Hi, I promise I won't bore you with my story unless you ask.  I'm in Portland Oregon USA, that is the north west corner of the country.  Very similar to London, I'm told.  I'm going back to school for my second bachelor's degree this coming term.  Here's hoping my brain hasn't gone to mush since the last time.

Christianity seems rather tame in the UK.  In the US my impression is that Christianity is far more potent than in Europe.  Maybe experiences of atheists in the US are thus more dramatic than my run-in with guitar-playing born-again Christians whose lyrics far surpass anything than the Eurythmics could produce?

I've heard skeptics say that paranormal effects tend to disappear as more rigorous controls are applied.  Chances are that if the dream telepathy experiment was repeated but measures were put in place to prevent the participants communicating from each other by normal means the telepathy effect would disappear.  For example, you could make sure the participants were isolated from each other and that the sender is not told of the message to be sent until they are ready to go to sleep, so that they have no chance of communicating to the receiver.  Professional magicians are supposed to be necessary in these kind of experiments to advise on the ways that secret normal communication can take place.  Other controls may be necessary; of course I'm not an expert in this area; I'm just regurgitating what I remember reading from skeptical books and magazines.  To be honest I don't see how such experiments can prove anything positive, since in my view you would need to show that the probability of normal communication taking place is negligibly low which seems to me a tall order since you would need to be superhuman to think of all the possible ways normal communication can take place and eliminate them all. 

I am usually sane and stable.  Just had a couple of dodgy paranoid and hallucinatory episodes in the past.  (You don't necessarily know that the things you hallucinate are not real.)

I'm assuming you are asking me.  Computer science - why not?  Possibly on to a Masters concentration in software engineering + security.  The local university has a great security curriculum.  And if I go for a PhD, I should graduate in time to retire. 

Okay ---

While growing up, my family was believers without being religious.  That is, they all professed belief without attending church.  My mom started taking us to a Methodist church when I was about 5-6.  I'm oldest, so I don't know what she thought the younger siblings would get out of it.  She gave up in about a year, and I kept going by myself for a few weeks.  I was in the children's choir and I enjoyed it.  I have very little recollection of what I learned about the Methodist religion beyond the usual sappy bible stories considered suitable for children.

When I was in Junior High School - about 11-13 years old - my very best friend was a preacher's kid.  Her dad preached at a Foursquare Gospel church only a few blocks from my home.  Talk about nuts.  And I pretty much went along with the program as I wanted to be with my friend.  But I could never quite turn my brain off.  I deliberately tried talking in tongues - it was a great way to get extra attention.  And I noticed - the old lady who was the usual blabberer was watching me and she started up in competition for the attention.  And everyone went over to her when she started.  And then I knew it was all an act.  People worked themselves up to get the attention.  And I knew it was easy - just blabber nonsense syllables and wave your arms in the air - if you can get yourself to cry even better. 

My friend's family had to move on to a larger church.  They were literally eating plain boiled rice three times a day as the congregation was so small.  The new pastor and his wife were old enough for social security, so they had enough money to eat while he preached.  When the new pastor told me that playing Solitaire at home was evil and the devil would leap out of the cards and steal my soul, I left the church.  That was just too lame.

It was about this time I started to question the bible stories as I started to learn about science.  Evolution has always fascinated me and I enjoy reading about it.  I was still willing to believe in the christian god, but I believed the bible was a bunch of stories put together by bronze/iron age goat herders. 

In my mid twenties, I was a military wife.  The ex-husband was in the Marines.  A friend and I were bored staying at home with little children, so we decided to start going to base chapel.  Military base chapels in the US are universalist in nature.  There were three chaplins - Baptist, Lutheran and Catholic.  The jewish, islamic and buddhist followers all had to find services in town - if they could.  I was interested in the Lutheran faith and convinced the chaplin to baptize me and my children.  He was reluctant as he thought I could not really surrender myself to christ.  Happens he was right.

We moved and the new base chapel had no appeal for me.  I was upset.  How could I not feel right in any church if I was a true believer?  It seems really silly now - people go to church for the social activities, and so they pick the church that they feel most comfortable in.  Absolutely no one expects anyone to feel comfortable in just any church, temple, synagogue.  But I got so hung up on it, I quit going altogether.

And that allowed me to question everything.  And I went back to university, kept reading in science topics, decided to be agnostic in the sense of throwing up my hands and claiming to know nothing.  Then my youngest son was diagnosed with learning disabilities.  He knew he was different from the other children.  He knew they could do homework quickly and easily.  And he was 6 years old, it was 9 pm, he had been working on his homework since he got home from school, his homework still wasn't done and he was crying he was so tired.  That was it for me.  God/s/dess could give me, an adult, nothing I couldn't handle, but why did they have to pick on a child who could not handle the troubles and did not even understand why they had troubles.  Fuck god/s/dess and fuck their stupid mealy mouthed followers.

That was more than 30 years ago - I just turned 60 and my youngest son is 33 - and I am still pissed at people who go on about "god's plan".

Not to mention the huge presence of "Snake Handler" Pentecostal churches that take place in parts of the South where I live. There have been rumors that some of the more visible preachers of these faiths actually milk out all of the poison before handling them. However, enough deaths have occurred as a result of snake handling that you would have to admit that blind faith and pressure in that practice could be deadly. Also, if the snakes bite them and they become poisoned, most of the faithful will not seek medical help due to the fact that they feel that they have 'fallen" short of the glory of god.

There is  a debate  as to whether or not the practice should be banned because of the pressure upon children in those settings. But that is a bit of a local issue in most places and remains largely ignored.

However the state in which I reside and a couple of neighboring states, have already outlawed the practice of snake-handling in religious ceremonies but the practice continues and is mostly ignored by the law.  These people, after all, feel as though they are breaking the law in the name of God and see themselves as answering to an authority higher than man, so they have no problem with openly practicing their religion with no fear of involvement.

I was pretty hard headed as a child.  But yeah, I have met young people who are totally sucked into the fire and brimstone story. 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks about it in her book, Infidel.  The first time she went without a head covering, the first time she wore pants, the first time she rode a bicycle.  Each time she was sure this time Allah would finally strike her down.  And not once did lightening strike. 

Religion is about controlling other people.