Joan, I enjoyed reading your story in the comment on my story. Remembering old life events is–or should be– worth retelling. Thanks. Hope you’re doing well.

Hi Joan, it is a pleasure to meet you here.
I have been in Hawaii since 86.
I am 51 so its quite possible you were here before I was born in 68.

I visited BC Canada a few months ago but amidst the islands not in what must be very cold NE WA. I have a cousin living in Pullman so I may get near there some day.

I also rode a Greyhound once through Montana, across Idaho and we came down from the mountain pass into Couer De Lane It was so beautiful but I did not get to stop there.

The format here is a bit confusing to me, commenting in places other than what I am responding to but I’ll try to keep up.

I grew up in the methodist and born again cults, I turned away from them despite the great fear of the demonic and hell which they implanted in me since early childhood. At about 13 I read some Ram Dass and Robert Anton Wilson materials, and I suppose the hundreds of sci-fi shorts I had read as child all helped me escape that malarkey. I have gone through many changes since.

I stepped outside and took a picture so you can see who I am and how cold it is here, 82F and predicted a shivering 69F overnight. (Sorry it is a habit to gloat about the weather when there are no hurricanes lurking).

Be well and keep warm Joan!
Aloha!

Sorry for the delay in response. I only get on this site about 1x/wk right now. Can’t wait ’til summer, I’m a teacher.

I liked your comment under “Do I matter?” It is how I feel as well. You’re right, we do seem to have much in common 🙂

Yes I am very interested in space travel and have been forever! My picture of the SLS should in no way though be taken as an endorsement that building a giant rocket to throw away after each flight is the way to go, however….

I look forward to finally being able to have conversations with more than my small group of atheist friends. It’s not that they aren’t interesting conversationalists, but we tend to run out of ideas for new topics.

Joan,

I was born into Catholicism and was a devout catholic until i was about 17 or 18 from there, I found the “truth” and moved to protestant churches where I started of as a Pentecostal and eventually a baptist.

So yeah I have been a practicing bible preaching Christian for a solid 23 of the 24 years of my life.

How I got out of the superstition is a barrage of different events, each with its on effect statistically, but the one that played the biggest role was being a Protestant.

So in being a protestant I was encouraged to read the bible more so as to avoid the “heretic teachings” of Catholicism. Talk of the kettle calling the pot black. So I really dived into the bible when I became protestant and I read the bible cover to cover and I was like what the hell. (prior to this I had never read the bible for myself, any Catholic would know that bible reading in the manner which I did is not overly encouraged in the Catholic church)

And so I started asking questions, very very very many questions and the answers that I was getting were not even close to being convincing. Where I come from (Kenya) ministers of the word of the christian god are very respected people in the society and thus you can’t argue out your case, you will be seen as disrespectful to authority. But I started reading more more and more and by my 23rd birthday I was all but done with the christian god. What was holding me back was fear and it still holds me back because my whole community (family, friends, neighbors) are very christian.

When I moved to the USA in November last year, I was able to do little things like go to youtube and listen to the likes of Seth Andrews and I eventually got over the fact that dokeys don’t talk and the noah’s arc is as true as the earth being 5000 – 6000 years.

I’m still in the closet but more free by virtue of being in the West. Atleast here I have the virtual freedom still being careful on my twitter and instagram until I’m ready to come out.

Granted, turning protestant wasn’t the only thing, but it sure does account for the bulk of the percentage, almost 65%-70%.

Oh writing that felt very cathartic. 🙂

Hello friendly person,

I was active in the Atheism world a while ago. I got served some bitter vinegar though that put me off till recently. It was the announcement of Google that they were shuttering g+ that got me here. I was trying to migrate the content from my profile and two of the forum’s I started (one & two) from g+ to my new Friendica server (new one & new two). Friendica is Federated so #AwesomeSauce.

One of the posts I was migrating was from a guy I knew locally that did the Reason podcast. A DuckDuckGo search located him on here. I wanted to ask him if he wanted free server space to get his website back up.

1. Joan’s words:

• “Welcome, Blue Grey Brain, to Atheist Nexus. I, for one, do not believe there is such a thing as, “Scientific purpose of the human species” because that implies there is a designer who planned the existence of Homo sapiens. I see no evidence of any such designer or planner when looking through scientific lenses.”

2. My response:

• Hey Joan. Respectfully, you seem to be responding to a comment I did not make, i.e. the OP does not talk about any deities.
• You may be confusing the “teleological argument” with “teleonomy”. The teleological argument is the popular religious concept, concerning deities and purpose.
• In contrast, the OP builds on teleonomy, which is an atheistic/scientific way to describe nature in terms of purpose driven language. This is why Richard Dawkins, a militant atheist, supports teleonomy and has contributed to teleonomy.