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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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 [b]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. [/b]

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]

Poster deemed 'reasonable" here -- I don't think you're in a position to determine what OP meant by "discovering" atheism.  I took it to mean, as op described, how different people came to be atheists.  And as we've seen by the responses, it has happened in different ways.  This is something I had already learned from meeting other atheists, but can see it would be a question for someone thinking about atheism for the first time, from the point of view of a believer.

As for Dawkins, he's being precise in a way most atheists and agnostics are not, in part, I think, because they (and most people) don't really understand the terms.  Briefly, agnostic means not knowing and atheist means not believing. It does NOT mean "knowing" there is no god.  Regarding any supernatural being, humans technically can't know for sure, because such beings are invisible.

Atheists don't believe in god the way they don't believe in other invisible beings, like fairies and gremlins and Santa.  I know it offends religious believers to have god lumped in with that group, but being invisible and impossible to prove using the scientific method are the common elements of supernatural beings, irrespective of their importance in society.  Atheists reject all of them.  Technically, atheists are "agnostic atheists" - they don't know and they don't believe. And some will call themselves that.  Some people who call themselves agnostic feel more comfortable in the "don't know" category.  It doesn't sound as harsh and may imply that they are searching for god -- and maybe some of them are.

Atheism as been improperly defined as "Knowing there is no God."  I don't know one atheist who thinks this way.  Most are science-oriented and realize that God can't be proven. But atheists may also be as unmotivated to disprove god’s existence as religious people are unmotivated to disprove Santa’s existence. Speaking for myself, believing that god is real is as farfetched as believing fairy tales are real.

I suspect the idea of atheist certainty is sometimes taught in church (along with atheists being mean, bitter and without morals).  It's easy to see how someone who doesn't believe in god but who is kind, pleasant and moral might prefer the term [i]agnostic[/i] over [i]atheist[/i].  I prefer the “atheist” and I know some people who formerly called themselves agnostic, are now using the term atheist.  It's more precise and helps to show people that atheists do not fit the stereotype that society has placed on us.
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You write that you "don't know one atheist who thinks" that atheism is "knowing there is no God." I'm not quibbling that you might not think that way, but just a quick glance through this thread will show posters who ask when you "discovered" there is no God, or that they have "100 percent certainty" that there's no God, and I've seen many posts on other threads that express this lack of belief in similar terms.

Also, your efforts to connect lack of belief in a Christian God with fairies and Santa and Zeus -- that it's all a lack of belief in all of it -- doesn't seem quite genuine to me. I've been reading this message board for a long time, and the Muslim threads almost never (if at all, but I can't recall one) invite atheist comment. I've never seen an atheist weigh in on the pagan threads. Or the Hindu ones. Or anything at all about Santa Claus. Again, there may be a rare instance, so I don't want to state it categorically, but I just can't bring to mind any times I've seen that.

But the Christian threads? Open season. So it sounds a bit magnanimous here in what you wrote, and I'm not impugning you if you actually feel that way, but it seems to me that puts you in a vast majority (but I bet even you don't respond on the Muslim posts or the pagan posts).

As a Christian, it's our worldview that this is because the Christian God calls for a moral accountability to someone other than self. Most of the Christians I know and have as friends struggle with many things that we have faith are sins because the Bible tells us that. It's not because we feel superior or want to beat people over the heads. In fact, many of the most sanctimonious people I encounter are just as puritanical from a secular perspective as many Christians are from a religious one. The difference with Christian belief in sin is that our guidepost comes -- or should come -- from the LORD. You might be a moral atheist, but the Bible says that none of us is righteous, and it's the acceptance of this as a fact for ourselves that leads Christians to love God, out of the mercy that He showed us in provided forgiveness through Christ. I'm sure there are Christians who believe out of a desire for "fire insurance," as one PP put it, but many of us love God because we know He's better than us but loves us anyway.

But for a moral atheist? What is your guidepost? How do you know it doesn't truly serve yourself rather than others? And when you fail, isn't it nice that there's no judgment for you for not acting morally toward others? A truly Biblically oriented Christian doesn't think he gets off free when he sins, and the Bible doesn't teach that. So we submit to the law of God and ask Him to help us do what he wants from us. Again, some of us are really bad at that -- and some say they're Christians when they're really not -- but that won't excuse even moral atheists from accounting for their own actions to the God who created them.[/quote]

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