What is your personal belief?

That's a very interesting point Conrad and ofcourse one that's impossible to answer. I dare say that for some aetheists, there is some kind of psycological motivation that comprises some part of the foundation of their belief.

However, I would say with near certainty that, for an aetheist, there was some kind of psycological (possibly emotional), motivation involved in their undertaking of aetheism, even if it does not exist (no pun intended) after the point where one describes him/her self as an aetheist.

I thought it was especially engineers who believe in God - and creation in particular - apparently they are prone to see "design" in everything. On the other hand, scientists who work in a science field related to evolution theory almost all reject creation; 99.86% in a poll about 20 years ago in the USA (country with relatively many creationists).

Generally though, a smaller percentage of scientists believe in God than the population of a country as a whole. I suspect this is because they have to critically examine alot of things, without bias, and as such it becomes easier to see the flaws in the 'arguments' for God, and there is little to no (peer) pressure on them to be impressed by those arguments

Are some of us atheists because:

...

3. Because we have a rebelious nature, and atheism is just a "rebel's religion"?

This is exactly the reason why I chose not to believe - my parents were (are) Christians, though they don't practise their religion alot, and during puberty I wanted to disassociate myself from them a little. Not that I called myself an atheist, actually I considered myself agnostic for years and thought atheists were foolish, claiming to know there is no God, until I was repeatedly explained (by Stegocephalian among others) that agnosticism and atheism overlap..

However I grew out of that rebellious nature and now I reject the idea of a God simply because there is no credible evidence.
And I would also say there would be no atheists if there wouldn't be theists, people who claim there is a God, in the first place - it is merely a response on our part.

But yeah I think it is an important point that atheists tend to be rebels or outcasts. This is probably because in most areas/countries one religion or another dominates (christianity, islam) and a dominating religion brings alot of connections, identity, values etc. to them, so those who do not have much of a connection with their society tend to reject the dominating religion more often.

 Now you've hit somewhat of a pet peeve of mine here - did you really choose not to believe? This language of choise when it comes to belief is something I see Christians using, and many atheists apparently going along with, yet I don't think I ever made a conscious decision not to believe - quite on the contrary, every conscious choise I did make, during my long process of deconversion, was in an effort to preserve the faith; I became an atheist not because of a choise to become one, but inspite of trying, as hard as I could, to choose not to become one; it turned out that I really didn't have any choise in the matter.

I am wondering whether, if you truly could consciously choose not to believe, you ever genuinely believed in the first place - after all, you cannot, I presume, choose to stop believing that, say, the sun will rise tomorrow. This is because your acceptance of the motion of the Earth that causes sunrise, and of celestial physics precludes the notion that the Earth's rotation would suddenly stop overnight. Any idea you might entertain that this might happen is ultimately just pretending, and not changing your belief on the matter.

Back when I was a Christian, to me God's existence and the basic Christian doctrine was as certain as the motion of the planets. I would have been quite as unable to "choose" to stop believing in it, as I would have been to "choose" to stop believing in any fact that I saw as founded in extensive experience and practical evidence. Because I believed in hell (despite the fact that I found it a horrendous concept), and that salvation depended on my faith, and had believed that since I was very young, I further had a psychological block against examining my beliefs too closely. It took a long time before the inconsistencies and problems began to pile too high to keep brushing under the carpet, so to speak, and ultimately the cognitive dissonance became too much to bear - and one day I found that I simply did not find Christianity plausible anymore.

It's not that I chose not to believe, but that choosing to believe what I had believed for so long had suddenly become akin to belieiving that the moon is made of cheese.

So I'm always baffled when I hear people talking about "choosing to believe", and wonder if they really are capable of such a feat. Surely, if such a choise is available to you, you cannot have been genuinely convinced of the prior belief; otherwise, no act of will could have swayed you. Could you now choose to start belieiving in the existence of a god again? I know that that is certainly beyond the range of my conscious will.

