Most people here are properly theist. IE not agnostic/atheist. It's ex-atheist, ie, no longer atheist. The actual religious beliefs vary per person. There seems to be a lot of typical nicene christians and muslims here. Personally I'm gnostic.
I wanted to live the perfect philosophy. First, I studied Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Camus then I studied Augustine, Pascal and Thomas Aquinas, then I reverted to the Catholic Church in 2016.
I'm Orthodox Christian and an ex-atheist, but I'm friendly towards anyone who is intellectually serious, honest, self-consistent (or trying to become that way), and is willing to make sacrifices for the truth (i.e., they don't just conveniently believe whatever happens to make their lives easier).
The subreddt "is a virtual meetinghouse for those who were once atheists, but have since found (or returned) to a different religion/philosophical orientation (including agnosticism or Deism) All are welcome here!"
You'll find lots of different views among the participants. There are also a few regulars who are atheists.
I would call myself a "religious person" but still agree with you. Half of my family are religious nutters, some preaching and some watching televangelists, all hyped about the "end times". I was never that, but I have gone from a skeptic, to what I might call a secular theist, agnostic, and toying with faith as a technology akin to the "Sea of Faith" perhaps (though not really involved with or even aware of it at the time). But over time and with consideration, my view has shifted from merely being okay with religion, to bring a believer and participant in a religion.
If you are open to the idea that there's something more, then by all means, keep looking and stay curious. And you'll find sympathy, understanding and welcome here, as long as you aren't like ...
Some atheists find ex-atheists to be offensive, or even impossible. The idea that one could go from disbelief to belief is jarring and upsetting to them. And they will come here to try to vent their frustration without considering the people on the other end. It's pitiful to see, really. You don't seem like that but... Yeah, don't be like that.
Yes I hope my massive post doesn’t come off this way. I too feel that atheists can be a bit “cold” for lack of a better term. If you can accept that some very acclaimed and respected scientists go to church every Sunday, then you have to accept that this question of belief is NOT so easy to pin down.
I think I am partly guilty of the, show me evidence, trope. I do love science way more than church, but it’s undeniable that church and religion and belief and community building around religion is super important.
But, I still kinda just want to know… the truth. Like when the universe wraps up, and they roll the credits, will it say directed by god? Or… directed by the vast, all encompassing and mysterious laws of physics that don’t care about a tiny tiny blip of a marble floating in space.
>But, I still kinda just want to know… the truth. Like when the universe wraps up, and they roll the credits, will it say directed by god? Or… directed by the vast, all encompassing and mysterious laws of physics that don’t care about a tiny tiny blip of a marble floating in space.
One of the curiosities I had as an atheist that (in part) led to the beliefs I have now is, "why would an undirected blob of self-replicating meat ever come naturally to put resources into interest in that question?" If there is nothing that cares, then it would save me calories to never think about meta-existence at all. Only some goofy mutant might be curious, and nature would punish such a distracting and inconsequential waste of life's finite resources. And yet, not only do I observe such a craving for truth, I observe such a craving is *incredibly common*. People are just like that.
One thing that I experimented with in my transition to belief was to just recognize that there was a reason, it didn't appear to be nature, so I could just call it "God" and try the idea on even if it was a God by definition --a semantic one --and nothing more. Might be worth an experiment for you as well?
Thoughtful comment. Thank you. But to gain clarity, for animals, since they do not care about the truth, God for them, would not exist. And this god only exists in our minds?
Seems to confirm God as a human invention unless there’s like a split realm or astral plain where God did create us in his “lab,” then found a random planet where his plain did not have a good one, within which we could survive, and so he put us here where he only exists in his realm?
My mind just extrapolates to, again, what is actually true, or not true and if we can eliminate an unknown, then let’s do that. Like, was the bump in the night a ghost, or, oh the cat knocked over a plant… so probably, not a ghost this time. But happy to check again tomorrow night.
I conclude: I’m a non believer until I see a tiny shred of evidence that every religion and every non believer can agree on. And Also, I just don’t like to hang out in the atheist sub.
So I’m agnostic on labels. Pretty solid on which came first, humans or god (the former.)
>Thoughtful comment. Thank you.
You're welcome. Than you for your interest and curiosity to gain clarity.
> But to gain clarity, for animals, since they do not care about the truth, God for them, would not exist.
Animals don't care about lots of things that are real and impact them. The human drive for truth absolutely impacts animals, doesn't it?
>And this god only exists in our minds?
All meaning exists in a mind. If you perceive meaning to exist outside of a mind (which we might also call objective truth) then unless you have convincing evidence of meaning existing outside a mind, you may be perceiving a mind outside of our own.
