Hello, and thanks for the warm welcome.
As for my "deprogramming", here is a brief history: I was raised Catholic, but realized around age 19 or 20 that all religions were basically nonsense, mainly based on the fact that there were so many and religious affiliation was mainly a result of birth location and parents influence. However, for the next 15 years, i basically held the agnostic position that we can't know whether God exists and even went back and forth a few times from "the design of the world indicates a probable God" (scientific ignorance on my part) to "we will never know". Also during this time i was under the misperception of "atheist" as someone who is certain that God doesnt exist, which i thought was a ridiculous notion. It wasnt until recently that i was exposed to some of the modern atheist writings/videos (Hitchens, Harris, Julia Sweeney) that i came to realize that:
- Atheists position is that there is no convincing evidence of God
- Logically you cannot prove a negative (i.e proving that something does NOT exist)
For me, these two points are hugely misunderstood by the non-atheist community. I think atheists need to market this message more effectively and i hope to do so myself going forward.
Thanks again and look forward to following the forum.