existence-of-godI know there are varying answers to this because everyone is different…. do many Athiests spend time praying and reading the Bible before concluding that there is no God, or is it a conclusion that is come to based off of the lack of searching or pursuing?
I hope I worded this right…
You worded it very well, though you have embedded two assumptions in the question, which should be made very clear so you don't fall prey to the faulty logic contained therein.
The first assumption is that reading the Bible and praying are valid ways of determining whether or not one should believe in God. This assumption is one only held by those already indoctrinated to believe that there is something special about the bible as compared with any other set of books.
So, whether or not any atheist does this, in no way makes his conclusions more or less valid.
Secondly, the last phrase implies the question, "Are atheists atheist just because they haven't done enough research, and are therefore making unjustified conclusions?"
This is one of those "straw-man" positions that are often presented by believers. How is it a straw man? The question hides the PRESUMPTION that there is a God, then attempts to place the failure for finding him on the Atheist's shoulders, rather than placing the blame squarely where it belongs: On a complete lack of evidence justifying the POSITIVE claims being made by those who assert God's existence.
Richard Dawkins often finds himself confronted with this argument, in the form, "Dawkins clearly doesn't know all of the apologetics of 2,000 years of Christianity, so his conclusions are unsophisticated and invalid." PZ Meyers refers to this type of argument as "The Courtier's Reply." The emperor has no clothes, and it doesn't matter how many courtiers he surrounds himself to expound on the finery of his raiments, or how many dozends of treatises they write on the beauty of the designs. The naked emperor has to support the assertion that he "actually" has clothes on... not the child who says, without study, "Mama, the emperor is naked."
So the answer is, "Atheists (this one particularly) don't believe in God because there is insufficient evidence supporting the concept generally, or specifically (i.e. with respect to specific Gods of specific religions.) There is no reason to adopt the hypothesis and include it in my calculations as to how I will act in the world each day."
Some do, some don’t. I know a lot of atheists who have zero religious education, and zero desire for it. I also know a number of atheists (myself included) who have extensive religious educations.
I think people who spend some thought on these issues tend to be more interesting people, but its certainly not required.
Some people are raised without religion and never feel a need for it.
Some people are raised with a religion and lose the need for it.
Some people are raised with a religion and find that it doesn’t make logical sense, and abandon it.
Some people are raised with a religion and find that it doesn’t make emotional sense — that is, it stops meeting the needs of their lives — and abandon it.
Any or all of those people may have really studied their religion, or not.
Thank god some of them did.
With thousands of years of writings on the subject, for any one person to work through all of it in order to make a decision, it is daunting. I wish it were as simple as respecting my 4th grade teaacher and understanding that there are natural explanations for everything, but a lot has been discovered since then, so continuous study is just part of keeping up in this modern world. Worse, there are all those stories of prayer saving someone’s life, or a near death encounter with Jesus. How can I possibly investigate every one of them?
I have to mix my own intuition and common sense with the experiences of others. Fortunately there are people like Bart Ehrmann and Matt Dillahunty who pursued these questions in depth to help me out. I don’t agree with everything they say, anymore than I agree with my former ministers. I’m thankful for all of them sharing their thoughts.
Personally, I felt some obligation to geniunely pursue faith before I could really say it was a dead end. I think it was Dale McGowan who said he had a feeling when he was young that God did not exist then he spent a couple decades “checking his work.”
I chased him around for a good 25 years or so. Was not only a waste of time, was pretty miserable as well. The thing about chasing around things you can’t possibly find is that, especially if you think you’re supposed to, failure tends to make you feel inadequate.
For about 5 years or so I thought I’d actually found him. Turns out it was only a meth-induced psychotic break.
BTW, you don’t have to buy a deed to the moon before concluding that it’s a scam and you don’t have to read Mein Kamph over and over before realizing it’s not exactly a paragon of moral teachings.
I can only speak for myself, but I had almost no religious education or indoctrination. The few times I did go to church or Sunday school just felt weird, because it was obvious I didn’t feel whatever it was everyone else was feeling. It was never real to me.
As I get older I find myself interested in studying the Bible as a subject on its own, rather than as part of any religious feeling.
Many of the atheists I know came to the conclusion that gods don’t exist only after an extensive and earnest spiritual search. Many pray earnestly to a god during that period of searching. A great many make a deep study of religion, trying to find something there – after all, most of the people we know have some sort of religious belief.
Speaking personally, I spent many years feeling terribly guilty that I didn’t have the strength of faith that many in my family and circle of friends seemed to have. I thought something was wrong with me. I threw myself into the church in the hopes that by serving god, by learning more, my doubts would be resolved.
What I found instead was that the more I learned, the harder I worked, the clearer it was that the question of the existence of gods is irresolvable.
I’m a little concerned by some of the above answers, though there are many good points.
The question itself is either flawed or incomplete. What does the questioner mean when they say “God”? Which God are we talking about? If we are talking about the Judeo/Christian/Islamic God there are many, many strongly differing beliefs about it’s ontology. These differences have been strong enough to spark many a bloody war through the centuries.
So, then, if the question is do Atheists actively try to investigate some sort of ‘other’, that would vary per individual. I feel it is important to make a study of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions because they have so heavily influenced the world in which we live for so long. Even if you do not subscribe to any of those belief systems, understanding them provides valuable context for daily life. I do not know if this qualifies as pursuit of a god or gods.
If the question is, as many assume, do Atheists pursue the (insert denomination or sect here) Christian God I would ask, why should they choose that one? There are a variety of Theistic Religions that one could pursue, and several which have caused less bloodshed than any of the flavors of Judeo/Christian/Islamic traditions. Apart from beginning with an implicit assumption that ‘X’ God is real, and the only correct choice, why should a non-theist concern themselves with a particular god of a particular sect of a particular Religion over another?
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