johnydon22:
This will be interesting. Let me read and bear my own mind

dalaman:
I went through an old post of an old atheist here and got this from there, he gave his reasons why he's an atheist and I completely agree with them.

Maybe others can share the reasons why they are atheist. This shouldn't be about any conversion stories. Just simply state why you are an atheist.

Below are the reasons he outlined:


*There is not one iota of unequivocal evidence that any God exists. . . .God remains just an idea, a conception, a perception and a claim that requires belief to sustain it.

*God cannot explain all that exists because God itself cannot be explained. This claim just gratuitously swaps one mystery for another.

*Religions do not fully explain any mechanism or process whereby God created anything. It is effectively an appeal to magic they tell you to just believe. For example how exactly did God create the planet, all you get are just wishy washy appeal to magic.

*Religious faith is generally indistinguishable from gullibility. Trust and faith as human concepts, are normally based on experience and reason. Religious faith is necessarily based on belief in unproved and unknowable things.

* Religious faith has never been tested objectively and shown to work.

*A God or anything that exists outside the realm of natural reality is necessarily unknowable, unintelligible and incoherent. It is therefore irrational to believe in something that is said to be supernatural and beyond the ability to be tested and be objectively shown to be real.

*Religious scripture:
* is completely man-made
*contains many translation, historical and scientific and interpretation errors
* is often self-contradictory
* often contradicts known facts
*promotes conversion by violence
*contains many narratives that are purely mythical
* calls for punishment and death to unbelievers, why should people be punished for unbelief in stories that lack evidence?
*contains virtually no specific and unequivocal predictions
* is always subject to personal interpretation and opinion
* Was written by ancient men that didn't know much about the world and the universe in general
*contains only vague predictions beyond its own time
*contains many failed prophecies, predictions and unfulfilled promises of God
*Isn't universally objective as should be assuming it is from a divine source that wants to pass a message to humans.
*Scripture contains too much that is vague, metaphorical and symbolic to be instructions from a divine being to humans. A perfect being would be expected to be able to communicate much better than that.

*In order to render most of scripture useful, it must necessarily be interpreted. This makes it easily twisted to support nefarious purposes.

*The problems with scriptures outweigh any good messages they may contain. If read at all, they should be considered opinion and philosophy and that's all that there is to it.

*Morals are based on human sympathy, empathy, what will lead to a stable and less chaotic society and not on divine guidance. it varies from culture to culture, period in history and is always evolving. Establishing moral codes based on theism is unnecessary, riddled with contradictions, and fraught with danger. Reason is what humans are supposed to use to guide them when making moral choices and decisions not ancient rules written by people whose civilization and way of life is outdated.

*Religion is divisive in that it pits groups of otherwise indistinguishable people against one another. There are already more than enough differences for humans to fight over. And religion is the most intransigent of such divisions because many people feel it is a divine duty to revile those who believe differently than they do even if they don't see the reason in it. God hates the disbelievers or the disbeliever are condemned is what is written in most scriptures.

*Religions are generally intractable when it comes to substantive compromise with other religions or belief systems.

*All suggested ways to perceive God rely on internal mechanisms that are subject to personal desires, suggestion, and mistakes. On the question of communicating with God, religion insidiously asks us all to deceive ourselves. If God or Gods communicates to people as they claim then why are they always receiving and sending different messages that are mostly contradictory even within the same religious group?


*Every culture that has existed has had God myths and other superstitions. This is often used as an argument for the existence of God. Rather than indicating that there is a true God, this indicates that people are simply attracted to the idea and people easily form the idea.


*Goodness, truth, wisdom and all other purported attributes of God are human concepts. When applied to a presumed entity so completely different in kind as to be supernatural, they are meaningless. The idea of God is thus incoherent.

*Infinity is a concept humans cannot comprehend except in a limited mathematical sense. If God is infinite, this also renders him unintelligible.

*Belief in an afterlife is insidious, besides there is no evidence to show the human consciousness survives bodily death.

