Field Marshal Herman Bubbles

Username: F.M.H.B.
Political Beliefs: Anarchism
Religious Beliefs: Atheism, Theravada Buddhism
Other Hobbies/Interests/Etc.: Video games, tabletop games, basically all sorts of games, music, writing, any sort of thinking or creative activity, really.
Why did you come here?: To give people a place to think, instead of just live.
What do you hope to gain?: I hope to gain a greater understanding of myself, but especially of the world around me. I also like making lots of cool friends, so bonus!
What do you hope to give?: My experience, my friendship, my love, my knowledge, and my strange and varied sense of humor. Also this forum. Haha.
Anything else?: I hope that everyone here enjoys it, and finds a truth they may not have known!

Thanks for making the forum! I can already feel my study concentration slippinig! Lol.

So do you think you'll be mostly contributing on the threads, or just posing a question and then stepping back to watch your puppets dance?

I don't think he's actually asked any questions...

I will contribute to threads but in these early days I'm going to let others take the wheel. This has to be a group endeavor, not just something I put on for everyone. And yes, I have asked questions, made a forum for them to be posted, maintained a firewall, updated all sorts of pointless crap, and managed to still contribute to the actual conversation.

Yeah.

Any questions you wanna ask of me personally can be done here or in PM's, as with any member's intro.

What made you feel the way you do about Christians?

A combination of things.

Failed faith, firstly. I prayed to god and Jesus for a long time after my friend and I watched the Left Behind movie. I didn't want to be left on earth and burn in hell. So I did the whole prayer to Christ that that one black guy did in the church so he could go to heaven. I prayed for a long time, on my bathroom floor, cus I felt embarrassed otherwise. Needless to say, I never got an answer. Things went downhill , and nothing seemed better. I don't know what the reasoning was, but I eventually gave up after about a year or so of straight prayer twice a day.

I went through some hard times, had a lot of issues, and as much as I wanted faith and that comfort it just didn't sit with me. I read Allan Watts' "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are." Heavy shit. I still can't read through a whole chapter without having to reread it to understand what it means. But somehow, out of that, I got my agnosticism, my skeptic, comforting agnosticism.

After that, I tried talking about what I had learned in the book. It wasn't greeted well with my friends. They denounced me, said I was stupid, that Christianity and god and souls didn't work like that. That I would probably go to hell.

I hung out with other religious people of a less harsh demeanor, and for a while I was okay with that. Then a very good friend tricked me to coming to a party and tried to convert me. I was assailed in a room full of religious people and two missionaries, while me and another non-religious girl were lectured and talked to about god, hell, and the weird things their specific religion entailed. All I could think is "How can a room full of people I respect and know are smart be so cajoled into believing something that is obviously utter bullshit?" I was annoyed and turned off from faith, especially Christian.

I grew, and in so growing I learned a lot more about the nature of subtle control. How tyrants can rule and subject without ever using arms. They merely twist the mind. I saw the Bush Era rise, and with it a ton of proud, arrogant Christian moral doctrine, denouncing other people as heathens, using religion again as a partial justifier for violence. I saw the same happen on the other side too, but it hits hard when it's from your own team too.

I was sick of it. I was sick of being assailed for my agnosticism. A year or so ago, I eventually realized that religion is a lie. The likelihood that god is exactly or even remotely what Christianity says 'He' is is so unlikely that it's just ridiculous to even hope it's true. I've always believed Christ was just a man, so there is the downfall of the Trinity for me. I finally saw through all the bullshit of faith that I've been told was good. I was sick of believing in something that might be possibly true, that resisted in a realm of absolute gray. I wanted black and white.

I got a lot of my life in order. I was done with believing in such abstracts and half-truths that may or not be real. I put my confidence in what I could know, and what I didn't know I was determined to find out. Thus begun a revolution of my ideas, and it hasn't stopped. Most of the things I post on here are questions I don't have answers to, and most of my answers are things I'm trying out. I'm using this place, personally, as a sort of idea testing grounds. I think it's working well so far for me, though I don't know about the rest of you. Haha.

Christianity has always seemed majority to me, always controlling, even in the best of ways. Control is one of the few things I really hate, and Christianity is one of the biggest purveyors. It molds and sends and gives people answers just for the sake of making them feel better. I don't want to feel better, I want to know what's true. The emnity against Christianity also stems from a deep seated hatred and very personal battle with lies. So naturally, I am at odds.

Ask further if you need clarification.

Ow..... I'm sorry you had to experience the lowest end of christianity. That's really rough.

So then, you would exemplify one of the main reasons a lot of people become Atheist (mentioned in one of the Religion threads). Now, obviously your story goes much farther than that, but I was just noting.

I'm non-religious because of my experiences with the church.

I'm atheist because of my issues with lies and my partial solace in science.

I'm Buddhist because of my experiences with anarchism and spirituality.