Well, perhaps you can answer the question I put to Wayfarer then. What are these questions which a belief in God causes you to ask that were not there before?

Well, the first one is the ideal of love viz. memes. And through revelation (revealed knowledge) an awareness of same.

For example, say an individual grows-up in a dysfunctional environment that does not validate love. Say that person grew-up in a drug infested high crime area and that's all the person knows to survive. That is what they've been taught to survive.

As a result, that same person may be confused, sad, or otherwise in time, come to develop feelings of so-called existential angst. They may even be subconscious feelings. They do bad things to themselves and others but don't really understand or know why they do what they do. Almost like animal instinct.

Maybe then they come into a situation of prolonged isolation, near death experience, an accident or unhappiness and calamity of some sort. They decide to make an attempt at introspection and/or spiritual guidance. Then by coincidence, happenstance and Revelations occur. A revealed knowledge about a some-thing that was missing. The resulting feelings of that new revealed knowledge has liberated that person. It has made that individual break free from, as Wayfarer implied, another form of meme. Now they want more. More revelation.

From a human condition standpoint, they are now seemingly operating from a new paradigm or meme that is much more heathier. So in this case, now, that person doesn't rely on their old consciousness as a way to survive. Essentially speaking, their quality of life has changed. They have a renewed consciousness about themselves; a new awareness about their condition.

Did God do it or was it a coincidence that that person had a transformation...I do not know. Was that knowledge there the whole time; they just needed to introspect to find it...I don't know.

But that person knows.

Philosophically, in part, is that a Subjective truth? What would someone like SK say?

What part of that is a question?

The religious experience: Subjective Truth's/Soren Kierkegaard...you'll figure it out, I think....

In the meantime, not to drop book titles, but William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience is pretty much a lucid, classic read, if you don't have it already... .

I asked you what questions religious beliefs cause one to ask that were not present before. It's not a complicated request, it doesn't require preliminary research. Just give me an example of an existential question a religious person might ask, as a result of their becoming religious, that they would not have asked otherwise.

I'd recommend you look at the untenable Atheist thread OP. There are ton's of questions over there...

LOL

For example, say an individual grows-up in a dysfunctional environment that does not validate love. Say that person grew-up in a drug infested high crime area and that's all the person knows to survive. That is what they've been taught to survive.

As a result, that same person may be confused, sad, or otherwise in time, come to develop feelings of so-called existential angst. They may even be subconscious feelings. They do bad things to themselves and others but don't really understand or know why they do what they do. Almost like animal instinct.

Maybe then they come into a situation of prolonged isolation, near death experience, an accident or unhappiness and calamity of some sort. They decide to make an attempt at introspection and/or spiritual guidance. Then by coincidence, happenstance and Revelations occur. A revealed knowledge about a some-thing that was missing. The resulting feelings of that new revealed knowledge has liberated that person. It has made that individual break free from, as Wayfarer implied, another form of meme. Now they want more. More revelation.

From a human condition standpoint, they are now seemingly operating from a new paradigm or meme that is much more heathier. So in this case, now, that person doesn't rely on their old consciousness as a way to survive. Essentially speaking, their quality of life has changed. They have a renewed consciousness about themselves; a new awareness about their condition. — 3017amen

You described that well and without using the word god.

'God' is a word.

You tacked the word 'god' onto your thought at the end when you began to seek a cause for the experience of revelation. The cause is unknown but may well be simply the unknown interrelation and dynamics of matter, mind and unknown-unknown preceding the moment of revelation. It isn't necessarily an otherworldly or Lordly unknown.

So possibly for you "god" means "that which provides the human mind with the experience of revelation." But why not explore beyond the word 'god'? The word 'god' is old, tired and thoroughly corrupt. At best, it's a synonym for 'the unknown.' Everyone has seen what it is at its worst.

But why not explore beyond the word 'god'? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Sure. In what way we you thinking, a philosophical way? For example, a transcendental inquiry of some sort?

Or , more from a cognitive science point of view (?).

I think the "incidental consequence" option is adequate. I would say that being an atheist is highly unlikely to be of no consequence to the way you think about things. In other words if, for example, per improbable, you were to became a theist, it would seem implausible to think that nothing else about your philosophy would change. — Janus

But this is like saying that not being a tennis player is of consequence to my activities because if I was to start playing tennis then it would entail some changes. (You've stated my point perfectly).