It seems to me that we are persuaded by evidence, and experience to come to the beliefs about the world that we hold, and that conscious choise "willing yourself to believe" rarely plays a part.

I've only read your first paragraph Stego, but I think you misunderstand what Alphastar was saying.

He was referring to how he came to be aetheist: it was a conscious decision - he did indeed choose to class himself as an aetheist, because, at that point, it was a way of rebelling. He didn't say he now chooses to be an aetheist, he said that at the point he 'took-up' aetheism, it was a matter of choice.

 I understand that perfectly, and that was what I was questioning in my post - whether or not it is possible to make such a choise, when you are a believer, to become an atheist. (Or, for that matter, for an atheist, to suddenly decide to believe in a god.)

Could you, by choise, right now, choose to become a theist - to genuinely start believing that there really does exist a god - if I offered you an incentive to do so?

I suspect you couldn't - I certainly couldn't. I could always pretend to believe, but I could not genuinely switch my belief as a matter of conscious choise. That seems to me to be a universal feature of genuine belief - if you really believe something to be true, then you need to be persuaded by evidence of some sort that that something is not true, to change your mind. You can't do it just because you might want to, or because there's some incentive to change your mind. Or if you can, then your mind seems to work in a fundamentally different way from mine.

125k provided the common 'reasoning' used by most believers to support their faith in the existence of God.

I used to think the same way before I was exposed to the methods of modern science...it seems that time and time again we find that believers have very little education in the sciences! Hopefully Alphastar [and Stego in other threads in the open forum] shone some light on the subject.

By the way, the open forum has a rib-tickling [some may find the discussion bordering on insanity]debate going on between several 'scriptural-genii' about how to interpret passages from the Bible.

http://www.chess.com/groups/forumview/god---does-he-exists?page=8

what common reason do you think it is that causes me to believe? i believe because i was blessed by god to believe in him first and for most. then it there are clear signs that are apparent for those who are believers. i'm not talking about supernatural signs ether.

once a man or a woman takes a step towards faith with true intentions god comes closer to them, metaphorically speaking. and once you walk towards faith with true intentions faith runs towards you. only worshipers with true intent of worship receive the guidance.

this world can be explained and theorized by science, where if it can't be proven it is of no existence. look back in to history, scientists where incapable of explaining a lot of the facts that are known today.

i believe the path i was blessed with by god was islam. and what strengthened my path/faith was psychology. the muslim faith if looked at as a whole, meaning the big picture and not selected text and quotes, is the most complete and most knowledgeable sources in understanding true sociological strengths.

to truly understand yourself and the world that we live in, there is no better source than psychology. psychological awakening allows man to achieve values and highs that no fact in the world can give you on it's own. i can't tell you if most people believing in god have the same guidance. not to say it is better or worst, just that god shows his true believers there own path, practicing true faith. what is most important is that all ,god guided, paths arrive to the same destination.

even tho i love my fellow man and woman for the sake of god. god wiling on the day of reckoning, i will not feel for them when they are punished for there defiance. because if mankind wants to receive guidance with true intent in his or her hearts god will not refuse. no matter the path they led before they repent.

thanks, everyone for listening to me, because i have listened to you.

125k_A - first, you misunderstand science entirely when you say that in science " where if it can't be proven it is of no existence".

This is does not bear any resemblance to how science works. First, science never "proves" things - it merely provides theories which are accepted tentatively as true, to the proportion that they are supported by evidence.

For example, germ theory (the theory that microscopic organisms cause disease) is supported by such a wealth of empirical evidence, and has shown such practical success in modern medicine, that nobody aware of this evidence really genuinely doubts it. Yet strictly speaking, it is not "proven" - it is still tentatively accepted, though I cannot fathom what new evidence could possibly show it false.

The second mistake is in you thinking that science denies the existence of things it can't explain - that is false, science does no such thing. Science does not pretend to know everything, and openly admits to phenomena existing for which they have no satisfactory explanation yet - for example, the nature of dark matter is still a mystery, with different hypotheisis proposing answers, but none confirmed by any significant evidence. Yet if science were to work the way you think it works, this would have to mean that science would deny the existence of dark matter. It of course does no such thing.

