Ah, feeling a bit guilty to necro-post like this. :|
But anyways, I just decided fairly recently that I am really atheist (specifically, agnostic atheist) and felt a very joyful pang of, "Gotta join this club!" XD
But at the same time, I feel rather sad right now, actually. Where I go to school, most people are fairly tolerant (at least of atheists) so I always thought it was "normal" and a perfectly "acceptable" thing in America (as in, people didn't freak out if you were atheist.) But a few minutes ago, I just learned that atheists were in fact a minority here in the US, and that kind of makes me sad. :/ As well as feeling rather out of the loop.
When I was very, very young, I guess I basically made up my own beliefs. They weren't creationist, but rather, involved several higher beings that lived up in the sky and just helped people, and tried to stop the "bad people." But there was no afterlife, people just died if they died, unless they got extra lives (like a Mario game or something.)
My parents are Buddhists (albeit follow the additional deities in addition to the philosophy) and are okay with the idea that I'm not very into religion. I'm Taiwanese (of the Mandarin Chinese sort) and I just can't read any Chinese, preventing me from ever reading any of the things that were said during temple visits. I also never really had any of the beliefs explained to me, and I never asked in fear that I'd be scolded, so I ended up just not really knowing about it. Eventually as I got older, I dropped the beliefs I made up from my younger years, and now I'm pretty much agnostic, though loosely aligning with taoist beliefs. (Come to think of it, my parents are Taoist Buddhists. Hmm.)
A load of my friends were Christian but I never liked the idea of a single God, and I especially didn't like the idea of a hell. Maybe because of some of my mom's rantings I had some sort of bad impression on Christians at the time so I was subconsciously led away from Christianity in the end, but either way I also didn't like the idea of writings that, according to things on the news and media, seemed to have lots of controversies in its texts. It just bugged me. I figured I'd much rather be free to choose what to believe, which is what led me away from religion altogether. So that's my story.
My boyfriend is atheist, and my other close friends include a couple of agnostics and a Hindu (who isn't very religious anyway.) Of the people I've met, I just find people of that sort easier to talk to. And I've met so many that I even thought atheists were almost a majority. O_o
I just hate it when people cite the Bible or something when they're talking publicly (like not within a church or temple, etc.) To me, it feels like they don't realize that their religion isn't some universal standard, but rather just one of many. I don't know if I'm just overly sensitive or something, but to me it's a kind of intolerance, especially when quotes from religious texts are used as arguments or statements or such.
I went to Barcelona once and a man came up to my parents and I and tried to persuade us that Buddha was God... it really ruined my day, I never had that kind of an experience before.
I don't think humans are inherently bad (it's not like we're born wanting to kill people), but that they tend to get worse as they get older due to society. (So maybe in that sense they are terrible.) But even then, religious wars aren't just because of the manipulators, but also because of the followers who just don't know any better. I don't think that would really make them bad. Just an extra comment I wanted to make.
Sorry for all the disconnected ramblings. :/ Just kind of scrolling up and down and commenting down here. lol
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