I do get the perspective you're taking: from it, my absence of belief does appear to have a consequence because of what it would mean for your present beliefs. If you became an atheist, your worldview would change because (presumably) your theism helps you derive things like existential and moral value, and so you would have to derive it elsewhere.

I can remember being accused by both theists and hard-atheists alike that I am " a cowardly fence sitter who must make a choice because the outcome will affect my entire life". I can strain to understand what they meant, but it just doesn't resonate. A popular come back is to ask people whether or not they believe in the flying spaghetti monster (and whether their lack of belief in him has consequences for their philosophy). In a well formulated nut shell: the consequence that atheism has on my philosophy is that my philosophy is not founded or based upon theism/belief in god, which does seem to contrast with the majority of historical human opinion.

But if you look at atheists and think to yourself "oh boy, they're missing out on a whole world of goodness and truth", then you're a kidder of the highest order.

Consider that having specific theistic beliefs precludes you from considering the multitudes of competing theistic hypotheses (whereas myself, as an atheist, am free to entertain and explore it all in earnest). Consider that there may be ideas, perspectives, and facts that your specific theism biases you toward, or against.

For all the niche ideas, moral foundations, etc, that your theism grants you, is there not an infinitely broader world that you're implicitly missing out on through your theistic subscription?

Why must we paint the roses?

. What kind of questions might arise out of a faith in some particular god, do you suppose, that weren't there before? — Isaac

'Some particular God' sounds very much like something an ancient Sumerian or Roman might ask.

In any case, what I mean is that the types for whom religious belief is an end to questioning, are dogmatic fundamentalists or maybe wealthy evangelicals. And there are such people, to be sure. But many accounts of religious conversion depict people wracked by doubt, very much aware of how little they know, often really uncertain of their own faith.

And there are religious scientists - George Lemaître, as I'm sure you know, published the first paper on what came to be called 'big bang theory'. When it was published a lot of people thought it sounded too much like 'creation ex nihilo' - so much so that 'By 1951, Pope Pius XII declared that Lemaître's theory provided a scientific validation for Catholicism.[36] However, Lemaître resented the Pope's proclamation, stating that the theory was neutral and there was neither a connection nor a contradiction between his religion and his theory.[37][38][17] Lemaître and Daniel O'Connell, the Pope's scientific advisor, persuaded the Pope not to mention Creationism publicly, and to stop making proclamations about cosmology.[39] Lemaître was a devout Catholic, but opposed mixing science with religion,[40] although he held that the two fields were not in conflict.[41] (Wikipedia).

So I'm protesting the internet meme that believers are kind of swaddled in this sense that 'God provides all the answers'. It's a highly simplistic depiction in my view.

. What kind of questions might arise out of a faith in some particular god, do you suppose, that weren't there before? — Isaac

[Complete non-answer] — Wayfarer

Just give me an example of an existential question a religious person might ask, as a result of their becoming religious, that they would not have asked otherwise. — Isaac

'What if, at the point of death, I were to discover that in some sense I am still conscious?' 'What if the way I have lived my life is subjected to judgement, or has consequences in some way that I could never have anticipated?'

People argue about religion because it has important implications to the lives of many people, it touches many issues and topics. Abortion, marriage, sexuality, education, politics, science, history, morality and so on, are all impacted by the claims of theists. That's why I find myself talking about religion even though it's not something I think about or care about. — Judaka

Ditto.

What kind of questions might arise out of a faith in some particular god, do you suppose, that weren't there before?
— Isaac

[Complete non-answer]
— Wayfarer — StreetlightX

It seems Bible/Qur'an-thumpers & other pimps of Woo can't help themselves.

'What if, at the point of death, I were to discover that in some sense I am still conscious?' 'What if the way I have lived my life is subjected to judgement, or has consequences in some way that I could never have anticipated?' — Wayfarer

Thank you for giving some concise and to-the-point questions, as requested.

However, I disagree that those are questions that would not have been asked without first adopting religious beliefs. They seem, instead, like the kind of question that might (but not necessarily) lead a person into religious belief.

