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X Amish Atheist

~ fighting dogma from behind the lines…

X Amish Atheist

Tag Archives: atheist

Atheists are Ignorant

15 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Other

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

atheist, delusion, God, ignorance


Atheists are an ignorant bunch.

Atheists don’t know for sure how life began on Earth. They hypothesize a number of ideas such as abiogenesis – the idea that life sprang from an inorganic primordial soup and panspermia – the idea that life was brought here from another place in the universe. Christians know exactly where life comes from – God created it.

Atheists don’t know for sure how long the universe will last. Some think it will end in a Big Crunch at some unknown point in the distant future. Others think it will end in a Big Bounce, again at some point in the distant future. Christians know that the end is near and that it will be caused by God’s hands.

Atheists aren’t sure where the universe came from although many suggest that it came from nothing. Christians know exactly where the universe came from – God created it.

Atheists aren’t sure why there is something rather than nothing. Christians know that it’s God’s plan for there to be something rather than nothing.

Atheists don’t know the answer to, “Why are we here?” and some of them will go as far as claiming the question is meaningless because it anthropomorphizes a natural process. Christians know exactly why we are here – we are here to prepare ourselves for the afterlife.

Atheists know very few of the answers to the big questions in life. Christians know almost all of them.

Atheists may be ignorant but at least they’re not delusional.

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Becoming an Atheist

14 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Conversion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

atheism, atheist, belief system, logic, rationalization


At first it starts with a nagging question – an inconsistency or a contradiction that you notice in your belief system.

Then you rationalize. It’s usually not that difficult to rationalize – to invent something that makes sense with the rest of your belief system. Your religious beliefs will survive this rationalization – they’ll just have to endure a minor tweak.

Then you have more nagging questions. You realize that even your tweaked belief system is not sufficient to withstand the inquiry of an intelligent mind. Frantically you make more rationalizations and for a time, everything makes sense again.

And then of course you hit upon a new idea and a new question pops up. Once again you rationalize. This process keeps going on for several years. Your belief system gains some patches and a whole lot of little tweaks. Your rationalizations have become quite complex.

At some point you suddenly realize that your beliefs about God are way different from that of everyone else around you. But this is fine, you’re comfortable with this because it makes you feel good to have calmed the cognitive dissonance with your rationalizations.

The questions don’t stop there. In fact, the more you learn about science and philosophy, the more questions you get and the harder they become. You start redefining your beliefs even more. Your God starts becoming smaller and smaller. What you’re doing is learning more and more about the universe and relegating God to the gaps in your knowledge. If you’re lucky, you will have started learning about logic and you will suddenly realize that your beliefs about God are based not on evidence but on arguments from ignorance.

Eventually, you realize that your belief system is the definition of “agnostic”. You don’t tell your friends about your new label but you don’t feel awfully guilty about your beliefs either. After all, what could be the harm in admitting that you don’t know?

Then you start playing devil’s advocate. You debate against your religious acquaintances hoping that they can prove to you that God really exists. They fail miserably.

Mentally you start scoffing at your friends’ beliefs whenever the subject of religion comes up. It is around this time that you realize what you’ve become. An atheist! Surprisingly, it doesn’t feel all that evil. You don’t suddenly have the urge to rape and to kill. Actually, you start feeling better about yourself once you realize that your morality is real and not just a fear of eternal torture.

Becoming an atheist is not a single decision that a person makes nor is it a single point in time. Becoming an atheist is a long journey that often happens over the course of many years. For me it was about 10-12 years from the first serious question I had to when I was first comfortable considering myself an atheist.

Just remember, you were born an atheist!

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Coming Out

13 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Coming Out, My Story

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

atheist, coming out, friends, gay, girlfriend, relationships, religion


Update (Jan. 20, 2013). I deleted a sentence of this post that referred to my fundamentalist friends. Apparently, I meant what I said when I wrote that (otherwise I wouldn’t have written it), but it did not convey what I currently feel about my fundamentalist friends. I love my friends and I greatly enjoy their company–even the ones that I’m not convinced would remain my friends if they knew what I believed.

Thus far, I’ve truly “come out” about my atheistic beliefs to only one person – my very Christian girlfriend of four years. We’ve discussed our differing beliefs at length and both agreed that we want and can make our relationship work for the long term.

We’ve agreed that the practical course of action would be for me to eventually join a Mennonite church so that she could remain close to her Amish family. I don’t see much of my Amish family so I don’t care that much what they think of me anymore.

If not for her, there is a good chance that I would eventually work up the courage to tell everyone I that I am an atheist.

Several of my friends probably wonder about my beliefs since I am completely silent when they’re discussing religion. The closest I’ve come to actually telling any of them is when I asked one of my friends if he could be friends with a person of another religion. He replied that yes, he thought he could. Then I asked him if he could be friends with an atheist – someone with no religion whatsoever. After considering the question he replied that yes he could given that the atheist doesn’t try to force his belief system onto him. I told him that his sounds like a reasonable position to take.

So maybe there’s hope after all. Maybe I can eventually come out about my beliefs without losing all of my friends. I will not do it for the time being, however, because I could completely lose my family as would my girlfriend lose hers.

It’s extremely lonely, however, to have no friends that share your beliefs. I think I understand, to an extent, what it’s like to be gay in our society. Sometimes I get the urge to run around giddily, screaming, “I’m an atheist! I’m an atheist!” but I don’t dare, I just keep it bottled away on the inside.

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Are There any Other Ex-Amish Atheists Out There?

12 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Other, The Amish

≈ 55 Comments

Tags

amish, atheist


I am a formerly Amish atheist. Life can get a little lonely when there’s no other person that you know of that shares your background and your skepticism. This post is a shout-out to ex-Amish atheists everywhere. We need to get together, socialize, and support each other.

If you’re an ex-Amish atheist or agnostic, please comment on this page so we can get to know each other. I have also started a group on Atheist Nexus for people like us. Please come and join me;

http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/ex-amish-atheists

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