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Thursday, October 23, 2008

How to Become an Atheist

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From wikihow: How to become an atheist

Step # 5:

Consider your ethics and try to understand where they come from. You don't need a god/gods to be moral. Atheists are not unethical. Like many theists, many atheists donate to charity and live lives that are morally similar to those of theists. Atheists just might have different motivations for doing so.


It's interesting that someone put the thought and consideration into this. I like the well reasoned approach, and it does describe the process I went through starting about 20 years ago.
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2 comments:

Molly said...

Do you think atheists are born, made, or either/both?

I was fervent in my devotion to Catholicism when I was a child, but I now realize it was the superstition and magical thinking that appealed to me. You know, say the rosary and everything will be okay. Fast for Lent and you know you're all good with the force in the universe that regulates shit, aka God. But we left the Catholic church when my parents divorced, and so I left all my Catholic fervor behind me. After that, the only exposure I had to religion came in the form of trips to my father's fundamentalist Lutheran church during his custodial weekends.

I was so turned off by the idea that my completely innocent 13-year-old Jewish friends would burn in hell just because they were born Jews that I decided religion was completely retarded. I've been an atheist (I prefer the term "apatheist") ever since.

So I return to my original question: born, made, or either/both? In my case, I really believe that I was born with this mindset. The only reason I was ever religious was because it seemed like the closest thing to actual abracadabra-spells-type magic.

mathyoo said...

I believe that everyone is born an atheist. No one has a knowledge of any gods when they're born. Most of us are indoctrinated soon after that, and some of us leave the faith of our parents on our own. It seems like many of the atheists I've crossed paths with were, like me, inherently skeptical and never really bought into religion. In that sense, I think many atheists are both born and made. A natural affinity for skepticism combined with the right circumstances seems to put one on the path to atheism.