Myself, I find the "what if" format of them makes them not particularly useful questions at all; all answers would just be speculation on something that may or may not be true. More useful to know would be whether those things are true. Is there life after death? Is there some kind of moral judgement then? And even more so, how can we find out the answers to those kinds of things? That last one is where the line of inquiry gets actually philosophical, as I understand the word. Answering questions about how to answer questions is where the bulk of philosophy takes place -- from answering what our questions even mean to answering what our goal is in asking them -- and only once you've got that all worked out, can you then ask and maybe answer questions like "is there a God?", "is there life after death?", etc.

The answers I find after doing all that philosophical ground work are generally "no". But it's conceivable to me that someone might arrive at different answers through a similar process, and I'm curious to hear if that is the case for anyone. So far it looks like most of the people who have answered "theist" have said that they don't get there through a similar process; they start with a belief in God and then use that to answer all the questions that I would ask first in order to be able to answer the question of whether God exists. Even more curious to me though (and what prompted my to start this thread) are the atheists who have said that that's a core principle of their philosophy, in a way similar to theists.

I'm curious to hear from some of those who have picked that answer (#3) how their thought process works in that regard.

I disagree that those are questions that would not have been asked without first adopting religious beliefs. They seem, instead, like the kind of question that might (but not necessarily) lead a person into religious belief. — Pfhorrest

Sure. But the point is to illustrate the kinds of existential questions that might provoke a religious sense (as distinct from simply accepting what you've been told by whatever religion you were brought up in, which is what most people assume 'religion' amounts to.)

More useful to know would be whether those things are true. Is there life after death? Is there some kind of moral judgement then? And even more so, how can we find out the answers to those kinds of things? That last one is where the line of inquiry gets actually philosophical, as I understand the word. — Pfhorrest

Well, as I said, my starting point is questioning the view that the Universe, and we ourselves, are physical, or can be understood in primarily physical terms. Scientific naturalism is nowadays the accepted wisdom - that cosmology, evolutionary theory, and other sciences answer the question of who or what humans are. So my religious sense, such as it is, starts with questioning that, because if it's not true - then what?

But notice that to question the secular consensus means being automatically categorised as 'a believer'. But I see this as a product of the historical dynamics of Western culture; that the 'scientific view' has displaced the previous 'religious view' as the kind of attitude that sensible persons ought to cultivate. You're either one or the other.

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. — Richard Lewontin

The jealous God dies hard.

But I maintain it's a false dichotomy which originated with the authoritarian nature of the Christian religion, that required submission and unquestioning obedience. That is what provoked the secular rejection of anything that sounds religious, and the sense of the inherent conflict between science and religion. That needs to be understood before you can really understand anything much about religion.

I think the "tennis player " analogy is not a very good one. Here we are looking at the difference between two alternative worldviews that pretty much exhaust the possibilities.

Since theism usually involves the idea that there is an afterlife, divine judgement, the possibility of redemption or salvation and a much more robust notion of personal responsibility, it seems obvious that the presence or absence of belief in these theistic ideas would involve significant differences in philosophical attitudes.

And I am not a theist (I have no idea what gave you the idea that I was), but a "soft" atheist, by the way.

Since theism usually involves the idea that there is an afterlife, divine judgement, the possibility of redemption or salvation and a much more robust notion of personal responsibility, it seems obvious that the presence or absence of belief in these theistic ideas would involve significant differences in philosophical attitudes. — Janus

I don't think that's necessarily true. Those things make a significant practical difference in life, in the same way that scientific and political questions can make a significant practical difference in life. But as I've already said upthread, once you've build a robust enough philosophy to even have a way of answering questions like "does god exist?", the answer to such questions doesn't make any difference to the rest of that philosophy. Looking at my philosophy again for example, I cover topics about language, art, math, being, mind, knowledge, education, purpose, will, justice, and government, all without having an answer yet as to whether or not god exists; so far as all of that philosophy is concerned, the answer could go either way. Only in the last chapter, on more or less "the meaning of life", do I then investigate whether or not god exists, and find that the answer is no. But if it had then turned out that god did exist, that might make an enormous practical difference in how to live one's life, but it wouldn't change anything about any of that foregoing philosophy.

