Greetings

[Croaker]

Hello everyone!

Found this forum a few weeks back and have been randomly perusing it ever since. I've hence decided that signing up and joining in the discussion would be worth my time.

As far as my own history, I was raised by a very evangelical mother along with a relatively moderate father. I was a true believer up through my teens, having gone through a Christian based middle school and attended many a summer camp/retreat. In college I unwittingly joined up with a local branch of the Church of Christ, and after a few months of (at least, what I felt to be at the time    ) actual spiritual experience, my overeager mother had a bit of an intervention to remove me from the Church, as they are (widely?) seen as some form of a cult.

After this I simply stopped caring - if the one time I actually felt something was just a clever bit of 'brainwashing,' then why should any other time be any different?

Many years went by where I simply played the role to appease friends and families, attending church alongside them. Fast forward until I got married and had two children with a rather wonderful wife, and this last summer I started to realize that, despite the inherent fear of hell instilled by my mother in childhood, I had no specific reason to continue to believe.

Commence, what I call in retrospect, the 'great departure.'

I had just read a book titled Anathem by Neal Stephenson, and it single-handedly made me start to consider things I had never truly thought of - things about the age of the earth, the irrationality of 'faith' and so on. I then started to scour the internet for information, both secular and theistic, and even with my natural inclination to believe the theistic side, I slowly came to the realization of how downright goofy it all is.

There had been a long fear within me that life 'outside' the theistic world would be meaningless, that my life would fall apart and I would delve into some form of constant depression.

When I first ''took off the glasses" and looked at life through an atheistic viewpoint, though - everything suddenly clicked.

I'm still as happy as I used to be (if not more so), and constantly looking for more information. If anything this change in my life has reawakened an interest in the sciences for me, as I had always been interested in physics, astronomy, biology... of course, with the typical blinders necessary to consolidate my beliefs then with what I was being taught in class. I even remember some of the stuff I was taught in my Christian middle school classes - talk about a stretch!

I hope this is not overlong, but I'm glad to finally have a place where I can discuss something that has, recently, become a very interesting topic for myself. Glad to meet you all, and I'm looking forward to picking everyone's brain (and having my own picked as well!)

[Tank]

Hi Croaker

Welcome aboard, get those questions posted!

Regards
Chris

[The Magic Pudding]

I hope this is not overlong,

No not over long, it had enough happening to keep me reading.
Welcome.

[wildfire_emissary]

Hey there, Croaker! Welcome. I like your avatar.

[Croaker]

Thanks for the greetings, glad to meet you all!