Just want to sign into this thread and allocute to the fact that I am an atheist too !
I became an atheist after watching the hatred and horror perpetrated on each other by the bigots on either side in Northern Ireland some fifty-odd years ago. I was finally commited to this NON belief-system at the age of twenty-two when I could at long-last lay aside the indoctrination that I received at the hands of my loving but seriously bigotted Protestant Christian grandparents.
The best thing that I ever did in my life was to throw off the burden of religion !
The basics of all religions are the same: Don’t kill, steal, lie etc. Most people are perfectly capable of abstaining from doing these things out of the fear of some divine punishment. What’s gotten rotten are the churches – old-fashioned powermongers who, like the Catholic church, forbid people in overpopulated areas from learning about and using contraception! I mean – how stupid and medieval is that?!?
Churches who preach to hate homosexuals, people who believe in other things, who forbid sex before marriage and so on and so forth. It’s the year 2004! And you still have people wasting their time trying – in vain – to prove the Earth is 6008 years old!!
Originally posted by Arachnoidfreak
It took you until you were 22 to realize this? I realized this back in 7th grade man. of course, you were 22 before I was even born... Religion causes hatred and wars, and the world would be better off without it.
Yeah....Arach...
I began to realise it at that age too but it was only after I had UNLEARNED all of that crap that was put into my head that I could say I was truly free from it. It was a titanic struggle but I won in the end.
It is for THIS reason that I am so hard down on the indoctrination of children.
Omega...
Morals and ethics are NOT in the reserve of the religions but they would love it if they were !
Originally posted by Papaumau
I began to realise it at that age too but it was only after I had UNLEARNED all of that crap that was put into my head that I could say I was truly free from it. It was a titanic struggle but I won in the end.It is for THIS reason that I am so hard down on the indoctrination of children.
My respect to you Paps. I can imagine that back then it would have been even harder to discard religion than it is now, because of how much more force fed it was to most people. The real fear of god stuff, not just hinting at it. These days organised religion seems to be falling apart in terms of followers, at least in my part of the world. I became an 'official' atheist when I was doing my second last year of high school (catholic high school, funnily enough 😄 ). Although I'd had doubts about religion and god for a few years before then. Unlearning is a hard thing to do, I freaked out on a few occasions where I would sometimes start to do the sign of the cross & prayers in school masses when prompted even after rejecting religion. But these were just reflex reactions, but it's the whole life perspective 'un-programing' that's the hardest. I still don't know if I've unlearnt it all, but I'm sure it will come with time. At least I feel in control of my own life. 🙂
And yeah, totally against the indoctrination of children. Let them make their own choices in their own time.
If I was the dictator of the world I would ensure that no child was forced to follow any one particular religion until it was old enough to make up it's own mind. If that became a worldwide policy we would then see all of the world's organised religions withering on the vine as the cycle of the brainwashing of children would then be broken and the few indoctrinated adults that remained would eventually die.
Is a sense of “spirituality” wrong? No. If people feel the need to believe in more than meets the eye – good for them.
What I am strongly opposed to is FORCING ones belief down other people’s throat. And I do mean forcing… You don’t see an atheist forcing atheism down anyone’s throat.
This forum has a few fundamentalists who seem to use their religion to view themselves as “better” than other groups of people – homosexuals, women who have abortions, atheists and other religions.
Does ignorance, lack of education and fundamentalist views go hand in hand?
Well, I grew up on The Simpsons and South Park, so Political correctness just never fit into my life style.
As far as my bluntness, I'm to lazy to waste time and brain power pussy footing around the topic, I say what I have to say as quickly as possible so I can move onto other things.
The people in the arguing class I'm taking are going to get a nice taste of this in the next semester.