Hello, AR.

I figure this is the place to go for introductions, so I'll make my debut here. (No, this isn't my first post, but I couldn't resist). At this moment in time, I'm somewhere in the Pacific Ocean onboard the USS Ronald Reagan, serving in the Navy. I'll come back to that in a moment. For now, let me tell you how I came to be where I am in my worldview.

In the beginning, my family mostly only paid lip service to religion, bouncing to and fro from church to church. To this day, I can't recall whether or not we were Baptists or Methodists. I myself would go for the community and togetherness, but I never really received any kind of 'spiritual fulfillment' from reading the scripture. True, I was reading from the 'boring half', but I figured if it was God's book, he meant for it to be read front to back. I largely left faith and spirituality alone until my 7th Grade Biology class. That was the day I started to realize, even if it was in the most rudimentary, that God wasn't such a good guy. After all, why would he have sent two jets careening into the largest buildings in America? I was thousands of miles away, but it still galled me that anything so terrible could have happened in a world created by a loving, perfect God. Bear in mind that this was the God presented to me by every church I've ever been to. No fire. No brimstone. Surprisingly relaxed and positive in the message, with just enough devil-bothering to keep it spicy.

This aloofness, however, allowed me to drift with a spiritual aimlessness, though without any alternative religions to be found; my locale was firmly Christian, your only options were your 'flavors' of Christianity. Fair enough, I found at the time that the differing sects of Christianity were varied enough while still having common ground, so I felt comforted by that sense of uniqueness within conformity. But I always had looked into the Epicurean Paradox ever since I saw it on the internet. I found it to be a curious little mental puzzle within faith, but I figured it was answered after enough looking, I wasn't about to throw away something the country had adopted as its de facto faith so easily. So, while in college, I approached a Catholic priest who led over a parish a good friend of mine attended. I asked him what the answer was to the Question of Evil. At the time, his answer was relevatory. 'God allows no evil deed to occur without a greater good to occur in its place. We just might not see the good it causes." He then went on to talk to me about the people who would die horribly from vehicle crashes before things like crumple zones and airbags were a 'thing'. These people were dead, without question, and people's lives were in ruins. But then he stated that their deaths served a greater purpose by seeing that tens of thousands more lives were spared by the later inventions their deaths would initiate.

That seemed a good enough answer for someone who didn't yet think wholly critically that I converted then and there, and I spent some months in the RCIA (Right of Catholic Initiation for Adults). It was just a few classes for basic scriptural knowledge and the catechism which I'd already done plenty of research on already, so it was an easy fit. But then, with the rise of the Tea Party movement, and the general shift to the right that started to overcome the country, I saw people saying the most insane things about the tragedy that originally shook my faith. People were actually convinced that September 11th was a conspiracy perpetrated by the government for everything from oil profits to avenging a father's legacy. All of it hanging on some of the flimsiest, most ignorant concepts I'd ever stepped in. I took it upon myself to start educating myself, arming myself with the factual weapons I'd need to shut down the insanity at its root. From there, though, I began to be drawn towards some of the attached videos, skeptical in nature. I'd left atheism well enough alone, as I'd relegated it to the dregs of argumentative statements, being 'just another religion', after all. But then I started to see conspiracists tied into theological arguments. From there, I saw people who thought the world was only six thousand years old. 'Horse crap!' my mind shouted. I set myself upon another target. That, sadly for my old ignorance, was the death knell. It was a short step from there to the arguments of Nye, Hitchens, Sagan, Dawkins, and the rest. I started to understand that Christianity wasn't alone in being entirely wrong. It was all unjustifiable dogma.

Sadly I was out of college by the time this ultimate realization occurred to me, and I was firmly out of any kind of comfort zone. By that time, I was already in the Navy, which in spite of the Chaplains denials to the contrary, was NOT the place one wanted to be when one no longer believed in Yahweh. Hopefully we'll return to home port sometime soon and I can seek a support group there, but luckily I'm comfortable enough in my own skin and crafty enough to dodge certains that I can make due.

As for the rest of my family? My mother retained her neutrality. She's a Christian without question, but she's never bothered anyone about it, and I feel that faith was just never something that motivated her to argue. This sounds backwards, perhaps or even apathetic, but trust me when I say that her approach was perhaps the best one she could have had, given the situation. She never said I couldn't think freely, and never belittled me about faith or spirituality. My father and sibling, however, have gone wholly off the deep end, though in parallel strands. They're both now dyed in the wool, and as blinkered as they come. Though I'm sure they suspect it, I've never onpenly discussed my move towards reason.

Thanks for hearing me out, hopefully that sheds some light on the things I'll talk about with you all in the future.