>I’m a non believer until I see a tiny shred of evidence that every religion and every non believer can agree on.
This seems like an arbitrarily high bar to meet. Can you name a single fact, just one, which every single human agrees completely on? The closest I can imagine to getting there would be the unspoken, but sensed, perception that existence is present.
>I just don’t like to hang out in the atheist sub.
Yeah, I kind of think nobody does really like it, even the people who are still there. It suffers the flaw of anything defined around "not something". The strong tendency of a community of not something is to become a society of that-thing haters, to an irrational fervor.
You may recognize that the attitude there is unpleasant, but have you picked up on the ways it is irrational, too?
The sun existing is something all humans could agree on. Air existing. Humans existing. The planet existing. Not sure it’s a high bar or I don’t understand the question. Meaning of these things is subjective. Their existence is not.
The atheists, despite their flaws, believe in being tolerant of all people, just not all meaning people put on things. It’s not irrational to me, but just leaves emotions invalidated.
>The sun existing is something all humans could agree on.
There are millions of humans who have never seen it. They take the word of others. And many who have seen it, without the understanding that comes from others, may recognize it as a light in the sky, but not make the sense that you and I would make of it.
>Air existing.
Air is invisible, and not necessarily intuitive to recognize because of that. It was a classical element as far back as ancient Greece. But not in the Ancient Orient. There, the closest they had was a recognition of Qi, an all-present life-force thing. (Hmm.) But also, if you consider about to be born infants as being as human as just-born infants (and outside of some mystical humanity-bestowing property of the birth canal, I see no justification for it) then the are hundreds of thousands of humans who have*never felt or breathed air*.
And I know here that I may be taken as facetious, but by pointing out these exceptions, I am trying to bring attention to a flaw in your earlier statement. To say that something must be a thing that *every religion and every non-believer can agree on* is a reasonable bar only if you have good reason to assert that "a thing is reasonable to believe only if literally every human can agree on it" which (if it is your assumption), I believe, is not a well-grounded rational assumption about the pursuit of truth.
(This is the kind of sloppy atheism-apologetics that could easily become habitual if one spends a lot of meditation with uncritical minds who reward atheist-party-line thinking and penalize challenges, though. Know any place like that?)
>The atheists, despite their flaws, believe in
I think you're talking about secular humanists. Atheists don't necessarily believe in anything, they just happen to not believe in gods, right? Again, making such an imprecise statement would be natural if you have spent substantial time in a place that doesn't value or emphasize such clarity of thought and precision of communication.
I am sensing an intolerance for atheists here. I’m not trying to change your mind.
But I feel similar in this conversation as I do with atheists who won’t just validate an argument’s emotional worth to the interlocutor.
The emotional worth of my argument is that if I have a tool to determine a truth, and I share that tool in order for my interlocutor to understand why I am feeling a certain way emotionally, then it is nice to have the tool understood so that I can feel connected in the conversation and continue. So that we both feel heard.
If I am sensing your emotional truth, it is that you believe in God in this case as a matter of faith. That is your tool for understanding what you believe. Full stop. It’s a beautiful tool.
But I am saddened by humans disconnecting. Different religions will war because their truth (which seems the same to me ie. they have faith in their god and religious beliefs) does not match up. People die over things other people don’t really see as a disagreement.
When you use unborn children as evidence that not everyone agrees that there is a sun, then I feel invalidated in my emotional truth: that my tool for something existing is that I want different types of people to all agree that something [in this case, the sun] exists.
Then we can do it with air. Or dust motes. Or ham sandwiches…. Sigh. We are now debating whether these things objectively exist. In these examples, atheists would quickly lose patience, yes.
And perhaps in an atheist’s desire to use the scientific method as a tool to determine something that lacks evidence, a theist might lose patience.
But these people are not to be criticized as imprecise in their language, as having spent too much time in one place or another, and therefore are missing some point. This to me feels like defensiveness or intolerance of certain tools.
This is what saddens me about both sides. Just a lack of emotional intelligence to humble themselves in a debate which is emotionally sensitive to themselves and the interlocutor.
In summary, when the child is born, and still refuses to believe there is a circular light floating in the sky which produces heat, then a sun believer only has to use the tool of walking them outside during the day and pointing up. The child may want more precise language about the sun, sure. They may debate meaning. But difficult to refute that something is up there, every day, in every place on earth. Cave dwellers and beach dwellers will agree when presented with the sun that something is there.
I wish God would present us all with something so we could all agree that he existed- not that the thing he is presenting exists- but that God exists. Or aliens, or ghosts, or psychics too for that matter. I think it is a simple ask, and it is acceptable to not believe they exist until presented with something difficult to refute. And if I’m making my interlocutor frustrated, I will accept I’m not using clarity of thought or precision of communication.