For me the most important domain of philosophy is concerned with how to live; and I remain unconvinced that belief in a personal caring divinity who offers salvation and redemption and eternal life to the repentant, would not significantly change one's understanding concerning how life should be lived.

I don't disagree; that's why I said it would make an an enormous practical difference in how to live one's life. But though how to live your life in practice is the ultimate upshot of philosophy, most of the questions of philosophy are building the groundwork for how to figure that out, and particulars about what exactly does or doesn't exist and what they're like are all subsequent to all of that philosophizing. What does it mean to exist? What does is mean for something to be good? These kinds of questions, and a bunch of adjacent ones, need to be answered before we can even ask whether god exists and whether we ought to do what he says. That's most of philosophy right there. And then if it turns out that god does exist and we ought to do what he says, in light of the answers to all that earlier philosophizing about reality and morality, then yeah, that makes a big difference to what in particular is real and moral. But not to any of the philosophical groundwork we'd already done to get to that point.

What does it mean to exist? What does is mean for something to be good? These kinds of questions, and a bunch of adjacent ones, need to be answered before we can even ask whether god exists and whether we ought to do what he says. — Pfhorrest

I guess I'm looking at this the other way around from you. I don't think we usually do, or even ever can, figure out whether God exists. I would say that mostly, once we have reached the point of thinking philosophically, we start from a presumption that God exists or God does not exist, and that our starting theistic or atheistic presumption has a profound effect on how we then go on to think about life and how to live it. I mean just the starting presumption that there is, or that there is not, an afterlife, has huge implications for every area of philosophy.

So we might even explore both ways and start different inquiries from each presumption to see what their different implications for life are. I think this can be seen quite clearly if we think about the questions you posed: " What does it mean to exist" and "What does it mean to be good"; the answers will be very different depending on whether or not a divine creator and lawgiver is presupposed.

I'm guessing you're one of the people who voted option #3? If so, thank you for explaining your manner of thinking, that's exactly the kind of thing I was wondering about. I disagree pretty vehemently, but at least I see where you're coming from now.

Well, I guess it's always possible that it is completely different for different people; but for the most part I tend to think not.

I'll just add that because I see atheism and theism as starting suppositions in philosophy (which looking at philosophical texts from different eras confirms quite nicely in showing the differences between theistically and atheistically based philosophies) I see arguments over atheism vs theism, as well as purported proofs or demonstrations of either, as quite pointless.

In any case, I'm content to agree to disagree.

If only we weren't the kind of species that learns to believe before we (struggle just to barely) learn to think, maybe more believers would be(come) better, more cogent, thinkers. Like an appendix, tonsils, wisdom teeth, much of our intestines and other extraneous mammalian holdovers, corroborating covergent histories & rigorously tested experience show that we, homo insapiens, can survive & do thrive sufficiently without & despite (subjective, evidence-free, invalidly inferred) "beliefs". :naughty:

(For what it's worth, just one free thinker's humble though learned observation.)

I'd recommend you look at the untenable Atheist thread OP. There are ton's of questions over there... — 3017amen

Yes there are. None of which are questions atheists do not ask, many of which are questions religions claim to answer. So I don't see how they demonstrate you point.

many accounts of religious conversion depict people wracked by doubt, very much aware of how little they know, often really uncertain of their own faith. — Wayfarer

Right, but in those cases belief in God has not caused the questioning, as you claim. It is doubt in God that causes the questioning.

And there are religious scientists - George Lemaître, as I'm sure you know, published the first paper on what came to be called 'big bang theory'. — Wayfarer

Yes, and there are atheist scientists. Your claim was "if you really did come to believe, I think it would provoke enormous questions; it might cause one to question many things that one previously assumed" So we're looking for questions actually "provoked" by belief, not questions which persist despite it, such as those about the material conditions which existed at the beginning of the universe.

I'm protesting the internet meme that believers are kind of swaddled in this sense that 'God provides all the answers — Wayfarer

Right. Which is not what you claimed, is it? You overreached. Yes, 'God did it' is not wielded as an answer to every question, but it is wielded as an answer to at least some questions, so unless we're talking about technical theological matters, the total level of existential questioning goes down on becoming religious. At least some of the questions everyone has are considered to be answered. Atheism, on the other had, does not in itself provide any answers at all, it simply rejects one possible answer as incoherent or insufficiently convincing. All questions remain open.