*Organized religion wastes untold amounts of money and resources that could be used to care for people, promote real knowledge, and advance the human race.

*Theism puts God above people thereby making people subservient, unimportant and expendable.

*Religion relies on guilt, fear, uses threat and outlandish promises to gain obedience.

*Religion is like racism because it segregates people.

*Theism generally precludes any possibility of testing God or questioning his existence substantively and objectively. It is something like the wizard of Oz saying, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

*The methods used in proselytizing for religion bear an unmistakable resemblance to the methods of confidence men. But the scriptures consider this the great commission of mankind.

*There are many good rational and logical arguments against theism but not one argument in favor of it that doesn't rely on a fallacy, assumption or special pleading.

*There are so many Gods put forth by thousands of religions that no one could ever be certain of picking the correct one, assuming that one exists.

*Prayer is totally subjective and cannot be shown to have any more efficacy than pure chance.

*There is no discernible difference between believing in God and having an imaginary friend.

*People generally rely on facts and evidence in every human endeavor except religion.

*Unequivocal miracles do not occur. example Gods do not heal amputees and restore their amputated limbs or babies born with down syndrome.

*God supposedly speaks directly to the human spirit. This must be, at least partly, the same concept as mind. People who receive messages in their minds are invariably delusional.

*There is no positive correlation between belief in God and being a moral person.


*Religions have a long history of misogyny.

*Religious dogma is practically immune to the incorporation of new facts. The best it can do is strained reinterpretation.

* Children have to be indoctrinated with religion at a very early age.

*The argument that God cannot be proven not to exist is irrelevant when one considers that to do so requires that the concept of a supernatural God be intelligible and coherent, which it is not.

*There is a well known argument commonly called "The Problem of Evil". It basically says that if an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God exists, unnecessary or gratuitous evil would not exist in the world. Thus if God sees this type of evil and does nothing he is either not omnibenevolent because he doesn't care or not omnipotent because he is unable to stop it. There are many counter-arguments that have been used. However the only one that really could defeat the Problem of Evil is if one says that we cannot apply human standards to decide what is or is not gratuitous evil. This may well be true, but that argument renders God unintelligible and meaningless to humans. Either way, the concept of God seems to be highly doubtful.

*Theists claim that God has given humans free will. However, this free will is anything but free. The choices are forced on pain of death and eternal suffering. It is equivalent to having a slave and saying something like: "I grant you your freedom to leave at any time. But if you do, I will torture you mercilessly and kill you as slowly as possible."

superhumanist:
There is nothing much to add. The reasons in the op are enough for anyone to see issues with theism/religion

dalaman:
https://www.nairaland.com/1855866/why-atheist/1#25454787

I went through an old post of an old atheist here and got this from there, he gave his reasons why he's an atheist and I completely agree with them.

Maybe others can share the reasons why they are atheist. This shouldn't be about any conversion stories. Just simply state why you are an atheist.

Below are the reasons he outlined:


*

Daeylar:


Whoever the person that made this list really sat down and brought out all the reasons he/she is now an atheist.
What a long read.

I like.

Hakeem12:
Ironically, I think it comes from the bible itself. 1 Corinthians 13:11...When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Hakeem12:




[font=Serif] It began with being realistic and asking questions, religious people don't like you asking them questions. It makes them uncomfortable, they tell you to take on by faith what they can't find in their twisted ancient books. Each religion claims to be the only path to an imaginary heaven, which is bullshiit by the


. For a believer to repeat a single prayer line dozens of time and still have no assurance of answered prayers is pitiful at most.

Primesky:
Proverbs 16:25 There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

I'm amazed that people who haven't seen anything, will categorically say there's no God. Where have you been to, what exactly do you know?

How much of the vast ocean of space do you know?. Only 5% of the ocean of the world you live in has been explored. What have you seen?.

The whole world in which you live in is so insignificant compared to the large universal bodies. How big is your sense to reason out this things?. Worst of all, you say all things as big and organised as they are came of their own accord. They just pup up out of nothing and began to arrange themselves with laws that have stood for many generations?.

