Welcome to the forum, John!

Welcome John!

Because i joined next to you, i read your filipino story, and actually it seemed quite sincere, i am sure you are moving in the direction you are because you are moving away from what is false. i really wish you well too. i'm sure there are many other atheist who will show you ome friendship and kindness. i also think you have suffered in your life, but i'm glad you say that the recent times have been good. i would say, stick by your theist friends, because they obviously need someone like you!

dreems

Yes. I think they dont really believe or dont care enough. they just do.

have you eaten one? its common here in the phil

and yes it is common to see total nutjobs for religion here

thanks. hope my English skills is enough for you guys to understand haha

I ate a couple ballute eggs camping after alote of tequila I won't turn down a dare.  Alote of my friends were phillippino in highschool.  We go camping every year, I bring my 5-7 close friends and they bring about 145 friends and family and reserve 14 campsites and take over the block, thats how they role. 

hows the taste? haha.

so there are filipino migrants also there. wow. im pretty sure they are all religious. or not?

I recently started messing around on facebook, curious I started checking into people I went to school with. I went to 3 different high schools so, obviously I didn't make many lasting friendships in school. I note however that I have found not one single person yet who claims to be an atheist, of whom I went to school with. It is rough, the few friends I have are christian, all but one of them will make the concession of not mentioning jesus or god in every other sentence. They all know about my unbelief, but we still have some fun together.

 It's rough though if I sit and think too hard on it, these people believe in a magic know it all in the sky. But I'm gettin' by just fine. It would be nice to know some rational people irl. So you are not alone at least in the position you are in.

Hey, Welcome!

We don't seem to have a lot of Filipinos here in Australia, despite being so close, thanks to the restrictive immigration laws we had for much of the 20th century, but it has being growing fairly rapidly since those laws we relaxed.

Although it seems the bulk of them settle in Victoria, our southern-most mainland state, a few thousand kilometers away from where I live, in Brisbane. 

In my vicinity we have a lot of Vietnamese, originally from refugees fleeing the war there. We also have a significant presence of people from India, including one guy I met behind the counter at a gas station late at night, who confided to me that he was an atheist, no doubt encouraged by noticing the book I was holding - it was one of the big four, I don't remember now which one.

Where he came from, he said, it was the muslims that were the biggest problem.

I find it hard too. Especially when the head is completely formed already @_@

Thats what i have always thought of. nowadays people are just trying to please the group. They are not entirely religious at all.

Yes, all our State capitals, which are the biggest cities in each state, are on the coast. 

There are a few moderate sized cities inland mainly in the more well-watered south-east corner, including our federal capital, Canberra.

But the center and the west, apart from a bit around the south-west corner, and the far tropical north, is pretty much desert.

Just 'down the road', as we say, from where I live in Brisbane, there is a new housing estate which seems to have been populated by a quite a few Muslims, probably refugees. It is still a bit disconcerting to encounter burkha clad women at the local supermarket, in among much more informally clad 'Australian' women, more appropriately dressed for a warm to hot climate, ie somewhat more skin exposed.

I actually see a range of dress, from not much more than a head scarf up to the full burkha.

I also see a number of families who look like they are from other parts of Africa, quite dark-skinned, but not muslim, to judge from their clothing.

We have quite a lot of Asians, apart from the Vietnamese. 

In fact there are some other shopping centers not far from where I live which are almost entirely Asian, at least in the small shops.

I was thinking last time I was waiting to catch a train into downtown at our local station, that 'caucasians' were very much in the minority on the platform.

As you might guess from my avatar picture, my background is very much northern European, especially Scottish.

I have absolutely no problem at all with peoples 'race', I enjoy the diversity. It is mainly some customs, such as the dress codes of Islamic women, I find a little disturbing.

Australia has come quite a way from the old 'White Australia' policy of restrictive immigration and 'citizenship' tests.

Even on matters of religion, we have relaxed, especially in my state of Queensland, which was regarded as the 'Deep North' by the rest of the country, by analogy with the Deep South of the US. One of our longer serving state Premiers, sort of equivalent to a US governor, was close to being a fundamentalist of some sort - I think he was Lutheran, and originally from New Zealand. At one point our Education minister was toying with the idea of introducing Creationism in some form into our government schools. Thankfully the generation that were 'rusted-on' supporters of those guys gradually died off, and we have had a series of at least nominally left-wing state governments elected, which has brought us back to some sort of balance.

I think we still have a few weird cultish and fundy religious communities in the countryside around the southeast corner of the state, but overall, it now feels relatively open, especially as compared to parts of the US. At our worst, I don't think Australians generally ever got as 'hung-up' on religion as the US.

LOL. That's just the camera angle - it had my camera on a tripod, which was down a bit of a slope from where I was standing. I only a touch over  5' 7".

I think some of them would fall into that category. 

I used to work in what was then our government-owned Telecoms company as an engineer, and there was another engineer at the same level who came from one of these communities about 50 miles west of the city. He seemed to swallow everything that came out of the 'Bible Belt' in the US, both religious and ultra right-wing politics like anti-gun control stuff, arguments against the 'ozone' problem which was then a hot subject like 'global-warming' today, and some fundy style religious views. He would come around to my office and show me these printed articles on these subjects, and ask me for comments.

I have read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms only online. The book is very elusive here in my place i cant find one in bookstores. I guess you can call it aspergers  without the negative syndromes. I said vice cause sometimes my friends get annoyed on why i talk so much about history in general they find me a lil bit weird and irrelevant. good thing tho' they like hearing facts about history to learn new information.

my favorite story btw whenever we talk about religion is on how

God killed 42 children for making fun of a bald head!

they always get wow haha

The articles he showed me were about the non-religious right-wing issues, such as articles attacking the ozone-hole 'theories', I think he wanted my opinion of them 'scientifically'. I don't recall him ever trying to 'convert' me, and I never brought it up.

I remember when our workgroup attended a weekend 'workshop' training break, and  he asked some strange questions, made some odd responses to the instructors, all clearly based on his beliefs. One of them approached me, knowing that I worked in the same area, and asked about him. They also found him a little 'strange'.

He objected when they wanted us to try some yoga-style exercises, because he saw it as partaking in a pagan religious practice.

What was a little sad was when he got laid off in a 'down-sizing' of the company, he phoned me and asked if I could give him some sort of reference for his job hunting, but I honestly could not see how I could say anything really positive about him. Apart from his religiously views, I was genuinely not impressed with his intelligence in general.

Boy, having to worry about your aunt getting upset if she catches you browsing these sites must be a real hassle. Would she be more or less worried about you visiting any other kinds of site, say, porn sites? Just curious how seriously she regards lack of belief.

Welcome!

hehe... my incredibly intellectually gifted theist teacher in most of high would get annoyed on me trying to make an atheist out of her.

There was a filmed segment on one of our TV current-affairs programs here last week from a reporter in Mindanao, and it was frightening. I was thinking of asking you about it myself.

We have had some interesting documentaries on China broadcast recently on our local TV. There was a fascinating series about the Great Wall, which I have seen personally both near Beijing, and in the far western end, where it has eroded to little more than a chain of mounds of compacted earth where the main towers would have been.

I also visited the famous Entombed Warriors at Xian. China is indeed a vast and fascinating place, with a rich history.