I am 24 years old. I am married, but not conventionally. My wife Jessica is 23 (today, actually) and we live in a small college town in Texas. No children yet. Both of us have several years of college experience under our belts, but neither of us has a degree (yet).
I can best define myself as an atheist. That is, I do not believe that the Christian, Judaist, or Muslim forms of "God" do or can exist. Another form of supreme being could well exist for all I know, but I am positive that it does not exist in the form that the three monotheisms would have everyone believe it does, and I do not believe that it was this (or any other, for that matter) supreme being which created our universe, our world, or us.
Like many, I've never been capable of that "leap of faith" required to consider oneself religious. There are too many other possibilities and explanations for the questions that religions attempt to answer. With science constantly plugging so many holes that religion used to fill, I feel more comfortable putting my faith into science to answer what it can, and relying on philosophy to console me when the answers are out of reach.
I first became aware of my atheism at a very young age. I believe I must have been six or seven years old, riding in the back of the car on the way home from church, when I ventured a question to my father: "Dad, how do we know God exists?" I endured a long silence, and then received his answer: "Son... never, ever question that. We just believe. And you'd better too, or you'll never get into heaven." This was non-sensical, even to my young rationale. If God made me, and he means for me to never question his existence, then why did he give me a brain capable of doing just that?" From that point on, I never truly believed. Of course, being from the deep south, one must at last pretend to agree with it all at certain times or risk being shunned by those one cares about. I played along until my second year of college (around age 20-21). After that, I began to gradually inform those close to me of my beliefs. I also began frequenting "lesser" internet forums devoted to discussing religion and philosophy (think dating sites where they rate your pictures), and YouTube video comments. YT has a 500 character limit for each comment, so while it was a good exercise in being concise, it rarely afforded me the chance to speak my full mind, let alone learn anything from the experience.
But I can tell that will change here. I'm really looking forward to meeting all of you, finding out more about what, how, and why people believe the things they do, and discussing those reasons in detail when compared with alternative reasons... in other words, a debate on philosophy, I suppose.
I'd also really like the chance to learn, and I'm going to love researching the things that people cite and suggest for me to read.Thanks for reading my post, and I hope to hear from you soon!
