So, I've had you guys on my myspace for a while now and thought it was finally time I spoke up and told my story. I used to be a lot more active in the quest to destroy religion, although I've mellowed out a bit as I've gotten older.

Let me say straight off I was not raised christian or one of its many branches....I come from a jewish family. We don't have a hell. Jesus added that part on. Or the romans...whatever...but essentially as a jew you can violate the commandments and you still go to heaven, you just risk being bannished from the community or something to that extent....I never really cared enough to look into it deeply but the little I have read points to something along those lines...

Anyway I think I first started thinking religion was bullshit around age 10 or so. There was a variety of things which caused this, first I was being pressured into having a bar mitzvah. I wanted nothing to do with this, it seemed like an extra activity I had to do and I was pretty solitary as a kid, usually tinkering with electronics or on the computer. I hated school as it was, so telling me I had to go to ANOTHER school (hebrew school) to learn a language I didn't care about so I could read out of a fancy book/scroll thing was basically the equivalent of telling me to go fuck myself.

The second thing was probably just prayer...I remember once when I was around 9 or 10 I was like in my bed trying to fall asleep and I started praying for some new video game or stereo system or something to that extent....I quickly realized this didn't work, and also how selfish it was.

The third thing was the discovery of the jewish practice of ritual circumcision. I first learned about it when i was around 7 or 8 but didn't fully understand until I was around 9 or 10. What most people don't know is that this is a procedure actually more common in muslims and non-jewish americans (aka christians) as they far out number jews, and both practice the procedure routinely. With modern science it is a procedure which serves no purpose but to reduce sexual pleasure. A common theme in religion. So what else is new. As soon as I heard the religion called for some genital mutilation that was enough to scare me off. And despite how fucked up this practice is, 65% of americans are still doing it and it isn't all to uncommon to hear the much reported myths of uncleanliness or what not...not much different from all the common things the religious claim.

So as a young kid, these three factors combined made me realize religion was a crock of shit. I was being pressured by parents, grandparents, relatives, among other people into a religious activity, and I fought hard against them all. It wasn't until a shrink I had been going to (I was a pretty weird kid...mainly I was just rebelling against school and religion) told my parents to back off, that people finally stopped bothering me.

I actually have some qualms against the american education system and just school in general, mainly because my life experiences have taught me that one fixed system of education does not work for everyone, some people learn by having information repetitively pounded into their heads, and some people like I, learn from real world experiences, trial and error, seeing is believing, that type of thing. I don't mind reinventing the wheel if it means I'll understand it way better then reading the same from a book. I work in the IT field and taught myself pretty much everything I know about computers, and I had been working with them since the age of 3 or so.

When I was younger, around 13-16 or so, I used to actively fight against religion, I once converted a 13 year old girl going to catholic school. She came back about a year later telling me I ruined her life, all her friends ostracized her after she gave up her belief. I never knew peer pressure and religion were so closely intertwined, but apparently so. I didn't really feel bad hearing this story from her though, after all, she could have just chosen to believe again, but she didn't. She'd have probably come around to atheism eventually anyway.

I still will fight against religion if it gets brought up and the situation is right, but I've started to think some people are just too stupid to live without religion. As an atheist, it seems completely ridiculous to have those kind of beliefs, but I can't "put myself in their shoes". I'm not them. And all my life I've known I was a lot different from the average person, it's just how I am.

Some people seem to be non-functional without religion. It's like without believing in some fantasy they don't have the brain power to fill in the blanks. Maybe I'm just being arrogant and think I'm smarter than these people, but I haven't really heard this brought up on here before. What if someone is just simply incapable of rational thought, because their personality is of an emotional type, and they don't think, they feel. Like our president.

After all, before humans developed their advanced brain power we were just instinctual creatures, and while most animals probably don't have enough brain power to believe in a god, their actions are much more robotic and instinct based. What if religion to these people is just remnants of such behavior?

I think the people that we do manage to convert were borderline, or would have came around on their own anyway. I still think some people are hopeless. They don't think, they feel. And you can't argue with someone who's feeling. Are you going to say they aren't feeling it? They probably are, they just aren't intelligent enough to associate the feeling with their brain and instead associate it with a high power.

I just think its hopeless sometimes, but I still like what you guys do, mainly for the laughs. Maybe i'm an elitist asshole, but at least I have my head on straight. I know i'm right, after all, even if i'm wrong, i still go to heaven. Hell yeah, 2 points for judaism.

religion is such a joke.

By the way, this is my myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/lx_xero