Hi Rational Responders,

I didn't see any mega-thread for introductions, so I'll go ahead and start my own thread.

I'm Gadren (my username on YouTube is carrotmaritova), and I've been an atheist for maybe 2-3 years, although I never really thought of myself as such until 1.5 years ago.  I grew up in an LDS family, and while my parents are great, their (and by extension "my", for a long time) life is completely defined by the Church.  I can't vouch for other churches, but the LDS Church is very big on having the church community be your life.  I suspect that part of that comes from its pioneer heritage, where the church WAS society, but in this day and age, the result is pretty hard on anyone who wants an independent life.

 I was a strong Creationist, and I even did a freshman biology book report on Darwin's Demise (that's something I truly regret, because my biology teacher was perhaps one of the most sensible and rational people I've known; he was a major player in the Kansas ID drama).  During my high school career, I slowly shifted from "it's OK that they teach it, so long as it's just a theory, because it'll be proved wrong" to "the world is old but created" to "God used evolution to make all the animals but placed Adam and Eve" to, finally, "evolution is right."

I grew up in Kansas, which ended up giving me the sense that I was on the "front lines," where not everyone was LDS, and thus it was my duty to preach the gospel.  I sometimes wonder about the friendships I could have had if I hadn't let that define me.  There was a sort of mental filter (something I still see very much in my Utah-based relatives), kind of a morality firewall, from which all required approval.  My relatives still have a great deal of ambiguity with the word "good," and the immediate asumption upon hearing that a movie wasn't good wasn't that it was poorly made, but that it didn't pass LDS standards.

I carried a small leather notebook in my back pocket when I went to church, and it's very interesting to see my progression toward atheism in my private rants.  Having been part of the priesthood there, I saw the form and ceremony and action without meaning.  I wrote my own criticisms about it, then my private rebuttals to the points the teachers would make.  I soon found that attempts to discuss these sorts of things with my parents proved fruitless, and the words I longed to hear, "It's OK if you don't believe," never escaped their lips.  It was always a sort of half-hearted "We'll still love you," which sounded like the love you gave to a relative in prison (speaking of which, Mark Hoffmann is actually my ex-uncle!).

So, I'm still a closet atheist, though I sense that my parents have a suspicion.  I'm at the University of Utah now, of all places!  But thankfully, all my roommates are nontheist, and so we all support each other and I feel very free.

I came here with the whole Hovind nonsense on YouTube, and I'd love to be part of this community!