Thank you for the welcome!

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comoke1024's picture
Thank you for the welcome!

I just want to take a moment and thank everyone here for the warm welcome I have received so far. I have no other atheists in my life or social circles, so it means a lot to me to have a place to discuss religion without fear of discrimination or other consequences (my job has a for real Christian chaplain who comes around once a week). My family are mostly strong theists and most of my friends are work colleagues and I clearly can't talk religion with them for fear of making things difficult at work.

Thank you all and I look forward to future discussions : )

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arakish's picture
No problem Skeptical Kevin.

No problem Skeptical Kevin. I received a damn good welcome with my first post in a "favorite curses" thread probably now buried about 20 pages back. Then my warmest welcomes came when I told the story of how I survived being the sole survivor of the car accident that killed my wife and twin daughters and almost got me. I still find myself wishing AR had been here 20 years ago.

I am looking forward to some of your treatises. From what you have posted so far, you are going to fit in like that missing puzzle piece. Have at it yungun.

rmfr

Tin-Man's picture
Hey, Kev! Like Arakish said,

Hey, Kev! Like Arakish said, based on your posts so far you fit in quite nicely around here. Welcome to the club!

David Killens's picture
Welcome Skeptical Kevin. I

Welcome Skeptical Kevin. I hope you find something in this place that makes you smile, or at least eases the discomfort of theism. And do not be afraid to post, you have the right to express your opinion.

For myself, I do not fear death. I fear not living, not enjoying life and extracting all it has to offer. And I have a weird (Canadian) sense of humor.

Old man shouts at clouds's picture
Hey Kev

Hey Kev

Dive in the water is fine. The humor around here can be questionable at times but if you can tolerate clanking and electrical smells then you will fit in just fine. Love your first posts.

Do not envy your position at work! Closest I got to that situation was working with a christian rock band for 6 months, yes we lied to get the gig.....at least I had my best mate in the band (we joined as a package) so we could sneak off and sin together LOL. I haven't thought of that lot for 20 years...thanks for bringing back the memories!

algebe's picture
Hello Kevin. Welcome to the

Hello Kevin. Welcome to the sane asylum. This is a great place for intelligent debate and reassurance that not everyone in the world is a theist whackadoodle. There's a lot of variety here, too. The membership covers just about every time zone in the world, every age group, and many, many fields of knowledge.

comoke1024's picture
Thanks everyone :) I'm

Thanks everyone :) I'm noticing that I feel happier and more at home in my body the more involved I get into atheism, watching videos, participating in this form :)

It's quite empowering to discover something like this about one's identity. I never really got into religion myself. A lot of people in my life encouraged me to get into Christianity, so I tried it, but I had two issues with it:
1 - I couldn't find an objective reason to select one denomination over another
2 - I didn't like that a person who wasn't all that different from me in a spiritual sense, was giving their interpretation of scripture as though it were true and irrefutable.

I tried Buddhism for a while, but I found no reason to believe reincarnation is true. The concept of karma relies on reincarnation, as that's how Buddhists fix the "hole" in karma where we have examples of good people with horrible lives or evil people with good lives - Karma settles up with them in the next life.

I wavered for a while, not claiming any belief one way or the other... A few years ago I realized that I had tried all these religious sources, but I had heard nothing from atheists, so I watched some Q&A given by Dawkins, mostly. I wandered into Sam Harris, who I instantly liked, but it was Ricky Gervais of all people who pushed me over. He pointed out that there's equal amounts of evidence to support the existence of Santa Claus as there is for a god, but why do we say Santa Claus definitely isn't real, but a god might be?

Anyway, I really appreciate this forum and in particular all of you. Thanks again for the welcome :)

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