Hello from the UK :)
April 3, 2015 at 3:46 pm
(This post was last modified: April 3, 2015 at 4:11 pm by emjay.)
Hello everyone,
I've been an a fervent Atheist since I was 18 (I'm now in my thirties) and before that I was a strong Christian who always defended it at school much to the annoyance of my predominantly Atheist friends. If I met them at a reunion now I'd really like to say "you were right about everything". I even remember the classroom at college I was in and where I was sitting when it finally clicked that there (probably) was no god.
Nowadays I'm having a lot of health problems and so am thinking more and more about my own mortality and everything that entails. Living in Britain there has never been - from my own experience at least - any intolerance of Atheism whatsoever; if anything I'd say it seems most people are Atheists here, or at least most people of my generation. So I've never felt any need to join a specifically Atheist site like this or even known of their existence. But a chance mention in a book I was reading about Atheism led me to seek one out because it would be nice be able to talk freely about Atheist ideas without fear of offending religious friends as would be the case on, say, Facebook.
I live with my parents who are still very strong, immovable Christians and for the most part we don't talk about it as both our views are so entrenched and in the end it always ends in tears. That said me and my dad are discussing Christianity at the moment, a rare event, after by chance I started reading a Christian book which looked interesting - C. S. Lewis' The Problem Of Pain - and actually found it quite a good argument for Christianity... just an aesthetically pleasing way of looking at it that lacks all of the usual arbitrariness of most of the stuff in the Bible. But in the end just because something looks good, doesn't make it any easier to believe and I am way too cynical and skeptical now to become a Christian again even if I wanted to (and a very small part of me does). Basically as soon as I pick up the Bible and see contradictions on every page, any fledgling interest in Christianity evaporates because it is just not believable. My dad gave me another book to read which he considers proof of Jesus' resurrection: "Who Moved The Stone?". I thought it was a good book but clearly heavily biased towards Christianity and therefore not entirely reliable. So I went looking for another one, written by an Atheist, just to be sure I was seeing all the arguments. I found one and it was a perfectly convincing, to me, non-supernatural explanation of events: "an old man's musings on Christianity" (or something like that) by an anonymous author (on Kindle). Since that nipped my fledgling interest in Christianity in the bud, my dad is now grudgingly reading it at my behest trying to counter its arguments, point by point. I'm sure he will counter all of them as that, unfortunately, is the way this game is played, but still I am glad he's reading it. It was a trade - I'm reading one of his.
So that's me really. I am an Atheist but I have a lot of Christian 'baggage' that I can't shake. My Atheist beliefs are the result of years of interest in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy and they are a unique and hard-earned part of me that I don't want to lose, and that is part of the reason I'll always be biased against returning to Christianity. I hope on this site I'll be able to discuss some of my theories on the nature or consciousness etc and maybe find some kindred spirits and deep insights
Thanks for listening
I've been an a fervent Atheist since I was 18 (I'm now in my thirties) and before that I was a strong Christian who always defended it at school much to the annoyance of my predominantly Atheist friends. If I met them at a reunion now I'd really like to say "you were right about everything". I even remember the classroom at college I was in and where I was sitting when it finally clicked that there (probably) was no god.
Nowadays I'm having a lot of health problems and so am thinking more and more about my own mortality and everything that entails. Living in Britain there has never been - from my own experience at least - any intolerance of Atheism whatsoever; if anything I'd say it seems most people are Atheists here, or at least most people of my generation. So I've never felt any need to join a specifically Atheist site like this or even known of their existence. But a chance mention in a book I was reading about Atheism led me to seek one out because it would be nice be able to talk freely about Atheist ideas without fear of offending religious friends as would be the case on, say, Facebook.
I live with my parents who are still very strong, immovable Christians and for the most part we don't talk about it as both our views are so entrenched and in the end it always ends in tears. That said me and my dad are discussing Christianity at the moment, a rare event, after by chance I started reading a Christian book which looked interesting - C. S. Lewis' The Problem Of Pain - and actually found it quite a good argument for Christianity... just an aesthetically pleasing way of looking at it that lacks all of the usual arbitrariness of most of the stuff in the Bible. But in the end just because something looks good, doesn't make it any easier to believe and I am way too cynical and skeptical now to become a Christian again even if I wanted to (and a very small part of me does). Basically as soon as I pick up the Bible and see contradictions on every page, any fledgling interest in Christianity evaporates because it is just not believable. My dad gave me another book to read which he considers proof of Jesus' resurrection: "Who Moved The Stone?". I thought it was a good book but clearly heavily biased towards Christianity and therefore not entirely reliable. So I went looking for another one, written by an Atheist, just to be sure I was seeing all the arguments. I found one and it was a perfectly convincing, to me, non-supernatural explanation of events: "an old man's musings on Christianity" (or something like that) by an anonymous author (on Kindle). Since that nipped my fledgling interest in Christianity in the bud, my dad is now grudgingly reading it at my behest trying to counter its arguments, point by point. I'm sure he will counter all of them as that, unfortunately, is the way this game is played, but still I am glad he's reading it. It was a trade - I'm reading one of his.
So that's me really. I am an Atheist but I have a lot of Christian 'baggage' that I can't shake. My Atheist beliefs are the result of years of interest in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy and they are a unique and hard-earned part of me that I don't want to lose, and that is part of the reason I'll always be biased against returning to Christianity. I hope on this site I'll be able to discuss some of my theories on the nature or consciousness etc and maybe find some kindred spirits and deep insights
Thanks for listening
). So contrary to my expectations I think I might end up playing devil's advocate quite a bit in regard to Christianity, which might make me an outcast before I've even got my foot in the door. I hope not though.
