I am a nontheist like yourself (weak agnostic with strong atheistic inclinations) and think your site is superb. However, there is one person I think you may enjoy a good dialogue with. He is a Catholic apologist whom I find very intelligent, though admittedly not flawless in his approach to nontheism.

Link:

http://socrates58.blogspot.com/

Born in Farmington, Minnesota, I've been born, babtized, and confirmed as a Trinity Lutheran boy. Although, the thought of God, at the time, was silly in my mind. I often thought about it, despite my young appearance, with a critical edge. I was a very observant child, stating the non-obvious with impunity. I was matter-of-fact, I was blunt, and honest about the fallacies of Christianity. Sad thing was, Every time I did so, I was slapped or spanked by my not-so-strict parents. They reserved discipline for blatent stupidities, and they reguarded questionings of faith as such.

However, I did so anyway, showing surprising maturity on the subject. On the outside, though, I had to go to Church, vacation bible school, (Which I went to for the swordplay) and any other bull**** thing my parents signed me up for because they wanted the grace of gawd in my life.

However, we moved to a small town in the boondocks of Minnesota, called Sleepy Eye.

There, the religions were mainly Catholic, with a Catholic school, and Lutheran.

There, I was granted more open debates with the crazies, without fear of getting beaten.

At the age of 13, however, the 9/11 attack in the WTC occured while I was at school. Hearing this, I seriously began to question everything. I was ignorant of God, ignorant of Islam, and ignorant of the world. In other words, a 13 year old child in 8th grade.

The events, the aftermath, and everything began to show the country sliding into Theocracy. I was finally opened to the world of corruption. But, the year before, I had met a girl. Her name, which will remain obscure here, rolled off my tongue with a smooth and silky sound, igniting my passion and my adolescence.

Over the years, since then, I've grown to know this woman, to love her. During school, though, she and I kept religion out of our conversations, instead talking about music, movies, and TV. This will become important later on.

During my sophmore, Junior, and Senior years, I considered myself Agnostic, having no interest in Christianity's bull****. I was already confirmed, to placiate my mother so she'd shut up about it, and to get a few nice things like my silver watch and bed cover. It's a comfy thing.

One important event, though was the hike in the mountains, organized by a group at Christikon, out in Montana. A 5 day hike up in the mountains, sustained only by ourselves. Given the least experienced guides, and given inferior equipment, we set out on the hardest trail, without the car ride the other 5 groups got. Hiking for 37 miles total, we traversed the wilderness, getting lost nearly every time. I found the trail, time and again. The guide, however, thanked God every time.

Thanking God, for finding the trail. I took it as an insult, considering I found the f*cking trails every time. My fellow friends didn't find them, the guides didn't, I did. When challenged, they said that God worked through me, to guide them. I told the male guide to shove it.

As I carried the group through the woods, my old injured knee would react with every step. Asking God to heal it, as the guide suggested, pondered up the question as to why the guide got our asses lost, and that I, the agnostic at the time, had to find the trail. Silence afterward.

For the rest of the trip, I was silent as well, helping my friends when needed. The trip only brought to my attention the delusions of these crazy Christians.

After graduation, I went of to college in South Dakota, in the heavily Catholic town of Brookings. I had a Catholic tart as a girlfriend, till she found that I was agnostic. She ended it after 2 weeks, after 3 months of phone conversations that she and I shared over the summer. The 2005-2006 semester left me seriously questioning my faith more, what with the death in the family, and the prayers unanswered. I was debating with myself to go atheist or not. The blissful lie of Christ, or the painful truth of knowledge? I picked knowledge.

During that time, though, I got back with my best friend, the girl whom I've fallen for since my moving to Sleepy Eye back in 2000.

After many movie nights, after many weekends of planning for halloween, for parties, of drinking, of so much fun, we invariably came to a religious conversation.

The thing that hurt me the worst, was that she felt she couldn't fall for a man who didn't believe in God. What was so wrong about it? I was a human, just as much as she was, with the exception of me not being deluded.

Revealing to me that she was a born again Christian, my fear of her compartmentalized mind came to fruition. She was completely accepting of the fact that her best friend, the one guy she could count on, was going to hell.

Coming from the woman I loved, truly and wholly, I was devastated and entered a state of depression. During the summer of 2006, that depression turned to alcohol when she took back her ex boyfriend of 3 years.

Her boyfriend was a cheating, lying, adulterous, pious, bastard who doesn't care about the 50 plus women he's had. His lies permeate through the town, where he's fornicated with nearly every one of my female friends at some point.

His convictions only get worse with his reason: He's got Post Traumatic stress due to his 2 weeks in Iraq.

Lets just say that I'd have no problem hitting him with a baseball bat next time I see him.

