UberKuh

I can partly agree with Chad at first blush, but whereas he seems to be implying that atheists are atheists because they are in revolt against God (or the concept of God), I see it differently.

I am a 39-year-old atheist who was a strong Christian believer until about four years ago. While it is true that a particular bad experience in my mid-30s added fuel to the fire of my "deconversion," it was bad childhood experiences that led me at age 12 to try to find answers, and then to declare myself a "real" Christian. (Prior to that I believed I was "affiliated" with Christianity and God through my parents--that I was too immature to personally have the kind of relationship with God that the church seemed to demand.)

My first questioning of Christianity came, naturally enough, in Sunday school, which I naively took to be a forum for learning, rather than a remedial course for proapaganda. So my initial questions were of the Doctrinal type. I wanted to make sure the Christian argument could withstand scrutiny. (The writing of C.S. Lewis was a great help to me at this time.) Then, as I became an older teen and formed a capacity for critical thinking, naturally my questions took more of a Logical form. However, I accepted the teaching that there were some things about God that would not be explained to me for a long time, if ever. I believed that God would guide me, would make things clear to me at the "right" time.

So for a long time all my questions (mostly brushed off by more experienced Christian teachers and ministers) were just academic, just a list of personal thoughts. But what gave them emotional force and made them really vital was when I began to pray specifically for some desperate needs, for guidance and knowledge. I believed God would not leave me alone and in the dark. I believed He had answers and help for me. The standard cop-outs in the mouths of believers (God always answers prayers, He has a plan for you, you just have to be right with Him) stopped sounding believable and started sounding like just things they used to distance themselves from me.

I got scared. I believed that if God was the good, kind, trustworthy Father the church made him out to be, that things would be much different, not only for me, but for everyone and everything. At this point I guess you could say I was going through the Affective and Ethical types.

So I plunged back into the Doctrinal, Logical arguments and ideas that had led me to Christianity in the first place. For several years after that "theist" D and L battled it out with "atheist" D and L in my worldview. I flung every prayer out of me like a random shotgun blast, not knowing whether it was reaching anything. I tried to reinforce the tottering structure of my faith with any likely piece of Christian lumber I could find.

Finally I had some sort of Zen-like moment. It was Easter Sunday, and I was actually reading the Bible, reading Matthew, trying to figure out what door I should have been knocking on, what question to ask next. All of a sudden it all just stopped making sense. I looked at the words on the page, and wondered how I ever did think their message was helpful, inspired, noble, holy, or good. I felt disgusted with myself in the same way a person does who suddenly realizes how obvious it is, from hundreds of signs he pushed away, that his spouse is having an affair. I suppose that was something like the Intuitive type mentioned above.

Again I wanted to make sure that these new ideas withstood scrutiny as my religion had not. I once again began to the Doctrinal, Ethical, and Logical arguments, this time for atheism. And after a few years, that is where I am today.

I've spoken to other atheists who were brought up as atheists. Most of them don't go through anything like the drama I did. Most of them are simply like those people Tanooki Joe mentioned, skeptical, just like you'd be skeptical of anything that you thought didn't add up. No argument has yet convinced them. Other "hereditary" atheists I've spoken to did have a religious period in their lives, usually because they wondered what all the fuss was about and were too naive to understand when there can be smoke but no fire.

The rare ex-atheist Christians I've spoken to have always turned out to be people who were originally brought up Christian but became atheists to make an impression, for example, wanting to be thought intellectually sophisticated by friends or love interests, or wanting to shock their parents and family. I've never heard of anyone who, brought up as a modern atheist, became a Christian and stayed that way for the rest of their lives.