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RE: how old were you
January 24, 2015 at 10:10 am
(January 24, 2015 at 5:45 am)jackson Wrote: What age were you when God stopped making any sense?
I was 20 years old. But only fairly recently have I started calling myself atheist.
I reject your reality and substitute my own!
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RE: how old were you
January 24, 2015 at 10:18 am
Late teens and early twenties. You know, the age when you're just starting to think for yourself, meeting other people outside your close knit circle, that kind of thing. It was slow at first, and eventually culminated in declaring that I was officially an atheist to my immediate family.
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RE: how old were you
January 24, 2015 at 10:49 am
Never bought into it. Pretended until about 12.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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RE: how old were you
January 24, 2015 at 10:57 am
I was 5 when I went to a Catholic kindergarten (at my grandmother's insistence, I now believe) and went WTF at the creation stories. Interesting, because I knew nothing of science or critical thinking yet. My young mind just totally rejected it. I remember wondering why they were telling us these bizarre stories. I accepted the concept of God until about 12 when I realized it was in the same category of Santa Clause.
Funny thing is, I didn't make a connection between God and the creation stories until after I stopped believing in God. My parents were only very casually religious so I didn't get any indoctrination from them. My Grandmother filled my head with God but she passed when I was still pretty young. I was utterly shocked the first time I realized people actually believed in Genesis.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
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RE: how old were you
January 24, 2015 at 11:02 am
Apparently in my earliest years, when I was at that YMCA church, I was bringing home some really odd ideas, according to my mother, so she eventually withrdew me. I was maybe 8? I was attending with a babysitter. Maybe around 10, I started going to the UU church. It was with another babysitter. I really embraced it, and my mother liked that I liked it. During that time, I loved my YRUU (youth worship), and in my own estimate had even weirder concepts (of God and such) floating in my head.
Only in 2006 did I really declare my Atheism to myself, thanks to a convo with my father where I suddenly (through no effort of his, even though he's a non-beliver too) got the idea of nothingness, which was transformative for me.
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
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RE: how old were you
January 24, 2015 at 11:23 am
It never made sense to me. I remember sitting in Sunday School when I was about nine thinking "they believe this stuff?". I felt embarrassed for the teacher.
Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.
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RE: how old were you
January 24, 2015 at 12:04 pm
(January 24, 2015 at 11:23 am)Chas Wrote: It never made sense to me. I remember sitting in Sunday School when I was about nine thinking "they believe this stuff?". I felt embarrassed for the teacher.
Heh, from 14 to 17 I taught Sunday School. Started out with 3rd graders, but when they figured out I was decent at it I ended up teaching adults too. At 17 I enlisted and was exposed to the greater world. At twenty I found myself in a shit country where people died constantly for their faith. Did not compute. I reached the point that I figured even if god does exist, fuck him. (With a rusty shovel)
I reject your reality and substitute my own!
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how old were you
January 24, 2015 at 12:29 pm
The funny thing is it doesn't make sense to those that actually believe in the crap.
It never made sense to me but I quit trying to force myself to believe it in my early 40s. One thing led to another and when I fully accepted that there is no chance of Hells existence I totally let it go.
What a relief! I hated being burdened by something that always felt like bullshit to me.
