Introduction

Welcome to The Thoughtful Atheist! My intention is for this to be an honest, open place to discuss the triumphs and shortcomings of both Christianity and Atheism. I am myself a skeptic, someone entirely devoted to the truth but highly suspicious of anyone who claims to have found it. I am currently an atheist, and have been since I gave up Christianity three years ago.

I am on a journey at the moment that includes reading through the Bible (10 pages a day = 1 Bible every three months!), something I would recommend for anybody with the slightest interest to do. The Bible reads quite differently when read in large portions, as opposed to exhaustive study of small pieces, as is the practice of most who read it.

My hope is that this blog will be a resource for anybody, Atheist or Christian, who is questioning the validity of their belief system.  Questioning is good, no matter which side of the fence you start from.  It's what confirms our beliefs and convictions as truth, and the only thing that allows us to escape false belief in favor of truth.  It should be noted that there are a plethora of useful resources for this on the internet.  Unfortunately, they are almost exclusively atheist in their leanings.  When I find resources I believe would be helpful to the reader, I will include them in the Resources section of this blog.

The ability to say "I am willing to give this up if it's not true" is in fact quite rare, both among the religious and the non-religious.   Most of us espouse this as an ideal, but few of us live up to it (myself included).  We are psychologically predisposed to defend our past choices, and therefore our current beliefs.  Moreover, a challenge to our beliefs is a challenge to our very personhood- for what are we but the sum of our beliefs and our actions?  This blog is my attempt to forgo my own personal intellectual placebo, and have honest, rational, real discussion about what I do, don't, can, can't, will, and won't believe.

Any thoughts or comments are most welcome- particularly challenges to my conclusions or my way of thinking.  In my experience, you learn very little from the people who agree with you

--J