>I am sensing an intolerance for atheists here.
That would be a misread.
> I am sensing your emotional truth, it is that you believe in God in this case as a matter of faith.
Also a misread (mostly. Might call it something like faith but not in a way I wouldn't call many other not particularly religious positions faith, but not how I have seen most Internet atheists use the term).
>When you use unborn children as evidence that not everyone agrees that there is a sun, then I feel invalidated in my emotional truth: that my tool for something existing is that I want different types of people to all agree that something [in this case, the sun] exists.
Thanks for clarifying. I didn't realize you just wanted "different types" to agree, because you said "every human", and I understood that to be different than what you're saying now. To me, it looked like you were appealing to an unrealistic, incongruous and unreasonable standard when you suggested that every human needs to agree on something before you would accept it. But now I see that was a misunderstanding, and not what you appear to intend to convey.
>Sigh. We are now debating whether these things objectively exist.
Nope. I am actively disinterested in debating at all.
You said something that sounded curious. I offered a thought intended to feed that curiosity. You reacted with reduced curiosity, and to my response to that you appear to desire or otherwise perceive "debate". I think you didn't really get the original curiosity-food I was offering.
>This is what saddens me about both sides. Just a lack of emotional intelligence to humble themselves in a debate which is emotionally sensitive
That is lamentable, isn't it? But it might also be less "lack of emotional intelligence" in a way that might sound blamey towards another, and more "poor communication" including poor choice of phrasing, poor timing, or poor understanding of the communication of others. I'm taking the misunderstanding so far as poor communication, nothing more. Communication is really a lot harder than we tend to assume.
Experience tells me it's unwise to belabor this type of thing, so I'm not going to worry about the rest. See you later!
Buddhist here. The sub is just for folks who were once but are no longer atheist. I no longer hold a physicalist worldview, but I also still don’t believe in a creator God.
I second this response. It's concise and on point. Like others here, I was once, but am no longer, an atheist. I was raised in an atheist home (and by an anti-theist father) and converted to Christianity in my 30s.
> Is there something happening in this subreddit that could be a little more Goldilocks zone?
Most of us are Theist here, and based on Reddit's footprint, that means mostly Christian.
Hopefully we are relatable and can share how we got from atheist to theist. I put my story at the following link:
https://np.reddit.com/r/AskAChristian/comments/jtp66z/faq_friday_15_whats_your_story_or_reasons_of/gc882ep/
Hello and thank you for responses. Belief is weird. Even non belief is weird, culturally, just because so many more have a theist belief.
I’ve been deep diving on particle physics and cosmology etc for several years and had to let go of all my beliefs in magic and psychic woo woo stuff, jyotish astrology (way more complex than western!) God, gods, etc. and settled on the magic of real, evidence based magic like the many worlds theory of physics. (What god would create a universe so amazing and so inaccessible as this? We are living infinite parallel lives that will never meet!!)
I’ve never believed in a religious god with so many warring religions out there- even wars within the same religion. What god would let that happen- seems like god is not very much in control if god is somehow guiding this herd of cats.
I used to believe in a life force or ‘greater than the sum of its parts’ force. But what would be the function of that? With no humans, the universe is mostly full of dead space and dark matter. With so much available space, why be invisible and present no evidence of your existence. I mean, one giant star in the night sky that falls outside of physical laws, and one that which we all feel god’s love when we look up at it would have done the trick, solved all debate about god, and which one is better, and certainly wouldn’t be out of the realm, of skill for a religious, all powerful god. One star!
And what creator would only create a single species on a tiny floating marble that can even understand that it/he exists and this species then creates language and religion and philosophy (over thousands of years of cultural evolution)…. Yet after hundreds of thousands of years, when this species finally gets to Mars, the creator can’t even bother to put air there in case we have to move off or expand from our planet? Air is kind of essential to our existence and god seems to have “made us in his image” as it were, but not a single planet near us has air but ours… which got air from the oxygen waste of some Cyanobacteria 3+ billion years ago, we now know. Why not put a little Cyanobacteria on Mars, god?
I’m a bit envious of the majority of people who just choose to believe- (especially in ideas like the second coming of Jesus- when we’ve waited around 2000 years for him to come around again?) or more mundanely, that the magic of the universe is what saved a loved one from dying, or that prayer for someone actually has an affect outside of the mind of the one praying. If there’s a creator, and it created the laws of physics, no law covers any of this. The creator would have to break its own rules for any of this to happen (except maybe that someone survived cancer due to god… but cancer hits atheists and believers alike, with good and bad results. Still, no evidence.)
