**peaks his head around the corner**

Guess I’m not all that new to the posting but for those who haven’t met me I might as well give a little intro to myself since this thread is here…

As the posting name implies I’m Joel; I’m 26, a student at IPFW, and fairly recently de-converted from christianity. While the actual change from christian to atheist happened rather quickly for me it was a fairly long process in hindsight.

After many years of reading a lot of philosophy and steadily liberalizing my religious views under the light of reason and rationality I was left with a pretty modernized view of religion. I took the bible as mostly metaphorical (as a literal interpretation is both untenable and often morally repugnant) and my view of god was somewhere between christianity and deism involving a personal relationship but not much in the way of direct intervention. I was also a… I guess the term would be universalist… With the constructs of god i could accept involving a loving creator I couldn’t conceive that it was possible for that creator to condemn people to hell for eternity for a simple difference in worldviews… I think that last part was one of the key moments leading me to reject all theistic religions…

Towards the end of Bill Maher’s Religulous’ run in theaters I went to see it, having a healthy sense of humor about religion by that point. It’s also worth noting that at that point I had just reading all of Ayn Rand’s fiction and several of the books on objectivist philosophy, I’d actually had one with me that I was reading while waiting on the movie to start. Anyone familiar with her writing should also know her view of religion and I’d be lying if i said the rationality and logic of her views hadn’t affected my philosophies at all (I’m kind of like the bastard child of a one night stand between humanism and objectivism )… All that in consideration it was somewhere toward the middle of the moment where I had an epiphany… I just wasn’t at all sure that there was a god out there… It just didn’t add up to me anymore and to be intellectually honest with myself I had to admit that I was now an agnostic…

As I left the theater I had a lot on my mind and it was a relatively early show so the stores were still open at Jefferson Point. Being a regular patron of the Philosophy section at Barnes and Noble I remembered a book that had caught my eye one day, since I had still considered myself a christian at the time it didn’t have much relevance to me other than as a curiosity but I found my thoughts drawn to it that night and decided to go take a closer look. That book was “Why I Became an Atheist” by John W. Loftus, perusing the forward and introduction while loitering in the isles I increasingly knew that this was a book I needed to read, while I had my doubts about christianity and religion in general I had never seriously evaluated the arguments against them.

I took that book home that night and found his case to be nothing short of compelling and was forced to deal with the realization that there were many arguments that I had accepted about christianity simply because they agreed with my worldview and I had been raised to believe that they were true… However, presented with well reasoned and researched arguments the likes of which I had never seen countered (apologists haven’t really come up with anything new in a long time…) I was forced to confront the realization that it just wasn’t possible for christianity (or any of the modern religions) to be right about god or pretty much anything else for that matter.

At that point I was pretty much an atheist but still called myself agnostic, still viewing it as possible that there was something out there beyond anything the religions had a clue of. Then at the encouragement of an atheist friend from work I went back to the bookstore and picked up The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins… Towards the beginning of the book, the scale he established of seven stages from strong theist to strong atheist, had a distinct effect on my worldview. I realized then that I was further down the scale toward an atheist than I had realized before, I’d say roughly a 5 if you’re familiar with the scale, basically i thought the existence of god was less likely than the non-existence of god and was inclined to be skeptical. By the end of the section titled “Why there almost certainly is no god” I was a pretty solid 6 (logical well reasoned argument carries a great deal of weight with me and Dawkins is superlative in that regard).

Since then I have read extensively, covering “Losing Faith in Faith” by Dan Barker, “Why I am Not a Christian” by Bertrand Russell, “The Ancestors Tale” by Dawkins, “Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement” by numerous authors, “Irreligion” by John Allen Paulos, “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris. I’m currently reading “Why Evolution is True” by Jerry A. Coyne (brilliant book by the way) after which i plan on reading “Bones, Rocks, and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened” by C. Turney, “Breaking the Spell” by Daniel Dennett, and “The Reason Driven Life” by Robert Price. I’ve also listened to several years worth of podcasts and I couldn’t describe my view better than Richard Dawkins did when he said “I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden”

I now openly self-identify as an atheist in public (including stickers on my laptop and buttons on my backpack) although I’m still working up to broaching the topic with my mom… I enjoy debate and am always anxious to put my newly acquired and ever increasing knowledge to the test.

Hmmm… that was a lot longer than I had planned lol…

p.s. Andy D. is convinced I’m a spy for the christians

Wow Joel, I had no idea your “deconversion” (for lack of a better word) was so recent!

