Adrian Selby

I never had a theistic belief. I had atheist parents, not that they're like the people on here, they are much more of the vein, 'that god stuff is just bullshit' without being able to defend it to a very clever theist. So there were no prayers or anything in my household, no sunday school, no bible. Then I grew up and worked it out for myself.

And realised it was bullshit. So, umm, I've always been atheist by never having learned anything different.

Adrian

scarmig

[QUOTE]Originally posted by jojo-sa:
<strong>To all the atheist and free thinkers.

1. Why are you ahteist or free thinker?
</strong>

Because I'm not a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Scientlogist, Wiccan, etc, etc, etc, ad inifitum. A person who is not religious is, almost by definition, an atheist or agnostic.

A free thinker is simply someone who is willing to question assumptions and premises before accepting their derived conclusions.

<strong>2. What faith were you as a kid? or what was Your religious ubringing and education in as a kid?</strong>

Baptized Catholic, raised Baptist/Protestant. Got rid of it all when I was 13. One of the best days in my life.

Ia Cthulhu!

Edited for dumb tag errors.

[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: scarmig ]</p>

Doug

wyrdsmith said:

Turkey became secular in the 1920's due to Kamal Ataturk. He was pretty brutal with the Islamic establishment to get there too.

Since that time, there have been other attempts at a Turkish style secularism in the Muslim world such as Nasser in Egypt in the 50's and 60's and Shah Reza Pahlavi in Iran up to 1979, but unfortunately these leaders' brutal repression of Muslim leaders caused fundamentalist Islamic movements to grow much stronger, to the point where one took over in Iran and in Egypt it is a grievous danger that it might happen there too, despite the toning down of repression by the Mubarak regime.

Mistrust of Western secularism is so strong now in the Arab/Muslim world due to the West's repeated attempts at control and these miserable attempts at secularizing Arab/Muslim governments that the likelihood that these countries will have secularist governments any time soon is pretty slim.

Viti

Does anyone have a link to the Atheist Testomonials thread?

1. I am an atheist/freethinker because I do not believe in any deities

2. I had no religion whatsoever until I was 10 years old, then it was a non-demoninational Christian church. My Dad has always been agnostic and Mom has deconverted in the last decade

Orpheous99

This also includes Judaism and Islam since they all share the same roots and myths.

The main reason why you're seeing so many former Christians is that in the West the majority religion is Christianity and most also live in a free society where one doesn't have to worry too much about being persecuted for one's beliefs, or non-beliefs. Most Muslims in the world, on the other hand, don't live in free societies and can be put to death, in some, for expressing other beliefs than those accepted by their fellow citizens.


The lyrics maybe different, but the melody is the same.

[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: Orpheous99 ]</p>

Dirk the Daring

1. To assert that a particular god exists is to assert that exactly one of all the myriad god-beliefs in human history has been correct. To me, this seems arbitrary and ridiculous, given that there is exactly the same (lack of) evidence for any of them. If one is going to assert that the vast majority of all god-beliefs are false, then one must logically go the extra step and assert that literally all of them are false, or else practice self-deception by applying uneven standards of truth.

2. I was not raised in any religion. My mother is an atheist and my father describes himself as Christian but does not practice and is in fact more of a pantheist. At the age of 22 I became a Buddhist and remain one, though this has no impact on my atheism.

I have studied all the major world religions and although I think there is a definite kernel of truth in each of them, this has nothing to do with their particular creed of god(s) and is in fact made more obscure because of that creed.

--Dirk

Sephiroth

I didn't see any reason why Christianity would have anymore validity than any other religion, didn't think it made sense to take most of the Bible metaphorically, and saw no reason why I should believe in a god in the first place. I was a Fundamentalist Catholic until 15 and a liberal Catholic until almost 18. Enjoy.

britinusa

I was a good catholic boy, now I'm an Evil Atheist. Actually, that isn't quite right. Although I thoroughly enjoyed religious education (I loved that heady cocktail of 10% history and 90% fairy tales) I honestly can't remember believing any of it. Perhaps I've always been an Evil Atheist...

Eudaimonist

1. Why are you [an] atheist or free thinker?

I studied and reflected on philosophical and scientific issues, and discovered that non-theistic ideas allow me to understand life and the universe more convincingly than religions do, and that reason is our only means to knowledge.

2. What was your religious upbringing and education as a kid?

I went to a Catholic elementary school, and I had several Catholic nuns as teachers.

Koyaanisqatsi

All right, why not?

That's like asking, "Why do you breath oxygen?"

I was indoctrinated into the Presbyterian sect of the Christian cult, because my parents had been indoctrinated into the Presbyterian sect of the Christian cult, just as their parent's were and so on and so on and so on, proving yet again the evils of all cults and the inescapable fact that only through indoctrination do people shut down there normal cognitive functioning in order to become mindless sheep no matter where they live or which cult they join.

Why, you couldn't figure it out on your own? It's not that tough. Fictional creatures don't factually exist. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc., etc., etc., are all cults that indoctrinate otherwise intelligent, innocent people into shutting down that intelligence in order to control them through social doctrines and fear based on fictional creatures that don't factually exist.

Only the freethinkers awaken to this indoctrination and deprogram themselves in order to be free, healthy, vibrant members of society; the only hope for the evolution of mankind out of the intellectual dark ages we're obviously still under.

See? Remarkably simple. On the one hand, you have the cult-controlled slaves who go around thinking that fairy god kings magically blinked everything into existence in order to punish it for not obeying a fictional, nebulous, ineffable creature, and then you have us; the liberators of those slaves.

So, here's a question for you (with that delineation in mind) that would provide us with information that would be greatly appreciated: Are you a slave or a liberator?

Don't mention it.