Hello everyone.

[sniperkit2en]

English is not my first language, so forgive me if I make any grammar or language mistake.

I’m a 20-years-old Malaysian Chinese who is taking Physics degree in one of our country’s local universities. Majority of my family members practice Buddhism while others are Christian (converted due to marriage). I used to believe in the existence of a God (or more specifically, a personal god), the concept of heaven and hell, supernatural phenomenon, just to name a few, during my childhood as I was influenced by the words and actions of my grandparents who can be considered as hardcore Buddhist. (“Hardcore” in the sense that they often listen and accept every piece of information about their religion without much question.) In Malaysia, I’m also surrounded by people from different religion: Islam, Christian, Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, etc, so it’s very uncommon to find anyone here without any religious belief.

As I grew older and my ability to think critically improved, I started to question the existence of God and the validity of religion because there’re things in religion which are unfair, inconsistent, immoral and doesn’t make sense at all. So I started to find answers, and it’s this curiosity that introduced me to atheism when I was a secondary school student. Although I did not understand most of the science behind it when I started to explore this topic (e.g. theory of evolution), I do agree on the logic behind it (e.g. the problem of evil). My belief that all religions are flawed and should not be trusted entirely only strengthen in time as I explore how our world actually works, especially in the field of Physics as I find this subject interesting and fascinating.

I must admit that Physics play a huge factor not only on my view about religion, but my whole life as well. It enable myself to see the world in a different way. When I saw a car moving, I realize that the car will be shorter in length and the time move slower inside the car relative to myself.  When others think that Earth is pulling things towards itself, I realize that those things are also pulling Earth and each other toward themselves. When others look up to the sky and admire the beauty of the stars, I realize that light moves at a limited speed and I’m actually looking into the past. It teaches me that everything in the world is not as simple as someone see the world in the first glance, not limiting yourself to a single frame of reference, learn to think outside the box, never lose a holy curiosity and never accept anything as granted.

I used to be an arrogant, selfish, stingy, ignorant child in the past. No thanks to religion, now I’m a different man. It’s quite an irony, in my country at least, that someone who doesn’t have any religious belief can become a human with a strong sense of human’s moral values and ethics. Since we’re young, we’ve been taught that moral and religion are not two separate things and one doesn’t come without another. So irreligious people like me are often branded as immoral in my country, which is the results of the fact that many immoral people in my country mostly consists of people who don’t have a strong religious background. But they don’t realize that branding all irreligious people as immoral is just as prejudice as, for example, branding all Muslims are terrorist, and prejudice is immoral. Prejudice is prejudice, no matter the form.

Anyway, there’re still a lot of things for me to learn and I’m looking forward to learn from this forum. I’m currently fighting and resisting the indoctrination by the members of the so-called Unification Church as I wrote this post, so I hope I could use some help.

[DunkleSeele]

Hi sniperkit2en, and welcome to the shark tank! :)

[aitm]

Greetings and welcome.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Golly..the Unification church! I was once a member, but that was before the savior Sun Myung Moon got a message from GOD to purchase the republican party in the US at rock bottom bargain prices and get convicted of tax evasion.. Of course back then the plan was to get laid.. Well.. That was MY plan anyway.. Amazing that GOD fulfilled my plan and I quit the church anyway..

[aitm]

Amazing that GOD fulfilled my plan and I quit the church anyway..

da lard works in mysterious ways

[Green Bottle]

Afternoon Sniperkit2en, and welcome to the forum......

[GrinningYMIR]

Welcome to the forum

[AllPurposeAtheist]

da lard works in mysterious ways

Nah.. We used Crisco®..

[Desdinova]

Lead to the darkside critical thinking does.  Welcome aboard!

[PickelledEggs]

Welcome! Please remember that the annual baby roast this summer is BYOB (That's short for bring your own baby)

Enjoy the forums!

[Mr.Obvious]

Welcome to our merry band of heathens.

And may I add as a fellow non-native-english-speaker, your english seems better than mine.

[Solitary]

Welcome aboard sniperkit2en! Solitary  What Buddha taught is not what modern Buddhism or the various schools taught that have been corrupted by other religions. He didn't consider himself a god,, or that he was divinely inspired. There are no rituals, prayer, or religious icons etc.

[sniperkit2en]

Golly..the Unification church! I was once a member, but that was before the savior Sun Myung Moon got a message from GOD to purchase the republican party in the US at rock bottom bargain prices and get convicted of tax evasion.. Of course back then the plan was to get laid.. Well.. That was MY plan anyway.. Amazing that GOD fulfilled my plan and I quit the church anyway..

So I guess you know many dirty little secret inside it that I haven't discovered? It's a long story how I got involved in this Unification Church and I plan to discuss it in detail in a new topic, but I'm one of many youngsters in their 20s who got recruited into W-CARP (World Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles), one of Unification Church affiliated organizations. I must admit that they're good at doing this because I thought it's just another charity organization when they introduced W-CARP to me, without lying to me. It's quite sad for me to see how good hearted people like us were deceived and indoctrinated into believing anything they throw at us. If not for me who spent more than a decade honing my critical thinking skill, I may be now preaching about "Divine Principle" and how Sun Myung Moon is the True Father, although I cannot say the same for the rest of the youngsters.

[sniperkit2en]

Welcome aboard sniperkit2en! Solitary  What Buddha taught is not what modern Buddhism or the various schools taught that have been corrupted by other religions. He didn't consider himself a god,, or that he was divinely inspired. There are no rituals, prayer, or religious icons etc.

I agree. It's quite evident in my country that Buddhism is often mixed and confused with other religions. Take my grandparents for example, although they claim themselves to be Buddhist, they also believe in Taoism and even worship a bunch of "Chinese deities" such as Guan Yu, Tu Di Gong, Cai Shen, just to name a few, which many of them are not related to Buddhism.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Moon was a political hack and the church funded the extremely right wing rag, The Washington Times not to be confused with the Post. He influenced both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and bought influence in right wing political circles in Washington and very likely China as well..
I don't know much about the inner workings of the church, but I'd trust them about as far as I could throw Jupiter, the planet..
Here's some real dirt on the dirty fuck.. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/sun-myung-moon-dies-at-92-washington-times-owner-led-the-unification-church/2012/09/02/001b747a-f531-11e1-aab7-f199a16396cf_story.html