Posts: 328
Threads: 25
Joined: August 15, 2010
Reputation:
4
Glad to find these forums
August 16, 2010 at 12:08 am
HI everyone. My name is Jeremy. I'm a newspaper editor from Georgia and recently turned skeptic. I say skeptic because I would say I'm riding the line between agnosticism and atheism at the moment. I'm a former believer and once played in a contemporary praise band and the whole nine yards. Through my 20s, I began having serious doubts about my faith and religion in general, and in July 2009, I "came out," as they say, on my blog, which links back to my Facebook account, which my family and friends read. It was obviously a shock to them, and they have handled it much worse than I have, and probably a little worse than I expected. I am actually exceedingly more happy now than before, as I'm sure many of you will understand. So, I just wanted to say greetings and hopefully my story may help some of you and vice versa. For background on me, here is the post I made last summer to family and friends in case it might help someone else. And if you check my blog these days, I quite often take religion and faith to task, which is still, one year later, hard for my family to deal with. I'm currently reading and picking apart " Handbook of Christian Apologetics."
I hope to meet some folks with common experiences through this forum. Take care!
Posts: 1211
Threads: 38
Joined: July 15, 2010
Reputation:
21
RE: Glad to find these forums
August 16, 2010 at 2:03 am
(This post was last modified: August 16, 2010 at 2:04 am by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
You are certainly in an excellent business to have the ability to be skeptical about the things you hear. It's only going to help you here and everywhere, even if the bigwigs in the news industry still put 'ethics' on the backburners. Though please understand that my distaste for news comes mostly from places like FOX news. I only refer to them as a news organization in name only, of course.
In any case, welcome to atheist forums.
Just hand your soul to the guy with the reddish skin and pointed goatee and you'll fit right in.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Posts: 12806
Threads: 158
Joined: February 13, 2010
Reputation:
111
RE: Glad to find these forums
August 16, 2010 at 2:04 am
(This post was last modified: August 16, 2010 at 2:08 am by Shell B.)
I don't have a common experience, thankfully.
Welcome and good luck with your deconversion.
Posts: 14259
Threads: 48
Joined: March 1, 2009
Reputation:
80
RE: Glad to find these forums
August 16, 2010 at 6:10 am
Welcome Jeremy.
A quote from your blog post:
"We have, indeed, for centuries, received nothing at all but silence from the God of the Old Testament"
People receive the same from God all the time to my knowledge
Posts: 339
Threads: 11
Joined: June 29, 2010
Reputation:
5
RE: Glad to find these forums
August 16, 2010 at 11:57 am
hi, welcome
Posts: 328
Threads: 25
Joined: August 15, 2010
Reputation:
4
RE: Glad to find these forums
August 16, 2010 at 1:35 pm
(This post was last modified: August 16, 2010 at 1:36 pm by everythingafter.)
(August 16, 2010 at 2:03 am)TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote: You are certainly in an excellent business to have the ability to be skeptical about the things you hear. It's only going to help you here and everywhere, even if the bigwigs in the news industry still put 'ethics' on the backburners. Though please understand that my distaste for news comes mostly from places like FOX news. I only refer to them as a news organization in name only, of course.
In any case, welcome to atheist forums.
Just hand your soul to the guy with the reddish skin and pointed goatee and you'll fit right in.
Thanks Angels. I certainly understand your distaste for news coming FOX, which is, of course, entertainment and mind-warping, not news and certainly not journalism. Thanks, in any case!
(August 16, 2010 at 6:10 am)fr0d0 Wrote: Welcome Jeremy.
A quote from your blog post:
"We have, indeed, for centuries, received nothing at all but silence from the God of the Old Testament"
People receive the same from God all the time to my knowledge
Thanks fr0d0!
By that statement, I meant a tangible nothing, if that makes sense. I can't account for whatever folks claim they hear in their heads. lol
Posts: 606
Threads: 12
Joined: June 28, 2010
Reputation:
16
RE: Glad to find these forums
August 16, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Welcome to the forums! We love Georgia.
Eeyore Wrote:Thanks for noticing.
Posts: 4535
Threads: 175
Joined: August 10, 2009
Reputation:
43
RE: Glad to find these forums
August 16, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Welcome everythingafter!
Why exactly do you refrain from calling yourself an atheist?
.
Posts: 14259
Threads: 48
Joined: March 1, 2009
Reputation:
80
RE: Glad to find these forums
August 16, 2010 at 9:08 pm
(August 16, 2010 at 1:35 pm)everythingafter Wrote: By that statement, I meant a tangible nothing, if that makes sense. I can't account for whatever folks claim they hear in their heads. lol It always was a tangible nothing if you chose to look at it in that way. I know people who make the same claims now. Why/ how do you dismiss one and not the other?
Posts: 296
Threads: 19
Joined: July 15, 2010
Reputation:
3
RE: Glad to find these forums
August 16, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Hey there!
Trudging through endless religion one step at a time.
|