Hi from sunny LA

[Seshat]

Hey there. I'm a 36-year-old married woman living in Los Angeles. I'm probably pretty lucky compared to some folks on here because atheism is socially acceptable among the people I spend time with in the film and publishing industries. Many members of my family are religious, though, including several members of my husband's family who are trying to beat alcoholism by instead becoming addicted to Jesus, and a cousin in his early 20s who's an evangelical missionary wasting his youth pimping the bible in various third world hellholes when he could be partying and getting laid. I haven't said much to my family about my beliefs, and I'd like to have a firm intellectual footing before I attempt it. I'm hoping this will be a good venue for gaining that.

I was raised Protestant and went to church sporadically until I was about 11 years old. I still believed in God and Jesus until I was about 24, but the more I thought about it the less it made sense to me. I read the Bible for myself rather than having it interpreted for me by pastors and Sunday school teachers, and was disgusted by the vicious violence, sexism and cruelty, and given the history of what the church has done in the name of the "good" book, I think the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was not convincing the world he doesn't exist, it was convincing the world that God exists.

I went through my "angry atheist" period where I thought that people who believed in religion were stupid and ethically bankrupt through hypocrisy, but I feel like that's a sort of rebellious teenage phase--one that was necessary in my intellectual development but that I don't want to get stuck in. I know some incredibly intelligent, charitable and good hearted people who believe devoutly that there's an invisible man in the sky who grants wishes if you kneel and bow your head before you ask. But rather than be an angry atheist (sorry Dawkins, I'm looking at you) I'd like to open people's minds to the idea that, at the very least, the concept of a "one true religion" is bad for the future of the human race. I'm not going to do that by belittling or attacking, but by gently getting them to think about things they may take for granted. I don't necessarily believe that Christianity, or any religion, is "wrong" per se--I'm more in line with Joseph Campbell's idea that religion is metaphor and the problem comes when people take the metaphor as hard fact. I love his line about how Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Middle East are ready to kill each other because they have different names for the same god.

Anyway, cheers, I hope I have fun here

[AlP]

Hello again. Welcome to the forum =).

[Tom62]

Cool post! And welcome to the forum, Seshat.

[McQ]

Thank you for that wonderful introduction! We're very glad to have you here and hope you'll jump right in to the discussions. You'll meet one of our Moderators soon, I'm sure. A fellow Los Angelino named Joe. He's around here somewhere....

"Joe! Hey, Joe! You have a neighbor on the board!"

(of course, L.A. is kind of a big city, but you never know)

 

[joeactor]

Thank you for that wonderful introduction! We're very glad to have you here and hope you'll jump right in to the discussions. You'll meet one of our Moderators soon, I'm sure. A fellow Los Angelino named Joe. He's around here somewhere....

"Joe! Hey, Joe! You have a neighbor on the board!"

(of course, L.A. is kind of a big city, but you never know)

 

huh?  Wha?  Oh, Hi!

Yeah, I'm out this way, so I must know you!

Nice to meet you, and I'm sure we'll chat more on the forum,
JoeActor

(yeah, one of those types...)

[curiosityandthecat]

Welcome!

[Thom Phelps]

Funny how many of us have similar stories of self-discovery, regarding seeing the myths of religion for what they are.

Welcome to HAF!