Why I left Atheism?

[Sol Invictus]

Religion embodies stubborn ignorance and wishful thinking. The thought of people seriously entertaining religious ideas in this day and age makes me want to

With this we move toward a materialistic world which rejects any notion of Transcendence. No reveled wisdom. No God in heaven. No afterlife. Just material "reality". Do you prefer the spiritual emptiness of a material civilization where everyone is on Prozac instead?

[SilverKnight]

Why is it that spirits mostly present themselves to people who have an ancestry in places where belief in spirits and more archaic types of religion are dominant? (You said that you are partly Dominican, that's why I mention this). Maybe because our subconscious mind which is influenced by our culture can create images that appear to be real, although they are not... or because pure logic drives the rest of us away from the emotional-psychological state of consciousness that allow the believers to ''see'' what we boring realists can not understand. Sometimes I don't know what I really believe, so I must call myself an Agnostic...

Fully Dominican ethnically, American citizen of the USA.. It might be true that people who come from these countries might have tendencies to believe such things but I highly doubt that's my case, my fiance who is white German-swiss-monnonite American born right here in US also seen the apparitions and weird sounds in that previous home is not just me..

There's something definitely spiritual buddy out there, there's more to this life then what we think of. The house is more then a century old about or closest to 1 and a half centuries old no wonder why we say and heard so many things, think of all the tragedies and deaths that might have occurred there, spirits retain energy which by scientific terminology it can't be destroyed nor creates therefore is trapped there until it is released one day.

Human beings are fragile and quirky beings. We don't perceive one absolute reality, but rather experience a brain-generated model of what is around us. We can also end up perceiving things that just aren't there at all..

I started out Lutheran but eventually abandoned it.. And all other religion along with it. Just gone. The evidence isn't there to support religious claims. Plus, Christianity and many other religions stem from long before science was developed into the marvellous art that it is today. The Bible was written by flat-earthers... Gods as we know them evolved from older ideas that ultimately originated from our natural superstition and our tendency to perceive agents in the natural world. We are natural dualists, automatically thinking of the mind as something separate from the body, yet such thinking is clearly flawed and unsupported by evidence.

Religion embodies stubborn ignorance and wishful thinking. The thought of people seriously entertaining religious ideas in this day and age makes me want to

There are things from the Bible that seem entirely unreal or just symbolic, but there are other contents that could be true, is just a matter of putting all the pieces together and finding the right and wrong answers.

But as you said our minds just experience a very limited model of what's really around us and beyond our sight.

The thing is, science is the realm which deals with matter in a material or materialistic sense. The spirtual realm is beyond this. To mix the two up is symptomatic of new age spirituality. But then it appears that this pantheism is something that the even the Dalai Lama embraces, in contravention of the very Buddhist doctrine he purports to uphold! He is very much part of the international pantheistic/new-age movement, which is heavily promoted by various counter-initiatory occult circles amongst the "elite."


(I do hate calling current world leaders elite. We have no elites, only the counter-elite, chosen by the mob and of the mob. Alas, I digress.)

I don't doubt in the spiritual anymore once you experience it first hand your mind completely changes for ever, there are those who will never have the change to experience it unfortunately, reason why we have to much non-believers and doubters.

[Virtuous]

Quite interesting story this is...I hate people who follow Religion blindly word by word (and Religion in general), however I also don't like people who just deny everything. I am skeptical, to some extent I do believe in spirituality as other dimensional entities and so on. That is why I am Agnostic and not Atheist.

[Partizan]

When I will have time, I will write my loooooong story about how I left Atheism. However I gotta go somewhere now. I can say that, with being son of a non-practicing, not caring Muslim mom and über-Atheist dad who makes fun about religion and God concepts everyday, I found my road myself

[SkyBurn]

I am skeptical, to some extent I do believe in spirituality as other dimensional entities and so on. That is why I am Agnostic and not Atheist.

Atheism more or less refers to a lack of belief in organised religion.

Atheism and Agnosticism are not mutually exclusive terms.

[Jägerstaffel]

Atheism more or less refers to a lack of belief in organised religion.

Atheism and Agnosticism are not mutually exclusive terms.

A lack of god belief - not organised religion, to be precise. You are correct however that they are not mutually exclusive.

[el22]

I don't even understand what agnostic is supposed to mean.
You either are a theist, or you aren't. A-theist is just a shorthand for "not a theist". It doesn't implies that you should believe in something (like scientific theories for example)

[Jägerstaffel]

I don't even understand what agnostic is supposed to mean.
You either are a theist, or you aren't. A-theist is just a shorthand for "not a theist". It doesn't implies that you should believe in something (like scientific theories for example)

Which is why some are agnostic atheists and some claim to be gnostic atheists.

Suggested reading to those that are interested in the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativ...sitive_atheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implici...plicit_atheism

[Balmung]

I wish i could believe, but its just not logical. I even stood in a supposed haunted house and said "Hey ghost, come at me you pieces of shit", and they didn't. If i did believe in something, it would never be the man made religions of this world. They're far too bizarre to take seriously.

[Panopticon]

Atheism and agnosticism are more mutually inclusive than exclusive.

The term 'agnostic' is somewhat weak, the definition of agnosticism being the position that one does not know whether any deity or any other religious or metaphysical claim is true or not, therefore adopting a neutral religious position.

Agnosticism, by virtue of not believing in aforementioned deities and claims, is atheistic, just that it portrays itself not to be. Herein lies the misconception that atheism is some sort of cohesive world view shared by a collective, sort of like a religion, which also non-theists often fall for. The only criteria for atheism is lack of faith, not to assert that god does not exist. There is not any evidence compelling enough to goad faith which attracts people to disbelief.

In short, agnosticism is an ill-defined term; and agnosticism and atheism cannot be completely extricated and any dichotomization would be false. In addition, there is a general misconception and misunderstanding surrounding those terms.