An Opening thought...

A friend made a comment to me the other day that took me by surprise. What he said was I was the only Atheist he knows. I was amazed that someone with such a large circle of friends could only know one atheist, and it got me to thinking.

I've been an out of the closet atheist for less than a year now, and I imagine that there are a lot of people like me walking around. First a confession, I'm a recovering Christian. I was raised agnostic, and in my early 20's I converted to Christianity, I did so in circumstances that I imagine many other people have found themselves in. It was at a really low point in my life and didn't know how to pull myself out of it. That's when I found religion. Surprisingly, my life started to improve, and of course I thought it was my belief in Christ that brought about the change for the better, not my own strength and determination.
As time passed and my knowledge and experience grew, I found that more and more of my christian beliefs were falling to the spears of logic and reason. As more and more core tenants of my beliefs fell, my rationalizations for why I believed were becoming more and more convoluted until they finally collapsed under their own absurdity. But despite my quiet and gradual conversion to atheism, I kept it to myself. Even though my head knew what was right, my heart couldn't let go of the comfort from belief and of belonging.

This brings me back to my original thought. I'm sure there are many people out there that are in the same boat that I was, they know that believing in an old man in the sky is absurd, but aren't quite willing to admit it. And that's my point, there are far more atheists and agnostics running around out there than we all think. Am I the only atheist my friend knows, I doubt it, but I am the only friend of his that is willing to stand up and declare it proudly.

And that brings me to the central point of this blog. I may not be a great writer, and I'm far from eloquent, but I believe that the world needs more people to stand up and be counted as a voice for reason, logic and critical thinking, or we're all in for another Dark Age.