Happy Atheist Forum

Hi, all :) My name is Louise and I'm new to the forum. I'm a 20-year-old college student. For the past year, I've been reassessing my spiritual identity (or lack of). I was born into a Roman Catholic family (the kind that went to church every Sunday) and attended a private Catholic school for ten years until I was 14. At seven, I wanted to become a nun! The first person I spoke to in high school was an boy in my French class and it went a little something like this:

Me: Hi,I'm Louise. What's your name?
Boy: Gideon.
Me: Oh, like in the Bible!
Boy: I'm an atheist.
Me: Wait, so you believe in the devil?

Luckily, my high school years in a public high school allowed me to think and learn without being bound to the Bible, creationism, and the like. However,it wasn't until my sophomore year of college when I took my first evolutionary anthropology class that I really questioned my belief system. Everything I had ever learned about being a good human being was founded on my Christian upbringing (the ten commandments, the golden rule, the beatitudes, etc) and as someone who was swiftly gravitating towards Darwinism and atheism, this didn't sit well with me. So here I am, trying to make sense of the world without Christianity!

Welcome to the forum!  I hope you like it here.  

Welcome! It's good to have you on the forum.  :D

Welcome to the forums.

Welcome, Louise. Hope you have fun here. Thanks for sharing that story and your introduction. I had similar thoughts about atheists when I was a holy roller.

Welcome to the board, I'm sure you'll like it here.

Welcome.  

Thank you all for the warm welcome !! I've yet to "come out" to my family though I don't really think it's their business at this point in my life. I suppose it's going to be somewhat of an issue if/when I get married and opt for a secular ceremony but that's a long time from now!

Quote from: "Sophus"Welcome! It's good to have you on the forum.  :D

I've read a bit of Dawkins in my anthro classes and probably only a line about Nietzsche... I'll definitely check him out!

Quote from: "thelittlefinch"Hi, all My name is Louise and I'm new to the forum. I'm a 20-year-old college student. For the past year, I've been reassessing my spiritual identity (or lack of). I was born into a Roman Catholic family (the kind that went to church every Sunday) and attended a private Catholic school for ten years until I was 14. At seven, I wanted to become a nun! The first person I spoke to in high school was an boy in my French class and it went a little something like this:

Me: Hi,I'm Louise. What's your name?
Boy: Gideon.
Me: Oh, like in the Bible!
Boy: I'm an atheist.
Me: Wait, so you believe in the devil?

Luckily, my high school years in a public high school allowed me to think and learn without being bound to the Bible, creationism, and the like. However,it wasn't until my sophomore year of college when I took my first evolutionary anthropology class that I really questioned my belief system. Everything I had ever learned about being a good human being was founded on my Christian upbringing (the ten commandments, the golden rule, the beatitudes, etc) and as someone who was swiftly gravitating towards Darwinism and atheism, this didn't sit well with me. So here I am, trying to make sense of the world without Christianity!

Thank you for this interesting and revealing introduction. I grew up in an English household with an atheist father (although I don't recall him ever saying that directly) and a Christian mother who took me to church on Sundays until my mid-teens when she lost the ability to physically drag me there (joke I just stopped going!). Since then I have been relatively ambivalent towards religion. My wife of 30 years is an atheist as well. My 3 adult kids are 'woo free' and good people. So I was bumbling along basically unaware of religion. In the UK talking about religion as a general topic is seen as 'odd' and slightly in bad taste, so it doesn't really happen. Then there was 9/11 and The God Delusion. These two things raised my awareness of the danger of institutionalised superstition (religion) and I became far more active about analysing what I actually thought about religion and the influences it has had and still has on people. I decided religion does more harm than good because it denies reality. In my work I have spent many, many years as a business analyst where I sorted out process problems. This may seem a little wide of the mark and unrelated to religion but it isn't. To solve a problem one must recognise what the problem actually is. Religion places the problems we all face in a false context and therefore prevents us from curing the problems we actually face.

