re why do people become atheists in article may athos rutgers edu mayne nu cs fsu edu writes in article may athos rutgers edu noye midway uchicago edu writes my stuff about dealing with defferences deleted this is not at all comparable christianity is the main stream in western culture you are trivializing the experiences of others i am sorry i did not mean to i think i understand how your experiences were much worse than the small bit of ridicule i have had to put up with i guess i didn t really understand before now i do i remember what it was like being different as a christian we were told all the time that we were different and in fact that only members of the our church were really christians though others who believed in god weren t as bad as atheists so we were a small minority that was nothing compared to being an atheist wow pretty conservative church please excuse me if this seems like a ridiculous understatement to you the only thing comparable would be a young child being christian being surrounded by staunch atheists including parents who actively persecute any religious tendancies both actual punishments and even worse emotional blackmail they would also have to have the whole mainstream society on their side maybe these conditions could have occured in the old soviet union not in a country with under god in its pledge of allegiance on a side note that under god wasn t in there until recently i believe my father who is in his sixties remembers saying the pledge of allegiance without that in there i don t know the history behind that though emotional blackmail ouch thank goodness i ll be neutral in my thanks here i was raised in a completely tolerant household so that i could make my own decisions i doubt it even then because children have to be taught to be christians and hence must have support somewhere so atheism doesn t have to be taught but christianity does i guess i can see that although i can see a child believing in some sort of god without anything other than his her own imagination as a basis sorry i guess this is sort of minor my query about parallel between lack of choice for homosexuals and lack of choice for him as an atheist deleted yes my atheism was born of necessity for an intellectually honest person belief is mostly a response to evidence hmm i wonder why i am a christian then this isn t a flame this is a real wonder does anyone else have opinions to offer on why you believe in something that hasn t necessarily been proven to you will or wishes have nothing to do with it i could choose to lie or to be silent about my true beliefs i could no more choose to believe in the god of christianity than i could decide that the ordinary sky looks red to me sounds like you are an atheist by nature then or is it possible that at least part of it is due to the apparently repressive nature of the christianity of your childhood if this is getting too personal perhaps you should ignore it or we can take it to email still i should be clear that i m not equating what i went through with what gays go through however it is a mistake to assume that everyone who goes through painful experiences are broken by them happily some are made stronger once we get past it this may have been a general remark you do not sound broken to me but indeed stronger i must say that i wasn t hurt by my experiences in church any more than some of my friends who didn t become atheists i was just hurt differently i m not sure i understand this sentence could you explain not without going to details and violating the confidences of some of my childhood friends suffice it say to that religion does not guarantee that a person will be happy and strong emotionally and a repressive upbringing can leave its scars even or especially on those who don t get free of it i doubt that any sane and sincere person doubts that and i feel no need to defend it yes i agree with that i ve seen some of the damage repressive religion can do and as a result i intend to raise my own children as much as i can to look around before accepting one religious stand atheism is included in this and to question everything this is very important by the way i am much happier and stronger being out of the closet in the end it has been as someone eloquently put it in private email an experience of liberation rather than disillusion i can see that bill mayne cheers vera je cherche une ame qui of course i don t agree with pourra m aider mylene farmer s religious views je suis i just think they re interesting d une generation desenchantee vera noyes mylene farmer noye midway uchicago edu
