tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33241741.post6782354460328547431..comments2023-09-24T07:53:50.826-05:00Comments on The Atheist Experience™: What's the Difference?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33241741.post-62791871482321420532008-07-24T12:06:00.000-05:002008-07-24T12:06:00.000-05:00Thanks very much, Adrael. I appreciate your positi...Thanks very much, Adrael. I appreciate your positive feedback and you sharing some of your personal input.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33241741.post-45044167594963651962008-07-23T08:18:00.000-05:002008-07-23T08:18:00.000-05:00My first response to your post was going to be a l...My first response to your post was going to be a little self-deprecating. Something like "ouch, I guess I'm not as hardcore as I thought" and then proceed to praise you on being a "totally old-school, kick-ass atheist." But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that my story is actually not that different from yours.<BR/><BR/>I may not have been brought up as a fundamentalist Christian as much as a generic, Mexican Catholic(the thinking man's religion, not like those weird, Protestants, am I right, people?). And I've never spent more than a couple of hours inside a "lybery." My family never took kind to fancy book-larnin'. But other than that, my atheism was in no way influenced by them arrogant, dogmatic "secularistists" Bill'O keeps yapping about.<BR/><BR/>I remember being in the 8th grade when I "came up" with a challenge to the special pleading fallacies, a.k.a. "The Zeus Rule." "Why is the Bible proof of god but the Odyssey is not proof of the Greek pantheon or the Book of the Dead proof of the Egyptan deities?." Not to mention "inventing" a semi-complete form of the "Problem of Evil" at a time when Aristotle, Plato and Socrates were the only Greek dead guys I knew. And I hadn't even read their stuff, I just thought they had written/said cool pithy sayings we now put behind calendar pages. <BR/><BR/>I had never read Russell or Ingersoll or hell, even known an atheist in person and until 3-4 years ago, I didn't know who Dawkins was either, apart from him being "that famous evolution guy."<BR/><BR/>Anyway, the points I wanted to make were these: One, thank you for reminding me that I actually became an atheist not by following a godless leader but through my own assesment of the evidence (i.e. I was an atheist before it was cool =D).<BR/><BR/>And B) You're a totally old-school, kick-ass atheist. I wish more believers followed your example. Hopefully, the "New Atheism" will encourage people, not to just "convert" to atheism, but to question and research on their own the wild, unsupported claims religion makes.Adraelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05973486036413829486noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33241741.post-8377875028035756352008-07-22T19:24:00.000-05:002008-07-22T19:24:00.000-05:00The methodology you took I find very comendable an...The methodology you took I find very comendable and astute. I've wondered on several occasions about how often it is that atheists do it for reasons other than, well, reason. It seems so natural to take sides and be contrary for the sake of it.<BR/><BR/>I find these deconversion stories particularly interesting as it's completely foreign to me. Religion (and irreligion) was essentially never mentioned by my parents, so everything I took in from it was from external cultural sources. Imagine my surprise when I realised they seriously believed it!Zurahnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06325048684652466640noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33241741.post-23972929342398519292008-07-22T16:05:00.000-05:002008-07-22T16:05:00.000-05:00Clint:>Now I revel in reading what I consider t...Clint:<BR/><BR/>>Now I revel in reading what I consider to be a rational worldview by these writers<BR/><BR/>I totally agree. I love to listen to Joseph Campbell as well. One particular scene I enjoyed was when Bill Moyers, during an interview, asked Campbell what he thought about Christians who read the Bible and take it as literal fact. Campbell said "that's a misread of the text." When Moyers restated and put the question to him again, he just repeated, "it's a misread."<BR/><BR/>Because a majority of our population believes in god, we are very used to hearing and seeing programs and literature geared toward the idea that the existence of supernatural things is a fact. Certainly it's a common assumption in many minds; but it's certainly not a "fact." Just because a lot of people accept an idea doesn't make it correct.<BR/><BR/>For me, as a female, it is the same issue when I read writers who use "she" as the personal pronoun of choice when talking about a generic person/human as a reference. I'm so used to "he" that "she" stands out.<BR/><BR/>I just finished The God Delusion, and I was surprised that I didn't find it offensive to anyone. It is written from the perspective that there is no god. And I think that must be what freaks out some readers. But when I was in college, that was always the presumption in academic literature. When I took anthropology, only one instructor had any sort of supernatural beliefs. And he recognized (and often noted) how rare that is in his field.<BR/><BR/>Thanks for sharing your perspetive.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33241741.post-56694229462311723532008-07-22T15:24:00.000-05:002008-07-22T15:24:00.000-05:00It's nice to base one's world view on an objective...It's nice to base one's world view on an objective reality, isn't it? I pity those poor people who have to defend their beliefs from the real world.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33241741.post-88575356685392001782008-07-22T13:52:00.000-05:002008-07-22T13:52:00.000-05:00You make some good points. I was atheist (albeit w...You make some good points. I was atheist (albeit without really realizing it) long before I'd heard of Dawkins, or Sagan, or any of the big-name scientists and freethinkers. Now I revel in reading what I consider to be a rational worldview by these writers, knowing that it wasn't them who swayed me from Catholicism, but my own rationality and curiosity.Isherwoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11593469288628004621noreply@blogger.com