An atheist in Congress? Say it ain't so!Follow

Oh come on. Just say 'Elderon' three times, already.

Oh, yeah, definitely happens in college. That also happens to be the time when a lot of closeted atheists start coming out. That was my situation. Being away from home was the first time that I could finally say that I was an atheist without worrying that I was going to kill my grandfather with his bad heart. I didn't get evangelical about it, but it was definitely a huge burden lifted off of my shoulders not to have to be quiet and watch what I was saying when speaking on religious matters.

To this day I still haven't "come out" to my parents. My brother knows, he's landed somewhere in the atheist/agnostic spectrum himself. I think my sister knows, though we haven't discussed it directly. My mom knows I'm not a catholic anymore, but neither is she, though I don't think she realizes that, unlike her, I completely eschewed religion altogether.

Anyone else amused by the fact that in his attempts to argue this issue, Smash has managed to completely prove my original assertion?

I'd say that's fairly unsurprising, given your standards for 'proof'.

Remember when that spider monkey in the San Diego zoo 'proved' Saddam had nuclear weapons?

One good thing catholicism has done for us is given us the Friday fish specials during the Lenten season!

Mmmmm, fishtastic.


I'm actually becomming less tolerant of religion as time goes on. The bulk of the blame for this can be laid at the doorstep of people and polititians who can not, or will not recognize the difference between religious and secular issues. Too much of my tax money is ending up in the pockets of various religious institutions. Too many laws are being written based purely on religious values.

These are very unamerican actions.

I lived in goddamned Saudi Arabia.

You what now?

How did I miss that one?

I don't know how to catergorize myself. I believe that there's SOME kind of higher power out there only because the balance and harmony of nature and the universe is too amazing to believe that it all "just happened".

I have no idea what this higher power is or what it's motives are; I'm not even 100% sure it exists. I do, however, believe the Bible is full of ****. Not in a total sense, however. It's an amazing storybook full of (some) really good moral lessons which I think everybody can learn from. But to believe it's the true word of "God" is ludicrous, and people who believe the Bible is truly a historical account of what actually happened in the past scare me.

That's where I believe many Christians irk me. Alot of them say "Well this is right, or this is wrong because the Bible says so and the bible is irrefutable proof of everything". If you can't realize that the Bible is a book that is flawed because it 1) was written (BY MAN NOT GOD!) over a thousand years ago 2)interpreted a million different ways 3) translated back and forth from numerous languages, then you're a lost cause; not to mention the stories in the bible weren't even written down at first, but handed down orally. There are no texts from Jesus himself, only the writings of the apostles. The bible isn't the word of God; it's the word that the various religious organizations want you to hear.

So, while some atheists and christians may try to "convert" me to their line of thinking, at least the atheists have reason and empirical evidence on their side, not "Hey this book I read that was written in a totally different language from the one I speak and interpreted a thousand different ways over the course of the last 4000 years is 100% true". Atheists can back up their claims with evidence, not blind faith.