Men who have no significant work of research whatsoever attached to their names will come up and say there's no God!. The Sun is three hundred million times bigger than the earth, and yet the Sun is no way near the size of some stars. So how dare you think to be too big to know it all?. What do you know?. Can your little brain handle the truth?. The thunder and lightning, the oceans and the creatures in them, the mountains and the forests, the giant balls of fire above, the hail and snow, the wind and fire. Do you mean all these just appeared out of nothing?. Who are these that confuse themselves with the lies of the devil and think themselves to be wise?. Can you argue with your maker?. What a pity!. Every computer identifies its maker, but man who claims to know it all, cannot!. You make things and attach user manuals to them. But that which the almighty attached to you, you have rejected and you're still chasing shadows, looking for what exactly?.

If there's no God, then you don't exist!. Otherwise tell me how you came about?. How come all these years no one has been able to think it out or figure it out?.

Everything man needs to know is in the Bible!. If you reject it, confusion is all you will ever find. There's no one athiest at peace, no, not one!. The God factor in them keep turbing their hearts. They wish they could find something, but they're looking in the wrong direction and hence can find nothing!. They keep trolling everything about God, yet they can't seem to know why. Return to your maker!.

Jesus Christ is the way!

budaatum:

Ironically, reading the Bible is what made me realise too that I'd always been an atheist. I started reading it at 9 and got to the end by my 13th birthday and that did for me. I just couldn't see it how I was being told to.

Hakeem12:
The thing that still baffles me is how people read those books and believe most of the ridiculous contents. It shows to prove how a lot of people have decided to shut their brain to reason when it comes to religion.

dalaman:


Or the Koran. Muslims consider the Koran to be the most complete book in the whole world. A book filled with totally mythical and fictitious narratives.

Hakeem12:
Yeah, I even found it more amusing than the bible, especially when I read some hadiths by Bukhari and others. To be frank, I have read these books more than most religious people, and the more I read, the more ridiculous it becomes. I was born into a Muslim home, I can speak fluent Arabic so reading and understanding the Koran was no big deal. But then I started reading the bible too and it was no better. From the story of creation, to revelation, it's all mythology. The songs of Solomon is basically an erotica written by someone who was high on fermented palmwine. Religion is a joke.

dalaman:


Did you at any time practice Christianity?

Hakeem12:
Yeah. My extended family are all Christians. Throughout high school, I went to church with my cousin, Christ apostolic church. But my cousin was the first to even renounce religion then, says it's ridiculous. I didn't even have the courage to do back then, till university. He was treated like an outcast when he told his folks. He should just have played along and pretended. Now his siblings are being protected by his parents from him, saying he has sold his soul to the devil.

dalaman:


Your ignorance is God. That's all you are saying.

Primesky:


If my ignorance is God, what is your wisdom, is it Satan?. Let God be true and every man a liar!. The sooner you realise your need for the saviour the better it will be for your eternity.

Primesky:


If my ignorance is God, what is your wisdom, is it Satan?. Let God be true and every man a liar!. The sooner you realise your need for the saviour the better it will be for your eternity.

Hakeem12:
The thing that still baffles me is how people read those books and believe most of the ridiculous contents. It shows to prove how a lot of people have decided to shut their brain to reason when it comes to religion.

Primesky:


If my ignorance is God, what is your wisdom, is it Satan?. Let God be true and every man a liar!. The sooner you realise your need for the saviour the better it will be for your eternity.

frank317:


U are asking for details if the mysteries of the earth like the sun and seas even without providing a single answer yet u claim to know God the creator... How don't expect us to be part of ur confusion?
U make up a God in ur head and all of a sudden he is now a saviour? I don't even understand u

frank317:


U are asking for details if the mysteries of the earth like the sun and seas even without providing a single answer yet u claim to know God the creator... How don't expect us to be part of ur confusion?
U make up a God in ur head and all of a sudden he is now a saviour? I don't even understand u