Think I'm growing out of atheism

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you haven't grown out of atheism because it does not even exist.

This is fodder to skeptics.

Near as i can tell, that's the "new atheism" - where people follow Dawkins instead of some other leader.

There are a troubling number of self-avowed atheists who want something codified, something to believe in, etc.

their avowed lack of faith is weak.

IMHO Dawkins is a smart guy, and frequently correct, and an ass. The frequency of his correctitude is vastly enhanced by his ability to paraphrase others without attribution.

And in that sense he makes a fine shepherd.

But i didn't part from the flock to join another.

One of my favorite quotes from Ravi Zacharias is "there is no point in cutting off someone's nose and then giving them a rose to smell." He was referring to sharing his faith with others. I too think Dawkins is an extremely smart man, but if he is looking to attract ppl, i think he does an awful lot of cutting off of noses.

It's tough to be too sure of anything really if you keep yourself open to taking in new information.

I had several years of being both reductive materialist and full-determinist. As of now I think the full-determinist part of that sticks (albeit maybe it doesn't adapt well for psychological usage and sits on the back burner) but I've gotten to be very doubtful of the notion that conscious is limited to neurons firing.

One thing I do feel confident in sharing - the more you dive off the deep end of mysticism and the like the more two-dimensional and less adequate the standard definitions of God vs. no-God seem to be. Particularly in mystic treatises where God is literally likened to be the No-Thing, or the Arabic zero, or if you start considering what's up beyond Kether on the tree of life, that you start seeing a God that defies both doctrinal belief and material concepts of the big bang - flirting with both but really fitting neither.

There are religions aside from Christianity so why is that the one your moving towards aligning with, like what's so special about it that makes it stand out from other religions you could come to subscribe to? I am actually curious.

*sigh* I am an athiest because simply the fact I dont find it possible in any way shape or for for such a god to exist and even so if he did he does not seem perfect, has made many flaws, has insecurity issues and demanding attention and changing his ways in the new testament so naw hes not real, and if he is, the bible is wrong and he is not perfect, feel free to smite me but it is what it is!

A few things I'd like to say on comments that have been made here..

There is a difference between an atheist and an anti-theist. Atheists simply aren't religious. Anti-theists speak out against religion.

Willingness to be open to the possibility of a god, is an atheist concept, not an agnostic one. Think about it. If you truly believed that there was a 50/50 chance that you'd get killed in an accident, you'd stay home. Instead, you accept that the possibility always exists, but carry on with your day, anyway.

There also is a need for anti-theists, whether they annoy you or not. The problem isn't the anti-theists, it's the way that we're all self centered and we take things personally. The idea is to wipe out the popular notion that your beliefs cannot hurt anyone, when, in fact, they can, and often do. Many are anti-theist because of the religious abuse that they endured as children, with no outlet in which to speak out and get help. Religion has this safety net in which all people involved hold the firm belief that the word is good, and cannot be questioned or criticized. This affects the lives of their own children and others around them.

If we lived in a world where children weren't abused and thrown out of their homes for having different beliefs, or were properly educated so that they could survive on their own as adults.. and religious law didn't affect our society as strongly as it does.. Then sure, anti-theists would be jerks... And maybe some are just jerks.. I don't know. I don't understand why someone would take the time to study religion so thoroughly only to argue against it with the intent of simply being an a**hole.

It's interesting how it always seems to be the people who need the to be heard the most who are the most easily dismissed.

Sweetleaf, i am assuming this was for me? I will try to give a short version but realise there is no way i can do justice to this question in a comment thread. I was raised in a Mennonite home--we had electricity and cars, but as a child i was dressed plainly with the pigtails, mom wore a head covering, etc. It was a religion but as much as a religion it was a culture.

As a teenager, i started examining the beliefs i was raised with. I already knew the Bible pretty well--we went to church just about every time the doors were open and i also was sent to a Christian school. Both at church and at school it involved a lot of Bible teaching and scripture memorization.

But as i said, it was a culture and i couldn't just blindly buy it all, hook, line and sinker. I did not see why the plain dress, abstinence from all alcohol (not all Mennonites believe alcohol is evil but the church i went to did), no tv, and other things. The church my parents attended was having the same thoughts on dress and televisions (although most of the members still do not drink alcohol even now). The church underwent a gradual change from very plain to a style of dress that is mostly what typical ppl in our area wear; many of the members would not stand out in a crowd now. Television came on the scene for many about then too. At this point, i started distancing myself from the Mennonite culture although i would still say there are a lot of things about me that are part of my growing up years.

Anyway, taking what i had learned of the Bible in my growing up years, i was hesitant to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But not blind faith either--that is no anchor when life gets stormy. Looking at the world around me, i believe the Bible simply makes sense. It teaches that there is a God. Looking at nature, at the statistical probability of nature and man coming into being by evolution...can't see it all coming from a big bang. Intelligent design makes far more sense to me.

