Well lets see...this will be my second post on here...Susan asked for me to go ahead and introduce myself...so I guess I will

Let's just off with how I'm an atheist living in the wonderful state of Texas:

Growing up I was completely apathetic to religion.  My parents didn't go church; I would occasionally go to sunday school with my grandmother but I would pretty much just sleep through the whole damn thing.   I thought everything was going pretty good until I was about 13.  About that time my father was diagnosed with an enlarged spline (not sure of the technical term for this) and needed surgery to remove it.  The night before the surgery he went to Baptist church and became "saved".  After the surgery he started going to this church every sunday; my mother also begain to go with him.  It didn't take long before they forced me to go with them.  This about the time I started actually learning about christianity.  I questioned everything the pastor was saying, but if he actually ever asked something (like "do you accept christ as your savoir&quot I would always say yes.  Well a few years later the church "goes under" (the first pastor left and the new one was using the tithe to buy things he shouldn't have been buying).  They went to a new church and brought me along for a little while, but I turned 18 and that pretty much ended.  At this point I did actually believe in a god.  Nothing from a christian view point made any sense though.  

In college (only had about 1 1/2 years of college...it was a really crappy community college) I took your basic classes and a philosophy class.  When we started going over Nietzsche is when I started to question my beliefs.  It didn't take me long to become an agnostic.  About 3 years ago a few friends of mine stumbled upon Ayn Rand.  Now at this time I had gotten into eclectic paganism.  But after reading up on Objectivism I started leaning towards a more atheist view point.  And now, being 23 (almost 24) I am an atheist.

My biggest problem with christianity has always been mainly one thing:  The accepting Christ as ones savior being the only way to heaven.  I just don't get how someone can believe this and ignore the fact that millions (possibly billions) of people have never "heard the messege".  According the bible these people have gone to hell.  It just always seemed like an excuse to spread the religion.

Another problem is everytime I've been in a church they always tend to "demonize" humanism.  My only guess is that they fear humanism because it offers an alternative to a source of morality.

But anyways...I'm done for now...maybe I'll throw some more info later on after I get my possible sleep.

May the giant space racoons never invade,

CrazyRoper