Hey everyone. 20-something atheist from Pennsylvania here.
I've been checking out the site for a while now and think it's really neat (Rational Wiki turned me on to FSTDT which got me here). It's nice to know there are, you know, other atheists out there, because sometimes it feels like there aren't!
I was raised Catholic. I like to think that I never really accepted what I was being told, but it would probably be fairly accurate to say that I followed what I believe to be the common progression from Catholic to non-denominational Christian to agnostic to atheist. I kept my non-beliefs to myself for a long time, but eventually realized that atheism is not something to be ashamed of. My parents are very active in the church still, but are very much accepting of my non-belief. In that regard, I'm quite lucky.
My belief is, ultimately, that religion accomplishes two things for people: 1) it explains things they don't understand and 2) it makes the fact that each of us is going to die a little less scary. People smarter than me have said a lot of things about religion and atheism that I agree with, but one of the statements that best explains how I feel, more accurately than I could hope to express and more bluntly than I could get away with expressing, was Stephen Hawking's statement that Heaven is a "fairy story" for people afraid of the dark. That's essentially what I believe: that a whole lot of what we do in this world is motivated by a desire to attach meaning to our brief lives and to cope with the fact that they'll end. Religion copes with the fact that our lives will end by, effectively, denying that fact. I'd rather be intellectually honest with myself, put on my big-boy pants, and find my own meaning, not in a "fairy story," but in this real world, in this near-infinite universe, in this nowhere-near-infinite life.
So... Having taken up far more than I had hoped to, let me give the TL;DR version: glad to be here, I look forward to contributing, and I wish everyone on here the best!
I've been checking out the site for a while now and think it's really neat (Rational Wiki turned me on to FSTDT which got me here). It's nice to know there are, you know, other atheists out there, because sometimes it feels like there aren't!
I was raised Catholic. I like to think that I never really accepted what I was being told, but it would probably be fairly accurate to say that I followed what I believe to be the common progression from Catholic to non-denominational Christian to agnostic to atheist. I kept my non-beliefs to myself for a long time, but eventually realized that atheism is not something to be ashamed of. My parents are very active in the church still, but are very much accepting of my non-belief. In that regard, I'm quite lucky.
My belief is, ultimately, that religion accomplishes two things for people: 1) it explains things they don't understand and 2) it makes the fact that each of us is going to die a little less scary. People smarter than me have said a lot of things about religion and atheism that I agree with, but one of the statements that best explains how I feel, more accurately than I could hope to express and more bluntly than I could get away with expressing, was Stephen Hawking's statement that Heaven is a "fairy story" for people afraid of the dark. That's essentially what I believe: that a whole lot of what we do in this world is motivated by a desire to attach meaning to our brief lives and to cope with the fact that they'll end. Religion copes with the fact that our lives will end by, effectively, denying that fact. I'd rather be intellectually honest with myself, put on my big-boy pants, and find my own meaning, not in a "fairy story," but in this real world, in this near-infinite universe, in this nowhere-near-infinite life.
So... Having taken up far more than I had hoped to, let me give the TL;DR version: glad to be here, I look forward to contributing, and I wish everyone on here the best!
