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transsexual
New Member
6 Posts |
 Posted - 03/25/2002 : 15:26:43 [Permalink]
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I believe in evolution but feel some type of life had to start it. While I also believe there is a high probability of life elsewhere all of our research has shown nothing to support it. If it "just" happened , as large as the universe is, it would have repeated itself many times. Argument based on "perfect" conditions makes no sense as evolution teaches life adopts to conditions. I look at every race and every place on the earth having a creation story.(they don't match for the most part)I look at modern man having a need to know.(even athiest)I have heard the after body experiences and how peaceful it was. I look at DNA and fingerprints and see we all are different(even our personality)I look at the sheer beauty in life and how some people will touch your life for no reason.
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Wolfgang_faust
Skeptic Friend
USA
59 Posts |
Posted - 04/10/2002 : 08:29:38 [Permalink]
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Hey, I have a question for you all. How many of you are in relationships with a fundy christian? I suppose I could do a poll but I am not sure how. I was a baptist preacher when I got married and not I am an atheist. My fundamental wife has a bit of a problem with it. I was just wonder if anyone else is in the same boat.
If anyone wants to put this up as a poll that would be great.
Add value to every day, Sharpen your skills, your understanding |
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Blair Nekkid
New Member
Canada
20 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2002 : 12:43:30 [Permalink]
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Okay, here goes:
When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my family used to go to a United Church. My folks would go to the sanctuary and I would be sent to the dungeon, err…um ... Sunday school in the basement. There the church ladies would regale us with stories of Jesus, sheep, shepherds, angels etc. Despite the fascinating presentation of these stories with the fuzzy flannel board and paper cutouts, I knew the real action was going on upstairs. I would therefore endeavor to escape and rejoin my parents upstairs. I was becoming quite a little Houdini by the time the minister suggested that my parents should have me put down, or at least left at home so I would not give the other little sheep any more bad ideas that I already had. This request was not as well received by my parents as you might imagine. In late 1968 we began going to a Baptist church (shudder) where I experienced the summer of love, Baptist style. If “spare the rod and spoil the child” held true, then I was in no sense a spoiled child. I endured many a “Vacation Bible Camp” run by crew cuts in horn rims who would make Pat Robertson look like a damn hippie. These semi-literate mouth-breathers would rant fire and brimstone until the inevitable alter call. It was than that I noticed that this Baptist version of getting saved seemed like a booster shot as opposed to a cure. I mean if you were watching you would see the same people kneelin',weepin',and confessin' that they were indeed the most filthy of sinners week after week. I think my folks were getting a little pressure to join in the “I am not worthy!” chorus, and having some of that evil pride and stubbornness, left the company of the Baptists for the Presbyterians in 1974. Our Presbyterian minister's sermons were not dogmatic pronouncements, but were practical advice on how it would be nice if we could all get along a little better. He based his sermons on selected examples from the life of Jesus as opposed to fire and brimstone rants regarding the significance of the death of Jesus. Around this time I became involved with Young Life (which at the time at least was a liberal non-denominational Christian outreach group). I became quite involved, to the point of becoming a leader in the junior high ministry when I was in high school. For a brief moment I even considered going into the ministry, but I got better.
Curiosity killed the Christianity. I tried reading anything I could get my hands on. I was exposed to the insane rantings of Josh McDowell at a tender age (16) while still thinking of myself as a Christian at the time, I realized that if heaven was going to be full of disingenuous assholes like that, I would prefer hell (at least the music would be better). I also learned to avoid Christian bookstores. I began to realize that logic and facts were like kryptonite to fundies. It seemed to me that you could prove any point you wanted if you pluck verses from the bible like wontons from a Chinese buffet. But why the bible? What made it better than the Vedas, or Sutras, or the gibberings of someone who claims that god talks to them they know what everyone else should do?
First to go was my belief in hell and the devil, followed closely by the cosmic sky muffin himself. Don't even get me started on ‘having a personal relationship' with a 2000 year dead Jewish peasant who may not have existed at all. I have now adopted a more realistic worldview, and I now believe that “I don't know.” is a valid and better answer that making something up to harmonize with the tribal legends of a group of desert nomads.
Cheers,
Blair
"Well, I may be an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial." |
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Badger
Skeptic Friend
Canada
257 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2002 : 22:02:29 [Permalink]
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Megan, I'm 37 and I've only made it 3 pages in to the bible. There's only so much ..... I can eat and that's about it. Good luck if you choose to go further.
Wolfgang, on the flipside, I'm married to a confirmed new-ager. She called me crazy last night. Long story, but what ever happend to moderation??!! (Ed falls off his chair laughing)
Spock, my dad was a skeptic, through and through. If you said the sky was blue and the grass was green, he'd go out to check that it wasn't cloudy and we didn't have dandelions. I come by it honestly.