Your bookshelf in your apartment was brimming with great titles (yeah, I’m a snooper).

I had gathered from the few conversations I had with you that your convictions had been edified long ago.

Hi, my name is Katie and I am an atheist.

I am a personal assistant, cook, teacher, and driver to an almost three year old girl. I don’t get paid for it though. For money, I work part-time at Barnes and Noble. For kicks, I run a forum for atheist moms on a social networking site called CafeMom.

I was never fully entrenched in Christianity. My family went to church because that it what you did in rural North Carolina. I called myself agnostic until I met my husband who lent me some of his philosophy books. Somewhere in the middle of “Why I am Not a Christian”, I had an “a-ha” moment.

Lol, Bertrand Russell really is brilliant isn’t he

It’s funny, I had avoided that particular book of his for many years while i was a christian because of how much I respected his philosophy… I think on some level I could tell that the book would threaten my worldview… I wish I’d read it years ago now

@Joel,

It was just a joke and I don’t think you are a spy. From your story above and talking to you, I can see it wasn’t just Bill Maher’s movie that set you free suddenly. It was a gradual complicated process; the way it is for most people. Glad to have you.

@Katie Nice to meet you and thanks for sharing. This will be a very good meeting at the ACPL library. It looks like you may be out of state. What is the link to your hosted forum?

Thanks,

Andy D

jeebus, Andy D, has officially hijacked this blog to continue his global plan of plastering every website with pictures of fracking cats. He even has Andy W. doing it.

Do I change my name to Andy first and then post with cats or can I do it the other way around.

… and just in case any humorless atheists read this, it’s a joke. But seriously…

@skeptigator

LOL- The cats pics are not a top down directive. This is a bottom up emergence of our love of cats. (For the record, I like dogs, too.) Andy W goes further and his cat has his own twitter account which is quite funny.

This may be a trend for naturalists. I couldn’t help but notice on Jerry Coyne’s blog on “Why Evolution is True” his love of cats and he dedicates one day of the week to blog about them. (Caturday) Check out: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/tag/cats/

You can even explore why cats purr. Science is fun.

I guess I should have added a little more information about me. Darn kids are distracting.

We moved up to Fort Wayne from North Carolina about a year and a half ago after my husband got a promotion. All of my family is still in North Carolina. I found this site by grace of Google.

I spend a good deal of free time on CafeMom. It’s kind of like MySpace for mothers. It is frequently mainly by cranky, whiny women who left their senses of humor in high school but, some of them are very cool and make up for the fact. This is my group.

http://www.cafemom.com/group/412/forums/166841/Public_Discussion

I saw that was a meeting tomorrow and I would very much like to go but, I work most nights and tomorrow is one of those nights. I am even more disappointed that I can’t go now that I know there are others who share my love and affection for not only Bertrand Russell but, lolcats.

Hi –

I’m a fan of this blog, and love the content. Truth be told, being an openly atheist/agnostic/secular humanist in the Fort can be a somewhat risky experience.

As someone posted before, we are in hostile territory. There is a reason the In God We Trust license plates sold off the shelves in Allen Co. From conversations I have had with some religious folk around the area, being an atheist is not interpreted very well and is synonymous with evildoer. Christian=good. Atheist=bad.

I’m not bringing any new info here, but in family/social circles coming out as an atheist can have damaging and isolating results. Kind of like when my brother came out to our family that he was gay. A good portion of the “accepting” Christians basically said good riddance.

Its nice to know there are some people who are visiting this site and reading the posts. Maybe some of the traffic here are people who are currently questioning their own individual belief system. I’m sure there may even be a few fanatical, evangelical zealots lingering and looking for souls to save.

I do realize everyone’s’ story is unique. And I feel it is important to try to bridge the gap that exists between believers and nonbelievers. We share way more in common with each other than some people may think.

Another Andy?!?

Does being called ‘Andy’ somehow predispose one to become an atheist? If so, screw all the logical arguments against Intelligent Design, I’m simply going to start calling everyone I meet ‘Andy’.

Andy S.,

Do you have any cats, perchance?

I am even more disappointed that I can’t go now that I know there are others who share my love and affection for not only Bertrand Russell but, lolcats.

What?! Now they are shipping cat lovers in?!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Throw a banana in the mix and this truly is my worst nightmare*

* gratuitous Ray Comfort reference

Yes, cats right. Sorry drifted off topic there.

I love cats – very peculiar animals – especially, Siamese.

And it is funny there are a boatload of Andys on this blog.