Zatarra
12-22-2004, 11:17 PM
Hi all. I'm David and I'm a relatively new freethinker and I would like to introduce myself.
I was born into and raised in a practicing Catholic family. I first began having serious doubts about the faith over seven years ago, but until recently they would be resolved by a combination of reading only pro-faith materials and fear of hell. In June of this year I became so sick of the mental acrobatics I had to perform to believe everything the Church teaches, for I was a rather devout Catholic, and suppress my desire to be intellectually honest and consider other possibilities, that I decided to read other points of view. Thanks to some enlightening books and sources on the web, particularly Internet Infidels, I completely lost my faith in a short time. I continued attending Mass, because the fear of hell was so deeply engrained in my psyche, until October when I finally decided that if there exists a deity that is going to punish me for rejecting something as absurd, implausible, and disgusting as Christianity, so be it.
My full deconversion story is rather long, but I haven't published it anywhere. I have recently been working on another document which details my old, defficient reasons for believing and my new reasons for disbelieving. I am more likely to publish that when I am done.
After some time consdering myself agnostic, I now call myself an atheist. I believe the problem of evil is an excellent argument against the existence of a personal deity, one worthy of worship anyway, and if there exists some non-personal force, I don't think it should be considered a deity but something else altogether.
I have looked into Humanism and Universism, but neither of them really suit my views. I am still pro-life because my reasons for opposing abortion are completely secular, though I do now support an exception in the case of the mother's life being threatened. Also, my sexual morality is mostly unchanged, even if I have not ever always lived up to my moral standards. I cannot accept Universism's five basic principles because they make claims to which I do not subscribe.
I simply consider myself a freethinker because I do not believe that any infallible authority can possibly be established, thus I must think for myself.
I was born into and raised in a practicing Catholic family. I first began having serious doubts about the faith over seven years ago, but until recently they would be resolved by a combination of reading only pro-faith materials and fear of hell. In June of this year I became so sick of the mental acrobatics I had to perform to believe everything the Church teaches, for I was a rather devout Catholic, and suppress my desire to be intellectually honest and consider other possibilities, that I decided to read other points of view. Thanks to some enlightening books and sources on the web, particularly Internet Infidels, I completely lost my faith in a short time. I continued attending Mass, because the fear of hell was so deeply engrained in my psyche, until October when I finally decided that if there exists a deity that is going to punish me for rejecting something as absurd, implausible, and disgusting as Christianity, so be it.
My full deconversion story is rather long, but I haven't published it anywhere. I have recently been working on another document which details my old, defficient reasons for believing and my new reasons for disbelieving. I am more likely to publish that when I am done.
After some time consdering myself agnostic, I now call myself an atheist. I believe the problem of evil is an excellent argument against the existence of a personal deity, one worthy of worship anyway, and if there exists some non-personal force, I don't think it should be considered a deity but something else altogether.
I have looked into Humanism and Universism, but neither of them really suit my views. I am still pro-life because my reasons for opposing abortion are completely secular, though I do now support an exception in the case of the mother's life being threatened. Also, my sexual morality is mostly unchanged, even if I have not ever always lived up to my moral standards. I cannot accept Universism's five basic principles because they make claims to which I do not subscribe.
I simply consider myself a freethinker because I do not believe that any infallible authority can possibly be established, thus I must think for myself.