Looking at the evil in the world around me--the abuses, illness, death, pain...it makes sense that we are fallen from what we should be (Genesis chapter 3). If we are now what we are originally meant to be, why this angst at pain? Why this yearning for something better? Where does love come from anyway? I believe that there has to be an ultimate Goodness. And the concept of sin makes sense to me too--how do you explain things like child molestation, genocide, and other horrors that exist in the world without saying "this is WRONG!" ?? If there is a wrong, there has to be sin. But yet, if there is evil there is good. Without Goodness, there is no measure of the concept of evil. C.S. Lewis explains this better than i can in his book "Mere Christianity."

So, if we are fallen...what do we do? Is there hope for mankind? Again, in the Bible we find the story of Jesus Christ. There are authors who have made a study examining the evidence for Jesus. One is Lee Strobel, a former atheist, who wrote "The Case for Christ" and the "Case for Faith."

But, for my purposes, let's go with Jesus being real and being a historical figure and a Jew. Either he was the real deal or He was completely bat-sh$#@ crazy. He claimed to be God incarnate and perfect in the form of a man. The Son of God sent to die to take away the sins of the world. (This is where the old testament comes in, for the understanding of Jewish sacrifice. He was the ultimate sacrifice for sin. But that's a longer story.) I'm gonna go with He was the real deal. His death is a historically documented event. But no one ever found His dead body and there were over 500 witnesses to His resurrected body after His death and resurrection.

This is where Jesus differs from other religions...redemption. More later if you have other questions or pm me if it will hijack the thread.

Anything you look for you will find, that's what confirmation bias is about.

Deconversion and conversion stories interest me, even though in my mind you're regressing and not progressing.

I'm sort-of-Christian as I've mentioned before.

I am drawn towards unearthing Europes pagan past though. Christianity was spread with sword and violence, which, the more I read about it, leads me to question the true motives for promulgating the religion.

People are complex. I know Christians who I don't agree with at all, and others who I feel a kinship with. The latter tend to be more pragmatic, curious and open minded.

I talk best with atheists though. Not the fedora tippers, but those who have a genuine interest in nature, science, philosophy etcetra. Discussing ethics, philosophy and science with atheists tend to be much more stimulating unless the Christian I discuss with is particularly curoious, open minded, gnostic, or otherwise a person who isn't set in his ways.

People are complex individuals, and they're always changing. Religions are inflexible by default, and this is where the dissonance usually happens. A person either has to limit his growth to correspond with the particular flavor of religion, or he has to put aside certain aspects of that religion to accomodate to growth.

Warner Heisenberg said that "the first few sips of the natural sciences make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass you find God waiting".

I can imagine someone taking that journey: being forced to abandon the literal belief in the stories of the Bible, and with that a belief in the theology that goes with that. But then concluding that there is some kind of sentient force running everthing when you get to the bottom of how the Universe works. But this second theism that you would get "at the bottom of the glass" would have to be a very different (more mature) kind of theology than the one you had before taking the first sips. You couldnt be a YEC Fundy. You might not even be a Christian at all, but some kind of hybrid Diest/Buddhist. You might not be an atheist anymore, but you would still be a heretic.

I have known chemists and biologists who have remarked that some reactions, some ratios of elements, even some apparent laws of physics that apply to our daily lives, seem Too Convenient.

They also agreed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

An all-powerful, vengeful sky father that requires ritual and worship? Nah.

A far more advanced life form? Sure, could be.

I think panentheistic monism might be the best way to phrase that.

The same thing seems to happen in reverse with the mystic and ceremonial magic communities as far as I can tell; that is they start by probing the subjective side of it, usually starting with whatever esoteric/gnostic variant of their local theology that they can apply as an analogy (ie. something that offers an actionable mystic roadmap). From there they seem to drift into something increasingly mechanical and hierarchical that - as you put it - seems to have a combination of traits similar to Buddhism and deism.

I'll go with that.

"Pantheistic monism", or perhaps "pantheistic monotheism".

It's not a huge deal but one of the things I might mention as a definition of terms; there is a slight difference between pantheism and panentheism. Very similar viewpoints just that pantheism would assert the universe is deity, panentheism would assert that the universe is within deity (ie. deity is universe +).

A good example of the later is the Lurianic tsimtsum concept albeit I think the idea of deity 'vacating a space within itself' to create with seems like an unneeded step that's just there to assist habitually dualistic thinkers (limit perception to a certain range, such as our experience of the electromagnetic spectrum, and you have an artificial 'space' that may not even really be a space in the proper sense). If the Information Theory or Zero Universe interpretation of QM ends up holding water that does better at explaining the same concept just by the suggestion that this is what it's like to experience an information-based system from the inside.