MacG

Hi everyone,
I've been lurking the II site for a few weeks and have been enjoying the dialogue, debate and
insight. I now feel compelled to post my first message but with a little background first. I've
never been religous, was dragged to church maybe 15 times as a kid by non-interested parents and
have recently been devoting alot of time and energy to cementing my ideas of why life makes a helluva lot more sense to me without God playing any kind of role.
That being said, I feel pretty comfortable with my atheistic beliefs (or lack thereof) and have come to the conclusion that the ideas of religion (namely, worshipping and oweing responsibility to what I consider a non-existent entity) seem, to me at least, to be a vestige of a bygone era, where superstition and myth were used to explain what was once unknowable. This leads to an obvious conclusion: That in my mind, the rest of God-filled humanity has been happily and whole heartedly living a lie. That people have been mistaken all their lives and that entire countries, governments, social orders etc. have been and always will be based on a false premise.
Without being an absolutely, positively unswayable atheist (but getting there), how do I
make sense of this? How do I (and this is essentially what the question of my post is)
reconcile myself with the rest of humanity where it seems I missed the bus on religous thought and devotion? Or am I just another person who feels he knows the 'truth'?

Trying to make sense of the confusion and sincerely yours,
MacG

K

MacG:

Welcome aboard.

It is amazing what has been done in the name of fictional deities. But that has been happening forever. While the majority of today's theists would be amused at the religious practices of the ancients, they can not see how their own are very similar in many respects.

As a former theist, I would say that I don't think you're missing anything never having been one. I think the ability to rationally observe the world more than makes up for not being in a God club.