Cross Examined<\/a>, by Bob Seidensticker. I find the variety of different paths that lead people to atheism or agnosticism \u2013 and the diversity in how people then approach their disbelief \u2013 fascinating, and as I looked at these two blogs in\u00a0tandem\u00a0I saw this diversity \u00a0illustrated perfectly.<\/p>\nBackground<\/strong>: Melissa was raised in a fairly extreme fundamentalist family while Bob was raised in a fairly normal\u00a0Presbyterian\u00a0family.\u00a0While Melissa spent the early years of her adult life striving to follow the dictates of her religious faith, Bob never was very religious to begin with and transitioned naturally and uneventfully into a secular life when he reached adulthood. Melissa\u2019s questioning of her faith has been rocky and taxing and has fundamentally changed her life, but Bob\u2019s loss of faith was hardly noticeable and didn\u2019t have much impact on his life at all.<\/p>\nPassions<\/strong>: Melissa blogs about the things that are important to her \u2013 gentle parenting, LGBTQ issues, and healing from the effects of an abusive upbringing and fundamentalist background. Bob\u2019s passions are different, and his blog focuses on refuting Christian apologetics (he traces his interest in this area to a conversation about creationism with a fundamentalist relative some years ago). Bob has even written a book that is part novel and part apologetics debate over God\u2019s existence.<\/p>\nIdentity<\/strong>: While Melissa mainly finds community in her local LGBTQ community, Bob is active in his local atheist group. In some sense, Melissa\u2019s identification as agnostic is not as important to her as many other parts of her life while identifying as an atheist is actually very important to Bob.<\/p>\nI think too often that when people hear the label \u201catheist,\u201d they think of some sort of cookie cutter image \u2013 a liberal college student waving a copy of Dawkins, perhaps \u2013 but this is simply not the case. The reality is that atheists and agnostics differ in their backgrounds and reasons for abandoning religion, they differ in their interests and passions, and they even differ in how they approach atheism and\/or agnosticism, and in what these terms mean to them, all of which is amply emphasized when contrasting the two newest additions to Patheos\u2019 atheist channel.<\/p>\n
And of course, this is how it should be.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to finish this thought by opening the floor for my atheist readers. What\u2019s your story? What\u2019s your background, what are your passions, and how do you approach your identity as an atheist (or agnostic)?<\/p>\n
(Oh and, welcome aboard Melissa and Bob!)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Patheos atheist channel has just added two new blogs \u2013 Permission to Live, by Melissa, and Cross Examined, by Bob Seidensticker. I find the variety of different paths that lead people to atheism or agnosticism \u2013 and the diversity in how people then approach their disbelief \u2013 fascinating, and as I looked at these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2012\/08\/diversity.jpg\" "\\"diversity\\"")
<\/a>The Patheos atheist channel has just added two new blogs \u2013 Permission to Live<\/a>, by Melissa, and Cross Examined<\/a>, by Bob Seidensticker. I find the variety of different paths that lead people to atheism or agnosticism \u2013 and the diversity in how people then approach their disbelief \u2013 fascinating, and as I looked at these two blogs in\u00a0tandem\u00a0I saw this diversity \u00a0illustrated perfectly.<\/p>\n