Lazy8 wrote: 

Which is exactly my point about living in the Southern Bible Belt.  This is not a unique to atheist experience is my only point.  Some places do not allow you to keep to yourself.  And life can become very difficult, very quickly in certain small communities and not in just the South, it was just the best example I had.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
ahhh...ok././.makes sense.

yea...you're probably right...

 p4jkafla wrote: 
There are people in those pews who are being perfectly honest when they say they believe, and I wasn't talking about them. I don't have that experience so I don't know what it's like from the inside. I was referring to people like I used to be, afraid to call the emperor on his wardrobe but squirming at the lie they have to tell over and over to be accepted by their communities.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
I see it as group psychosis because it has all the earmarks of psychotic behavior. If you see someone on the street corner proclaiming that they were elvis, or that they saw elvis alive, you would most definitely consider them mentally ill, would you not?

 p4jkafla wrote: 
I don't see it as psychosis, but peer pressure combined with self-doubt.

 p4jkafla wrote: 

Oh I do love the sound of my own voice, especially when I am talking about myself.  However as an evangelical fundamentalist Bible-thumper this isn't really the place for my story.  I don't care for it when people come into my sandbox and piss all over it with how much they disagree which is kinda, sorta what that would be doing.  Not that I wouldn't be polite but you know, people don't click on a link about atheism to read Christian propaganda.  But since you asked, the short version is: I would rather be wrong than bored.  At least that is what I came up with today after reacting so strongly to Lazy8's earlier post.

 edieraye wrote: 


This, BTW, is really excellent.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
Yep, mass psychotic behavior is part of the human experience, and religion in whatever form is no exception.

 edieraye wrote: 
Thanks! I agree with you...personal stories are the best. What's yours?

 p4jkafla wrote: 

Wow!  What a fascinating history.  I can see how it must have been a painful process for you but also, what a rich heritage.  How to balance the two - honoring the amazing legacy of your grandfather while honoring your own personal and very different journey must have been difficult at times.  It might still be.  Thanks for sharing.  I find people's own, honest, stories so much more interesting and informative and inspirational than philosophical and theoritical noodling.

Oh, and thanks Lazy8, too - you know I always look forward to your posts!  

I was bought up in a very strict catholic household, and catholicism ran very deep. For example, my grandfather was the founder of the Catholic Medical Mission Board (which is now a $B global medical relief org.).  In his home in Yonkers, he had one of the very few private chapels in America, where the Arch Bishop of N would come and say Mass for his family. He had 11 children; his eldest daughter became a maryknoll nun who ultimately became Mother Superior of that order. My father, who was the oldest son, was in the Maryknoll Seminary for 10 years before he came to the conclusion that it wasn't his calling. He opted out before he took final vows, and then married my mom.

To say I was raised catholic would be an understatement. I also graduated went to a catholic high school, and graduated from a Jesuit College. However, that is not to say I didn't question my religion, as I did, continuously through college. I still believed...until I had my first of many brushes with Catholic Family Services, regarding my gender issues. Then, it was quickly downhill from there. Nothing made sense anymore; certainly none of what the church would have one believe.

It was only when the child abuse scandals broke here in the US and across the globe that I finally realized that if the supposed spiritual head of the body of christ could be so awful, I could no longer believe in any of it. I started to read and listen to people like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris. I started to read more and more, people like John Loftus, who completely (and I mean COMPLETELY) destroyed christianity with his book  "Why I Became an Atheist", and others.

And I am far far happier now than I have been in a very long time.

 p4jkafla wrote: 
My experience mirrors Manbird's. I never did believe.

Oh I said I did—because after all if you don't you go straight to hell. And they made you say you did on the assumption either that you were telling the truth or that saying so often enough would make it true.

But saying it didn't make it true. And eventually I admitted it to myself, and then to my family. Admitting it to myself meant examining what I was saying: telling god you believed in him and loved him, when he was supposed to be all-seeing and all-knowing and knew without being told whether you did or not. I realized that I wasn't fooling god (if any) or even myself, and the absurdity of the charade became too much to keep up so I hung up my altarboy robe for good.

I don't think I was alone in those pews. There are probably millions of people dressed up for sunday services and nodding their heads while they piously intone that they believe, when inside those heads they're thinking "No I don't. This is ridiculous. I wish I was outside taking a walk."

 Manbird wrote: 
bybhiw

 Manbird wrote: 

Thanks for sharing!  I'm always interested in people's personal stories.  And great question P4 - thanks for asking it.

 p4jkafla wrote: 
I simply never believed in a god. I tried and tried and tried - every way, all kinds of spiritual ways of thinking but I always felt like a fraud, pretending. I found athiesm (I like the humanism branch, myself) through my 12 step stuff. Which is kind of the opposite way it works for most recovering people. But for me, recovery gave the ability to be true to myself and not have to pretend to believe. 

I'm curious as to how any of the atheists posting here came to become non believers. What was the path you took to understand the world the way you do?

As long as we are posting links, one of my perennial crushes, Alain de Botton, recently gave a TED talk on Atheism 2.0

 oldviolin wrote: 
Oh, I know all right. I know. And you're going to know, too, in about 2 seconds little mister. 

 Manbird wrote: 
That's going to really mess up your underwear schedule. But, hey, you know? 

 p4jkafla wrote: 
It's good stuff. I have 4 episodes queued up and the DVR.