Why I am an atheist – TD

I grew up fundamentalist Protestant in the deep South.  Church three times a week, Bible reading and prayer most nights at home, the whole nine yards. Looking back on my childhood, though, I think religion’s grip on me began to slip at an early age.  The problem was, I simply didn’t feel guilty about “sins” such as swearing, petty gambling, and such.  (I mean, seriously, how many real sins does your average eight-year-old commit, anyway?)  I felt pangs of conscience when I hurt somebody, but not when I committed a victimless “sin.”

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I get email

Wow, the things I have been missing. All that hateful email I’ve been getting over the years? Turns out that was the upper echelon of the scum. Put up a few videos, and you discover the youtube commentariat:

To use my “freedom of speech” (which PZ Meyers HATES more than the KKK hates black people):

EAT MY WHITE, STRAIGHT, CIS, NON-FEMINIST MALE COCK, BITCH! OR I WILL RAPE YOU!

C=======================3

I’m still kind of marveling at the sudden surge to the bottom of the canyons of dimbuggery I’m seeing.

Another #cvg2012 write-up

Jeez, what kind of blogger is that Daniel Fincke? It took him a whole week to write up his recap. Of course, that he mentions every single person he met might explain that.

(Also, the price of buying him dinner one night was that he was supposed to peddle stories about my satanic nature, my vicious emotional outbursts, and my kitten-torturing, but nooooo…he screwed me over there, again!)

And here’s another…and one in which my glorious hat, far better than any mere pope hat, is revealed.

Yes, I had a throne, too.

Pamela Gay’s TAM talk

That talk by Pamela Gay that was so well received is now available as a transcript. It’s very good, and it’s also good to see that someone at least was praising skepchicks at TAM, instead of dismissing them.

Although it is offset by the fact that I now know of one woman who was so harassed she had to leave the meeting early. Let’s hope some of the organizers were actually listening to Gay, and that they’ll do better next year.

Why I am an atheist – Fred Santos

This is a story that I have written numerous times, however I never feel that it is comprehensive enough, or at the same time concise enough. That is how I am with my writing. Especially in factual cases, such as this; I aim to write with honesty and provide each detail of the events that led to my atheism showing the logical progression that it took, being both in-depth and at the same time avoiding the sense of clutter and babbling that plagues me. I often feel that my writing becomes incoherent and am never totally satisfied with the final result. But here I begin once more the story of my deconversion from the Christian faith.

Like the majority of middle class westerners, I was born into the dominant religion of Anglo-European tradition – Christianity. My earliest and fondest memories of family include attending church and reading Bible stories. Though my early childhood wasn’t a particularly religious one, there was always an element that was drawn to the warm sense of group identity that came with visiting my ‘uncle’s’* church. *(He wasn’t actually my uncle. The pastor of a Baptist Church and my mother’s former guardian during her time under the care of the Bernardo’s foundation as a child, I had come to know him and his wife colloquially as aunt and uncle, and their children were referred to as my cousins – due to this I still have a strong familial bond with them to this day.) This church remained an occasional place of attendance during my growing-up and was a significant influence on my developing faith.

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