After 4 weeks of being with him, she dumped his ass one last time, because one of the girls he cheated on her with finally came forward, and told her what was up.

Since then, she and I have grown closer, yet not enough to date. Although, every weekend seems to be out time to hang out, play pool, watch movies, and drink of the poison called vodka mixed with tang.

Continuing on, I lost my faith completely, but I never had a label for it. Atheism was still a foriegn term to me, and I was still in the closet to most people.

It wasn't until recently that I just came right out and said it.

In the last month, I've managed to get spat on, my car tire poked out, and had a half-assed excorcism performed on me.

I've also noticed the amount of thank-God-ism's that are prevalent in TV and movies. I've also got involved in politcs, and I'm under constant attack from my parents about it, being told that I, a 20-year old, don't know sh*t about anything.

So, there be it. Currently, I'm contending with the MN humidity, and looking for a job. Good thing I have connections...

Holy Christ on a stick, I talk too much.

Since everyone else has shared their own experience with religion, I think I'll put forward mine.

I was born in Biloxi, Mississippi. However - because my father was an air-force seargent, and subject to all of the restrictions and orders that his position entailed - we moved up to Nebraska about nine months after I was born. I lived there for ten years, and ever since I could walk I ran into evangelical christians - in fact my best friend's family went to an evangelical church, and I occasionally joined them.

I think that my experience with religion is somewhat uniqe - I never actually took Christianity very seriously as a child. I considered most of the things that my fundie friend and his family said about god to be nonsensical, so I really didn't have any inhibitions against "testing" god. As such, I decided - for about a week - to pray and do about everything that my family and neigbors told me to do when it came to god, and to see where that went.

Obviously, I was disappointed. After I administered my little exam to god, and he/she/it failed to show him/her/itself, I essentially ceased any consideration that what the ministers, neigbors, friends and family told me was true. Of couse, on the surface I was still a good little Christian boy, but I certainly was not a "True Believer."

Interestingly enough, it wasn't until I was twelve that I actually heard the terms "agnostic" and "atheist," and that's when my official "deconversion" occured. Since then, I had been living in the closet, so to speak, until very recently; my mother walked in on me one day while I was perusing some atheistic websites, and gave me a very severe scolding that I only partially alleviated by stating that I was an agnostic - she didn't know the term, and I had to explain it to her - and that I was carefully considering both sides of the issue (I had a fundie website open to some amusingly nonsensical preaching, and showed it to her as 'proof' that I had an open mind). She let me go with an admonition and the threat that she would "take away the internet if I catch you looking at inappropriate things again." Of course that was precisely the wrong thing to say, and we settled into the polite fiction that I was no longer questioning the beliefs she assumed I had.

A few months later she walked in while I was looking at a, rather harmless, really, knock-knock joke featuring Jesus. She attempted to confront me again, but she had to drive my sister to a softball game, and so I had about a half-hour to prepare some elaborate and detailed arguments to support my religious views. Sadly, they almost all went to waste. She entered the argument with an a-priori assumption that I was wrong, and an equally unfounded belief that the mere fact that she was older than me had anything to do with the truth of our assertions. I was seventeen at the time, and when I admitted to her that I had been thinking of myself as an atheist since twelve, she responded with something along the line of "You're not old enough to make such important decisions at that age!"

We "debated" back and forth for about thirty minutes; me bringing up various facts, atrocities, and arguments about religion, and she attempting to debunk (or ignore) as much of what I said as she could. She wasn't particularly successful in that regard, and so she closed the argument by stating that she didn't "know enough about God to talk to you about this."

I think it was to her advantage that she closed the argument without admitting she was wrong, at least in the parent-child relationship that we had. Although at a more personal level I was, and still am, simultaneously disappointed in her for being incapable of thinking past her assumptions and euphoric that it was so easy for me to prove (or at least present credibly) my philosophy and experiences.

My father was at least somewhat more tolerant of my thoughts. He took the time to listen to me and seemed to consider what I said. However, he almost dogmatically instructed me to "keep an open mind" on the subject, so I don't believe that he has a full understanding of my position (apparently my little lecture on empirical evidence and the value of the scientific method went to waste).

The rest of my family is very Christain, and, for now, I am still in the closet in their regard.

Wow, I wrote slightly more than I thought I was going to. I hope you all enjoyed the story ^.^

It appears to me, however, that at some point the success rate and emotional investment in a belief can become so large that the belief is just no longer a candidate for review and revision. Perhaps that is when the conversion or de-conversion becomes permanent.

I hope that when my conversion or deconversion becomes permanent I can remember the value of humility!

This is a great web site. I enjoy reading the content. Most of it is reasonable, thoughtful and sincerely truth seeking, aka refreshing.

