Dear Andrea

A big welcome to this world of rationality, truth and peace, where common sense and science lead to freethinking wisdom --- as you found out when becoming a non believer and freethinker like us.

We invite you to make good friends by joining the busy group "ORIGINS: Universe, Astronomy, Life, Earth, Humans, Religion, Gods, Atheism, Evolution, Darwin..." with 700 discussion topics and 3500 members.

http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/originsuniverselifehumankindanddarwin

Terry

Greetings! Welcome to the site!

Nice.  Which denomination did you break out of?

What's that in the flask?

Welcome, Andrea! Glad you could join us. :D

Please consider joining a group to meet people and talk about anything that's on your mind, Hang With Friends. You might also like Young Atheist Women, Women Atheists, Female Atheists, Real Talk for New Atheists and possibly Feminist Atheists.

After you've searched for topics of interest in "Groups" above and in the "Forums", don't forget to look at recent activity which hides along the right margin of the page all the way at the bottom.

I also recommend Eco-Logical and Climate Concerns, since the climate is changing so drastically. As a young Tampa woman you're facing stronger storms and rising sea levels, on top of the heat and high food prices we all face.

Judging from the Erlenmeyer flask you might also like Atheists who love Science! and Geek & Nerd Haven too, possibly Atheists in the Physical Sciences.

Oh, cool.  You're from Guatemala?  My Spanish is weak as hell, but I'd like to get back to learning it.  I think it's the most useful second language to know, in America, nowadays.

Hmm, I've seen those Nazarene churches, around and about.  I've always been curious what the deal was with them.  I've never heard anything about them in the press, the way you hear about the Pentecostals, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, The Christian Scientists, or any of the other specific denominations.  They must keep their heads down, I guess.

I was raised Catholic, myself, although I never believed.  Nothing exciting there, except for my stint as an altar boy.  I wasn't aware of how much danger I was putting myself in, at the time.  Fortunately, I was an ugly child, so I didn't have any disturbing encounters with the priests.

Hmm, I was about to say that it sounds like you were making desert, mixing pomegranate and anise.  Then, I realized I misread that as pomegranate.  I think I need to go make some coffee or something.

Welcome aboard! =) Hope all is going well for you today...

My pleasure! =)  Hope you have a great (rest of the) week as well!

Quite alright.  I've been having a couple of long, wonky weeks, myself.  Things should be slowing down at work in another couple of weeks, though, with the holidays coming on.

As for the Spanish ... well, I'm on it ... at some point.  Too much random stuff on my plate right now.  I'll have to pick up a good learning system, at some point, so that I can go back and do it properly, rather than just picking up random words and phrases, as I've done in the past.

I recall that my research into the Nazarene church was kind of frustrating.  I kept finding little bits about the history of the church, but I had difficulty finding any sort of statement about what they believe, what makes them different from other commonly known sets of Christian doctrine, and why I should join them instead of one the other 41,000 denominations of Christianity.  Churches should really do that sort of thing to help out potential worshipers ... not that doing it for me would get them anything, but in general.

Yeah, that's one of the things that always got me about Catholicism.  Almost none of the mass service is customized and meaningful.  Varying the music a tiny bit, from week to week, doesn't count as a significant change.  Hell, they don't even change the slots into which the music fits.  They just insert different pegs into the available holes.

The only real message is the 5 or 10 minute homily.  It just doesn't seem worth it to sit through the hour-and-a-half long mass to get the 5 or 10 minutes of variant message, even if I was a believer.

I vaguely recall that ringing the bells was an amusing diversion, if brief.  Aside from that, being an altar boy was just a little bit of walking back and forth with the cross and candles and such.  I got to space-out for part of it, at least.  The signals for the various bits were fairly clear.  If I was sitting in the pews with my parents, they always made sure we were paying attention.

I think the sit/stand/kneel/left-foot-in/left-foot-out stuff is just to keep people awake.