Grad student seeking atheist to interview

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Brooke, before you became a believer in any religion you were an atheist, even if you didn't know it.

When you are old enough to be convinced that a particular belief is true, you are also old enough to not hold that belief.

I am of the camp that we are all born atheists as a default.
Depending on where we live, we may never be exposed to religion and thus we remain atheist.

There are others who would say that a person must be old enough to understand what it means to hold a belief and make a conscious choice to not hold certain beliefs.

(Or words to that effect)

Brooke, you're a graduate student? May I ask in what discipline?

I ask because it seems you may be using a deeply flawed methodology.  In the Social Sciences, using questionaires and direct interviews is called "Symbolic Interactionism" . This approach has long been considered perhaps the least reliable method of finding truths.  

Using that method will probably get you the information you need and it will probably  be accepted.  I guess it depends on your goal. To simply get your Masters or to get it based on evidence which is kinda ,umm, true.  The wiki article lined below is worth a glance, especially the criticisms


"Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence with others.[1] According to Macionis, symbolic interactionism is "a framework for building theory that sees society as the product of everyday interactions of individuals". In other words, it is a frame of reference to better understand how individuals interact with one another to create symbolic worlds, and in return, how these worlds shape individual behaviors.[2] It is a framework that helps understand how society is preserved and created through repeated interactions between individuals. The interpretation process that occurs between interactions helps create and recreate meaning. It is the shared understanding and interpretations of meaning that affect the interaction between individuals. Individuals act on the premise of a shared understanding of meaning within their social context. Thus, interaction and behavior is framed through the shared meaning that objects and concepts have attached to them. From this view, people live in both natural and symbolic environments."

Symbolic interactionism - Wikipedia