Think about it - how could science ever discover anything new, if it denied the existence of the things it cannot currently explain?

Science does not deny the existence of anything, but it doesn't affirm the existence of things it has no empirical evidence for - and that evidence can even be very circumstantial for science to consider the idea.

The second thing I found interesting in your post is that you say that "psychology" strenghtened your faith - for me, psychology was one of the major things that led me to question the validity of faith claims. Have you actually studied psychology, and the multitude of biases and mental phenomena, grounded in the neurology of our brains, that can lead us to falsely affirm whatever we believe, to notice evidence only selectively, to emphasize things which affirm that which we believe, and to discount things that go against? Have you read about the scientific study of human religiosity? Have you studied the numerous psychological experiments that show memory to be a fickle thing, with remembered past events bearing resemblance to what actually happened only as far as it suits the worldview and expectations of the person remembering?

I can think of few subjects as likely to engender doubt in the validity of religious claims as the study of human psychology.

Cret1n - as tempted as I am, I'm currently staying away from any more active forums, as I am too busy with "real life" at the moment to afford to write the sort of long posts that I cannot resist not writing, when faced with certain kinds of stimuli... the kinds that too many threads in the open forum provide in abundance.

125k, I think deconversions and ones personal beliefs always have to do with psychology. You can view the psychology of humans from a viewpoint that humans are rational, and a viewpoint that they are irrational.

I would argue that, since someone's beliefs are often shaped by his social surroundings (ie. what do his parents believe, all his friends at school, etc.), a conversion from belief to disbelief is more rational, as that has little to nothing to do with peer pressure.

(Note that a decision being rational does not necessarily mean that the decision is correct as well.)

I feel sorry for MrPopTart, only 16 years old and already becoming a real fundie.

Ignostic naturalist.

I don't think people really know what they mean when they say the word god, and everyone has a different idea of it. It's impossible to argue against such a multiplicity, and unless someone can give me a coherent definition of god, there's no point in me arguing as to whether he may exist or not. This is ignosticism.

Most people that give a definition of god basically make him the god-of-the-gaps, which I consider to be an incoherent definition - any god of the gaps makes more (or bigger) gaps than he fills.

I think some kind of power greater than our own could exist, and I don't put it beyond possibility that it might have helped in some way to create humanity at some stage. This isn't the definition many people would give of god, but it's an interesting thought. Some examples:

- powerful aliens

- we are all in the matrix, and the creation of some kid with a mega-powerful computer, and technically, he is our god.

- some kind of unconscious naturalistic life-form that has helped shape natural history

The naturalist part basically means that the word supernatural, requisite for most ideas of god, is nonsense, and not coherent. If something appears to be supernatural, it is either false data, misinterpretation of natural law, or a consequence of an as yet undiscovered natural law. Naturalism, to me, meanst that everything that happens in the universe is governed by laws that can be inferred through science, and nothing is above those laws.

I am an Atheist.

I believe man created the gods, not the other way around.

To me, "God" is a crutch for those who need to externalize responsibility for their own lives. I am my own god, no one holds more power over my life than me.

Nature is my god.  To do good, my religion.

(Sorry about my English - my first language is Afrikaans) I'm a christian, but not by choice! I am from a Reformed tradition, that will help you understand my position better. I doubt god everyday. Many times I've tried to believe in him passionately and emotionaly. But I struggle because I don't see him (face to face); I don't feel him (I can't touch him or a idol of him). I can't prove that he exist because I can't fit him under a microscope or into a telescope to study him (or her?). But I can cannot believe in him! Although I say all these things about god, I just accept him. By what force inside me and/or outside me I'm not sure, but its something I can't explain. Reason didn't work, experiments also didn't work, nothing I tried did helped me. Therefore I don't see god as a christian god, or a Jew god, or Allah. God is him (or herself), not something or someone manmade. No man can control him, he can do what he wants and when he wants. Part of him resembles what I read about Jesus in the New Testament Bible because nobody on earth can be so unselfishly as he was. If he was a product of man, then they would have done a much better job to portray him (and to end his life on a cross!).