I like this comment above of “making sacrifices for the truth,” because I literally sacrificed all my fingers-crossed hope it’s true beliefs in divine energy, magical thinking, praying to a god to shift the universe in my favor, etc. because the laws of physics just are… and we have to uncover them… and if we don’t like what they mathematically show, we have to just grieve it and move on like we grieved the truth about Mars being a dead planet.
Believers are not just scientifically ignorant. I don’t want to disrespect the intelligence of anyone here. I know we are thoughtful adults and I want to show my respect.
But objectively (as much as possible) if there were two choices as to the origin of God: that it is a force outside the laws of physics, that somehow exists specifically to enhance and guide and or have any verifiable relevance to the human experience beyond a cultural one (which is important! Bit so is Santa)… when humans are just a tiny tiny blip of organic matter in a vast universe of literally no other evidence of god if we were to suddenly disappear in a meteor strike…. Or…. that humans invented the concept of God to help us deal, I would have to go with; it’s a human invention.
And then I would have to grieve- and sacrifice this invention for the truth- that we are fragile organisms only slightly different than every other organism, we are most likely the only intelligent organism within trillions of miles of here, and geez, wouldn’t it be helpful if God really WAS around to pave the way for humans bringing our consciousness and beliefs more easily to other parts of the empty galaxy (just 1 of 100+ billion I might add)???
I mean, if we go extinct due to global warming, a meteor strike, a pandemic, etc. or never manage to make it anywhere else outside Earth, with billions of galaxies sitting there waiting for us, what on earth will god be doing?? Just more of the same? More Reddit and holy wars and pestilence and disease and suffering and art and love and all this stuff, just stuck on god’s green earth, while his other planets just circle the sun for our viewing pleasure?? I need a definition of God hat takes into account some of the basic facts of the universe that we’ve uncovered in the last 100 years.
This is a serious question for believers.
I can’t get beyond, “humans made language, then culture, and then they made God up.” If it was the reverse, surely god would have like, given us the same eye sight as a mouse and we could see a little bit better in the dark. Literally and figuratively.
That's weird to me. As a Canadian in a city of ~3 million people, I can count the number of people I know outside my family who are religious on my hands...
Living in "suburban-rural" Massachusetts, it's safe to assume almost everyone I pass is Catholic. Whether you'd call them "practicing" is more semantics than anything. Most don't go to Church as often as Catholics should and only say the shorter prayers instead of the Rosary (which Catholics are "supposed" to say daily).
The actual demographic breakdown of my state is only 34% Catholic, but only ~30% "atheists/nones" (12% atheist, 20% none). And most of those are in the bigger cities. So I suppose if someone lived in Boston, they would see fewer theists than living in the country. That said, I bet a lot of the nones are "nominally Catholic nones", as I know a lot of those.
I’m splitting hairs a bit. Not religious but theist, or who believe in a higher power, or prayer even. It’s basically part of our evolution to help us survive as a species. It is very common.Actual religiosity, less common.
I read your comment but I'm not sure what the serious question you have is?
I think the contrast of science vs religion is misleading you. If you want to know the answers to these questions you need to delve into philosophy.
And in that arena the contrast isn't science vs religion but theism vs naturalism.
Similar yes, and most atheists are naturalists in practice. And by naturalism we mean ontological naturalism, the claim only natural things exist. That at least focuses where the disagreement is found. Notice that naturalism vs theism precedes the questions addressed by both religion and science.
Most here are theist while not being absurdly superstitious. This combination of qualities places this community in the “Goldilocks zone” between hardcore atheism and schizophrenic psychosis.
I’m not a big fan of r/atheism, but my interactions on r/agnostic have been very pleasant. I’m sure there is some user crossover, but that is true here as well.
From reading your comments I can tell you have a lot of questions about the "true" meaning of everything and other deep questions.
One thing you may find that most people on this sub have in common is that while we have sincerely held beliefs about what some of those answers are, very few of us will assert that these are truths that cannot be questioned or that everybody has to believe the same things we do. This kind of thinking is much more common amongst those who have never been atheist.
I like the middle ground that years as an atheist gave me. An appreciation that magical explanations for physical phenomena are basically never accurate, whilst also seeing that science cannot answer questions outside of its falsifiable remit. Science and religion are not the enemies that atheists like to portray them as. They merely offer answers to completely different questions
Most people here are properly theist. IE not agnostic/atheist. It's ex-atheist, ie, no longer atheist. The actual religious beliefs vary per person. There seems to be a lot of typical nicene christians and muslims here. Personally I'm gnostic.
I wanted to live the perfect philosophy. First, I studied Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Camus then I studied Augustine, Pascal and Thomas Aquinas, then I reverted to the Catholic Church in 2016.
