Beliefs on God, the Universe, and Everything

[uBeR]

Originally Posted by FrenchToast

Sure you can. Atheism is as much faithbased as any other ideology, just not in the traditional sense.

That's pretty semantical. Saying "I don't believe in God" is not quite the same as saying "I have faith God does not exist." In the first instance, you say so because you lack the evidence to support the argument that God exists. Does that make you faithful? For example, I lack any evidence that there's a unicorn sitting in my room reading Frege out loud to me. Does that make me faithful? It would be pretty semantical, in my opinion, to say yes. Now, if I say, "I know for sure God does not exist," (i.e. strong atheism that YomMamasHouse mentions), we should judge the merits of that argument based on the evidence. One who lacks evidence for such a statement, I agree, should be considered faithful. If that person, on the other hand, provides some evidence to support his argument, we should judge carefully the merits of what he brings forth, rather simply resort to calling him faithful. That's my opinion anyway.

Originally Posted by YomMamasHouse

What was the deciding moment that resulted in this?

I would not say there was a "deciding moment." If any, it would be when I met some atheists who run a Secular Student Alliance chapter on my campus, which I am now a part of. I suppose that's when I committed myself to atheism and openly declared myself an atheist. It wasn't spontaneous though. Before college and even during the early parts of being in university, I never questioned my faith or religion to any great extent. However, being exposed to academia and arguments that challenged my faith, I began to question it more. That is, I came to rely on reasoning. It was a complex and long process, but I gradually became less convinced of the religious orthodoxy I adhered to as I continued to independently examine that which I put my faith in. I weighed the arguments and the evidence made by both sides and I concluded, through reason, that I should withhold any belief in God, at the very least. I shouldn't believe in things for which I have no evidence. There are also arguments that it should be rejected and opposed completely, a la Richard Dawkings and other strong atheists, which probably have some merit to them too, in my opinion. To be clear, I'm not trying to suggest there are liberal academics ramming atheism down the throats of their students. Very rarely was religion discussed in any of my courses, but when it was, it was in a manner that allowed for free expression of opinion and thought. On the other hand, academia also teaches to be critical, to examine arguments, to reason carefully, and so on. This is one reason why I think philosophy is so important--because these notions are at its foundation. So just the ability to reach a higher level of critical reasoning, which I attribute to university, allowed me to independently conclude through my own research and experiences that I should be an atheist.