EquALLity wrote:Hi, welcome to the forum!
Wow, you've never spoken with other atheists? I'm glad you found the forum then!
What made you an atheist?
Truthfully I started disbelieving in my junior/senior year of high school (I went to a Catholic HS) when my friends and bf went on a Kairos trip, which is this trip to a camp where they take away your cell phones, feed you really well, but make you tired with plenty of activities and seminars and group discussions. I felt as though it was a great brainwashing technique and way of making your emotionally available to bury your soul into classmates that don't give a crap about you. Then you come back and 'live the forth' (which is a rule or something about being kind to people) and everyone is happy and the groups stay friends forever and everyone is nicer and people don't judge and blah blah blah for about two weeks. Then the same alcoholics and druggies go back to doing their thing until a "Group 4 reunion!" emerges after a couple months and they reminisce about their Jesus trip for a bit, and then that's it. Oh and it only costs like 100 bucks!
TMI ALERT!
For example: my boyfriend came back and had this huge freak out thing where he read some passages from the journal (that you're forced to write in) about how having sex with me was such a sin and we should wait for marriage and that he didn't want to do anything again and blah blah. Needless to say after a couple weeks I was back to fooling around with him and we are still active two years later. *rolls eyes*
Another example not as personal is that my ex-friend went on Kairos after her and I had a huge falling out. She didn't talk to me, I didn't talk to her (for like, months) and then all of the sudden she came back and wanted to have a heart to heart. No. It doesn't work that way. One weekend at Jesus camp doesn't cure you from being a terrible person.
So, yeah. That's when I really started getting frustrated with religion. Plus religion class was getting on my nerves about the way they taught things. Especially abstinence only sex ed.
So since then I really was questioning my whole belief system, teetered with a traditional agnosticism, and then broke from religion fully really only about a year ago. It just frustrated me that people were only acting holy around the holy holidays, like Easter. And I guess I just fell in love with the science I was learning and really see no room for a god to exist, especially the thousands of gods that exist in people's minds and the ones that are dead.
Over time I have become stronger in my atheism and really see no need for it in the world at all, especially not in my children's futures. So needless to say it has been an interesting journey, and one I am still wandering through. There are so many books to read, discussions to have, and ideas to conceive that it takes up a lot of my time.
And I just want to thank you for taking the time to read this. I know they are long posts but I feel the need to spill my guts because I feel such a sense of belonging that I've never really felt before, and it is so incredibly wonderful.