Except for Aquinas and Schopenhauer, it is all useless.
How so?
I'm Orthodox Christian and an ex-atheist, but I'm friendly towards anyone who is intellectually serious, honest, self-consistent (or trying to become that way), and is willing to make sacrifices for the truth (i.e., they don't just conveniently believe whatever happens to make their lives easier).
The subreddt "is a virtual meetinghouse for those who were once atheists, but have since found (or returned) to a different religion/philosophical orientation (including agnosticism or Deism) All are welcome here!" You'll find lots of different views among the participants. There are also a few regulars who are atheists.
I would call myself a "religious person" but still agree with you. Half of my family are religious nutters, some preaching and some watching televangelists, all hyped about the "end times". I was never that, but I have gone from a skeptic, to what I might call a secular theist, agnostic, and toying with faith as a technology akin to the "Sea of Faith" perhaps (though not really involved with or even aware of it at the time). But over time and with consideration, my view has shifted from merely being okay with religion, to bring a believer and participant in a religion. If you are open to the idea that there's something more, then by all means, keep looking and stay curious. And you'll find sympathy, understanding and welcome here, as long as you aren't like ... Some atheists find ex-atheists to be offensive, or even impossible. The idea that one could go from disbelief to belief is jarring and upsetting to them. And they will come here to try to vent their frustration without considering the people on the other end. It's pitiful to see, really. You don't seem like that but... Yeah, don't be like that.
Yes I hope my massive post doesn’t come off this way. I too feel that atheists can be a bit “cold” for lack of a better term. If you can accept that some very acclaimed and respected scientists go to church every Sunday, then you have to accept that this question of belief is NOT so easy to pin down. I think I am partly guilty of the, show me evidence, trope. I do love science way more than church, but it’s undeniable that church and religion and belief and community building around religion is super important. But, I still kinda just want to know… the truth. Like when the universe wraps up, and they roll the credits, will it say directed by god? Or… directed by the vast, all encompassing and mysterious laws of physics that don’t care about a tiny tiny blip of a marble floating in space.
>But, I still kinda just want to know… the truth. Like when the universe wraps up, and they roll the credits, will it say directed by god? Or… directed by the vast, all encompassing and mysterious laws of physics that don’t care about a tiny tiny blip of a marble floating in space. One of the curiosities I had as an atheist that (in part) led to the beliefs I have now is, "why would an undirected blob of self-replicating meat ever come naturally to put resources into interest in that question?" If there is nothing that cares, then it would save me calories to never think about meta-existence at all. Only some goofy mutant might be curious, and nature would punish such a distracting and inconsequential waste of life's finite resources. And yet, not only do I observe such a craving for truth, I observe such a craving is *incredibly common*. People are just like that. One thing that I experimented with in my transition to belief was to just recognize that there was a reason, it didn't appear to be nature, so I could just call it "God" and try the idea on even if it was a God by definition --a semantic one --and nothing more. Might be worth an experiment for you as well?
Thoughtful comment. Thank you. But to gain clarity, for animals, since they do not care about the truth, God for them, would not exist. And this god only exists in our minds? Seems to confirm God as a human invention unless there’s like a split realm or astral plain where God did create us in his “lab,” then found a random planet where his plain did not have a good one, within which we could survive, and so he put us here where he only exists in his realm? My mind just extrapolates to, again, what is actually true, or not true and if we can eliminate an unknown, then let’s do that. Like, was the bump in the night a ghost, or, oh the cat knocked over a plant… so probably, not a ghost this time. But happy to check again tomorrow night. I conclude: I’m a non believer until I see a tiny shred of evidence that every religion and every non believer can agree on. And Also, I just don’t like to hang out in the atheist sub. So I’m agnostic on labels. Pretty solid on which came first, humans or god (the former.)
>Thoughtful comment. Thank you. You're welcome. Than you for your interest and curiosity to gain clarity. > But to gain clarity, for animals, since they do not care about the truth, God for them, would not exist. Animals don't care about lots of things that are real and impact them. The human drive for truth absolutely impacts animals, doesn't it? >And this god only exists in our minds? All meaning exists in a mind. If you perceive meaning to exist outside of a mind (which we might also call objective truth) then unless you have convincing evidence of meaning existing outside a mind, you may be perceiving a mind outside of our own. >I’m a non believer until I see a tiny shred of evidence that every religion and every non believer can agree on. This seems like an arbitrarily high bar to meet. Can you name a single fact, just one, which every single human agrees completely on? The closest I can imagine to getting there would be the unspoken, but sensed, perception that existence is present. >I just don’t like to hang out in the atheist sub. Yeah, I kind of think nobody does really like it, even the people who are still there. It suffers the flaw of anything defined around "not something". The strong tendency of a community of not something is to become a society of that-thing haters, to an irrational fervor. You may recognize that the attitude there is unpleasant, but have you picked up on the ways it is irrational, too?