'What if, at the point of death, I were to discover that in some sense I am still conscious?' — Wayfarer

How is that not a question an atheist might ask? How is it that belief in some God is not an answer to that question, the vast majority of religions are quite clear about what happens after death? Assuaging fear of death is their main selling point.

What if the way I have lived my life is subjected to judgement, or has consequences in some way that I could never have anticipated — Wayfarer

Again, why would an atheist not ask this question? In what way is religion not an answer to this question? Most religions are also pretty clear on things like judgement and punishment, it's something of theme - hell, heaven, re-incarnation...

As an old existentialist, the existence or fiction of God is irrelevant to me: whether it's there or not, it doesn't save the existentialist, who has to do that for herself. Although perhaps an agnostic existentialist might feel less alone in the cosmos if there were one...

But if it had then turned out that god did exist, that might make an enormous practical difference in how to live one's life, but it wouldn't change anything about any of that foregoing philosophy.

See what you guys think:

Consider a form of a Kierkegaardian irony. Say one is living an everyday ordinary 'life of striving' (a Maslowian phrase btw) feeling perfectly fine living single. Then that person, by happenstance, meets a girl/guy. That person then realizes things that they wouldn't have otherwise realized. And it could be a profound list of things ( some of which Pfhorrest mentioned)… .

Did feelings or the phenomenon of Love somehow cause that change in that person? I would argue that change can happen regardless through Revelation. Revealed mystical knowledge.

I'm an atheist and it's an incidental consequence of the rest of my philosophy — Pfhorrest

I was tempted at first to pick this option, that is to say that my atheism is a consequence of my philosophical positions. But this suggests a causal history that never took place in my case - and I suspect in the case of many, perhaps most atheists. As a matter of fact, I was raised secular, and I was an atheist long before I had anything that could be meaningfully identified as a "philosophy."

As I thought more about this, I realized that my qualms went further than just the facts of my biography. Yes, I could reconstruct my philosophy along the lines that you suggest:

in order to answer questions like "Is there a God?" and "Should we do what he says?", we first have to be able to answer questions of forms like "Is there X?" and "Should we X?" more generally. Once you've done that, figured out some way to answer questions about what is or ought to be, then you have already built a philosophical system; all the philosophically important questions are answered. Now you can ask whether there's a God and whether you should do what he says, using that philosophy, and it might make a big practical difference in life, but it can't make any difference to the philosophy used to answer those questions. — Pfhorrest

As I already indicated, in my case at least, this reconstruction is not true historically. But is it true in any sense? You argue, it seems, that it is better to ground your God beliefs on more general epistemic, ontological and ethical positions than the other way around. This may be plausible, at least for an atheist, in the sense that such structuring would appear to be more balanced and parsimonious. But whence the grounding for those supposedly more fundamental philosophical positions? The fact that they are held to be fundamental means that they are not grounded in anything more than my temperament, my intellectual development throughout my life and the accumulation of experiences. But isn't this also what made me an atheist in my pre-philosophical years? And doesn't my atheism constitute part of that psychological and intellectual background out of which my philosophical leanings formed?

And so, answering this checken-and-egg conundrum for myself, it seems very plausible that my preexisting atheism influenced the development of my philosophical ideas (that is what you consider to be philosophical ideas, which seems to be mostly limited to basic epistemology, but let's set this aside for the moment). Did the influence go in the other direction as well? Very much so: the more I examined the God question philosophically, the more confident I grew in my atheism. But this is hardly an argument for the primacy of philosophy [epistemology]. We naturally seek to rationalize our preexisting beliefs. And given that my preexisting beliefs were partly responsible for the way I was reasoning, this could have been little more than a self-reinforcing cycle.

Therefore, my atheism could be said to be a consequence of my philosophy in the sense that, after the fact, my beliefs could be categorized and restructured so as to make atheism a consequence of some general philosophical framework that I endorse, but not in any other sense.

Therefore, my atheism could be said to be a consequence of my philosophy in the sense that, after the fact, my beliefs could be categorized and restructured so as to make atheism a consequence of some general philosophical framework that I endorse, but not in any other sense. — SophistiCat

I think that's a very important thing to highlight.

