Well hello.. and sorry for being rude..

[Illbethewriter]

I thought I might take this chance to just.. well.. introduce myself, seeing as I have apparently been quite rude and posted a request for people to take part in my dissertation survey.. without asking a moderator.. and I thought I might make up for it by sending out a polite 'holla'.
I'm a 20 year old young (not for long) lady in my second year of university studying Journalism, Film and Media. I absolutely love it. I think it's sooo important to choose a degree you're going to enjoy, and I most certainly don't envy my friends who chose to do Law just because it sounds good. Only part I don't enjoy particularly is the 'film' part, which means I get a core module or two where I'm forced to study things related to film.. because I kind of feel like "I'm paying £3,330 a year for you to teach me the meaning behind Fight Club?"
I aspire to be fucking awesome journalist (Paxman watch out), but I realise it's going to take a loooong time and lots of persistence and hard work. Currently I write for our student newspaper and magazine (from politics to porn, I kid you not) and I also have my own radio show on our student radio station every Saturday night. I also do a bit of newsreading every Tuesday, and I'm going for 'Best Newsreader' at the Student Media awards (exciting title!) I love a bit of Radio 4 in the morning, I'm partial to some Newsnight action and 10 O'Clock Live and Mock the Week are right up my street. However, my guilty pleasure is The Jeremy Kyle Show. I may be an atheist, but my dedication to Jezza is almost religious. I genuinely would like to marry him and have lots of sex and babies - although I'm not sure how that'd work seeing as we'd always have to use condoms.
I should probably let you into how I became an atheist myself..
.. I must put it very much down to my boyfriend to be honest. I'd never really been religious since the age of 14 when I'd had a gutsfull of it. My best friend had taken advantage of my particularly low period at the time (as most teenagers experience) and started encouraging me to go to a Christian Youth Club (which I can't deny that I enjoyed) and to Church. The Youth Club made me feel particularly welcome, as is the nature of most groups with religious spirit, and I got my own special youth Bible (bought for me by a random member of the church) which explained how everything worked and what the Bible meant. But at an age where I hadn't previously been exposed to religion in a particularly explicit sense I found it an awful lot to take in. The most I'd ever done was said the Lord's Prayer in school, sung a few hymns and been warned by my grandmother that "God don't sleep nor slumber". Suddenly having to introduce a completely different and, at times, contradictory sense of the world to my schema became too much for me. I was driven further into depression. I didn't understand; how was it that I couldn't be a good person if I didn't believe in God? Weren't you able to be 'good' and not believe in God? What if I did something wrong; did that mean I'd go to hell? How wrong would it have to be for me to go to hell? I'd started masturbating; was God watching? Did he think it was disgusting? As funny as this sounds to a 14 year old girl it was a most distressing feeling to think that a man with a beard in the sky was watching me flick my bean! Generally, I swear a lot in my everyday speech (I hope you forgive me for this in the forums); was God listening to me? And then these suicide thoughts I'd been having.. they were bad.. very bad according to the big book. And the happy initial welcoming feeling I had from the Church was fading. The only part I really enjoyed was the social side of it and going to the Youth Club. I didn't want to go to Church on a Sunday morning; like every other kid I wanted to stay in bed. My best friend started using God to try and control me; "God doesn't like you swearing", "God won't be happy if you don't go to Church" etc. It was like hanging out with my Mum more than with a friend. One day I flipped, basically told her to go fuck herself.. and we were never as close after that.
Since then I suppose you can say I've been 'irreligious', but not really thought about whether God existed or not. I didn't really care. I remember always getting pissed off when they'd try and make me pray when I was in comprehensive school (high school to USians.)
My boyfriend initially started 'getting into' atheism after I'd been with him a little while; I don't think he'd ever believed in God, but reading The God Delusion, as I'm sure many of you have, he could finally put his disbelief into words. I was easily 'converted' by him due to my past experiences with religion; I just kind of (and still do) picked up whatever books he'd finished reading. Sam Harris - End of Faith, The Dawkins Delusion (for a bit of 'balance') and other such books. We would (and still often do) watch documentaries on religion - including Dawkin's multiple Channel 4 creations. My involvement pretty much stops there, but my boyfriend's interest in arguments against religion has developed into a passion for science. I am forced to watch documentary after documentary of Stephen Hawkins, Brian Cox, Ben Goldacre and the like. My internet history is loaded with science blogs and secular websites, which he paws over for hours while I'm at my lectures. Arguably having this kind of thing exposed to me is not a bad thing as a lot of their 'stuff' is interesting and is doing no harm to my intellect or knowledge of science-based current affairs, but it just doesn't interest me that much. I've always been more of a humanity kind of gal!

So yeah, that's how I became an atheist. To be more specific I would say that I'm of the agnostic/atheist standing in the sense that we are agnostics about everything that we cannot prove or have not yet proven, but evidence-wise I am more of an atheistic leaning. And that is (I would like to think) how I would describe most atheists. Maybe I should be more specific in my requirements for my survey participants.. as I know many people are reluctant to simply brandish themselves an atheist (as it's not as simple as that).. hmmm.

[The Magic Pudding]

"God won't be happy if you don't go to Church"

God should get himself a life and stop relying on people to lift his mood.  Maybe medication could help.
Anyway hello and welcome.

[xSilverPhinx]

Welcome!

[Tank]

Hi Ibethewriter

Welcome to HAF

Regards
Chris

[terranus]

Bonvenon al la Forumo!
[spoiler:v9ax7a5y]Welcome to the Forum![/spoiler:v9ax7a5y]

[Illbethewriter]

Bonvenon al la Forumo!
[spoiler:3r6y15y0]Welcome to the Forum![/spoiler:3r6y15y0]

This actually made me chuckle for the first time in my life!

[YaarghMatey487]

Bienvenue! And...meh...church. I will say that while I appreciate Richard Dawkins, I'm not of the "new atheist" ilk. I'm not a fan of any sort of zealot (unless someone is a zealot for premium grade loose leaf tea). I'm not saying that I don't appreciate atheists who are vocal...but I don't think that someone is an idiot simply because he or she has faith.

[Cosmo]

God should get himself a life and stop relying on people to lift his mood. Maybe medication could help.
Anyway hello and welcome.

haha badass

[terranus]

This actually made me chuckle for the first time in my life!

A chuckle, eh? Not a response I was expecting but alright I'll take it.