Hello!!
Offline Hey everyone!
Just joined this site, i am new to this blogging stuff, i recently started commenting on current.com and thought that was fun so i thought i would branch out to a new site and see how it goes! I am in my 20's a health science student who hopes to be able to move on to evolutionary biology from the North East, (Any CT people?!). I guess it would be best to mention my religion story now. As every baby i was born an atheist then unlike all i was brought up in Christianity. I rejected Christian beliefs very early on, around first or second grade. I always had an interested in what people believed once i found out there was more than one religion, that interested i recently found out was possibly biological from my fathers biological fathers side where all his many brothers were pastors, and higher religious figures. Go figure. So needless to say i asked everyone who was various religions a million questions and even took part in events with their families. Through all my fundamental education years i tried many religions including Wicca,paganism, Buddhism, Judaism, Hindu (slightly),etc. For most of my life i could have been considered an agnostic. After coming out as a homosexual i was being Targeted by peoples religious beliefs so that started a lot of questioning of the real effects religion plays on humans lives. At that point i did not consider the point that religion was not real i assumed all this things must have happened. After realizing this was not the case, I deemed myself (now knowing) agnostic. I kept calling myself agnostic till i realized that the only reason i was is because i was using it to try to explain things i did not know like where did that first atom come from. Then it hit me like a stack of bricks that science does not know YET, and we may not know in our life time but time will tell and admitting that it was the work of some god is just a idea (lie) disguised as an answer. Almost like admitting defeat "we don't know so we will throw this stamp on it and stop looking" that day i came out for a second time in my life, this time as an atheist. Now i am a very proud and active atheist. By active i mean i question believers of anything constantly, and constantly correct people in saying believe and evolution because it is understand and evolution.
Hope you enjoyed my story! Questions? Comments?
God bless you all! 
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Offline If there is ever proof of a "god" it would be found in science. These religious folks don't know data, don't know how to determine, nor test thus they could never find out or understand. They would need to have the skills of an atheist (98%? of the science community). Needless to say they will accept it because it agrees with them just how some Christians choose to ignore the slavery context but uphold the anti homosexual context.
is that data must be gathered as far as possible from a position of zero bias. Obviously this is hard to do for everyone but given atheism does not assume god must exist then it's theoretically the better initial scientific starting point.
Yeah, look, the bible/koran and probably the jewish bible are pretty much hate-filled. I wonder if you'd get away with including racism, sexism, slavery, homophobia, exhortations to murder and torture and all the rest of it in any normal children's book.
Lucky for god, he's utterly exempt from morality.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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Offline Welcome aboard. Speaking from my own personal experience, I can say that I relate to your being somewhat indecisive about agnostic or atheist. I personally tried to hold on to a blief in a god, long after I knew otherwise, but I got to admit, life got a whole lot better when I just tossed all of that nonsense out the window and stopped trying to let the dogmas of some archaic faith tell me what was best for my life. Which lead me to the point of realizing, why believe in something that can not be defined ?
I think you'll enjoy it here. I know I do.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
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Offline Being gay is not a reason to reject a god or accept a god, or any religion for that matter.
Although your treatment by religious people certainly shows the contradiction of an alleged "all loving god", that is only one reason, but not the core and best reason to reject a claim.
EVIDENCE, in the form of repeatable testable falsifiable data, is the best and most credible way to assure a claim is true.
Even if such a god existed, your mistreatment would make him an asshole. But that only addresses their alleged god's morality, not his alleged existence itself.
I would say the best reason to reject a god claim would be for the same reason, for example, rejecting claims of Thor or Isis, or even the claim that Ouija boards really work. There simply is no credible evidence for those claims.
Liking a claim or not liking a claim is not a good reason to accept or reject a claim. EVIDENCE is the only reason to accept or reject a claim.
There certainly are plenty of moral objections and those alone would cause me to flip my finger off to such a being, even if real. But the nuts and bolts as to why I reject any claim is far less complicated.
I am sorry that our species is still hung up on what others do sexually. But that is unfortunately still a majority of our species, not just Muslims and Christians. You'd find the same treatment of gays in China and Japan as well.
