Hello all,

Just joined the site and thought I would say hello before I start browsing around. It looks like a neat and active forum.

I was raised as a Methodist but my parents weren't particularly strict about things. Like most kids who go to church, I simply took God as a given. My first pangs of doubt on the subject came from the church itself. When I was in Confirmation class, our pastor told us to get Bibles if we didn't already have one. She said to make sure that if we bought one to not get a Bible "with red pages down the middle". She was refering to the Apochrypha of the Catholic Bible. She said, "those are just stories and we don't believe in them". This naturally got me to thinking...if the "red pages" are just stories, whose to say the rest of them aren't "just stories" too? And who gets to decide what are "just stories" and what is the truth?

The second pang was when I was at a Bible retreat (God, I hate those!), where someone quite innocently asked the age old problem of evil question (Why do bad things happen to good people if God is there to protect us). The answer was so long and stumbling that it made me think again.

So, now I'm a full fledged aethist. The journey from "I have doubts about this whole thing" to finally admitting to myself that I don't believe in God was a long and interesting one.

Anyways...enough rambling.

Hello and see you on the boards!

Michael