Welcome to the forums! Glad to see a new face here. One word of advice, DON'T listen to Jean Chauvin - the dude is full of shit.

Happy Posting!

AA

Pleased to meet you. How do you mean "lost in the ways of faith"?

Welcome to the forum.

a position of observation awaiting further proof describes what christians call atheism very nicely. 

Atheism is a label that means 'without god' but even as an atheist you can never completely rule out the vanishing possibility of 'some power out there' though there's no likelihood it's an anthropomorphic superbeing. This means many atheists will tell you they believe there is insufficient proof for the existence of gods. This is what I mean when I say atheism is 'observation awaiting further proof' when it comes to god.

Personally, I want a testable explanation for the existence of a god that is not simply a naked assertion, an argument from complexity, a threat of eternal torment or the assertion all humans are born into ancestral sin and must be 'saved'. But if there was some such empirical proof for an exo-universal power, I'd have to revisit my position. As it stands no such proof exists - at least none we are in a position to comprehend.  

I'm the son of a preacher and a missionary and a former believer. I became disillusioned with god myself for a number of reasons over a long-ish period of time as I went from my teens to my 20s. What is it about christianity that disillusioned you?

 welcome to the forum

Welcome to the forum. Always nice to have open minded new people.

I would check out the video by Jake, the one that explains Agnostics, Atheists, Strong Atheists and Weak Atheists.

In my opinion, with the absence of hard evidence, the logical default position would be disbelief until further proof.

For instance, Bertrand Russell's example of the teapot that floats around the Earth. The one that we can not see, photograph or detect. There may actually be a teapot there, but I am not going to believe it until I know for certain.

I am a former christian turned hard core Atheist. I also happen to live in Tennessee. I was born and raised in New Jersey though. The Bible Belt is probably responsible for more Atheists than anything else (other than the Bible ). Although I had lost my faith in god, long before I moved here.

Hope to hear more from you.

 Welcome.

This is an excellent website to sort out the issues with Christianity.

It has been a big help to me, a former minister.

 Yes, we can, but first we would need to find out the function of the amount of euphoria that is spread. Then we can set up a Taylor Series and use the ratio test to find the interval of convergence.

I am 18 too, I have just graduated and I do not want to return to the horrid times of AP calculus, not hard, just annoying.

It should be illegal to even attempt to copyright something like that. The US gov't, if anyone, should automatically have any and all rights to any and all things related to US gov't operations. Any and every American should have full use of the title. Or, better, no use of the title, as it's already being used.

Well, I've seen enough people rain down on him to post a contrary opinion. I LOVED the C.S. Lewis series as a kid. To death. I've probably read all the books 5 or 6 times. Not for quite awhile, because I lost them when I moved from Alberta to B.C. in the early 90's, but before then I read them a lot. Now maybe it's because I didn't even know there were parallels to christianity until I was long past 20, but they always appeared to be typical fiction to me, until I learned enough about christianity to draw parallels between the two. But then I can draw parallels from most fiction to religion, so it never meant anything to me. Fiction is where religion belongs anyway.

I read Disney comic-books as a kid, liked Donald Duck the most, couldn't really 'get' Mickey Mouse.

Liked the movie Fantasia.

Can barely remember my tearful response as I came out of the theater after seeing the movie 'Bambi', that my mother told me about later.

I even spent an enjoyable afternoon at the original Disneyland at Anaheim, CA, so I am not one to rubbish Disney.

So there is definitely something there in many of the stories, and the art, that appeals, especially, it seems, to the young. Maybe as one's early hopes and desires get bruised against the harsh realities, it is harder to immerse oneself in the cuteness of Disney.

The Disney style just gradually lost its appeal to me as I grew up and discovered much more solid and 'meaty' stories.

CS Lewis pissed me off in his Sci-Fi/Fantasy series, "Out of the Silent Planet", which is one of the few sci-fi series I did not finish reading - the Christian theology pervading and inspiring it just got too obtrusive for me.

 Yeah, I can see where you are coming from. And I never even noticed anything bad with The Golden Compass, just that I found the movie kinda boring.

I got the trilogy from the library when the movie came out.  Read all of them, but I was creeped out by the demons that were supposed to be souls or something. 

The fighting and angels and stuff was kind of cool, so I finished the books.  Really glad I didn't spend any money on them.

And LOTR rocks.  I first read it in 1967-ish and have reread it many times since.  I really liked the most recent movie series as well.

I read the first chapter or so of the Hobbit when I was 8 or 9, and haven't touched Tolkein since. The movies were good, but as an author he sucks balls. And no, I don't care that he's one of he more respected writers in recent history. He didn't know the basics of how to write a good story. All he does is go on and on and on and on and on about pointless shit. It's kinda like reading the bible, just with a lot of fluff instead of darkness.

I have the first two in the "Thomas Covenant the unbeliever" series and had totally forgotten about that, maybe I'll ebay and find out how far it went. I assume in the end his leprosy gets cured or something ><
 

Hehe, I didn't know anyone else read Donaldson.   I read the Thomas Covenant series (first six books) when I was learning English, I have a recollection of it as if I saw the movie drunk.  The story is there, but the details are vague.  I enjoyed it very much.  Apparently he's writing more in that series.  

I hardly read fiction anymore due to lack of time.  That is, other than religious works, that's kind of sad really.

And I think I was too old when I started reading LOTR, I was in my late teens, it annoyed the hell out of me, all those songs and poems... wow, it was a very tedious read, but worth the effort.  

The golden compass I've only read the first two, and that as I was learning English also.  I liked the storyline, but it seemed a bit childish.

Does anyone here read Dan Simmons?  I think he's probably one of the best fiction writers out there.  I have read all of his stuff as of 5 years ago.  His Hyperion series is amazing, and it has an interesting mix of Catholicism, Woo, and atheism in the storyline.  He's very good at what he does.  

I just remembered I have the first two books in the final series of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I started to read the first book, was very impressed. It struck me as every bit as strong as the first six books. I decided then, based on previous experience, to wait until I had the whole of the new series before getting too far into it.

I hadn't found any more after the second one when I last tried, so I left it for then.

Talking about this has reminded me to have another look. I see that he released the third one late last year, but there is a fourth due out late 2013, according to Donaldson's official web-site - damn!

Do I just get the third one, start reading, or put them aside and wait another two years so I can read them straight through??

What happened to me when I started reading the first series, while he was still writing them. I got really into them, reading them avidly, one volume after another, till I got the end of one only to find out he was still writing the next one!

Someone else pointed me at Hyperion. I might find time to have a look at the series.

I used to read a LOT, I got in trouble in school for reading. I have a freakin library but a paperback seems to average around $8 now and I can read the avg book in a few hours, kinda sux. Piers Anthony was probably my favorite author as a gradeschooler and it was nice to find out later he is an atheist. I made a book thread about it some time back I think.