My name’s Joshua Bennett, and I also came here after reading the Harry Potter fanfiction. I made a commitment to pursuing rationality after reading Richard Mitchell’s book The Gift of Fire, and seeing even a fictional example of applied rational thinking got me excited. I know that, despite my best efforts, I am a terribly irrational person; I want to fix that.
In the past year or so I’ve thrown off (among other things) my fundamentalist Christian beliefs in pursuit of truth, and I now call myself an atheist and anti-theist. When people ask how I lost my faith, I tell them I didn’t lose it so much as cut it out and throw it away as one would a cancer. I know there are many other cancerous irrationalities lodged into my mind, and I hope that, by studying and conversing with the community here, I will begin to excise as much unreason as I can.
(By the way, I’m glad to see this community is atheist-friendly; I live in Texas and there don’t seem to be very many non-religious folk around.)
There was an atheist picnic at the park where I work. They were celebrating the rapture that was supposed to take place back in May (needless to say, they weren’t too surprised when the rapture was called off). I got to speak with a few people, but most of the meetup groups were rather far for me to drive to on a regular basis.
Thanks for the links. I’m located in the DFW metroplex, but I could make a drive to a meetup elsewhere once in a while.
My name’s Joshua Bennett, and I also came here after reading the Harry Potter fanfiction. I made a commitment to pursuing rationality after reading Richard Mitchell’s book The Gift of Fire, and seeing even a fictional example of applied rational thinking got me excited. I know that, despite my best efforts, I am a terribly irrational person; I want to fix that.
In the past year or so I’ve thrown off (among other things) my fundamentalist Christian beliefs in pursuit of truth, and I now call myself an atheist and anti-theist. When people ask how I lost my faith, I tell them I didn’t lose it so much as cut it out and throw it away as one would a cancer. I know there are many other cancerous irrationalities lodged into my mind, and I hope that, by studying and conversing with the community here, I will begin to excise as much unreason as I can.
(By the way, I’m glad to see this community is atheist-friendly; I live in Texas and there don’t seem to be very many non-religious folk around.)
Well, you’ve got Steven Weinberg. Not to mention a number of people here on LW.
There was an atheist picnic at the park where I work. They were celebrating the rapture that was supposed to take place back in May (needless to say, they weren’t too surprised when the rapture was called off). I got to speak with a few people, but most of the meetup groups were rather far for me to drive to on a regular basis.
Thanks for the links. I’m located in the DFW metroplex, but I could make a drive to a meetup elsewhere once in a while.