A philosopher's worldview has dual aspects: it operates as an association of perspectives and ideas through high effort cognition - a rational-communicative artifice. A robot doing philosophy might envision this as a series of believed propositions and believed logical relationships between them. But it also operates as an association of perspectives and ideas through experience and memory; an emotive-performative practice.

The two aspects of a worldview do not operate independently of each other, visceral experiences, socialisation effects and broader socio-historical context inspire reason, sentiment, reason about sentiments and sentiment about reasons. A philosophy is an embodied practice as much as it is an intellectual body of work.

Only very systematised or extensively articulated worldviews approach the rational-communicative archetype that typifies philosophy, and even with that there is much variation in style. Nietzsche expresses the force of his ideas with rhetorical flare and biting wit; aphoristically and with skilful affectation, Spinoza expresses the force of his ideas through the obsessive portrayal of their logical-conceptual dependence; architectonic and always impossibly precise.

The rest of us consist in fragments, nameless aleatory conceptual personas summoned by our (collective) interpretations. As much mood and spittle as thought and sculpture. When reflection leaves us, we return marginally changed and perhaps change others. Were it our job to systematise our thoughts we might be more like landmarks in the terrain of ideas rather than passing place personalities displaying erudition. All we can do is try to learn and inspire others to learn.

Learning systematic thought is always underpinned by the associative (mechanisms of) transitions we make in a space of reasons. Reasoning is a constrained and hopefully discovery fuelling/revealing mode of association (a robot might see this as truth preservation through syllogism); but what is good for the gander (association in general) is good for the goose (reason). What shifts belief, what orients reflection; are processes both affective and deliberative, and always in response to some exposure; some impetus to act like I will. When a presumption forms or is inculcated by such exposure, it informs the processes of reasoning that can come to attend it. When we have thought for a long time with such a presumption, perhaps when such a presumption has formed before we learn to reason; such a presumption may be embodied as a thought pattern, a tick, or a habit of spending too long in the evenings trying to show someone on the internet that they were wrong.

In terms of the OP; the existence of God is often such a presumption. God might mean your family's love and your inclusion in your community; sin might mean the destruction of many things you care about. Such a presumption is unlikely to be swayed by mere reason; intellectual exercises rarely perturb deep socialisation effects much. "God is all things" and like statements should thus be understood performatively. Doubt in such statements undermines us; a fish out of water drowns.

That person then realizes things that they wouldn't have otherwise realized. And it could be a profound list of things ( some of which Pfhorrest mentioned)… .

Did feelings or the phenomenon of Love somehow cause that change in that person? I would argue that change can happen regardless through Revelation. Revealed mystical knowledge. — 3017amen

I think it is true that if you have a mystical experience (or take certrain drugs) you will likely think things which you hadn't previously thought, and perhaps never would have thought had you not had the experience. On the other hand the thoughts elicited by such experiences are probably going to be mostly interpretations of the experience and I think it is well documented that people interpret such experiences through the lenses of their own cultures. So, I would say there is no "revealed mystical knowledge", at least not knowledge in any discursive or propositional sense, to be had from such experiences, or at least to be justified by such experiences.

These experiences are affective and personal, and thus whatever knowledge they might bring is not of the inter-subjectively testable kind. The only justification for any belief that comes out of such experiences is of the personal 'feeling' kind. It is pointless arguing about such beliefs, just because there can be no common ground for inter-subjective justification to come into play.

And so, answering this checken-and-egg conundrum for myself, it seems very plausible that my preexisting atheism influenced the development of my philosophical ideas (that is what you consider to be philosophical ideas, which seems to be mostly limited to basic epistemology, — SophistiCat

I wouldn't characterize "what I consider to be philosophical ideas" as "basic epistemology". As I've listed several times here already, it includes a wide variety of topics from philosophy of language, ontology, philosophy of mind, epistemology yes, philosophy of will, various ethical subtopics that I refer to as teleology and deontology, and social implications of epistemology and deontology regarding education and governance.

but let's set this aside for the moment). Did the influence go in the other direction as well? Very much so: the more I examined the God question philosophically, the more confident I grew in my atheism. But this is hardly an argument for the primacy of philosophy [epistemology]. We naturally seek to rationalize our preexisting beliefs. And given that my preexisting beliefs were partly responsible for the way I was reasoning, this could have been little more than a self-reinforcing cycle. — SophistiCat

You and I seem to have very different histories of our atheism, and given the religious demographics I suspect most peoples' is more like mine than yours. I was raised in a religious household, with parents who believe in no uncertain terms that there definitely is a God and raised me like that was as obvious and uncontroversial a truth as the world being round, so atheism wasn't a preexisting belief when my philosophizing started.

