There were about three different testimonials worth noting for this week. I didn’t leave any comments or posts. I’ll just get straight to what I found.
Commenting and Posting
Nothing to note here.
Nothing to note here.
The Atheism Category
The first story that caught my eye was about a former Mormon who became an atheist. His story starts by explaining his gradual falling away from what the church was teaching him. It was that he saw it as bad. He just didn’t see any good reason to believe what they were telling him anymore. He eventually got into philosophy and became enthralled with everything it opened his mind up to. It felt restrictive to him to only enjoy things considered “holy” before, and his passion for philosophy fueled his desire to learn about the world and be in awe of everything it had to offer. He also explained the exact moment when he realized he was definitely an atheist. One of his college classes started by having everyone put a tally on the board in front of the classroom under various columns for race, age, religion, etc. When it was his turn, he paused at the religion portion. It was right then that he realized he needed to put a tally under the Atheism section.
The first story that caught my eye was about a former Mormon who became an atheist. His story starts by explaining his gradual falling away from what the church was teaching him. It was that he saw it as bad. He just didn’t see any good reason to believe what they were telling him anymore. He eventually got into philosophy and became enthralled with everything it opened his mind up to. It felt restrictive to him to only enjoy things considered “holy” before, and his passion for philosophy fueled his desire to learn about the world and be in awe of everything it had to offer. He also explained the exact moment when he realized he was definitely an atheist. One of his college classes started by having everyone put a tally on the board in front of the classroom under various columns for race, age, religion, etc. When it was his turn, he paused at the religion portion. It was right then that he realized he needed to put a tally under the Atheism section.
The next one is about a roughly 20-year-old who had been Catholic his entire life. However, he had over time lost interest in going to church and all the normal things he did as part of his religion. He claims he lost his faith because he decided to stop being ignorant. He read a lot of material written by atheists that opened his eyes and made him realize he no longer fit as a Catholic. The main dilemma here is that he has not told his parents about his being an atheist. They are not super religious, but it pains him when they reference him finding a church at school and he just does his best to shrug it off with a “maybe” or some other ambiguous response. He would like to tell them, but he was not exactly sure how to go about doing this. He is fairly certain they would not disown him or anything, but he doesn’t want to hurt them either.
The last one is a subject I have touched on before I believe. This person was walking around campus with his female friend who happens to be a lesbian. As they walked by a Christian male, he blurted out that God hates homosexuals and they will all go to hell. His friend got extremely red in the face and started to walk away very quickly. The poster essentially responded to the Christian by explaining that it makes no sense for God to love everyone, except for homosexuals. Obviously, the wording was much stronger than this, but that is the general gist of what he said. I probably would have done something exactly the same as he did honestly. It really angers me when someone who claims to be a Christian who is supposed to be kind can harbor so much insidious hate for another human being simply because of who they are. Then they have the nerve to use God as their justification for such despicable behavior. It’s completely contradictory and wrong and I have absolutely zero respect for anyone who acts like this.
Wrap-up and Plans for Next Week
The study seems to honestly be going quite well. We are all finding some good information and gaining a good feel for how Reddit operates and how members interact with each other. We are still working on comparing the posting trends of members within our respective categories. Once we have enough information for this, this will gain extra insight into the workings of the community.
The study seems to honestly be going quite well. We are all finding some good information and gaining a good feel for how Reddit operates and how members interact with each other. We are still working on comparing the posting trends of members within our respective categories. Once we have enough information for this, this will gain extra insight into the workings of the community.
While some of the testimonial-type postings might have the same general trend of a newly formed atheist or someone needing to confess their atheism to someone they know, the postings are still helpful nonetheless. There are usually differences between them anyway that give a slightly different perspective. Plus, the postings like the last one where they show the ugly side of religious nuts (no offense to religious people of course, since most aren’t nuts) perhaps help me out the most. I went into this study wanting to learn about the atheist perspective more, and hearing stories about illogical Christians and the like are the exact thing that can help with this. It is one thing for an atheist to just post something making fun of religion, but it’s quite another to give a concrete example of how religion has the capacity to prevent people from having common sense. I look forward to what next week brings in the atheism category.
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