-DM-

Which reminds me of something which, at the time, was quite troubling but which now gives me a chuckle:

Back when I was a Christian, I was being personally "discipled" by my pastor. We met for weekly, one-on-one Bible studies. Each session began with the two of us praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our understanding of what it was that we were studying. Unfortunately for the sake of the reputation of the Holy Spirit, we sometimes arrived at mutually exclusive interpretations of the scripture in question.

-Don-

Nantko

None of the above.

I never believed in the existence of gods. I've never seen compelling evidence that made me leave that position.

rfwu

For me, it was a multitude of steps that got me to the type of Atheism known as Agnosticism. One factor was the way most of my friends during my childhood in Saudi Arabia were Muslim. Funny, because all three of them were named Omar. Anyway, it turns out that most of the Muslims I've met were fairly nice people. I've lived in an American camp, so there was a place of worship so that people can go to discreetly. That's where my family went. When we move to the States, we joined up another church just because it was our weekly routine. I was shocked to find out how much these people hated Muslims and people of other faiths! I started to do research on the history of religion and conflict and found out tons of horror stories! 9-11 just made things worse! When the church began what I thought of as a smear campaign against all outside cultures, I finally felt fed up and left for good!

Now on to the little stuff...

One big step was this book I read by Carl Sagan called "The Demon Haunted World". Anyone read that? He makes a compelling arguement for science and rational thought over the general way religion thinks.

Fundies scare me. I mean REALLY scare me! They are actually seeking power, and that is not a good thing!

I've also given some thought as to WHY I was going to church every sunday. After some time, I figured that I didn't really NEED church. I was only going there because everyone else was! What a big waste of my time!

My Chinese heritage. That's right, my Chinese heritage. I really feel like I owe something to it. Religion from there (beside Communist atheism) are all very mutually inclusive and tolerant when it come to religion. But I didn't live in China. Nor did I feel up to converting to any other religion. I had no time for the commitment Atheism was the only logical choice, since it allowed me to be tolerant of anything I wanted.

Oh, and lack of evidence was there somewhere too!