DidyHOST (Didymus)

Personal Data

Nickname (& aliases):  Didymus aka DidyHOST aka Didy fka Thomas

Email:  aachatthomas@hotmail.com

Personal Home Page:  www.angelfire.com/home/kirbyandmichele

Atheist/Agnostic/Theist?(& any subcategories):  Agnostic atheist. (weak or negative atheist, weak or empirical agnostic)

Approx date started visiting A/A Chat:  March, 2001

Location:  Kansas, USA

Gender:  Male (and I hope you could tell from the picture)

Birth date:  April, 1972

Height:  6'1"

Marital status:  Blissfully married to TommysMommy!

Children:  An adorable son, Tommy - born June, 2001.

Pets:  At present, just a couple stray fish and a crawdad (if the fish hasn't eaten it).  Usually various captured critters from local ponds.

Hobbies/interests:  Playing with my son, hanging out with my wife, chat, internet, shooting, fishing, canoeing, hiking, and a bit of computer gaming.

Occupation:  Engineer of the Environmental/Civil variety

Political position:  Centrist leaning left.  I usually vote Democrat as the lesser of evils.

Favorite cheese:  colby-jack

     ... animals:  Monkeys and fish!  Also crawdads, lizards, salamanders, ...

     ... books:  Sadly, I'm not much of a reader, and very few titles come to mind.  I read mostly non-fiction.  Books on native animals; lighter stuff on science, skepticism, and atheism like 'Demon Haunted World' and 'Losing Faith in Faith'.

     ... foods:  Spaghetti, steak (sirloin, medium), peanut butter, donuts.

     ... movies:  Braveheart, Highlander (the first), the Abyss, Contact.

     ... music:  Mostly country, alternative, and rock.  Pop/celtic stuff like Clannad.  Occasionally classical.  NOT rap, hip-hop, techno, etc (blech).

     ... web sites:  www.snopes.com   www.infidels.org   www.google.com

What actress/actor would play you in the A/A Chat movie:   Ed Harris

Ambitions:  To be a good husband and an even better daddy.

Turn-ons:  Genuineness, straightforwardness, and kindness.  In a more primal sense, MY WIFE!

Turn-offs:  Extremists, politics, religion, closedmindedness, arrogance.

Proudest accomplishment:  Helping create my son, getting my engineering degree.

What brightens my day:  My son's smile, my wife's kiss, and hellos from my friends.

Never leave home without:  5-point checklist: wallet, keys, leatherman, tiny AAA maglite, and watch.  The leatherman and maglite are geeky, I know, but damned if they don't come in handy [and they go discreetly in my pocket, not one of those hoslter things :-)].

Rules to live by:  Be kind and be compassionate.  Insist that others treat you the same.  And remember, "Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so." (Thank you, Mr. Ingersoll.)

If I were Queen/King of the world:  Someone would plan a coup d'état REAL quick!  :-)

Dream job:  Matress sleep tester, or maybe adult film critic. (Oh please.  Like I shattered your pristine image of me.)  ;-)

Last word:  Unless...

Didymus' Thoughts on Agnosticism/Atheism

Short Version
I don't believe in gods.  My best guess at labels are "weak" or "negative" atheist and "weak" or "empirical" agnostic.  I'm agnostic in that I don't know whether or not a god exists, but I don't think the answer necessarily is eternally unknowable.  I'm an atheist in that I don't believe in a god, but I do not assert that there is no god.  I hold this position presently because it is where the evidence (or lack of it) leads me.

Long Version
I remember as a very young child I loved the question "why".  Even if I started out with a simple question, and kept asking "why" to each answer, my mom would always end up at "because God made it that way".  That answer never satisfied me.  I knew that "because God made it that way" really meant "I don't know".  I guess I never stopped looking for the answers.

My family was theistic and liberal christian but we didn't really go to church until I hit 7th grade.  It was then that, after attending vacation bible school, I decided to go to catechism classes.  You could say that I (and my sister) brought our family back to church (for a while).  My sister and I went through catechism, were baptized, and confirmed Lutheran.  We were fairly active in the church youth group throughout high school.

Somewhere in late in high school or early in college, I became interested in the bigger picture of religion.  I started to read about other religions and, drawn by the lure of esoteric knowledge, eventually found an interest in a christian sect of rosicrucianism.  I read a lot about it and found it amazing that all of the philosophy behind it fit together and made so much sense ... if you assume the basic tenets are true.  It didn't take me long to realize that christianity (and religion in general) was much the same.  If you begin with the assumption that the basics are true, it all seems to make sense.  Of course, common sense tells me that assumptions should be made carefully.  And I found little evidence to support religious assumptions

So I drifted into "agnosticism" at about the age of 20 or so.  About 8 years later, I was considering petitioning the local Masonic Lodge for membership.  My father is a Mason, as were my Grandfather, and a couple of my uncles.  I was considering membership for the fraternity, but mostly because I believed (and still do) that the Masons take good men and make them better by reinforcing their morality.  I read about Freemasonry on the Internet and learned that there is one major requirement for becoming a Mason:  you must believe in a supreme being.  So, I began to seriously consider how I would answer the question.  After a month or two of contemplation, I realized that I could not, in good conscience profess such a belief. ... I didn't believe in a god. This revelation led me to more Internet research and I learned that, in certain contexts, the label "atheist" fit me.  And here I am today.

I find it increasingly difficult to understand the Theistic position.  It's all mythology to me.  Deism and Pantheism are interesting possibilities to me, but there's no reason for me to accept them as true.

Life after death?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  If not, no biggie.  I won't be around to miss anything.  If so, I'll worry about it when I get there.  And if someday I meet a godthing, I'll greet it with great interest and no regrets.  In the meantime, I'll worry about this life and making it a happy one for myself and for the ones I love.