I grew up in Catholic school with some angry nuns that didn't like questions, and I was asking a lot of them by fifth grade. So by seventh grade, when I repeated got the "mysterious ways" answer and told that I could not participate in the extracurricular activities because of my "attitude" I decided to I was atheist.
After arguing my mom in to a half heart attack I transferred myself out of the private school and into public school where I was free of religion class, but I still had unanswered questions, so I kept looking. I looked into eastern traditions and I saw a lot of wisdom in them. I loved the book Sidhartha and the eight fold path and everything, but I honestly felt like there was something missing from it. I admired the search for knowledge and understanding within the universe, but it felt a bit counterintuitive to me to be full of passion and bottle it up at the same time. To feel so full of everything but work so hard to empty yourself.
I got into some of the more depressing philosophies (nihilism and existentialism) near the end of high school, but the more I thought about those the more I started to think that philosophers spend a lot of time trying to sound smart without really saying much of anything.
By college I was an apathetic agnostic as for as God was concerned, but I still wanted answers, and when someone had an idea about something I followed them with it. I tried to just open up to any possibility, to seek out truth and challenge it, because Truth should be able to stand up to challenge and not be swayed. I decided this and it put me into some awkward positions. I was hanging with some LDS for a little while, I joined an atheist group in town to hear what they spoke about. I talked with professors and friends about their experiences.
And then some things happened that would not be taken seriously in this forum but they were so specific to me and who I was at the time that to challenge them would be to challenge who I am or ever was as a person. And so here I am.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but you asked and so I am offering it up.
After arguing my mom in to a half heart attack I transferred myself out of the private school and into public school where I was free of religion class, but I still had unanswered questions, so I kept looking. I looked into eastern traditions and I saw a lot of wisdom in them. I loved the book Sidhartha and the eight fold path and everything, but I honestly felt like there was something missing from it. I admired the search for knowledge and understanding within the universe, but it felt a bit counterintuitive to me to be full of passion and bottle it up at the same time. To feel so full of everything but work so hard to empty yourself.
I got into some of the more depressing philosophies (nihilism and existentialism) near the end of high school, but the more I thought about those the more I started to think that philosophers spend a lot of time trying to sound smart without really saying much of anything.
By college I was an apathetic agnostic as for as God was concerned, but I still wanted answers, and when someone had an idea about something I followed them with it. I tried to just open up to any possibility, to seek out truth and challenge it, because Truth should be able to stand up to challenge and not be swayed. I decided this and it put me into some awkward positions. I was hanging with some LDS for a little while, I joined an atheist group in town to hear what they spoke about. I talked with professors and friends about their experiences.
And then some things happened that would not be taken seriously in this forum but they were so specific to me and who I was at the time that to challenge them would be to challenge who I am or ever was as a person. And so here I am.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but you asked and so I am offering it up.
". . . let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist." -G. K. Chesterton
