverting to theism. Drifting away then jumping back I can understand, but I’m curious to how people solve the logical problems that made them leave their faith in the first place.
Briefly to answer the question to myself: I wouldn’t consider myself to have ever completely “deconverted”. I drifted, as you put it, away. I’ll go as far as saying that I drifted very very far away from my faith, but there was always something there that stuck with me.
My “comeback” story has a strange parallel to your story, in that it was actually in the midst of a family tragedy, where literally everything that could have fallen apart, did fall apart. It was then at the lowest moment in my life, when I could not deal with things anymore, didn’t have the strength to make decisions anymore, that I truly felt God intervened. The more I let go, the more things worked out and improved.
One could easily argue that with all the tragedy, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees, and that by actually giving up, I subconsciously began to ease up and regain my focus on things, and that I eventually actually picked myself up and got things sorted in my life.
I’ll be honest, and say that there is of course that possibility. I simply feel and know in my heart that somehow I was carried through it all.
That leaves us back where the whole discussion started in the first place. People ask me to prove that God exists. I say prove he doesn’t. You can prove that there’s no proof, either way, but neither of us answer either imperative with a satisfactory answer.
You can feel in your heart, but you cannot “know”. Emotions aren’t really evidence for anything. Don’t get me wrong; emotions are an important factor to include in the equation of life, but people feel very different things in this world. When I was a wiccan, I truly believed my spells and rituals worked. Likewise, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., are all convinced that the tenets of their faith are truly working like they’re supposed to.
I know what it is like to pray and have it answered. I know what it is like to have a miracle happen and the only explanation seem to be God. I know what its like to be in a room with thousands of other Christians, feeling an intense electrical tingling in your spine, to shake and lurch forward, to burst into tears of repentance and joy, to feel a euphoric burst of pleasure in your chest, and then after its over, to have revelations. To want to share your feelings with everyone. To feel like all the deconverts and other religions never knew true Christianity. They never knew this feeling, or they must have forgotten it. You know, in that moment, that God exists, and that everything will somehow be okay. I know exactly what it feels like.
You re-enter life with a new fervor, then after a while, you return to your normal life; the way you were before. Maybe you made some commitments to other people or maybe God, and you still keep them, but when your shoes are kicked off at home, you’re pretty much the same. Then maybe you feel guilty about this. You go to a revival service, you hear a compelling sermon, you read a Christian book, watch a video, find meaning in an obscure bible verse, or maybe you just have a breakdown, and your tumultuous emotions put you into a tear-ridden prayer and make you think about your problems. The hormones from the tears and the reflection of your situation helps you diagnose your problems and refreshes you, and gives you the clarity and motivation to start to solve your problems, right after you finish praying.
That’s how it was with me, anyway.
As for answered prayer of other kinds, most pastors advise praying often and having faith to have your prayers answered. God works in mysterious ways, so if you pray for any situation, you’ll undoubtedly find his divine planning in whatever outcome, with perhaps the exception of extreme tragedy, like the loss of a child, in which case you’ll just learn to ignore it.
Also, faith in prayer is really just confidence in the situation you prayed for. Maybe you pray for God to help you find a job, then go to a job interview that you aren’t sure about. You walk in confident, suspecting that God will help you.
Couple this with the fact that Christians are told to pray often and bring anything and everything to God, and its no surprise that Christians are absolutely sure that prayer works.
I can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, but I can’t prove that Thor or the Easter bunny doesn’t exist either; no one can. There are compelling arguments against the idea of BELIEF in the mainstream Christian idea of God, such as theological contradictions, biblical contradictions, as well as explanations for things that make many Christians believe.
By all means though; if your faith isn’t harming people, if you don’t believe in creationism or that homosexuality is immoral, if you don’t believe that good people who don’t believe go to hell, etc., if you can examine your faith and see that it does no harm, and it helps you, then I won’t try to take it from you. If you aren’t sure if it helps or harms, or if you want to hear more arguments for atheism, so you can weigh the other side, this video series is a good place to start. I’m not saying watch it or don’t, I’m just putting it on the table.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12rP8ybp13s&p=A0C3C1D163BE880A