The Nirmukta Freethought Community

Hi, all. I've been lurking the Nirmukta forums awhile, and finally joined this forum.

Initially Hindu brahmin, but hopefully that's all now in the past. Was never very religious. I rejected the idea of a god/gods (as the cheaply human-like being) quite at the start itself (I didn't understand what all the gung-ho was about) but concocted a scientific definition; that god is "chance" or something like the unknown in the Schrödinger's cat experiment, I've forgotten what, it was crap anyway. And also something similar to Dan Brown's Lost Symbol.

I could never understand how people got their "religious sentiments" offended, and not could I judge for myself when something was or wasn't religiously offensive.

Anyway lost faith in god generally after an experience with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect and unrelated reading of Islamic scripture. The former made me realize that people are generally retarded and unwilling to think for themselves and the latter made me realize how dangerous these unformed minds, when indoctrinated, can be. I subsequently extrapolated these to Hinduism and the rest is history.

Particularly like Ajita Kamal's debating style which brought the logical fallacies, when dealing with religion, to my attention.

Yes, you're right. It's always easy to see the cracks in another person's religion/faith system, but ignore or fail to see the same in your own belief system. I too have relatives who insist that Christianity and Islam are intolerant religions while Hinduism is a glowing beacon of awesomeness. Whatever... the point, is that you've come to a reasonable, well- argued decision regarding your lack of belief and for that you I commend your courage. Sometimes it's very psychologically stressful to abandon what you've been following all your life. Usually most of the atheists I know personally or have met on the forums here, were never very religious to begin with, so they only took their initial disbelief to its natural conclusion and came out of the atheist closet.

Anyway, sorry for rambling on , welcome aboard and hope to see you posting away on the forums.

Peace,
Nick.

(07-12-2011 11:22 PM)nick87 Wrote:  Yes, you're right. It's always easy to see the cracks in another person's religion/faith system, but ignore or fail to see the same in your own belief system. I too have relatives who insist that Christianity and Islam are intolerant religions while Hinduism is a glowing beacon of awesomeness.

Yep, that the universal Hindu mentality.

(07-12-2011 11:22 PM)nick87 Wrote:  Usually most of the atheists I know personally or have met on the forums here, were never very religious to begin with, so they only took their initial disbelief to its natural conclusion and came out of the atheist closet.

So theists don't just become atheists when confronted with sufficient logical rebuttals? Or at least proof that their religion is doing more harm than good? That's a pretty scary picture.
Is atheism not something that can be acquired?