For me one of the key realisations of an atheistic world view is that as an adult I am solely responsible for every thing I do or say. I am not the pawn of a myth. Equally as an evolved creature I can only be what I am. I am not perfect (whatever that means) and never can be. Thus I, like you, and all other people can only be the product of their genes and memes shaped by how they assimilate experiences based on how they have assimilated previous experiences. Thus we are all constantly mutable and unique.

So in a world with no absolutes how should I behave? I look at it this way. Use the golden rule and to the very best of one's ability 'do no harm'. In particular remember that one has a finite life on a finite planet with finite resources, so don't destroy Spaceship Earth, as that would be the ultimate wrong as it would hurt all humans who will ever be born, forever.

That got a bit heavy!

Welcome aboard!

I'm sorry Tank. Was this your introduction?  

Quote from: "Cecilie"I'm sorry Tank. Was this your introduction?  

No, but being a veteran of greeting people (over 4,000 at RDF) I have found that if a person gives a detailed introduction that contains a question 'life without Christianity' it can encourage engagement by the new member if one interacts with that question. In addition the basis of friendship is trust and the basis of trust is the exchange of personal information. Louise shared some personal thoughts about herself and some thoughts as to how she would come to terms with her new world view. By responding in kind Louise should feel more welcome and more comfortable than if her efforts appear to be ignored or not be of interest.

One can only make a first impression once. A forum is the product (not sum) of its members and their interactions. Encouraging interaction is a good thing in my opinion. One's introduction post is quite personal to some and how the forum responds to that introduction can set the 'feeling' the new member has for the forum.

Sorry if I come over as a teacher or 'Dad' at times.

Quote from: "Tank"

Quote from: "Cecilie"I'm sorry Tank. Was this your introduction?  

No, but being a veteran of greeting people (over 4,000 at RDF) I have found that if a person gives a detailed introduction that contains a question 'life without Christianity' it can encourage engagement by the new member if one interacts with that question. In addition the basis of friendship is trust and the basis of trust is the exchange of personal information. Louise shared some personal thoughts about herself and some thoughts as to how she would come to terms with her new world view. By responding in kind Louise should feel more welcome and more comfortable than if her efforts appear to be ignored or not be of interest.

One can only make a first impression once. A forum is the product (not sum) of its members and their interactions. Encouraging interaction is a good thing in my opinion. One's introduction post is quite personal to some and how the forum responds to that introduction can set the 'feeling' the new member has for the forum.

Sorry if I come over as a teacher or 'Dad' at times.

But you don't give everybody a long greeting like this, so I was just wondering.

Quote from: "Cecilie"

Quote from: "Tank"

Quote from: "Cecilie"I'm sorry Tank. Was this your introduction?  

No, but being a veteran of greeting people (over 4,000 at RDF) I have found that if a person gives a detailed introduction that contains a question 'life without Christianity' it can encourage engagement by the new member if one interacts with that question. In addition the basis of friendship is trust and the basis of trust is the exchange of personal information. Louise shared some personal thoughts about herself and some thoughts as to how she would come to terms with her new world view. By responding in kind Louise should feel more welcome and more comfortable than if her efforts appear to be ignored or not be of interest.

One can only make a first impression once. A forum is the product (not sum) of its members and their interactions. Encouraging interaction is a good thing in my opinion. One's introduction post is quite personal to some and how the forum responds to that introduction can set the 'feeling' the new member has for the forum.

Sorry if I come over as a teacher or 'Dad' at times.

But you don't give everybody a long greeting like this, so I was just wondering.

True. Sometimes I don't have time, others there isn't anything to respond to, sometimes there is nothing I feel I can constructively add. In this case Louise is coming to terms with her new world view and I felt I could add a little support that life as an atheist is one of taking personal responsibility for one's actions while also realising that as a fallible person one should not be too hard on oneself when one feels one has fallen short of a personal moral ideal.

By the way, Louise. From the Northeast of what?  

Hi Louise! Welcome to the forum.  

Quote from: "McQ"By the way, Louise. From the Northeast of what?  :)

Quote from: "Tank"

Quote from: "Cecilie"I'm sorry Tank. Was this your introduction?  :)