What age were you when you realised God didn't exist

Scanlas The 2nd

I'm proud to say I was 9 about 1 or 2 years after I realised santa didn't exist.

Coriolanus

Oh ffs.

DrumSteve

When I got a lump of coal for Christmas

delonglad

First Santa, The Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy and now God???????? WTF

Lapin

Scanlas The 2nd wrote: »

I'm proud to say I was 9.

So how does it feel to be a 10 year old now?:rolleyes:

howamidifferent

Which God is that? :eek:

Scanlas The 2nd

howamidifferent wrote: »

Which God is that? :eek:

Whichever one you believed in at the time?

Caoimhín

Young enough, I suppose around age 14 or 15. Is just sort of dawned on me that all the nonsense that i had been told in school was simply preposterous.

Oh go away

alexa5x5

Dont think I ever really did believe. Even as a kid I was logical, ask Santa for toys = I got toys. Ask God for toy = no toys. The evidence was there :rolleyes:


I employed more sophisticated thought process later on in life.

Buceph

Surely realisation needs knowledge. And seeing as I can't disprove god in any scientific way, I can't know. I can however choose not to believe because of a lack of evidence and the general stupidity of the idea. So that's what I do.

Scanlas The 2nd

bluewolf wrote: »

Oh go away

jog on

DarkJager

About 11 or 12. I hated having to go to mass anyway from a young age, just seemed a waste of time. Then we started getting religion classes in school, even at that age, everything I was being told just sounded like completely ridiculous bull****. The following school year, I opted for an hours study time instead of religion class and that was the end of it.

Rabidlamb

I was 14 & had been an altar server for years.
I'd read about a Roman emperor around 300 AD (Constadine ???) noticing the growing popularity of Christianity & using it to aid his political agenda.
Then I thought about it & saw it as the greatest mass brainwashing of humankind.
Sure it's great to belong.

thebullkf

how do you know he doesan't?

can you prove he doesn't?

you make the claim-burden of proof lies with you;)

CrazyRabbit

I think it was just after I was born. When that doctor slapped my arse, I just knew that no god would allow such unwarranted violence.

fakearms123

As much as I am pro science and evolution simply because all the facts are there, science still can't prove a "God" doesn't exist so I like to keep an open mind in that sense and I do have some beliefs, beliefs that make life worth living, I do believe that life doesnt end after death that in some way you live on, like when a flower dies, they decompose and some reseed for next year some are bulbs and grow back next year.

I just try to stay positive on death and God, you will find that even the most self-proclaimed anti-religious people when they are in some deep trouble they will be muttering to themselves "Oh please God, oh please God".

Rothmans

Scanlas The 2nd wrote: »

I'm proud to say I was 9 about 1 or 2 years after I realised santa didn't exist.

About the same age as you OP. Then I realised at the age of 9 I didn't know shit .


Now that I'm older and more sensible I do believe again.
/awaits heavy dissing

Dravokivich

It wasnt so much stopped believing or knew he wasnt real... In school I was told he "is..."

Nothing else...

...i was 16 when I found out religion didn't mean "being a christian over being a pagan..." and it didnt really matter being either... The only thing needed to be a good guy is not to be a prick...

I don't see the need in it for myself, so i'm not out there looking for him...

thebostoncrab

I never disbelieved in a God, but as I got older I gave less and less time for religion.

At around 23 I 100% got behind the idea that no religion is right, but I cannot proove or disproove that there is a God.

Vinny-Chase

There's a big difference between religion and God people. Don't get them confused.

jester77

I believed after I saw his miraculous hand and wizadry feet back in 86. He's still alive albeit a few eggs short of a full Easter basket.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbbsytHDp2o

Scanlas The 2nd

thebullkf wrote: »

how do you know he doesan't?

can you prove he doesn't?

you make the claim-burden of proof lies with you;)

No burden lies with me.

I realized I was wrong when I was 9. My realization happened whether there was proof or not. No proof is required really though, just a bit of common sense. It's quite obvious to objective people with basic reasoning abiltiy that it is ridiculous to believe in a God.

Of course I can't prove there isn't a God, but at 9 I realized how ridiculous and astronomically unlikely a God was to exist.

I can't prove that I won't win next weeks lottery, but given the odds and the fact I never buy a ticket I think it would be a bit nonsensical to believe I will win the lottery. So I realize that believing I will win the lottery is wrong semantics aside.

Duggy747

Was never one for mass, praying or anything like that as a kid. Always saw as a waste of time since I utterly dispised having to go to mass and watch everyone mumble the prayers. (I used to mime the words "Mars Bars" so it looked like I knew what I was saying, could never remember the prayers :pac:)

While I never thought of God in the traditional sense of the Bible I'd just accepted that there was probably some higher power that plonked us here. Was around early teens, 13 - 14, when I came to the conclusion that there isn't a God, spiritual mumbo jumbo or anything beyond the 1 life I have.

