From PZ's Place: Pris, Germany, on Why I Am An Atheist:

I was born in Austria to Roman Catholic parents the summer of 1983 and baptised in autumn. We moved to Germany when I was one. I still live there.

We didn’t practice religion at home.

I received the standard Bavarian religious education, which is very thorough.

I went to first communion and confirmation, even became an altar girl and stayed one for years.

Despite all this I’m an atheist. What happened?

Indoctrination failure.

When I was little, god existed for me on the same level as creatures from fairy tales. When I got a bit older I learned that god was this all powerful being that made everything. For some time I even prayed regularly because due to horrible teachers my live at school was terrible. Praying didn’t help.

I always watched the news with my parents, and there are always a lot of bad things happening in the world. I started wondering about how this could happen if god was all powerful and good. Later I learned that this problem was called theodicy.

Another big problem was the existence of hell. If god forgives everything, what does hell exist for?

And don’t get me started on Pascal’s wager.

The older I got, the more inconsistencies I found.

My parents raised me to respect every human being and taught me that there was nothing wrong with being different from the norm in any way. All religious doctrine I ever met went against that.

When I got interested in politics and human rights, all respect for religion went out the window. According to most religious doctrine I’m a second class human or not human at all. Just a mobile incubator.

When I turned eighteen I went to the city hall and left the church. That’s how you have to do it in Germany. I received a letter from the local parish asking me to reconsider, which I ignored.

These days I see myself as a humanist. I follow Kant’s categorical imperative. ‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.’ That is all you need to be good.

To all those reading my ramblings:

Study philosophy, you don’t need to do it in depth, but you will see that religion isn’t needed to be good.

Study history. Pick one region and see how religion influenced conflicts and daily life. Take a hard look at the ‘divine right to rule’.

Study your religion, its history and its philosophy.

The most important thing I ever learned was this:

Think for yourself. Don’t accept anything at face value. Always ask questions.

Pris
Germany

Pris asserts indoctrination failure, which occurred well before the age of 18, when she officially left the church. Specific failures are these:

1. Prayer failed to produce what she requested.

2. She developed the Problem of Evil; she calls it “theodicy”, an odd misinterpretation.

3. She thinks that God forgives everything, therefore there is no need for Hell.

4. She rejects Pascal’s wager.

5. More unstated inconsistencies.

6. OK not to conform to the norm, contra religious teaching.

7. Women are second class humans, or not human at all, in religion.

8. currently a Humanist

9. Good according to Kant’s Categorical Imperative.

Of these, only numbers 1 and 2 could be interpreted as arguments against the existence of a deity (but not against the existence of a first cause for the universe).

Number 1 is a variant on the Vending Machine approach to prayer, where a prayer is inserted and a result is expected to correlate with the prayer. The lack of a correlate result indicates that there is a failure of the vending mechanism, therefore there is no God. But that is not the purpose of prayer, nor is that the expectation for the results of prayer, so the expectation is false, and the argument is not valid.

Number 2 is the standard Problem of Evil, which problem she develops but does not acknowledge the free will argument against it. So the Problem of Evil succeeds for Pris in the presumed ignorance of a solution for it, which in fact show the argument to be false.

The remaining points are without merit for rejecting the existence of a deity, and refer instead to human-based ecclesiasticism.

As always, it would be most useful to inquiring minds to study logic, and to do that completely before launching off into the realm of undisciplined human opinion called philosophy.

Pris invokes the Categorical Imperative derived by Kant as the source for her ethics. The Categorical Imperative is not a frequent contender and is of interest.

According to plato/Stanford, the Categorical Imperative in its primitive form is a license to use people to your own purpose, without regard for the consequences to those people. Hence, the Categorical Imperative, in the hands of a sociopath is Consequentialism. This would not work as a universal source for moral behavior.

However, there is a Humanity Formula which can be applied to the Categorical Imperative. The Humanity Formula is supposed to give an edge of empathy to an otherwise cold, inhumane theory. The Categorical Imperative with the “Humanity Formula” interpretation requires discriminating humans from all else. Humans differ because they have the following unique characteristics:

(a) humans are agents
(b) humans define ends

From plato/stanford:

‘Humanity’ is that collection of features that make us distinctively human, and these include capacities to engage in self-directed rational behavior and to adopt and pursue our own ends, and any other capacities necessarily connected with these.”

This contradicts the Materialist view of humans as non-agents… otherwise humans would be uncaused causers, which places humans outside the auspices of materialist existence.

In order to accept a Categorical Imperative as a source of moral authority, it is necessary to consider that humans are indeed uncaused causers: they have agency, and that is required for successful operation of the Humanity Formula, which in turn gives empathy to moral formulations.

So the CI with HF violates Atheo-Materialism; to claim both is non-coherent. Actually, claiming Atheo-Materialism is non-coherent by itself, but that is a separate issue. But it certainly is not compatible with the Categorical Imperative with the Humanity Formula.

Dabbling slightly in philosophy, as Pris recommends, is hazardous to one’s worldview. Study logic first. Then study philosophy under the critical discipline of logic. One need not go too far, I suppose, to learn that philosophy is merely the opinion of persons who get paid to publish opinions on untestable subjects. And these are the same people who demand evidence for everything. There is not much there which can be called Truth, much less anything of value to a worldview based on Truth.

Summary: Became Atheist probably in early teens, left church at 18; reason, most likely rebellion against authority: anti-ecclesiasticism.