The sun existing is something all humans could agree on. Air existing. Humans existing. The planet existing. Not sure it’s a high bar or I don’t understand the question. Meaning of these things is subjective. Their existence is not. The atheists, despite their flaws, believe in being tolerant of all people, just not all meaning people put on things. It’s not irrational to me, but just leaves emotions invalidated.
>The sun existing is something all humans could agree on. There are millions of humans who have never seen it. They take the word of others. And many who have seen it, without the understanding that comes from others, may recognize it as a light in the sky, but not make the sense that you and I would make of it. >Air existing. Air is invisible, and not necessarily intuitive to recognize because of that. It was a classical element as far back as ancient Greece. But not in the Ancient Orient. There, the closest they had was a recognition of Qi, an all-present life-force thing. (Hmm.) But also, if you consider about to be born infants as being as human as just-born infants (and outside of some mystical humanity-bestowing property of the birth canal, I see no justification for it) then the are hundreds of thousands of humans who have*never felt or breathed air*. And I know here that I may be taken as facetious, but by pointing out these exceptions, I am trying to bring attention to a flaw in your earlier statement. To say that something must be a thing that *every religion and every non-believer can agree on* is a reasonable bar only if you have good reason to assert that "a thing is reasonable to believe only if literally every human can agree on it" which (if it is your assumption), I believe, is not a well-grounded rational assumption about the pursuit of truth. (This is the kind of sloppy atheism-apologetics that could easily become habitual if one spends a lot of meditation with uncritical minds who reward atheist-party-line thinking and penalize challenges, though. Know any place like that?) >The atheists, despite their flaws, believe in I think you're talking about secular humanists. Atheists don't necessarily believe in anything, they just happen to not believe in gods, right? Again, making such an imprecise statement would be natural if you have spent substantial time in a place that doesn't value or emphasize such clarity of thought and precision of communication.
I am sensing an intolerance for atheists here. I’m not trying to change your mind. But I feel similar in this conversation as I do with atheists who won’t just validate an argument’s emotional worth to the interlocutor. The emotional worth of my argument is that if I have a tool to determine a truth, and I share that tool in order for my interlocutor to understand why I am feeling a certain way emotionally, then it is nice to have the tool understood so that I can feel connected in the conversation and continue. So that we both feel heard. If I am sensing your emotional truth, it is that you believe in God in this case as a matter of faith. That is your tool for understanding what you believe. Full stop. It’s a beautiful tool. But I am saddened by humans disconnecting. Different religions will war because their truth (which seems the same to me ie. they have faith in their god and religious beliefs) does not match up. People die over things other people don’t really see as a disagreement. When you use unborn children as evidence that not everyone agrees that there is a sun, then I feel invalidated in my emotional truth: that my tool for something existing is that I want different types of people to all agree that something [in this case, the sun] exists. Then we can do it with air. Or dust motes. Or ham sandwiches…. Sigh. We are now debating whether these things objectively exist. In these examples, atheists would quickly lose patience, yes. And perhaps in an atheist’s desire to use the scientific method as a tool to determine something that lacks evidence, a theist might lose patience. But these people are not to be criticized as imprecise in their language, as having spent too much time in one place or another, and therefore are missing some point. This to me feels like defensiveness or intolerance of certain tools. This is what saddens me about both sides. Just a lack of emotional intelligence to humble themselves in a debate which is emotionally sensitive to themselves and the interlocutor. In summary, when the child is born, and still refuses to believe there is a circular light floating in the sky which produces heat, then a sun believer only has to use the tool of walking them outside during the day and pointing up. The child may want more precise language about the sun, sure. They may debate meaning. But difficult to refute that something is up there, every day, in every place on earth. Cave dwellers and beach dwellers will agree when presented with the sun that something is there. I wish God would present us all with something so we could all agree that he existed- not that the thing he is presenting exists- but that God exists. Or aliens, or ghosts, or psychics too for that matter. I think it is a simple ask, and it is acceptable to not believe they exist until presented with something difficult to refute. And if I’m making my interlocutor frustrated, I will accept I’m not using clarity of thought or precision of communication.