What always stuck with me was when in 2nd class our teacher brought us out around the outskirts of my town to a crappy, unmaintained graveyard populated with babies & children who weren't christened. The grave was hidden out of sight (out of shame in those days) and we were told that it's residents were stuck in limbo for eternity because some water wasn't splashed on their heads.

The fact that people could go to mass / confessions, clean their slate with God and then carry on causing "sins" for another week while kids in that grave had to pay an unfair price for an "eternity" never sat well with me.

stovelid

I'm a atheist which means I don't spend a large amount of my time thinking about a God I don't believe in or taking those who do to task.

Much in the same way I don't waste too much of my time with incessant undergraduate arguments on forums dedicated to scientifically debunking the existence of unicorns and elves.

Chuck Stone

Buceph wrote: »

seeing as I can't disprove god in any scientific way, I can't know

You're an agnostic rather than an atheist if this 'logic' informs your stance.

Not being able to disprove that there are god(s) doesn't mean that they do not exist.

It can't be disproven that aliens exist on other planets but it is highly likely that they do.

You cannot cite the scientific method and then use it's non-application as a way of disproving something.

That ^^ is so full of contradiction it's difficult to break down.

Orando Broom

Scanlas The 2nd wrote: »

jog on

Keyboard warrior.

Wibbs

Scanlas The 2nd wrote: »

I realized I was wrong when I was 9. My realization happened whether there was proof or not. No proof is required really though, just a bit of common sense.

No proof is required? This is teenage/newage "ohmigodI'mhavinganovelthought!" stuff. Nope you're not. You're really not. This stage usually comes after or alongside the "amItheonlyonethatexistsandalllifeisillusary" notion. Whatever about a personal deity(and whatever floats your boat there) a creator deity or motive "intelligent" force that created the universe is still somewhat up for grabs. It certainly can't be disproven. There are a number of questions we're still asking and some of the current answers are... well out there, some IMHO hooey(tm) masquerading as science. Dark matter/energy for a start. A major fudge to make the existing theories figures fit. If the figures don't fit the equation rather than invent an invisible factor to balance the books, step back and revisit the equation. Think outside the box a bit. If you have ten apples in one hand and 5 in the other, it doesnt just tell you you have 15 apples, it also tells you you got huge fcuking hands. String theory? Nice enough, but unprovable and not a little weird in places(not always a bad thing). Hawkings recent stuff about the time "before" the universe fudges things and explains eff all just puts the creation bit back. Again. "Oh it didn't need any motive external force, just the laws of physics and gravity" yea brilliant that Ted. And where pray tell did they both come from?

Annnnyhoo. :D A creator force of some nature is likely to exist. It may be internal and "natural" to this universe or it could be external and "supernatural". That external may be a blind watchmaker fumbling in the dark or it just might be conscious and directed in building the cogs of our reality. The latter would to all intents and purposes be "God".

Scanlas The 2nd

Orando Broom wrote: »

Keyboard warrior.

waddle on

SeaFields

Duggy747 wrote: »

What always stuck with me was when in 2nd class our teacher brought us out around the outskirts of my town to a crappy, unmaintained graveyard populated with babies & children who weren't christened. The grave was hidden out of sight (out of shame in those days) and we were told that it's residents were stuck in limbo for eternity because some water wasn't splashed on their heads.

The fact that people could go to mass / confessions, clean their slate with God and then carry on causing "sins" for another week while kids in that grave had to pay an unfair price for an "eternity" never sat well with me.

I despise those graveyards as well. There is one by my girlfriends house where there isn't even headstones. Just a plate sized stone flat on the ground. Each stone represents the resting place of a child and there are hundreds of them. I believe for a period of time there wasnt allowed be a funeral/service/blessing either. The father alone of the child had to bury them after dark. Some backward teaching by the church.

Chairman Meow

And at what age did you realise you were a complete bell end?

Scanlas The 2nd

Wibbs wrote: »

No proof is required? This is teenage/newage "ohmigodI'mhavinganovelthought!" stuff. Nope you're not. You're really not. This stage usually comes after or alongside the "amItheonlyonethatexistsandalllifeisillusary" notion. Whatever about a personal deity(and whatever floats your boat there) a creator deity or motive "intelligent" force that created the universe is still somewhat up for grabs. It certainly can't be disproven. There are a number of questions we're still asking and some of the current answers are... well out there, some IMHO hooey(tm) masquerading as science. Dark matter/energy for a start. A major fudge to make the existing theories figures fit. If the figures don't fit the equation rather than invent an invisible factor to balance the books, step back and revisit the equation. Think outside the box a bit. If you have ten apples in one hand and 5 in the other, it doesnt just tell you you have 15 apples, it also tells you you got huge fcuking hands. String theory? Nice enough, but unprovable and not a little weird in places(not always a bad thing). Hawkings recent stuff about the time "before" the universe fudges things and explains eff all just puts the creation bit back. Again. "Oh it didn't need any motive external force, just the laws of physics and gravity" yea brilliant that Ted. And where pray tell did they both come from?

