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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Atheists at what age did you discovered that there wasn't a "God"or that any deity did not exist?  Was it through a life changing experience, your parents, your understanding of science, etc?  Also, did you get ostracize or rejected by your family and friends once you told them that you were an Atheist?  Have you ever suffer discrimination because of your belief or lack of? 
 [/quote]

I have yet to discover there is no god -- that would be impossible - like discovering there is no Zeus.  I stopped believing in god as an adult when I learned about religion from an academic point of view. And of course, I never believed in Zeus.  I was told he was a mythical character from the beginning -- a god people believed in long ago, but not anymore.

I learned there are many gods out there that people still believe in and that in some cases, e.g., Christianity, there are strong punishments for not believing (hell) and strong rewards for believing (heaven) but both are ideas, not actual places. And while there is no way to prove that God doesn't exist, there is no way to prove he doesn't.  I learned lots of other things but those were the main reasons for no longer believing.[/quote]

Speaking as a theist, I think this is the most sensible post in the thread and I agree that atheism is a system of belief, or organized non-belief, rather than discovering a scientific fact.

Also, there are still people who believe in Zeus, but that's neither here nor there.[/quote]

+1. I'm another theist who has no patience with evangelical theology or posting in caps. I agree, however, that OP's concept of "discovering" atheism rests on the premise that it's a system of belief--in the non-existence of a God--that rests on something unprovable, i.e. the non-existence of God. The fact that atheism has no established tenets for how to behave doesn't take away from that.

This--inability to prove the non-existence of God--is the reason some atheist thinkers like Dawkins describe themselves as agnostic instead of atheist. I think Dawkins has said he's 99% atheist but there's always that 1% uncertainty so he's technically agnostic.

Just a small correction: many Christians don't actually believe that non-believers will be punished.[/quote]

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