I'm an atheist. Ask me anything!

allaboutlove,

I'm doing well! Thanks!

How are you?

CNikki,

I was raised Baptist. I went to Christian school growing up and took many courses in the Bible and apologetics, etc. When I went to college, I majored in biology and found out that a lot of the stuff I had learned about science was demonstrably incorrect. At that point, I still believed in god but became skeptical of the Christian community's take on science. I began to pursue a more rigorous understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of nature vs. the supernatural, belief vs. knowledge, faith vs. certainty, etc. That ultimately led me to the conclusion that, in terms of reproducibility, supernatural explanations of the universe seemed to have built in mechanisms for dealing with situations where a particular event did not achieve a desired outcome. By comparison, science has nailed things down to the point where, if we launch a satellite or use GPS triangulation or whatever, science can give a consistent, reproducible, quantifiable, measurable answer that is correct 99% of the time. Of course, as time goes on and science becomes further refined, the answers on a particular question become more accurate and more accurate. Faith never seemed to have the same reproducibility. When things went wrong, it was part of God's plan. When things went right, to God be the glory. The randomness and lack of producibility seemed, to me, to indicate that the underlying philosophy did not accurately describe the universe. After that, I "came out of it" as you say.

I would first have to rule out natural explanations. Schizophrenia is a real disease. I wouldn't immediately assume that it's god talking to me if a simpler natural phenomenon explained the situation. The ancient Greeks thought lightning was Zeus being angry. I would want to explore (and rule out) natural options before going with supernatural explanations. I don't think that's unreasonable...

I do not intend this to be rude in any way. How is this possible? How is the sun still shining? I ask this in all honesty. I can't remember a time when I was not aware of God. Life just does not make sense to me without my faith in Him.

I will try to respond promptly. I apologize if I do not. I'm open to any question provided it is thoughtful, polite, and not too personal.

I'm a soft (negative) atheist. If god suddenly began appearing to me in visions every day, I would first do my best to rule out schizophrenia, hallucinations, someone drugging me, etc. and then I would begin to test what I saw/heard in the visions with the natural world. If god told me who was going to win the world series and it happened. I would find that to be very compelling evidence. Even then, however, parsing out whether then entity in question were physical or metaphysical would be a very difficult task, in my opinion.

I'm afraid that most people have to have faith. They depend on it. They live for it. If it were to be undeniably proven that heaven nor hell exist (which I think has already been done), then people that live only on faith would probably kill themselves.

For me, I choose not to live with incentive to live ethically and morally. Love exists outside of a 'god' or a religion. You shouldn't have to be threatened with hell or a promise of reward to learn how to love.

ARE YOU GOING TO HEAVEN?

I will try to respond promptly. I apologize if I do not. I'm open to any question provided it is thoughtful, polite, and not too personal.