A bit late outa the gate!

hellfiend666
Rational VIP!
hellfiend666's picture
Posts: 192
Joined: 2007-01-15
User is offlineOffline
A bit late outa the gate!

Ok, I've been on this site for a week now, and I've just found this whole intro section. Doh!!! A lot of you have, no doubt, seen my posts or seen me in a chat room, so y'all know I'm here. Despite my original reservations, I am glad to have found this site! I look forward to being a contributing member of this community, however scattered. I did, however, post a blog entry as an intro, so I'll just repost that "intro" here.

Hello all,
My name is Jack Wynne, and I have been an atheist my whole life, i just didn't know it the whole time. You see, i was raised by parents that never even brought up religion or atheism, or going to church, or even the bible. I was left to figure it out on my own, and I'm glad it was that way. As such, I was an outsider looking in on the Christian church, and therefore saw it with absolutely no bias. My whole life I have been reading everything I could find on "the Big Bang Theory" and Darwinian Evolution. At one point, in grade school, I brought a National Geographic in to school, (my parents had me subscribed to it if that tells you about my hunger for scientific knowledge), it dealt with the evolution of man, and I was virtually laughed out of the room. No one wanted to hear rationality, not even the teacher. I knew this stuff made sense, I knew there was solid scientific evidence behind it, and I just didn't understand why no one else could see that! So from then on, I kept my endevours in that realm, for the most part, to myself. I was encouraged to go to Sunday School with my best friend when I was 10, but I got half way there and decided not to, it just didn't "feel" right to me, even then. I did, however, feel a strong pull toward the sciences, and aspired t be an icthyologist from very early on.

When I reached adolesence, I did what most teens do when searching for thier place in the world, I started looking into this "religion" thing i'd heard so much about. Only, I didn't go to a Christian church. Oh no, by this time I was already disillusioned by the way they seemed to control the country, despite "the separation of church and state", and the countless contradictions in the bible. I saw the hypocrisy, and wanted nothing to do with it. Instead, I turned to something a little older, a little more Earthly, I became a pagan. I never really found a comfortable spot in that group either though, but still, my wife of the time and I joined a Wiccan coven. We spent a few years with this group, and eventually "hived off" (as they say) to form our own coven. We spent the next couple years running this group, acting as it's priests. Eventually the coven disbanned, and shortly after we were divorced, (the two events had little to do with each other by the way). So, I was left where I started for the most part, asking myself, "what is God".

During my time as a pagan priest, I had studied many religions. Many of the people i dealt with in those circles were disillusioned with the faith they were raised with and a large part of our gatherings was dedicated to discussing this. Sharring their reasons for looking elsewhere, what they liked about thier previous faith, what they didn't like, and what drew them to the path they currently walked. I listened very intently to everyone. We had former Jews, Catholics, Baptists, a Muslim or two, and they all taught me something in their own way. Through it all, I always felt like I wasn't being truthfull to the people that looked to me for guidance, for support, for leadership. It's because, though I tried, I could never convince MYSELF that i believed. Science still had a tight hold on my mind. I was always questioning my elders, and rarely did they give response that was satisfactory. In the end, I too was disillusioned, but with all religion. I realized what I was searching for so long and hard I already knew. Like Luke proclaiming to the Emporor, "I am a Jedi, like my father before me", so too was I an Atheist. A follower of reason, and ration. A man that doesn't believe anything without proof. For the first time, I felt whole. I had found myself, the self that was always there, I just couldn't see it.

The darkness of godlessness lets wisdom shine.