Atheists & Agnostics
In reply to the discussion: Should we [View all]mr blur
(7,753 posts)59-year-old English chap. 
First half of my teens in the most beautiful part of the UK, the Lake District, for the Swinging '60s,
second half in London for those hazy, guitar-driven early '70s. 
Was raised by Labour-voting parents who had the usual British attitude to religion - they went to church occasionally because, well, people did. (You may think that you've experienced mind- and arse-numbing tedium at some point in your life but until you've sat through a Sunday morning CofE service you have no idea...). Nobody believed it. I never did. Nobody cared, or cares. So I've been a Socialist and atheist for as long as I can remember. And now a Humanist, too.
Was a student, then a post-graduate, then worked at rock concerts in London, then an English Lit. college teacher, then a writer, guitar player and singer in a band, then jobs in advertising and marketing in the Awful 'Eighties (The Decade That Taste Forgot), then I started my own design business at the end of the '80s and was forced to 'retire' on the cusp of the millenium when diagnosed with MS.
ms blur and I live in rural bliss at the edge of the South Downs between Chichester and Brighton, with three cats, two small dogs, three ducks, six chickens and a number of fish and frogs. And a family of hedgehogs who live under the duck house.
Three boys, two off at universities.
Can't drive any more 'cos my legs don't work but my wheelchair does. Read voraciously (3 novels I have to read at least once a year: "Grendel" by John Gardner, "Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban and "The Deptford Trilogy" by Robertson Davies); listen to music obsessively (can't play now 'cos my right hand doesn't work too well); write and design (mostly web) and devour films, as always.
I know I'm one the people in this group that isn't welcome in a couple of other groups here. Know what? I couldn't care less. 'They' think some of us hate religious people; I don't, I don't hate anybody and I'm not going to start with a few self-important anonymous strangers on an internet forum. I despise religion for what it does to believers and to all of us. I feel sorry for religious people because I feel they are trapped by wilful ignorance and bigotry. They only seem to live half a life. The people here who hate us (and they do) don't hate us because we don't share their beliefs but because we refuse to pay deference to their ridiculous fantasy when they seem to feel that they're entitled to it. And we don't apologise for that. And that really pisses them off. I like to quote Bertrand Russell on this:
[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#deedfc; color:#00000 0; margin-left:1em; border:1px dashed #7a7b7d ; border-radius:1em; box-shadow:4px 4px 4px #999999;"] There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dares not face this thought!
Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.".
And I think they're mostly banal and tiresome and rather sad and, frankly, boring. But they can be very funny when they feel defensive.