{"id":1667,"date":"2013-09-15T06:19:20","date_gmt":"2013-09-14T20:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1667"},"modified":"2013-09-15T06:19:20","modified_gmt":"2013-09-14T20:19:20","slug":"am-i-an-atheist-even-though-i-believe-in-the-paranormal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1667","title":{"rendered":"Am I an atheist even though I believe in the paranormal?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Keith asks an interesting question&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Message: I don&#8217;t believe god exists. Why should i? What i know of religion is unbelievably contradictive and I&#8217;ve studied them all. I believe we all have a personal heaven as well as a hell. Depending on our choices in life. I believe in angels because I&#8217;ve heard ones voice. I believe in demons because I&#8217;ve come face to face with several. Not including my own.and i have never met a truly religious person who has been able to hold on to a shred of sanity. And to me the biggest BS about religion is people like<br \/>\nrapists can still go to Heaven if\u00a0<span style=\"font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic;\">they sit in a box and say their sorry. I consider myself an Atheist but Im curious to know if I&#8217;ve labeled my self right?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hi Keith. Great question.<\/p>\n<p>In short, yes, you are an atheist. For a clearer understanding of what an atheist is, you can check out <a title=\"What is an atheist?\" href=\"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?page_id=3\" target=\"_blank\">my video here<\/a>. An atheist is just someone who has no active belief in a god or gods. That&#8217;s it. Nothing more than that.<\/p>\n<p>As for your experience with angels and demons, the mind is a powerful thing. As I stated in my last post <a href=\"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1663\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> the mind is always trying to justify itself. When I was a mormon I had experiences akin to the ones you&#8217;ve stated above and eventually came to understand that it was more likely that it was my mind creating these events then it was any type of paranormal event.<\/p>\n<p>I hope that helps. If you have further questions on this subject please feel free to reply in the comment section below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Keith asks an interesting question&#8230; Message: I don&#8217;t believe god exists. Why should i? What i know of religion is unbelievably contradictive and I&#8217;ve studied them all. I believe we all have a personal heaven as well as a hell. Depending on our choices in life. I believe in angels because I&#8217;ve heard ones voice. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1667\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Am I an atheist even though I believe in the paranormal?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-qT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1668,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions\/1668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}