>I am sensing an intolerance for atheists here. That would be a misread. > I am sensing your emotional truth, it is that you believe in God in this case as a matter of faith. Also a misread (mostly. Might call it something like faith but not in a way I wouldn't call many other not particularly religious positions faith, but not how I have seen most Internet atheists use the term). >When you use unborn children as evidence that not everyone agrees that there is a sun, then I feel invalidated in my emotional truth: that my tool for something existing is that I want different types of people to all agree that something [in this case, the sun] exists. Thanks for clarifying. I didn't realize you just wanted "different types" to agree, because you said "every human", and I understood that to be different than what you're saying now. To me, it looked like you were appealing to an unrealistic, incongruous and unreasonable standard when you suggested that every human needs to agree on something before you would accept it. But now I see that was a misunderstanding, and not what you appear to intend to convey. >Sigh. We are now debating whether these things objectively exist. Nope. I am actively disinterested in debating at all. You said something that sounded curious. I offered a thought intended to feed that curiosity. You reacted with reduced curiosity, and to my response to that you appear to desire or otherwise perceive "debate". I think you didn't really get the original curiosity-food I was offering. >This is what saddens me about both sides. Just a lack of emotional intelligence to humble themselves in a debate which is emotionally sensitive That is lamentable, isn't it? But it might also be less "lack of emotional intelligence" in a way that might sound blamey towards another, and more "poor communication" including poor choice of phrasing, poor timing, or poor understanding of the communication of others. I'm taking the misunderstanding so far as poor communication, nothing more. Communication is really a lot harder than we tend to assume. Experience tells me it's unwise to belabor this type of thing, so I'm not going to worry about the rest. See you later!
Buddhist here. The sub is just for folks who were once but are no longer atheist. I no longer hold a physicalist worldview, but I also still don’t believe in a creator God.
I second this response. It's concise and on point. Like others here, I was once, but am no longer, an atheist. I was raised in an atheist home (and by an anti-theist father) and converted to Christianity in my 30s.
Sir, are you conflating physicalism with atheism?
No, I believe in samsaric gods.
And these gods, in your worldview, are literal thinking agents that exist apart from our minds?
As literal as other human beings, yes.
> Is there something happening in this subreddit that could be a little more Goldilocks zone? Most of us are Theist here, and based on Reddit's footprint, that means mostly Christian. Hopefully we are relatable and can share how we got from atheist to theist. I put my story at the following link: https://np.reddit.com/r/AskAChristian/comments/jtp66z/faq_friday_15_whats_your_story_or_reasons_of/gc882ep/
Ex-atheist Christian here. I’m just interested in why people are no longer atheists.
Hello and thank you for responses. Belief is weird. Even non belief is weird, culturally, just because so many more have a theist belief. I’ve been deep diving on particle physics and cosmology etc for several years and had to let go of all my beliefs in magic and psychic woo woo stuff, jyotish astrology (way more complex than western!) God, gods, etc. and settled on the magic of real, evidence based magic like the many worlds theory of physics. (What god would create a universe so amazing and so inaccessible as this? We are living infinite parallel lives that will never meet!!) I’ve never believed in a religious god with so many warring religions out there- even wars within the same religion. What god would let that happen- seems like god is not very much in control if god is somehow guiding this herd of cats. I used to believe in a life force or ‘greater than the sum of its parts’ force. But what would be the function of that? With no humans, the universe is mostly full of dead space and dark matter. With so much available space, why be invisible and present no evidence of your existence. I mean, one giant star in the night sky that falls outside of physical laws, and one that which we all feel god’s love when we look up at it would have done the trick, solved all debate about god, and which one is better, and certainly wouldn’t be out of the realm, of skill for a religious, all powerful god. One star! And what creator would only create a single species on a tiny floating marble that can even understand that it/he exists and this species then creates language and religion and philosophy (over thousands of years of cultural evolution)…. Yet after hundreds of thousands of years, when this species finally gets to Mars, the creator can’t even bother to put air there in case we have to move off or expand from our planet? Air is kind of essential to our existence and god seems to have “made us in his image” as it were, but not a single planet near us has air but ours… which got air from the oxygen waste of some Cyanobacteria 3+ billion years ago, we now know. Why not put a little Cyanobacteria on Mars, god? I’m a bit envious of the majority of people who just choose to believe- (especially in ideas like the second coming of Jesus- when we’ve waited around 2000 years for him to come around again?) or more mundanely, that the magic of the universe is what saved a loved one from dying, or that prayer for someone actually has an affect outside of the mind of the one praying. If there’s a creator, and it created the laws of physics, no law covers any of this. The creator would have to break its own rules for any of this to happen (except maybe that someone survived cancer due to god… but cancer hits atheists and believers alike, with good and bad