If you think it's work, you're doing it wrong. |
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Jesus
New Member
USA
34 Posts |
Posted - 05/01/2002 : 17:31:45 [Permalink]
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Hey all I went to catholic school for a couple years ,then cadacism for a couple more .That is when I descovered the giant purple unicorn in my back yard .He speaks spanish and I do not but somehow I understand ,He told me that he created everything and everyone not God ... DVF my daughter is in Xtian pre-school and I am fighting to get her in public school in the fall .Good luck
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Jesus
New Member
USA
34 Posts |
Posted - 05/01/2002 : 17:32:24 [Permalink]
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Hey all I went to catholic school for a couple years ,then cadacism for a couple more .That is when I descovered the giant purple unicorn in my back yard .He speaks spanish and I do not but somehow I understand ,He told me that he created everything and everyone not God ... DVF my daughter is in Xtian pre-school and I am fighting to get her in public school in the fall .Good luck
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Badger
Skeptic Friend
Canada
257 Posts |
Posted - 05/01/2002 : 18:08:46 [Permalink]
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The unicorn LIES!
He just pretends not to speak English, and tell him to give me my $20 back!
If you think it's work, you're doing it wrong. |
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Robert
New Member
Korea
21 Posts |
Posted - 07/13/2002 : 05:54:07 [Permalink]
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I am the only atheist in my (now disowned) family! They were not practicing xians, and only thought of their god when it was convienent for them. I grew up agnostic and then just woke up one day and realized that the idea of an all powerful omnipotent being is simply ridiculous
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moakley
SFN Regular
USA
1888 Posts |
Posted - 07/15/2002 : 05:53:13 [Permalink]
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During the late 80's and early 90's things began to add up to a god with a very confused nature. I had to isolate mans assigned attributes of his devine nature from the whole. The contradictions inherent with the whole opened my eyes to the possibility that there was no god.
Please don't tell my mother it would break her heart and if there were saints she should be one.
I became an atheist in the mid 90's. That's when I realized that Billy Grahams advice column made me laugh more often than the comics. Ironically, in the local paper, they appear on the same page.
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Bradley
Skeptic Friend
USA
147 Posts |
Posted - 07/18/2002 : 13:23:07 [Permalink]
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The biggest influence on my upbringing was French-Canadian catholic (Sacre bleu! You think the puritans are the only ones who believe that skin is the devil's slipcover?). When protestants, upon learning that I am a militant Atheist, ask what religion I was raised with and I tell them catholic, they smile smugly and say they knew it all along, as if only catholicism makes Atheists. I've always found it quite ironic that anyone could find protestantism to be such a tremendously vast improvement, a fact which I am always quick to point out to them.
"Too much doubt is better than too much credulity."
-Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899) |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 07/18/2002 : 13:58:18 [Permalink]
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Ack, I hear you. Raised Irish Catholic here and have gotten the same reaction from the Prods.
When they wax poetic about the "historic christian church" I wonder what they think it was, if not catholic?
I would say that the difference between Protestanism and Catholicism is much like the difference between "Safeway Cola" and "Coke." Ones just a cheaper knock-off of the other.
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860 |
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Espritch
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 07/18/2002 : 18:27:08 [Permalink]
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quote:
I have now adopted a more realistic worldview, and I now believe that “I don't know.” is a valid and better answer that making something up to harmonize with the tribal legends of a group of desert nomads.
I could have written that myself.
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Bradley
Skeptic Friend
USA
147 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2002 : 14:45:13 [Permalink]
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quote:
I would say that the difference between Protestanism and Catholicism is much like the difference between "Safeway Cola" and "Coke." Ones just a cheaper knock-off of the other.
A most excellent and graphic analogy.
"Too much doubt is better than too much credulity."
-Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899) |
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echthroi_man
Skeptic Friend
104 Posts |
Posted - 07/25/2002 : 20:25:52 [Permalink]
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In my case I was raised in a moderate, practicing household, was baptised a Christian, raised a Christian, confirmed as a Christian, and I still consider myself a Christian. I would even describe myself as an evangelical fundamentalist, but not a Biblical literalist. While I did go through a period where I questioned numerous doctrines, I never questioned my faith, and if anything I know believe in those doctrines more firmly.
The Irish Headhunter
Oblivion -- When you REALLY want to get away from it all! |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 07/29/2002 : 08:48:35 [Permalink]
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That's too bad. It pains me to hear it. I hope that someday you too can be saved.
Sorry, but I've had that etiquetteless sentiment thrown at me so many times that I thought I'd toss it back and see if it were taken with the good will Xians insist they have when they say it.
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My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860 |
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