Hi all! Atheist non-muslim here :-)
OP - August 02, 2011, 12:33 AM
Just wanted to say hi to everyone on CEMB. Hope you dont mind if I join. I am a half Greek-Cypriot/half English guy. I have been a member of the site for a while but only just introduced myself.
I was never a muslim so I cant claim to understand the difficult journeys that many of you may have had when leaving religion, so I admire those who sadly had to make such sacrifices and had to take a Leap of Reason off the precipice of Mount Unbelieveable rather than me strolling down the side, my path to non-belief was a free straight easy downhill primrose path with petals lining the route. It is understandable that some may be slightly envious of me. I didnt lose any friends or family over this and my parents didnt even think religion important or relevant enough for it to even be an issue. I never had to pray. They never really went to church and we would hide when the 'God Squad' came knocking on the door, but I would say the household attitude was 'secular' rather than 'atheist'. With a Church of England cultural background. You know the 'goofy village vicar on a bicycle and jam making competitions on the church lawn' kind of thing. Pretty harmless really and no-one (not even the vicar) REALLY believes in it.
I am am an atheist so I dont believe in ANY gods. I find most (all?) religious claims to be ridiculous, sometimes embarassingly so and I think religion in many cases where it leads to ignorance, suffering and worse needs to be intellectually questioned, debated criticized (where necessary) and the reasons challenged why people believe in them.
I am not a scientist, or a theologian, philosopher or anything like that, but I am a man-in-the-street enthusiastic amateur, who is fascinated by science and nature, life, the earth the universe and their origins, and try to keep informed as best I can. I cannot claim either to have read either the bible or the quran, so excuse any ignorance I may have, but I get the basic premises (ie A god exists and he wants this and that) of the major religions and they are so baseless even on a basic level.
Living in England of I was exposed to (oo-err!) the bible so many of my topics may be bible/xtianity/creationism related rather than any other religions but, as we dont dicriminate here I hope you dont mind. Although many of the claims are similar, I am here to learn about other claims too, they all seem to fall apart under real scrutiny.
My best friend is muslim (as are many other of my close friends I hang out with) and they know I am atheist and they have no problem with it. But we do debate. But every now and again he (and others) tries to 'prove' islam to me by pointing out so called miracles in the quran, usually of the "how could they have known that back then?" type. The other day he gave me a copy of Maurice Bucaille's book "The bible the quran and science". I dont always rise to the debate, cos it gets painful hearing the same arguments that xtians use that I would normally debunk, but he's my friend ya know.
Anyway sorry to ramble on. Just a little intro on me. Thanks for welcoming me to the site, hope you dont mind if I drop in and post every so often, cheers!
Adey
I am better than your god......and so are you.
"Is the man who buys a magic rock, really more gullible than the man who buys an invisible magic rock?.......,...... At least the first guy has a rock!"