Hi notwise,
I am an athiest and have been for many years now. I went to Sunday school and church in a protestant congregation my entire youth and young adulthood, I know all the Bible stories and sang "Jesus Loves Me", was baptized. It wasn't a fundamentalist church or anything, no "fire and brimstone" preaching, people were nice, I had friends there.
I think that just somewhere along the way of going to Sunday school and church every Sunday, (and then youth group meetings Sunday night) I just started to think that some of what I was hearing wasn't quite right. I started thinking about why people would or wouldn't go to hell. Such as, a Bhuddist monk who lived in harmony with the world and had never harmed a living thing, got a ticket straight to hell because he wasn't a Christian. To me that didn't seem too fair, and I felt that God oughta be fair.
I think I can trace my first glimmerings of doubt in religion and God back to a single incident, which I bet people remember. Sometime in my pre-teen years, National Geographic ran a TV special about seal hunts, where the hunters would club baby seals to death. I was really shaken by seeing that, and when I went to bed that night, I prayed for it to stop. In my life I do not think I have ever really prayed for anything else. I mean, how could a nice guy God let something like this happen. So I think this event kind of opened up my thinking and questioning. Until some years later, I just sort of realized that I was still going to church, mainly to make my mom happy, but that I didn't believe any of it.
And then you throw science and a few religious whackos like Jerry Falwell into the mix to re-affirm what I thought was going on, and here I am.
I think it all started with a pretty truamatic event, but then it was a very gradual move, until one day I just realized. Oddly enough, one of my best friends who attended that same church, has turned out just like me. Go figure.
Men have nipples. Adam was the first man, created by God in His image. Why does God have nipples?
™ Version 4.2