About a year before I became an atheist, a sadhu came to our town. He was white, and raised a Christian, but had converted in his college years. He said all this stuff about just thinking of God for a minute is enough to give you a lot of good karma and stuff. I used to try it, but I guess it was more like pretending and playing a game than really believing.

My journey was pretty straightforward, because one day I was reading on the Internet and I saw the word agnostic. I read the definition, and it sounded reasonable. Later, I went back, thought long and hard, and realized that atheism sounded a lot more reasonable.

But I am kind of dreading this summer, because I'll be going back to India for the first time since I became an atheist, and I know that I'll be forced to walk around in my socks while staring at an idol in a building that's probably run by corrupt people who are only in it for the few rupees I will drop in the donation box...but I have written much too much.

At this point I am more or less convinced that no God invented by any religion thus far is real, pretty much 100 percent, The christian God is logically impossible as far as I can tell, and there is no evidence for any other personal god(s) either. If a personal god exists it should by definition be knowable since it's PERSONAL. Since we see no real scientific evidence for the existence of any such personal god, I conclude they don't exist!

The existence or non-existence of an impersonal god who set the laws of nature in motion and then just watched or whatever is probably irrelevant so no point believing in that. I did go through a phase at one time when I thought such a god might possibly exist but I stopped, because there is no point speculating about something that can't be proven in any way.

To summarize my own experience:

Xian Fundy ->biblical "errantist"->deist->agnostic->atheist

This seems to be common, except that I zipped right through the deism stage in a matter of days. I went straight from Biblical error detection to atheist before I even fully comprehended it.

My wife, too, is afraid that I'll go to Hell. This neither surprises nor hurts me personally in the least. After all it's exactly what she should believe if she's consistent. I'm just sorry for the worry it causes her. Our relationship is still as strong as ever. And, my deconversion, though not without its hardship, has had the positive impact (from both our standpoints) of forcing her to read-up on her beliefs in order to win me back to the faith. She readily admitted that she didn't know enough to argue with me, but she's reading. Sometimes she says, half-jokingly, that she'll either convert me or end up an atheist herself. I just smile.
Perhaps this should be the attitute of any believer who unexpectedly finds him/herself married to a non-believer. Maybe those atheist spouses can make this suggestion. After all, Xians are supposed to be up to speed on apologetics, anyway.

If we ever have children and she wants them raised as Christians I only asked her for two things:
1)They must read the Bible cover to cover, thoughtfully and on their own. No guiding hand of a pastor to apply intellectual blinders.

2)They must be encouraged to think for themselves.

If after that, they still accept it. Fine. From what I've seen, though, a thorough reading of the Bible is enough to deconvert anybody.

I much later found out that he'd become an atheist. I was most surprised, but even more so when he told me that had he completely committed to the cult, he would almost certainly have eventually cut me out of his life, as the JW Cult strongly discourages friendships with non-witnesses. I was hurt and outraged at the thought that religion had almost willingly robbed me of a close friend.

It was some time later that I became an atheist, but this definietly planted an early seed. We're still close friends and I've learnt a great deal from him.

I was escpecially touched by the part about the friend who said that you were going to hell. I recently asked my wife the same question and got the same answer. Although she would never come out and say I deserve hell, it is clear that it is really what she believes, even if only in a way she won't fully reveal. This was, and remains even now, one of the most painful experiences of my life. I have decided to stay with her, but I wonder if my marriage will ever truly recover.

I'm sorry to hear that. I don't blame you for being hurt - it's a very hurtful thing to say, especially coming from someone you care about. I've always said that religious belief warps the moral compass; just look at the hideous cruelties it can make normal, compassionate human beings wish upon each other. And to think they call us the immoral ones, for rejecting such a hateful idea.

The road to truth is often a painful one. But it is still the truth. And I, for one, would rather suffer under the truth than live in blissful ignorance.

Well said.

P.S.: Mr. Loftus, I took the liberty of correcting a typo in your URL - I assume you don't mind. I'm honored to see you here; your blog has been a great inspiration to me, and I certainly hope you choose to stay around.

Thanks for the concern. I can understand the problem with parents as well. Both my father and father-in-law are deacons in their respective churches. Rather than fights I get a collective "tsk..tsk" from all of them.

Help! I'm surrounded by Christians!

Seriously, I do feel that atheists and agnostics are gaining ground and therein lies my hope. More stories like this one tell people that they are not alone. I, personally, found EbonMusings to be an incredible resource to flesh-out what I believe and why.

When my 6-year-old son asks me, "Why did God make it so people can be hurt?" I smile and say, "That's a really good question." He's a thinker. And he's not alone.