Hello, everybody!

My name is Libbie. I've known about this site for ages but only just registered, for some reason. Looking forward to participating and meeting other freethinking people.

I'll give you a quick overview of my life, in case anybody is interested....

I'm going to be 27 soon, and I'm married with no children (and no plans for any, either. Nieces and nephews are enough fun for me). I'm a self-employed photographer and I live just outside Seattle.

I was born and raised in rural Idaho and indoctrinated into Mormonism, although I was raised with a very special stamp of Mormonism that closely resembles the Evangelical sect of Christianity. My family is insane. My father and my uncle both strongly believed that they were either Jesus or the prophet who would usher in the second coming of Jesus, depending on which day you asked them about it. They would frequently get into arguments over who really was Jesus and who was just faking it. Looking back now, it's hilarious. But then, it was scary, and a total crap way to grow up. I was raised to truly, deeply *fear* the Second Coming and the End of the World, and even though I now have zero belief in God or the Bible I still get cold terrors on occasion when anything remotely resembling a passage of Revelation is discussed on the daily news. I'm living proof of how destructive religious indoctrination can be to a child's mind.

My mother divorced my dad when he started using drugs and was excommunicated from the Church. We moved to Seattle, and Mom laid off the religion stuff. My sister and I were free to think for ourselves, and we did. I began studying evolution in middle school and by the time I got to college, I had a pretty solid understanding of biology and had figured out that the Earth wasn't 6,000 years old. I still clung to a bit of casual religious belief until I met Will, who is now my husband. He's been an atheist all his life and really treasures logic and freedom of thought. Talking to him about such things helped me come to a full understanding of a universe without a God, and here I am, a happy and well-adjusted atheist, a 6 on the Dawkins scale.

Now I'm dedicated to helping others make the jump from religion to nonreligion, and I want to find ways to celebrate free thought. I've started compiling ideas for a photography book that will feature portraits of and essays by atheists. Hopefully some day I'll get to make it.

Thanks for reading my long post! Cheers.

Libbie