I Admit It

[fr0d0]

We're all agnostic. Only fools aren't. Welcome aboard.

[robvalue]

Hello Rob, another Rob here

Welcome to the forum. I am very sad to hear of your experience. I hope you can get the right help to deal with your PTSD, I know there are specific organizations like "Recovering from Religion" which are set up for this very purpose. I listen to the Atheist Experience a lot and they are always mentioning these things, I can try and find contact details if it would help.

It's up to you what you label yourself as, but I would say you are quite clearly an atheist. Atheism means that you are not convinced that a god does exist. It's as simple as that. If you're not at the point where you think it's extremely likely, beyond any reasonable doubt, that there is a god, you are an atheist. At least by the definition most used by atheists. It does not in any way require you to say or believe that there is no god. Whether you are gnostic or agnostic is a separate question, this addresses what you claim to know rather than what you believe. So if you don't believe there is a god, but you don't know for sure, you are an agnostic atheist. I would say almost every, or at least most, atheists would identify as agnostic. In the same way you can be an agnostic theist, you believe there is a god, but you don't know for sure. Or a gnostic theist/atheist, meaning you believe and know that there is/isn't a god. Not many people take the gnostic route as it is (as Frodo says) kind of ridiculous to claim absolute knowledge about this. But some do, after defining what it means to "know" something, rather than defining it as 100% certainty which is a useless concept most of the time.

I wrote a big article about this yesterday on the forum, you can find it here: http://atheistforums.org/thread-29499.html

Wow, sorry for the big ramble! The point is that the more people who are prepared to label themselves as atheist, the bigger the movement becomes and the easier it becomes for other people to "come out". It parallels extremely closely the attitude revolution regarding homosexuality. We are still way behind the point gays are at now, but it's a-coming. "No religious affiliation" is the biggest growing group in polls, and a lot of those people are going to be atheists, even if they won't yet come out and label themselves as such.

People always wibble on about, "What's the harm? I can believe what I want." THIS is the harm. I would equate indoctrination of helpless children with child abuse. What kind of parenting technique results in PTSD? No one should have to go through such a traumatic childhood, I'm so sorry that you did Rob. I hope your example will make people see that religion is anything but harmless. I am firmly against indoctrinating children. The reason it is done that way is to get them when their brain can't fully comprehend the concepts, and drill in certain things as true beyond question such as god, jesus, hell, the bible is true, etc. It's sick, and it makes me so fucking angry. By all means educate your children, explain to them your beliefs, but allow them to decide what they want to believe for themselves. Do not tell them what to believe. Teach them how to think for themselves. And don't you dare threaten a poor kid with HELL for not doing exactly what you and every other religious person tells you to do. That is horrific beyond belief. I've read and heard so many accounts of children scared witless by this, and the results go on into adulthood and even when they declare themselves atheists they can't quite shake off the idea of HELL.

Thank you for sharing your story, each new one I hope is an inspiration to others, and a warning to what religion does to people.

One good bit of advice with dealing with hell leftover feelings is to think that many other religions have a seperate hell, which all christians will go to along with everyone else in the world. Obviously both hells can't be real. And you (probably) won't have spent any time worrying about the Islamic Hell, or any other Insane Cult Hell that has been defined into existence. So don't worry about the biblical hell, it's just as fictional as all the others, and is clearly just scare tactics to get people to conform. If religion and the bible were great and true, they would not need to bully people into believing it.