A Bit About Me

I realized when i wrote my reveiew of ginG chapter 11 that I pretty much never talk about who I am here, but I guess i probably should, to give everyone an idea of where I'm coming from when it comes to atheism and religion.

For the basics I was raised, as I have stated previously, in a Mormon household. That said, it was not terribly cultic as far as things go. While many of the doctrines were in force our family was overall pretty lax when it came to the prohibitions on caffeiene and such (alcohol was a huge no though). We were a convert family, so its not terribly odd that we were never really perfectly adapted to that lifestyle or the amount of indoctrination that some were.

Anyhow, it was an interesting way growing up. I can honestly say that for quite some time I actually believed pretty much everything that was said about Joseph Smith, the history of the church, and whatnot. It was ironically their intense teenage indoctrination program, which they call "seminary" that broke me of the spell. Seminary was basically 4 years of deep scriptural study with a preapproved church curriculum.

In addition to being a Mormon, I was also a history nut, and too many things in the Book of Mormon just didn't work. The main one that tipped me off was mention of Horses in the Americas B.C.E. From there it was just downhill, andby the time I turned 16 I didn't really believe in all the crap anymore, and shifted away into an agnostic/deist stance for awhile, and "came out" to my parents about my agnosticism the month before I turned 18. Going to university changed my perspective even more, and after a brief stint of disingenous paganism and pantheism I went full on Atheist. Having throughly researched history I'd realized that my pantheism was only half right; religions were all equal, they were just equally false.

From there I somewhat lost interest in religion until I picked up The God Delusion last November, and since then the entire subject of positive atheism and active, "out" atheism has drawn me in, and I've been going ever since. And now we're here.

I know, pretty dull stuff, but if anyone has any quesitons about mormonism or anything else up here, feel free to ask!