Skeptic Project

I think of myself as a recovering atheist.

I was an atheist from age 13 until I was 37 (last year). I now believe in God and do consider myself religious. Certain things in my life demonstrated to me that a belief in a supreme being is not the by-definition folly that I once thought it was.

That said, I'm well aware that I could never demonstrate or prove the existence of God by any empirical means, nor would I try. I recognize that religious belief is not rational, is not supported by evidence, and in my opinion should be kept separate from the realm of fact, science and empiricism. Creationism is idiotic, at least in the sense of using a religious belief to replace rational consideration of the nature of the universe.

I don't think religion and science are mutually exclusive. I also think there's nothing inconsistent about me believing in God, and yet demanding evidence for something like 9/11 or other conspiracy theories. I know full well that my belief in God can't be justified through empirical means, and I have no problem with that. I readily admit the belief is irrational--but neither do I think that belief should govern how I deal with provable reality. What happened on 9/11, or whether Christ existed in real life, or whether HAARP exists, are matters that can and should be resolved solely through empirical, provable fact. The existence of God can't be resolved solely through empirical fact, so it's unfair to rely solely on empirical evidence to reach a conclusion about God.

In that sense I agree with duncanlecombre. I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the degree to which atheism is advanced in the skeptical community as the only intellectually "honest" position regarding universal outlook. I recognize that my belief in God can't measure up to the standards with which I think we should judge provable phenomena in the real world. However, that having been said, I think that, so long as I keep my irrational belief in God to myself and maintain a bright line between that irrational belief and the rational and logical judgment of the world as it exists (not as I spiritually view it), my irrational belief is entitled to be respected.

"Wouldn't intelligent design allow for its creatures to adapt to new situations?"

My problem with intelligent design is who designed the designer? That question leads to an infinite number of intelligent designers.

Another problem I have with intelligent design is that life way too complex to have been created supernaturally. I mean why go all the way down to hadrons and quarks to compose life. I'm also confident that it's just a matter of time before string theory becomes a falsifiable claim.

I'm not challenging your beliefs, I'm just laying out my thoughts. I'm still open to the idea of a supreme being. I just don't think anyone has the answers yet, if we were meant to know, we just would.

My fiancé is Russian Orthodox, and my personal beliefs are in no way similar to his at all, not even remotely so, but we still have an icon corner in our apartment and I find the artistic expression and so forth of the religion to be beautiful, but other than that I don't really understand why he believes what he does, but I certainly haven't lost any respect for him because of it. The same goes the other way with the way he views my own beliefs.

I get what you're saying Matt. I don't like people who are militant about ANYTHING. But to be fair, the last time I checked, atheists wouldn't ever knock on your door, come in your house, and try to get you to convert to any militant atheism.

THAT'S the kind of religious folk that bother me personally. Not because of any ideology, but because I find that to be extremely arrogant. I don't want anyone coming in my house to sell me anything from a religion to steak knives.

EDIT: That reminds me of a funny story. During my last year at college, there were some religious folks standing in the courtyard on certain days of the week passing out pamphlets. Curiosity got the better of me one day so I passed by one of the ladies handing them out and it was about abstinence with some Jesus quotations in there, yet there were condoms taped to the back page of it. I got a good chuckle from that.

Whatever. This is an irritating subject anyway.

Snob, a number of things in my personal life caused me to believe that a higher consciousness was looking out for me. It wasn't a rational decision and couldn't be, by definition.

I don't belong to any particular organized faith. I'm not a Christian because, while I believe Christ preached some very good things, I can't quite accept that he was literally the son of God. Believing in the divinity of Christ is sort of a prerequisite for being Christian.

I've considered becoming Jewish, if I can find a super-liberal group to associate with.

Religion, I believe, is totally a construct of man, not God. I don't think God really gives a damn what religion you belong to, or if you belong to one at all. This is where I think that my assumptions as an atheist were wrong. Many atheists I know simply assume that people who are religious believe that their religion is literal truth constructed by God and that, as such, theirs is the only "right" way. Some religious people do believe that, but not all of them, and you can be very religious while fully understanding that the faith system you belong to is artificial. When I was an atheist I assumed that this belief, i.e., the literal truth of a particular religion's "correctness," was the defining characteristic of religious belief. In fact it's not, and I couldn't have been more wrong about that when I was an atheist.

Anti-religion ideology is irrational because you ignore the positive things religion does and only focus on the negative.

To me, the more fundamental question is what is the foundation for your beliefs? Are your beliefs based on reason or faith? I prefer reason because it has a higher chance of providing you with a worldview that is more in line with reality. If you are out of touch with reality, you are a potential danger to yourself and others. Yeah, and I guess you could also be a benefit to yourself and others. But how much really, is the ratio of good to bad caused by religion? I don't think we can really measure that rigorously. But I'd estimate that it about cancels out. I read that the evolutionary reason for religiosity is because it creates greater group cohesion at the expense of outsiders. Is that good or bad? I don't know.

I just think that religion is a closed loop of circular reasoning. With the good comes the bad. But if we want to get rid of that bad, we have to get rid of religion. Yeah, the good may go away too, but we can get that back in other, more rational, ways. Rather than relying of the threat of hell and the reward of heaven to drive charitable acts, why not rely on our sense of sympathy towards each other?

That is interesting Muertos. I personally was Southern Baptist until the age of about 19 and I think it was a lot of the literal stuff that made me drop it.

I was raised to believe in a kind and loving God, but also to fear this kind and loving God. So when I began to think critically about the things I had been brought up to believe, it scared the crap out of me.

When I realized that a kind and loving God wouldn't be angry with me to use my brain that was given to me to think about my beliefs in a critical way, one thing lead to another and within a few days I came to the conclusion that I was an atheist.

I also had a few experiences (religious dreams, depression being "healed", etc.) when I was a believer. Why prayer sometimes works is still a subject of interest with me.

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I think the question you're asking is "is there a harm in believing something for which you have no good reason to?"

One of the questions, ya. The answer is "possibly". But Matt makes a good point that there is also good that can come of it. I just think we can do better and do good things for good reasons.

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Just another internet meme.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/derp

Press ALT+F4 to bring up the image menu.

I think he's the only one who knows how. We're all fucked.