Annnnyhoo. :D A creator force of some nature is likely to exist. It may be internal and "natural" to this universe or it could be external and "supernatural". That external may be a blind watchmaker fumbling in the dark or it just might be conscious and directed in building the cogs of our reality. The latter would to all intents and purposes be "God".

To be more precise I was 9 when I realized there wasn't really a God up in the sky with magical powers. I couldn't prove it then and I can't prove it now but I realized it was madness to believe so.

Vinny-Chase

Duggy747 wrote: »

Was never one for mass, praying or anything like that as a kid. Always saw as a waste of time since I utterly dispised having to go to mass and watch everyone mumble the prayers. (I used to mime the words "Mars Bars" so it looked like I knew what I was saying, could never remember the prayers :pac:)

While I never thought of God in the traditional sense of the Bible I'd just accepted that there was probably some higher power that plonked us here. Was around early teens, 13 - 14, when I came to the conclusion that there isn't a God, spiritual mumbo jumbo or anything beyond the 1 life I have.

What always stuck with me was when in 2nd class our teacher brought us out around the outskirts of my town to a crappy, unmaintained graveyard populated with babies & children who weren't christened. The grave was hidden out of sight (out of shame in those days) and we were told that it's residents were stuck in limbo for eternity because some water wasn't splashed on their heads.

The fact that people could go to mass / confessions, clean their slate with God and then carry on causing "sins" for another week while kids in that grave had to pay an unfair price for an "eternity" never sat well with me.

SeaFields wrote: »

I despise those graveyards as well. There is one by my girlfriends house where there isn't even headstones. Just a plate sized stone flat on the ground. Each stone represents the resting place of a child and there are hundreds of them. I believe for a period of time there wasnt allowed be a funeral/service/blessing either. The father alone of the child had to bury them after dark. Some backward teaching by the church.

Again, that's religion, not God.

Wibbs

Chuck Stone wrote: »

It can't be disproven that aliens exist on other planets but it is highly likely that they do.

Not really. We have an example of one. Earth. And it happened just once here even with our "goldilocks" conditions. Intelligent life? In four billion years it's happened just once and so far only for less than 80,000 years. This may never have happened anywhere else. So "highly likely" has zero objective scientific reality to it. Life is possible elsewhere and it's possible it may on very rare occasions become intelligent and the vastness of the universe lends itself to the idea that they're out there, but "likely" is still a stretch. Plus in an "infinite" universe with infinite possibilities, the possibility has to exist that we are indeed alone, the only light in the wilderness.

Funny we've always needed not to be alone. First it was spirits in nature and ancestors that evolved into more cohesive gods and angels and now with more agnostics out there aliens seem to be required in the human psyche. They're possible at least I suppose.

Wibbs

Wibbs wrote: »

No proof is required? This is teenage/newage "ohmigodI'mhavinganovelthought!" stuff. Nope you're not. You're really not. This stage usually comes after or alongside the "amItheonlyonethatexistsandalllifeisillusary" notion.

Ain't that the truth! It's funny how common it is

SeaFields

Vinny-Chase wrote: »

Again, that's religion, not God.

Yep, thats why I called it "backward teaching by the church".

Wibbs

Scanlas The 2nd wrote: »

To be more precise I was 9 when I realized there wasn't really a God up in the sky with magical powers. I couldn't prove it then and I can't prove it now but I realized it was madness to believe so.

So to be precise you realised there was no Hollywood Sistine chapel god in the sky. Even the most basic theological thought would agree with you.

average hero

Christ almighty, can this PLEASE be the last one of these threads in AH?!?

Rebel021

The age of reason

Killer Pigeon

When I first went into a church.

sbsquarepants

Wibbs wrote: »

Annnnyhoo. :D A creator force of some nature is likely to exist. It may be internal and "natural" to this universe or it could be external and "supernatural". That external may be a blind watchmaker fumbling in the dark or it just might be conscious and directed in building the cogs of our reality. The latter would to all intents and purposes be "God".

Highly unlikely i would say?
If this creator force exists, what created it and so on? Everything has to, by definition, come from nothing - if the universe was created -where did the creator live before hand? Who or what created that place? It goes on infinitely.
We'll never know how all this stuff came to be here, infinity is a concept not an achievable or atainable goal. It's probably way beyond anything we'll ever have the ability to comprehend.
But throwing a god into it is just unneccesary nonsense as far as im concerned. We can't understand so god must have done it. I don't understand how my ipod works, but that doesn't mean god is in there, out of his tits, spinning tiny little decks:D

Scanlas The 2nd

Chuck Stone wrote: »

You'
It can't be disproven that aliens exist on other planets but it is highly likely that they do.

