Do we decide to become atheists?
In my case it was not a conscious decision. It’s more like a rope that was slowly snapping thread by thread until one particular day when my mind was a bit busier than normal tackling the usual questions of the day (why evil? why poverty? why life is unfair? why many priests and bishops seem stupid or lying or ignorant? why? why? why?), the rope snapped completely - I “realized” that the existence of “god” and the hypotheses that are built around this “god” was what was distorting the picture of reality. That the reality that supposes the existence of such a being is an illusion we created; the universe doesn’t care and it doesn’t need a “god” to explain many things we - I - already knew. I wasn’t particularly examining the evidence for or against “god”. I was looking at the world trying to make some sense out of what I see and accept as obvious but I wasn’t being satisfied with the “standard” answers that were so far given me by the Truth authorities. I was trying to unintentionally systematize my thoughts and ideas by trying to resolve the fundamental issues not knowing what it would lead me to. I wasn’t even thinking that I was weighing “god” and the arguments for or against it. Then I crossed the line - it’s “god” itself that was muddling things. I didn’t know “god”, I was only made to believe it. At least that’s how I remember it.
I remember feeling proud and happy about my big “discovery”. 
May 8th, 2008 at 7:15 am
On your statement “not being satisfied with the standard answer”. If the answer is always god then the debate ends. Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society calls the answer of god the debate stopper. When god is the answer, the debate stops and there can be no more inquiry.
I to was not looking to disprove god, but eventually that is where the road led. As children we learn that there is no Santa, angels do not exist, fairy tails are just stories to learn from and not real. As an adult you (naturally) question things, including faith, belief systems, etc… After thiking about such things (I think) one can only conclude there is nothing supernatural, no psychics or clairvoyants, no chi or ki, no such thing as karma or luck. I see that you are based in the islands so..there are no faith healers and no psychic escrimadors that can read your thoughts.
“I was only made to believe it.” That reminds me of what the philosopher Daniel Dennett says in his book, “Breaking the spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomena.” In it he states that there is belief in god and the belief in the belief in god. I think that as children, and even as adults, that is mostly what we all believed in.
Thank you so much for such a great site. I see that your last post was last month. what’s going on now in the P.I..
Kriss
May 10th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
The “god” answer is stupid now that I think about it. It stifles true knowledge and honest inquiry.
I’ll try to post more by staying away from the other sites that I frequent.
cheers!
KSW
June 7th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
This is great. I honestly thought that atheists in the Philippines were but a small minority, found almost exclusively in the many bowels of UP.
On my part, my atheism was deliberate. My inclination towards agnosticism was the gradual development, heartened mostly by years of schooling in the usual rote of Filipino Catholic schools and “mandatory” family traditions. It was those same questions though (why does evil exist? etc.) that got me going. Those questions, and the Old Testament. For the most part, my atheism really is a reaction against the Catholic church, I realize that. But, generally speaking, I just find the whole idea of organized religion (and its various fundamentalist proponents) malevolent, hypocritical, and atrociously divisive. And that’s why I turned away from it. How can one reconcile the infinite diversity of life and frontiers unknown with this limiting, ultimately *small* and dubiously constructed concept of “God”? All that wealth and wonder and mystery being ascribed to the omnipotence and omniscience of this purported divinity? I just find it so baffling and deleterious! Self-proclaimed prophets and messiahs policing our thoughts and writing laws on the basis of some subjective sense of morality… It’s insulting.
Anyway… cheers to you guys for all this. And, as to the question in your title (i.e. Do we decide to become atheists?) I think we do. And that’s what makes it so freeing. Because, odds are, we didn’t have a choice when our parents had us baptized or sent us to religious schools. All that was forced on us, we had nothing to do with it; but the choice to turn away from all that was entirely ours.