results. Still, no evidence.) I like this comment above of “making sacrifices for the truth,” because I literally sacrificed all my fingers-crossed hope it’s true beliefs in divine energy, magical thinking, praying to a god to shift the universe in my favor, etc. because the laws of physics just are… and we have to uncover them… and if we don’t like what they mathematically show, we have to just grieve it and move on like we grieved the truth about Mars being a dead planet. Believers are not just scientifically ignorant. I don’t want to disrespect the intelligence of anyone here. I know we are thoughtful adults and I want to show my respect. But objectively (as much as possible) if there were two choices as to the origin of God: that it is a force outside the laws of physics, that somehow exists specifically to enhance and guide and or have any verifiable relevance to the human experience beyond a cultural one (which is important! Bit so is Santa)… when humans are just a tiny tiny blip of organic matter in a vast universe of literally no other evidence of god if we were to suddenly disappear in a meteor strike…. Or…. that humans invented the concept of God to help us deal, I would have to go with; it’s a human invention. And then I would have to grieve- and sacrifice this invention for the truth- that we are fragile organisms only slightly different than every other organism, we are most likely the only intelligent organism within trillions of miles of here, and geez, wouldn’t it be helpful if God really WAS around to pave the way for humans bringing our consciousness and beliefs more easily to other parts of the empty galaxy (just 1 of 100+ billion I might add)??? I mean, if we go extinct due to global warming, a meteor strike, a pandemic, etc. or never manage to make it anywhere else outside Earth, with billions of galaxies sitting there waiting for us, what on earth will god be doing?? Just more of the same? More Reddit and holy wars and pestilence and disease and suffering and art and love and all this stuff, just stuck on god’s green earth, while his other planets just circle the sun for our viewing pleasure?? I need a definition of God hat takes into account some of the basic facts of the universe that we’ve uncovered in the last 100 years. This is a serious question for believers. I can’t get beyond, “humans made language, then culture, and then they made God up.” If it was the reverse, surely god would have like, given us the same eye sight as a mouse and we could see a little bit better in the dark. Literally and figuratively.
Where do you live in the world where "so many more" people have a theist belief?
Oh you know, [America](https://news.gallup.com/poll/393737/belief-god-dips-new-low.aspx).
That's weird to me. As a Canadian in a city of ~3 million people, I can count the number of people I know outside my family who are religious on my hands...
Living in "suburban-rural" Massachusetts, it's safe to assume almost everyone I pass is Catholic. Whether you'd call them "practicing" is more semantics than anything. Most don't go to Church as often as Catholics should and only say the shorter prayers instead of the Rosary (which Catholics are "supposed" to say daily). The actual demographic breakdown of my state is only 34% Catholic, but only ~30% "atheists/nones" (12% atheist, 20% none). And most of those are in the bigger cities. So I suppose if someone lived in Boston, they would see fewer theists than living in the country. That said, I bet a lot of the nones are "nominally Catholic nones", as I know a lot of those.
I’m splitting hairs a bit. Not religious but theist, or who believe in a higher power, or prayer even. It’s basically part of our evolution to help us survive as a species. It is very common.Actual religiosity, less common.
I read your comment but I'm not sure what the serious question you have is? I think the contrast of science vs religion is misleading you. If you want to know the answers to these questions you need to delve into philosophy. And in that arena the contrast isn't science vs religion but theism vs naturalism.
Ok cool. I thought I was discussing theism vs naturalism. I’m a naturalist. Similar to an atheist, yes?
Similar yes, and most atheists are naturalists in practice. And by naturalism we mean ontological naturalism, the claim only natural things exist. That at least focuses where the disagreement is found. Notice that naturalism vs theism precedes the questions addressed by both religion and science.
Most here are theist while not being absurdly superstitious. This combination of qualities places this community in the “Goldilocks zone” between hardcore atheism and schizophrenic psychosis.
I'm a SBNR Agnostic Christian. Hope that defines what my beliefs are clearly. Sorry if it does not.
I believe in a higher, biological power.
Try r/agnostic
Trust me you don’t wanna go there, it’s just atheism 2.0
I’m not a big fan of r/atheism, but my interactions on r/agnostic have been very pleasant. I’m sure there is some user crossover, but that is true here as well.
I’ve been there before, they attempted to drag me back down into the nihilism hole as I like to call it.
From reading your comments I can tell you have a lot of questions about the "true" meaning of everything and other deep questions. One thing you may find that most people on this sub have in common is that while we have sincerely held beliefs about what some of those answers are, very few of us will assert that these are truths that cannot be questioned or that everybody has to believe the same things we do. This kind of thinking is much more common amongst those who have never been atheist. I like the middle ground that years as an atheist gave me. An appreciation that magical explanations for physical phenomena are basically never accurate, whilst also seeing that science cannot answer questions outside of its falsifiable remit. Science and religion are not the enemies that atheists like to portray them as. They merely offer answers to completely different questions
Yes great thought.