.

read that wrong

Scanlas The 2nd

average hero wrote: »

Christ almighty, can this PLEASE be the last one of these threads in AH?!?

When was there a thread about what age you realized God didn't exist?

MagicMarker

I was -3

Scanlas The 2nd

Wibbs wrote: »

So to be precise you realised there was no Hollywood Sistine chapel god in the sky. Even the most basic theological thought would agree with you.

Yea I agree, but up until 9 I was fairly gullible.

Chuck Stone

Wibbs wrote: »

Not really. We have an example of one. Earth.

This ^^ is the only part of your statement which needs attention - the rest is just blabbering (no offence intended).

You're actually trying to use the scientific fact that there is life on a planet in the universe to surmise that there may not be life on other planets..

say that out loud to yourself over and over

'I'm trying to use the fact that there is life on this planet to put forward the idea that there may not be life on other planets'

So you are using the existance of life on this planet to postualte the non-existence of life on other planets?

That might just have been the most contradictory statement I've ever read.

BEASTERLY

Wibbs wrote: »

This stage usually comes after or alongside the "amItheonlyonethatexistsandalllifeisillusary" notion.

Haha, i remember being told this when i was a teenager, the idea got into my head for a few weeks and i remember being **** scared i was going mad.

On topic, i dont think organized religion is a good thing, it ironically has led to so many sins. But that is totally seperate from god, you dont have to be up front in mass every sunday to believe in god.

In my mind, you cannot disprove god until you can explain all the mysteries of the universe.For example, what's outside the universe? One of my favourite theory of god is that the civilization of a parallel universe became so advanced that they created our universe as an experiment, so god is actually a group of scientists. Thats just one of a million different theories.

The most ridiculous theory i heard is that the universe was just there in a ball of matter before the big bang, it always was, no explanation other than its just common sense to believe that.

dpe

I was 6 or 7. I didn't know at the time but my parents had an agreement that if I should decide for myself about religion (my Mum's a believer, my Dad wasn't), but that I should go to Sunday school in order to make my own mind up. Took about a month for me to realise that the bible made no sense at all (it was Cain and Abel that first got me suspicous), and about another month of coming home every Sunday with more and more "this doesn't make any sense" type questions before me Dad said I didn't have to go any more (my Mum told me years later that he was really pleased at how quickly I'd rumbled it). I'll take the same approach with my own daughter.

pragmatic1

Not until my 20s. But I was never a good Catholic and didnt believe most of the stuff anyway, more a deist than anything.

BEASTERLY

Chuck Stone wrote: »

This ^^ is the only part of your statement which needs attention - the rest is just blabbering (no offence intended).

You're actually trying to use the scientific fact that there is life on a planet in the universe to surmise that there may not be life on other planets..

say that out loud to yourself over and over

'I'm trying to use the fact that there is life on this planet to put forward the idea that there may not be life on other planets'

So you are using the existance of life on this planet to postualte the non-existence of life on other planets?

That might just have been the most contradictory statement I've ever read.

I think you should read his post again. When i take from it is that there is evidence(earth) for life on other planets.

gbee

Hard to say.

From the beginning, born in 1954, I was an avid believer, I was just a stupid kid and have grown up ashamed of it, but that was me.

However, I was also a very questioning kid, my believe in God was absolute but my teachers, family and general behaviour of the public made me suspicious.

I grew up in the second city of the republic were daily prayers, meal graces and evening rosaries were common. I used to be called in from play to pray.

At angelus time in the middle of the day people used to stop what they were doing and drop to their knees in prayer, many taking out the beads and feverishly moving their fingers, delivery drays and [motor] van drivers would stop their vehicles and carts, dismount and kneel right in the middle of the road.

All this confused me as God accepted everything you did as a prayer and lying down in the middle of traffic was never a good idea and having Mrs Jones's cat go late for it milk cannot be what God wanted either.

Then the big change came when they threw out Adam and Eve and then laughed at me for believing in such rubbish. You can do the maths and date this, but that made me question everything and the fact that my parent's lied to me, I've never forgiven them.

The fact that both my most fervent beliefs, Santa and Christ were total fabrications and that my own parents foisted this on me was and is inexcusable.

I wasted a lot of my early life trying to reconcile my differences and naturally the local pub became the new mission. That, of course brought other problems.

So I was still in Primary when I began to change but my beliefs had been so well absorbed that it was well into adulthood and alcoholism that I finally struck off the idiotic veil.

I believe that teaching children religion is child abuse and the law should run its course on the offenders.