Welcome

Welcome to my first blog site. I have created the FVThinker blog to support my growing interest and communications in the areas of :

• Atheism
• Separation of Church and State
• The role and place of religion in society
• Any ills related to religion
• Extremism
• Secular society
• Science
• Rational Thought
• and anything else that tickles my fancy.

I am a recently self-identified myself as an atheist. Raised as a roman catholic, it never 'took'. I always knew that the communion wafer was . . . well . . . just a piece of unleavened bread. Once I left home I, effectively, never went to church again. Still I held no contempt for the church (Catholicism specifically, nor church in general). As I grew older, I saw how religious dogma insinuated itself into public policy and became more and more uncomfortable with that aspect of religion.

Then two pivotal moment in my life came to pass.

1)I became a father and my faithful Catholic mother was terribly distraught that her grandchild was not going to be baptised. It was bad enough that I was not a church-goer, but now the salvation of her grandchild was in the balance. She delivered various bibles to the house on the hope that I would read them and suddenly see the truth of the Lord. Until then, I was happy to be a tacit agnostic but she forced my hand.

Indeed, I elected to analyze my faith to decide just where I stood. It didn't work out for my mother. I came to the conclusion there there was no way, short of willfully abandoning reason and suffocating my own intellect, that I could find any reason to believe in a supreme being the likes that the Judeo-Christian faiths sketch out. Most of life's big questions could be answered by very satisfactorily through our current, mortal understanding of the sciences. When it came to THE big question of the origin of the universe, I make no claims to know, but I find it intellectually irresponsible to credit a deity simply because we don't know. History is replete with fallen gods that were at one time credited with various aspects of our universe (i.e. the movement of the sun, thunder, storms).

2) 9/11. It wasn't long after 9/11 that I saw "the elephant in the room". It was religion that took down the World Trade Center, and took down two other airplanes and part of the Pentagon. It was absolute belief in a theology that created that horror. It was the absolute belief in a demonstrably flawed premise that shook the world that day. While Islam is the most visible right now (and, arguably, subscribing to the most violent holy book [and that is saying something]), I don't distinguish amongst the faiths. The absolute reliance on myth to form one's view of the world is what represents one of the greatest threats to our world.

I am an atheist and I am proud of my journey. I am invigorated and feel moved to action to dispel myths surrounding theism and atheism. I hope you will find this blog useful and enlightening.

FVThinker