Oregon Alley Cat
happy humanist
Hi there, I am new to these forums. I have been posting regularly in places like yahoo answers and am tired of all the mindless trolling. 
Hoping for stimulating and honest conversation here.
I guess I can start off with my own story. I was raised in a small northern Oregon town about an hours drive from Portland. I grew up in a loving and supportive home in which we called ourselves Christian, occasionally went to church, but I really had no concept of religion as a child. I was obese as a boy, got picked on by the other boys in sunday school, and was a little more preoccupied with looking over my shoulder than learning about what the teacher was trying to tell me. When we stopped going, I was around eight or nine at the time, I definitely didnt complain. I didnt think about anything regarding religion until I was fifteen and my older sister converted to a Pentecostal denomination called Foursquare Gospel, which was started in the early 1900s by the flamboyant and well known evangelist Amy Semple MacPherson. My sister, being the vice mother, started inviting me. Being a rather lonely and isolated child I was flattered to be around people that expressed deep liking and approval of me. I converted too a few months later. I remained a Christian for eighteen years, most of that time a quite genuine and pious one too. I spent most of my twenties working odd jobs before I realized I needed atleast a bachelors degree to get ahead in life. I attended a Bible college in British Columbia and got my four year degree there. My professors encouraged me to ask myself tough questions regarding my faith, that ultimately my faith would be strengthened by this process. I guess you could say this didnt work out for me. I recall reading 1 Peter 3:15 which states, to paraphrase, that you should always be ready to give good reason for your faith to others. It occurred to me that I really hadnt taken the time to examine other faiths in depth. The problem of incompatible revelations deeply troubled me. They cannot all be right. Could it be that they are all wrong? I resolved myself to examine each of the core tenets of my faith (the divinity of Christ, the efficacy of prayer, the reliability of holy scripture, etc) in light of reason and evidence. The more I looked into things the more and more these tenets didnt seem to hold any water. I kept coming back to "I just need to have faith". The more I came back to that the more it seemed to me to be a cop-out, an excuse to go on believing in a doctrine when there was no good reason to. I remember well the night when I was laying awake thinking about these things and I simply realized that I could no longer say I believed there was a god, or gods, or spirits, or anything else supernatural. At that point I was an atheist. I still am, although I still consider myself a seeker and am still trying to learn more about my old faith and the faiths of other persons.
Having said all that I hope that my time on this website can help me and hopefully others too. Thanks for reading.
Hoping for stimulating and honest conversation here. I guess I can start off with my own story. I was raised in a small northern Oregon town about an hours drive from Portland. I grew up in a loving and supportive home in which we called ourselves Christian, occasionally went to church, but I really had no concept of religion as a child. I was obese as a boy, got picked on by the other boys in sunday school, and was a little more preoccupied with looking over my shoulder than learning about what the teacher was trying to tell me. When we stopped going, I was around eight or nine at the time, I definitely didnt complain. I didnt think about anything regarding religion until I was fifteen and my older sister converted to a Pentecostal denomination called Foursquare Gospel, which was started in the early 1900s by the flamboyant and well known evangelist Amy Semple MacPherson. My sister, being the vice mother, started inviting me. Being a rather lonely and isolated child I was flattered to be around people that expressed deep liking and approval of me. I converted too a few months later. I remained a Christian for eighteen years, most of that time a quite genuine and pious one too. I spent most of my twenties working odd jobs before I realized I needed atleast a bachelors degree to get ahead in life. I attended a Bible college in British Columbia and got my four year degree there. My professors encouraged me to ask myself tough questions regarding my faith, that ultimately my faith would be strengthened by this process. I guess you could say this didnt work out for me. I recall reading 1 Peter 3:15 which states, to paraphrase, that you should always be ready to give good reason for your faith to others. It occurred to me that I really hadnt taken the time to examine other faiths in depth. The problem of incompatible revelations deeply troubled me. They cannot all be right. Could it be that they are all wrong? I resolved myself to examine each of the core tenets of my faith (the divinity of Christ, the efficacy of prayer, the reliability of holy scripture, etc) in light of reason and evidence. The more I looked into things the more and more these tenets didnt seem to hold any water. I kept coming back to "I just need to have faith". The more I came back to that the more it seemed to me to be a cop-out, an excuse to go on believing in a doctrine when there was no good reason to. I remember well the night when I was laying awake thinking about these things and I simply realized that I could no longer say I believed there was a god, or gods, or spirits, or anything else supernatural. At that point I was an atheist. I still am, although I still consider myself a seeker and am still trying to learn more about my old faith and the faiths of other persons.
Having said all that I hope that my time on this website can help me and hopefully others too. Thanks for reading.
