Hey Pandas, If You Are An Atheist, What Made You Become One? (Closed)

When I was a kid I was really into WWF/WWE Wrestling. Eventually - not sure at what age, maybe 9 or 10, I learned that it was all fake. This blew my mind. Everything I thought was true, was shattered. So I went into denial of how real MANY things were. This was my first foray into critical thinking. I think I ended up approaching everything as "This is fake UNLESS I can be convinced otherwise". And nobody ever managed to convince me that any religion(s) were real. It's all just Wrestling.

The religious ones.

I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school. I was amazed when I found out there were people in the world who WEREN'T Catholic- if the god we worshiped existed, why didn't everyone follow him? Why did there need to be other religions? Then I learned about the beliefs of other religions and came to similar realizations about things that were permissible or forbidden depending on the religion a person followed. Why did one faith use wine as part of a religious ceremony, but another one completely prohibited imbibing? I started to see religions as inconsistent and realized it was because humans had come up with these ideas, or rules, not "God". They were created to control people, or to explain "mysteries" like the weather that we now have the ability to understand. Then I came to the realization that it was all completely made up, therefore not real.

TL;DR- it was an easy conclusion to come to once I put on my critical thinking cap.

If there was a god why would they make me trans like either they don't exist or find my suffering funny

If you think about it, this question is upside down. People are not born theists that can turn into atheists under certain circumstances. We most often become religious because that's what our community is. When your mind is young and developing, religion is presented to you as something no less authentic than our nation's history or the laws of physics.

It was the case for me, but I overcame it in a natural process of growing up and getting good at critical thinking. The day came when I was just too old for this nonsense, the same way you get too old to believe in Santa Claus.

Hypocrisy. I couldn't reconcile how they preached love and forgiveness yet actively caused emotional harm through intolerance. I was raise evangelical and it was painful when I lost my faith in my early teens. But I wasn't an atheist, I acknowledge there might be a higher power I just didn't know for sure. So I am non-religious. Belief in a higher power is meaningless. Whether a person believes or not doesn't change if they are real or not. Whether a person believes or not doesn't make them a better or worse person. There are horrible and wonderful people in all walks.

I'm more agnostic than atheist but it was a combination of things.

First, I read Greek mythology in middle school that had a preface saying the gods were explanations for things that couldn't be understood. So, I made the connection of that's what religion was.

Second, when I started attending Youth at a church at my mom's urging, conflicting lessons bothered me.

Third, I'm sick of the strangers who have told me I'm going to hell for not following their beliefs over the years. Not the way to convert a person.

For the record, I am not against any religions or beliefs.The hypocrisy of many of them. Hating other religions that share the same beliefs but under a different name. I’m mainly in favor the many of the caring principles of various religions. But since many religions seem to share similar values, who knows which one is correct, if any. I take parts of each and use them to better myself and ideally the world/people around me

I grew up in a sort of cherry picked New Age/pseudo-Buddhist/Jesus-was-an-enlightened-soul-but-not-literally-god household. Reincarnation, karma, psychic abilities, guardian angels, etc. I was always the questioning type, but I had an epiphany in my late 20s.

I was having a civil debate with a Christian coworker, but at the very end he got flustered and snapped, “There’s more evidence for Creationism that there EVER was for evolution!” (Side note: there’s not. Not at all.) That evening, as I was thinking back on our discussion, it occurred to me that—while my beliefs were certainly kinder, what with no hell, no Satan, no desire for people who believed differently than me to burn in fire—I also had no proof of them. Sure, I believed I had seen things, and I read about others who believed they had seen things, but so did millions of Christians, Jews, Jainists, Muslims, pagans, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Heaven’s Gate weirdos…ad infinitum. After that, it was just a few short days before I was an atheist.

I’m a bit of a science fanatic, and the more I learn, the clearer it becomes that there is just no need for any supernatural forces to explain anything. Even the concept of “supernaturalism” is self-contradictory. When it comes to the laws of nature and the cosmos, either something is natural, or it doesn’t exist. If there was a universe in which a god-man could turn water into wine with a wave of his hand, then it would follow that the natural laws of that universe would allow for that. Gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak forces and…psychic transmutation. We don’t live in that universe, and the hydrogen and oxygens atoms bound into simple water molecules in a terracotta jar aren’t going to suddenly become alcohol, glucose, tannins and antioxidants because someone forgot to stop by the liquor store on the way to the wedding.

And to speak to my own upbringing, the neurochemistry that makes me “me” isn’t going to magically transfer itself into a baby some years or centuries after I’m dead and be my reincarnated self. I know a lot of New Age types will try to pull the “but energy can’t be created or destroyed” card, but transferring an entire personality to another human body in another time and place is not the same as angular momentum or radioactivity.

I wasn't raised to be religious. That's literally it. But also the fact that your lifestyle is very limited when you have s religion (most of the time, not all of the time) and there's some things that I really don't agree with that many religions are enforcing. Like LGBTQ+ and reading certain books.

My parents didn't put in nearly enough effort to make me religious, and I'm far too cynical to convince myself of anything of the sort. One of the few things that stuck to me was my mother explaining to me that we, as Buddhists, should respect all religions, because the point of a religion was to make sure people are good people. And, well, you've got to apply that to yourself a little as well, don't you? In any case, I'm too far gone over reality and the unfortunate downsides of organised religion to have any hope of spending another life living in peace as a frog.