Why I am an atheist – Joreth InnKeeper

A Deconversion Story Of A Non-Converted

What bad thing happened to you to make you hate god so much?

Well, besides the fact that it is impossible for me to “hate” something that I think of as a fictional character in a particularly poorly written collection of essays, nothing. I’ve led a pretty charmed life. My monogamous parents got married after my mother graduated high school and they’ve been married ever since. They’re still together and they still love each other. I had a younger sister, I grew up in the suburbs, got good grades in school, had great teachers, a best friend, and a dog. I went to private school for high school and got accepted to the college of my choice. I started dating when I was 16, but I had “boyfriends” as early as 13. I wasn’t abused, I wasn’t beaten, my parents loved each other and they loved us kids, I had both sets of grandparents until I was an adult, I had aunts and uncles and cousins to grow up with, I went to church every Sunday and I sang in the choir in high school as well edited the church paper and was a youth group leader.

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What Ken Ham fears

Libby Anne did a “Why I am an atheist” post a little while ago, and in it she mentioned how she’d been brought up to believe Ken Ham and his creationist nonsense, but when she actually started looking beyond the inbred, incestuous creationist literature, she discovered that the evidence actually rested with evolution. Ken Ham noticed that post, and complained about it. Libby Anne wasn’t a True Christian™, he said; if she’d been exposed to more AiG propaganda she wouldn’t have left the fold; she was lost when she went to an evil secular college. And, of course, the standard defense:

It’s not that “we know the Bible is true because young earth creationism is true,” but rather because the Bible is true we can believe what God said in Genesis about the time frame in which He created.

The evidence doesn’t matter. The bible says it, therefore they believe it.

Libby Anne does a fine job defending her position, and she sees right through the dogmatists at Answers in Genesis:

And the solution Ken Ham and Dr. Purdom make? Double down. That’s pretty much it. Teach the same things, just more. Oh, and isolate yourself and your children from other points of view – oh the dangers of the state college or “compromised” Christian college! Interestingly, I see the same thing happening with all too many homeschool families. They say their goal is to “teach god’s truth” and “shelter” their children from bad influences, but what they really mean is indoctrinate and isolate. And that, quite simply, is what Ken Ham and Dr. Purdom are advocating.

The funny thing is, I don’t plan to do any such thing with my daughter. I’m not afraid of her hearing other perspectives or arguments or evidence. I’m not afraid of her hearing and digesting different viewpoints. My goal is not to teach her to believe one specific thing, but to open her mind and teach her to think critically and come to her own conclusions. Ken Ham and Dr. Purdom, though, refuse to do that. Because, apparently, exposing children to a variety of viewpoints and teaching them to think critically and make their own decisions is dangerous.

That’s exactly right. How you educate your kids isn’t a matter of hiding them away from everything in the world you don’t like, because eventually they’ll grow up and look around (unless you’ve done a really good job of stunting their minds) and discover it all anyway. Expose them to it all, fearlessly. Teach them how to think, not what to think. And then what happens?

They discover that creationism is a lie, and science opens doors to the whole wide universe.

The true conflict

We all know now that Sam Harris has Muslim friends.

I’m proud to say I have humanist friends.

It is true that fear, hatred, and hostility of some Western people toward Islam and Muslims help made Muslims all over the world more religious, more fundamentalists, and more terrorists. We who were born in Muslim family but became an atheists and fighting Muslim fundamentalists know very well how difficult this fight has become.

We know there is a conflict. But the conflict is not between the West and Islam. Or West and East, or Christianity/Judaism/Hinduism and Islam. The conflict is between secularism and fundamentalism, between rational logical minds and irrational blind faith, between innovation and tradition, between humanism and barbarism, between the future and the past, between the people who value freedom and the people who do not.

The crash test

The transcript of Greta Christina's interview with Edwina Rogers is now available. I’ve heard that some other people here at FtB are going to get a shot at interviewing her, too — I was offered a chance, but deferred because…well, because she reminds me of this commercial.

It’s getting ugly. The SCA can’t very well put her in a sealed room and tell her not to do interviews anymore — communicating with people is her job — but I suspect the board that hired her is cringing every time she opens her mouth.

Why I am an atheist – Adam

I was born into a christian family. We weren’t fundamentalists, religion wasn’t the center of our lives. We did go to church every Sunday morning and I went to youth group every Wednesday night. Neither were overbearing and you were allowed to believe whatever you wanted, so long as it was still christianity, except, that, science always took a back seat. I loved biology in high school, But, when my teacher was forced to read that dreadful memo at the beginning of the evolution portion of the class, my parents started pushing me towards engineering. I didn’t quite understand why, but t liked math and legos were my thing for a while, so I followed their wishes well into college.

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Kentucky must be a real dump

Kentucky just launched a tourism campaign to tout the wonderful landmarks in their state — and Governor Beshear includes Ken Ham’s creationist “museum” as one of them. He has just slapped the whole state with a gross insult.

Really, Governor Beshear? You’re so desperate for tourist attractions that you pad your list with a shameful institution dedicated to lies and miseducation? They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel; next on the list is a garbage dump, or a sewage treatment plant, or a polluted lake.

Of course Ken Ham is laughing happily. Not only did he get the state seal of approval on his madhouse, but the state has committed $2 million to road work to improve access, with $9 million more on the way.

Man, the University of Kentucky must be rolling in cash if the state has so much to spare that they can waste it on roadbuilding to an attraction that doesn’t exist.

Good questions, ____________ answers

You fill in the blank. Greta Christina interviews Edwina Rogers.

Did you know 70% of Republicans are pro-choice? And that there is no Republican party position on abortion? It’s only a few elected officials who are anti-gay, not the majority. You shouldn’t stereotype Republicans! Republicans believe in the separation of church and state, too. But not a majority now (she’s backed down on this one). Republicans at the federal level have not been promoting creationism and intelligent design. It was OK that she donated money to Rick Perry because a) he used to be a Democrat, b) he was head of the Republican Governor’s Association, and c) she was interested in promoting health care. And we all know what a friend to health care Rick Perry has been. She joined the Republican party along with everyone else in the South because she like Ronald Reagan’s message, which was about working hard.

I learned many Surprising Facts™ about America in this interview. I haven’t been thrilled with the Democrats for some time, but apparently the Republicans have an agenda more in tune with my views (!), and I ought to have been voting for them.

Why I am an atheist – Matthew Smedberg

I grew up Catholic, and had argued myself to the “correct” conclusion, that the Church’s teachings and morality were soundly defensible via logic. During college, however, my views on morality, especially but not limited to sexual morality, changed, forcing me to re-evaluate the logical connections I had previously accepted. (I remember vividly one time, while riding a horse into Damascus, reading a speech of Douglas Adams where he forcefully argues that calling masturbation wrong on the grounds that it does harm is not only false but unconscionably cruel.) I became convinced that humans have the power and the right to decide on what is just and moral together — that no god worthy of the name would give moral edicts at all, and certainly not ones merely reinforcing old, old prejudices.

I am an atheist because I became convinced that god was a story we invented. But I call myself an atheist because I do believe in something: I believe that we can do better.

Matthew Smedberg
United States

BBC Radio 4 might want you

They’re doing a story on how the internet has affected religious belief, and are looking for someone who left faith because of the net.

We would like to interview an atheist who had grown up in a faith community, but chose to leave religion because of the internet. We would be very grateful if they would share their story with us and how they think their lives may have been different if they didn’t have a means to access the wealth of online information or communicate with other atheists.

Oh, boy. Do they realize what kind of deluge they’re inviting? If you fit that description, contact information is available at the link.