It is encouraging though that in more westernized societies that gays are finally getting more of the equal treatment that all humans deserve. I would warn however, being gay does not mean that you get taboo status just because others have mistreated you. I have the same problem with Jews who think because we(the west) support them(and I do, for the most part) can never complain about their tactics in combating the bad behavior of Palestine.
I don't like anyone, even atheists, who want to play victim and milk that as a way to avoid very ugly things. All setting up taboos does is create resentment and division and it shows a lack of security on one's own part. As an atheist I never tell others "never say things that offend me". I do however, challenge them to prove what they are saying otherwise maybe they shouldn't be going around saying it.
In any case, welcome, glad to have another fellow heathen on the board.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
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Offline I think you misunderstood coming out as gay did not turn me atheist "After coming out as a homosexual i was being Targeted by peoples religious beliefs so that started a lot of questioning of the real effects religion plays on humans lives. At that point i did not consider the point that religion was not real i assumed all this things must have happened." It only opened by eyes to the negative effects religion plays on peoples life, along with the need to look into the stories people used against me or try try to explain to me they were right. Being targeted did not make me an atheist it just made me anti religious, at that point i was still agnostic.
If i said something to draw you upon that conclusion i apologize for misleading because coming out about my sexuality only played a role in seeking further insight into the beliefs of these people but as you can see i was on the road to this conclusion even before coming out.
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Offline Born in Alabama and lived the majority of mt life there. Ewww!!! I will never go back! Lol Anyways hi and welcome
Oh yeah, I live in Texas now. Not a whole lot better.
If all the Christians who have called other Christians " not really a Christian " were to vanish, there'd be no Christians left.
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I like that; I should start doing that.
I tend to say I understand/am educated about evolution when they ask if I "believe in" it, but correcting other people on that point is a good way to get them thinking differently about their qualifiers.
To me it is important to note the differences between apparently possible (not disproved) and logically impossible explanations- regarding the "big bang"; I don't think a deity qualifies as an answer, and more importantly it doesn't number among the logically possible if it ever numbered among the apparently possible.
Welcome!
I'm in Portland, OR - almost as far away from you as I can be and still be on the continental US. Have fun here. Glad you could make it.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
All are welcome here. Free speach is sacrosanct. Post early and often, sort of like Chicago elections. I am in a place near Toronto Ontario and we do have at least one [1] member here from CT. I grew up in Maine, does that count?
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
Welcome to the forum.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Thanks for sharing. I like your point about understanding, too. It's a good one. There's no need for faith in evolution. There's not even a need for faith in abiogenesis. Everything that happens after the instant of conception is an entirely natural process that we can watch. It's amazing but not a miracle.
I was thinking as I walked to work this morning that god people demand evolution offer them proofs they never demand of their religion. Rafts of impossible lateral transitionals, species evolution within our lifetime, chimps with human morality and a range of other bullshit. Imagine if they demanded such rigorous proofs from their celestial teddy bear?
Congrats on coming out.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Hey ill take it maine is only a few hour drive and one of the schools i am looking at is in Canada
I think it will be a good place for me to go
"I was thinking as I walked to work this morning that god people demand evolution offer them proofs they never demand of their religion. Rafts of impossible lateral transitionals, species evolution within our lifetime, chimps with human morality and a range of other bullshit. Imagine if they demanded such rigorous proofs from their celestial teddy bear?"
I have thought such things before and this is what my conclusion looks like....
We have provided them with so much proof from carbon dating, genetics to observable things that primal reflexes in babies not to mention the diving reflex which is an aquatic reflex. Faith is the purposeful suspension of logic and people pride themselves on such idiotic notions. Just like how some people pride themselves on their inability to preform mathematics, it is a complete disgrace to evolved conscious thinking beings. It is sad to know that half of the population in the united states does not accept (understand) evolution.
If there is ever proof of a "god" it would be found in science. These religious folks don't know data, don't know how to determine, nor test thus they could never find out or understand. They would need to have the skills of an atheist (98%? of the science community). Needless to say they will accept it because it agrees with them just how some Christians choose to ignore the slavery context but uphold the anti homosexual context.