I got into philosophy because my academic interests in natural sciences and social sciences over my childhood and adolescence lead me in search of the most fundamental parts of those fields, narrowing down to physics for the natural sciences and something in the realm of economics or political science for the social sciences. Trying to get deeper and more fundamental in those, I eventually ended up doing what I later learned were basically metaphysics and ethics, and then when I had an intro philosophy class as part of general ed requirements in college and realized that there's one field that studies the fundamentals of both of those things, found my love for philosophy.

As I learned more through all of that, without really thinking about it I pushed God further and further out of the limelight of my worldview, and by my adulthood had basically become an atheist as far as my beliefs were concerned, without ever claiming the title or really thinking about it. (I expect that this part is very different from most people's experiences, as I get the impression that most atheists who were raised religious had a strong rebellious breakaway from their religion).

I hadn't really decided that "God doesn't exist", it's more that I just "had no need for that hypothesis", relegating God to something beyond the normal world (about which I never really thought); and when I realized that there were adults who thought God was actively intervening in the normal world all the time, that seemed as weird to me as adults believing that Santa Claus delivered presents on Christmas, like the kind of story parents tell little kids but adults wouldn't genuinely believe themselves.

When I was around 17 or 18, I thought I had "proved the existence of God" through a now-laughable argument (more or less: infinity is inconceivable and therefore impossible, everything finite has a boundary, every boundary has things on both sides of it, therefore the universe is finite and bounded and there is something beyond it, and whatever that thing beyond the universe is, that's God). That fit fine with my basically-atheist worldview at the time, and fulfilled my growing desire to rise above all ideological conflicts with a creative middle position (that position being that the universe as we know it is basically materialist, but there's something beyond that universe that can be spiritual).

By the time I was 23ish I was identifying as a naturalistic pantheist, as a further refinement of that "creative middle position", after learning more philosophy and deciding that "thing beyond the universe" was an incoherent idea, and that things within the universe couldn't count as gods, deciding that the universe itself was the closest thing to God that could possibly exist, and deserved that name because reasons. (Edit to add because @Janus replied while I was typing: I was having what I understood as mystical experiences a lot around that time, a deep feeling of revelation and profundity, while thinking about the concept of pantheism.)

It wasn't until I was maybe 28 or 29 that I really realized that my worldview had basically been completely godless for as long as I could remember, and that calling myself a naturalistic pantheist didn't at all distinguish anything about my beliefs from those of atheists, it just emotively expressed a kind of "religious" reverence for the universe. Which I still had, but so did plenty of people who called themselves atheists, so I finally decided to stop being confusing and just call myself what I had already been for a long time.

God might mean your family's love and your inclusion in your community; sin might mean the destruction of many things you care about. — fdrake

I find that kind of theological noncognitivism really hard to discuss. That seems to be what my mom believes, and she'll try to talk "philosophy" with me and tell me how to her, God means believing in beauty and a kind of inner light permeating the world and uplifting people, doing good and trying to create good and beauty for other people, and she'll ask me don't I believe in that, and... I don't know how to respond, because it's not a propositionally coherent question. I agree completely with the goals of creating good and beauty, and uplifting people, and generally being positive and optimistic, but I don't know how to translate agreement with that goal into an answer to a question about what exists. It's really frustrating.

(I'm also reminded of a bus driver I talked to one on my way home from a philosophy class in college, who asked what I studied and then wanted to talk "philosophy" with me, offering his opinion that the cause of all of the bad things in the world was "sin", which word I had always taken as equivalent to bad deeds, but which to him seemed to mean some kind of metaphysical essence of evil that caused people to do bad deeds, or something).