(August 27, 2016 at 4:26 pm)Brian37 Wrote:(August 27, 2016 at 12:31 am)ScienceAf Wrote: Personally and honestly I'd love to hear some of the stories you guys and gals experienced through your journey to enlightenment (atheism).
Just post it down here.
I know you were metaphorically speaking, unfortunately when you talk in words in the title of the thread, theists like to assume you simply secretly hate god or simply are in denial. Point being you cant kill fictional things that never existed in the first place. I also cant kill Yoda or Darth Vader.
But as far as my personal journey leaving god belief behind wasn't a sudden "ah ha", but a collection of "hum, need to think about this".
The question to me asked a long time ago at a construction sight by a co worker, was "What if Jesus was just a man". Prior to that I simply wanted to believe because that is what everyone else around me did, so I felt expected to, although lots of what I heard in church was either boring, frightening or simply didn't make sense. So when he asked me that question it clicked, it was the first time someone besides me expressed outside my own head, questions about it.
But that was not the moment alone. The next big moment was when I went to the Smithsonian museum and saw a exhibit of the Ankor Watt Cambodian religious sculptures which showed sandstone statues with both Buddhist and Hindu features. That was an even bigger "HEY NOW" , I thought if mixing can happen between them, what makes me think any religion is really original. I know now that even the Yahweh character started out as a lesser god in the divine family under the head god "El" of the Canaanite pantheon, of which gave birth to the Hebrews, then Christians, then Islam.
But even at that time I was still more of a Jeffersonian deist, still wanting something to be there. I don't remember the exact moment I started calling myself an atheist, it was most likely when I was in college and met a dorm mate who was the first I can remember in person calling himself that. But even then outside of campus, I pretty much stayed quiet. I did find some fellow atheists at a Unitarian Church I attended after college, one was a WW2 vet, another a Nam Vet. But again, pretty much kept quiet outside that.
My push to be open came after 9/11/01 when I read an AP opinion article that was distributed nationwide but originated out of Chicago. A nurse from Chicago who was an atheist, expressed concerned that atheists were not being included in the national mourning process. I wish I had kept it, I wish I could thank her for finally getting me to say to myself, "If she can be open, why can't I?"
The very next day I do remember getting online and doing my first search for "atheist groups". My first stop was American Atheist, but really didn't get a response because that was not a message board in and of itself, but an advocacy page. My second stop was the now defunct "atheistnetwork". But even then because of my lifetime of being told "believing is a social norm, not believing makes you bad", it was still in my mind "what if someone finds out". But, less than a few days later, that fear went away, and I haven't looked back since.
Atheist Network gave rise to Infidel Guy who is now a science teacher advocate. It also gave rise to Rational Responders, which doesn't have much traffic now because Brian the owner has a daytime job, but also because of the explosion since the mid 2,000s of social media. Brian Sapient did take on Ray Comfort on ABC's Nightliine.
I will say this, unlike the "fuck you I got mine" right. All the things I know now, didn't get there by just me. It took lots of people to get educated, to put that info out there so that it could get to me. What I have in my head now I didn't do all by myself.
But, I think even today, my biggest credit has to be my mom, whom while is still believing herself, she provided me with the means to be educated and never really pushed me on religion either way. She did though, think I was calling myself an atheist as just being a phase. She doesn't think that now.
When I said kill god I simply meant the ideology.
