On Faith, Fear and Selfishness
One of my many minerals illuminated with 242nm light. Why use it here? I was lazy. One of my greatest criticisms of Christianity, and of many other religions, is the threat of eternal damnation. I'll explain in detail my thoughts on this a little later on in this post, but I first want to preface this blog post with some important background information about me. I am an atheist and I have been such since about age 17 (23 years ago). My parents rediscovered their faith when I was 5 years old and at that point my father began reading the bible to my sister and me. Even though my parents and my spiritual leaders did not strongly emphasize eternal damnation much, the passages in the bible that alluded to or outrightly detailed such had instilled an underlying fear in me. That fear was, "step wrong and burn in hell for eternity." It didn't really need to be talked about much amongst peers and family to become instilled in me. I was told that god's word is law a