I've got a lot of sympathy for those who can't believe or who are atheists of agnostics and I don't want to argue with you because I also believe that any argument can't change anybody. Its just something that god gives to you. You don't even have to accept it.

SJCorrie - some interesting things to comment on your post.

You say:

"Part of him resembles what I read about Jesus in the New Testament Bible because nobody on earth can be so unselfishly as he was. If he was a product of man, then they would have done a much better job to portray him (and to end his life on a cross!)."

There are aspects of the story of Jesus that sway me towards considering it likely that the story was losely based on somebody who actually lived - namely something you allude to here. There are aspects of the story that ring true because they are inconvenient to the believers - for example, the issue of where Jesus was born. Early Christians believed that the messiah was prophesized to be born in the town of Bethlehem, so, as the Christians believed Jesus to be the messiah, he MUST have been born at Bethlehem. But the problem was that Jesus was from Nasareth. Now I'm working entirely from memory here, as I'm feeling too lazy to actually dig up the Bible passages, but each of the gospels has a different way of dealing with this problem - one of them actually does not deal with it at all, and has a passage where the pharisees are arguing that Jesus cannot be the messiah, since he is not from Bethlehem - and Jesus, for some mysterious reason doesn't argue against that.

The Gospel of Luke is the only one that gives a story of how the pragnant Mary got to Bethlehem for the birth. Supposedly, there was an empire wide census where everybody had to go to the city of their ancestry, which itself is dubious - imagine the logistical nightmare of having people all around the empire shuffling around to go to the town of some ancient ancestor, like Mary and Joseph supposedly did, going to the town of David!

Not only that but the nice thing is that this one story can be checked against Roman records. The romans were meticulous record keepers, and kept good record of events such as censuses. There was no empire wide census in Herod's time, nothing at all that could accomodate the story. The story is entirely made up.

But the fact that such creative writing was done to explain away something that apparently didn't match prophesy about Jesus, seems to me to indicate that most likely there was an actual man from Nasareth called Jesus around whom all the stories were accumulated. How much this man resembled the man (or men, as Jesus seems to differ in essential bits between the gospels) in the Biblical stories is anyone's guess - mine would be that not very much at all.

After all, the gospels were not written by eye-witnesses, but by anonymous people who lived well after Jesus's time. Later Christian authorities labled the anonymous gospels with the names of desciples.

Also what clearly points to the mythical nature of the Jesus narrative, is the fact that Jesus was not the only, and not the first (by far) of savior god-men to be worshiped in the middle east. Stories told, for hundreds of years before Jesus, about these other God men included virgin birth, with a god impragnating a human mother (a very common theme), being born in a cave or a stable, being visited by wise men, and cattle hearders, and given gifts, being marked by a star in the sky, ect. ect. Traditionally these God men were celebrated on the 25th of Descember, and Christians adopted this day for celebrating Jesus too.

It is not difficult to surmise that many of the miracle-stories that passed around, about different god-men, were included into the story of Jesus. After all, you had to be competitive in the marketplace of ideas.

I always believe in the strongest and most powerful God.

After Nietzsche killed God, I believed in Nietzsche.

(A shame that he is in heaven) .    But no, the worms have eaten him, 

since then I believe in Worms. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6rTDmrdGp8&feature=related

Ergo: enjoy yourself, play as mach chess as you possibly can and eat well, so the worms won't have to go starving on you.

I like eating chicken, chicken eats worms .. o dear me, my worm is - in human terms - a cannibal.

I believe that Nietzsche eat chicken, does this mean that Nietzsche was a cannibal too? Or did he -at the end- eat himself ??