Question 29

Are there any atheists who want to believe in a god of some kind?

• I don't /want/ to be an atheist, I simply had no choice in my drift into it from weak theism (the only choice I made was to ask hard questions and seek answers, but even that is my nature). As for believing in gods, sure it would be nice just to close the eyes and sleep the blissful sleep of ignorance. (Gully Foyle #23)

• I think Gawd, Jeezus, and Casper the Holy Spook is a load of crap. My rational side eschews theism as intellectual suicide.

  Last February I announced that I had converted to atheism, yet that giving it up was a painful process. It is a year later, yet I am only too familiar with mystical longings, although they are not as intense or frequent as they once were.

  Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night, I get the irrational urge to pray. This also happens in times of fortune or distress, when I feel the need to thank or cry out for someone. It often comes down to a war between my theistic yearnings and my equally strong desire to be free from superstition.

  A daily dose of rationality from contact with a.a and reality helps, but I am looking for a permanent cure without these flame-ups. I suppose that time is the only medicine.

  In another sense, I would like for some fairy tales to be true, such as a pleasant afterlife. However, I don't really want to be a theist, because I know that it's just a fantasy. It isn't so much a choice as the only rational option. (Peter Kirby #16)

• Ok, I'll break ranks here. Yes I would love to have my consciousness continue onward. Since I don't want to die anymore than anyone else if there was a way out of it I would be very pleased. However in the end what I want is irrelevant and what is will be. (Shawn Burks #1074)

• Hell no! The very thought of blind faith makes my skin crawl. (Lilith #328)

• Er...No, not me. My mind is free; why would I want to enslave it again? (Paul J. Koeck #360)

• I used to want to believe. Now? Nope. No gods for me. The whole concept of worshipping some entity, praying to it for whatever, is totally repugnant to me. (Nicolas P. Demers #155)

• I am prefectly happy with the way I am. Have been since I tossed the fairy tales into the garbage bin over 28 years ago. (Keith Brannen #713)

• AMEN, BROTHER!!!

  Ahem.

  Honestly, I can't see myself falling back into that pit I fought long and hard to climb out of. Especially the "heavenly" monotheistic, patriarchal terror regimes deny and damn everything that I am, everything that I stand for, and stop at nothing to crush people with myths of sin. Never again. (Sarah Jaernecke #1102)

• When I started coming to grips with reality and admitting to myself that I was an atheist I kept feeling like I was going to get zapped by lightning or something bad would happen to me. Well, it never happened. It took me a while to really get over that guilty feeling, like I was doing something bad. Part of the guilt was directly caused by the Xtians around me, but my admission was an incredible release of stress and tension.

  Years later I feel much more peaceful overall than I did in my pre-atheism days. I am no longer forced to measure myself against some ficticious yardstick of "moral" behavior.

  I went through the theist, deist, atheist stages and I think many other atheists did too. (Kevin Huber #1274)

• Most folk that I hear that from think that it would be nice to put your trust in something outside and never have to make a decision again. Personally, that sounds like a ghastly idea to me, I do not envy all those who cease to think and only follow, no matter how wonderful the idea they follow seems to be. (Suzane)