My Path to Atheism

Let's get the not-so-obvious out of the way first.  The title is intentionally misleading.  This is not about my path or journey to Atheism but more of an explanation of how I have come to explain it.

I have been conversing with a friend about theology.  I find this a deeply interesting topic.  Here, in the UK, we have a pleasant if slightly mundane secular society.  We have a stereotypical bell-curve when it comes to belief and disbelief with the majority of Theists and Atheists sitting roughly in the middle and not really caring about what other people believe or disbelieve.  We coexist with many Atheists just assuming that the person sitting next to them is Atheist and the Theists just assuming that the person sitting next to them is Theist.  When the conversation comes up and you find that the person holds a different belief or disbelief, the response is "Oh, really?  That's surprising." and people generally get back to what they were doing.

I think that I should also point out that I do not go hunting Theists, attacking their beliefs.  Like most of my interactions with my fellow man, I let others come to me and they have come to me in droves to the point where, although not expert, I am experienced in holding my own in a rational debate or discourse.  Some things I have noticed in common when discussing Theology is the use of logical fallacies by Theists.  Now, it also has to be said that it is possible to come to the right answer but through the wrong way when a logical fallacy is employed but I think I will do a completely different post on these fallacies.

This is a selection of my books.  There is so much more I would like to read but these have given me a good foundation to the beliefs of others and I have also got some e-books such as three translations of the Quran and the Old Testament.  This generally gives me an unfair advantage when discussing Theology with those that have not studied different positions.  Whilst science is constantly discovering new things about the universe in which we live, religion has been putting out the same arguments for the last 2000 years and there are those, far more eloquent than me, that have answered and debunked these arguments to the Nth degree and it is upon the backs of those giants that I further my understanding.

Now, if you got this far, well done, I will now explain my Atheism.  I was born an Atheist.  I came into the world feet first causing much unnecessary stress to everyone involved.  My mother had always identified as Christian/Church of England but she was kind enough to not force her beliefs on me or my siblings.  I don't remember a whole lot until I was around 6 or 7 years old.  A few tattered and frayed memories, favourite toys, favourite friends but nothing really significant.  I was taught at school about evolution but it was not titled such, it was just an understanding that we, as a species, had come from other species before us and it really was no more interesting than that.

It was at one time, when I was playing with friends that lived just a few doors down the road from my home that they informed me that we had come from Adam and Eve and I was first introduced to the creation story from the Bible.  This was in direct conflict with what I had been taught about the origin of species and when I questioned this I was faced with "Oh, so you believe in Evilution" (Yes, that was how they pronounced it) and when I asked what "Evilution" was they explained it and my response was "Well, yes, I suppose I do."

I have to express my gratitude to my mother for her most important gift to me, critical thinking skills.  I was told to question everything.  With this skill, she effectively inoculated me against religion.  My BS meter became finely tuned.  At an early age I read the Bible OT and NT cover to cover and this solidified my Atheism (This was the 80's and I didn't know there were other Gods or religions)  My only exposure to religion was my friends who were Christian, my mother's friends who were Jehovah's Witnesses and the News which showed graphically what religion can do.  My mother had taught me to ask questions but those around me would eventually resort to answering my questions with "Shut up Cy."

In summary, I was born an Atheist and I never became religious.  I have never had a belief in a God.  I have yet to hear a convincing reason to believe that there is a God.  I am not angry at God because I do not believe that it exists.  I do not "Just want to sin" because I do not believe in sin either.  I do not need faith to not be convinced that there is a God because my Atheism has taken zero effort.

I think I will do further posts explaining how I have developed and putting into my own words why the challenges against Atheism are so poor and in many cases pointless.

Ye Gods, it's been over a year gone past since my last post.

So much has changed and not necessarily for the better.  Let's quickly address my last post.  My weight has crept back up so whilst I am not a fan of "New Years Resolutions", I will need to try to implement some life-style changes.  I managed to get myself a little shed.  Saw one reduced to £199 and found that if I ordered it online, I could get a further 15% off so I managed to get it for about £160.

I looked at the cost of the timber, fixtures and fittings and found it was cheaper to get a kit.  Had fun growing my chillies last year so hopefully will get a decent crop this year too.  I started a little raspberry pi project


I found myself away from home, doing my photography and usually I would use our laptop to copy files from my camera card to hard-drive for safe-keeping and freeing up space on the card.  However, I did not have the laptop available and I asked myself, how I could do it otherwise.  This cast my memory back to the Raspberry Pi which I've found is now in it's third generation (not including the B and + models)  So, out of my pocket money I got the Raspberry Pi 3 and started playing with it.  It is effectively a computer with the processing power of about a 5 year old PC.  Let's face it, it's not a gaming powerhouse but it runs linux nicely.  I then added the cannibalised playstation eye from my PS3 to add video and sound recording and attached the Pi to the Amazon Alexa service. A £5 amplifier and speakers later and I had effectively made an extremely cheap Amazon Echo (albeit with limited capabilities)  I then marauded a USB connector and 3.5mm sound jack from the back of an old PC motherboard and added an £6 LCD screen to the top and I have a working Linux computer with USB ports on the back for adding keyboard and mouse and copying from flashdrives/card-readers.  I can also VNC into the desktop or SSH into the command line from phone or PC.

Weight Loss and the Mancave

The weight continues to fall slowly and steadily weighing in today at 15st 3lbs. I have been sorting out The Mancave too so that I can exercise there without any inconvenience to others. Could really do with getting a shed so that I can move the gardening tools out of The Mancave however, they currently cost between £250 and £300 which is just out of our price range at the moment. I'm tempted to get a smaller storage box but even they are between £100 and £150, so I think it would be best to wait until we can afford the shed, do it once and do it properly, I suppose. I have plenty of skip runs to do but can't get the motivation at the moment. I might look at doing them at the weekend before work.

Garden Photos

This is how our garden looked prior to us moving in.  Five or six huge conifers encroaching on the garden and making it look a lot smaller than it actually is.

This is how our garden looks now.  I pruned the holly near the barbeque (bottom right) and the holly in the corner (top right) about mid-December.  There is a spiky plant in the middle at the back which was also cut back to within an inch of it's life.

So the spiky plant has budded these green things.

Which ripened to become blue.

S

The holly in the corner has budded and is now flowering.

The holly by the barbeque is shooting new life.

 

We built a raised flower bed from old floor-boards that were left in the loft.  The Fuscia is flowering nicely.

The flower-bed by the barbeque is now cleared out with new plants put in.

The Lilly planted right in Dora's flight path is not looking like it will survive.

With the conifers taken out, we have planted two honeysuckles to climb the trellis and a small apple tree and a small cherry tree.  

Where we have removed all the rubble from the back of the garden, we have removed the hiding places for the frogs so we have built what we call "The Frog Garden" for them to hide in.

The Hollies that are now sprouting new life

The remnants of the old connifers now being turned into firewood for the fire-pit.

Chillis in The Frog Garden starting to flower.

Jo planted a Salvia in The Frog Garden

Slow but Sure

My current weight is 15st and 5lbs.  My starting weight at the beginning of the month was 16st and my target is 12st 7lbs.  The weight is coming off nicely and apart from slight hunger occasionally, I'm not suffering for it.  I'm having the occasional sugar-free Polo and Tic-Tacs which are extremely low in calories especially when compared to chocolate, cakes and biscuits.  I'm also eating bananas and apples as a snack when I'm feeling peckish.  I've been doing a lot of work in the garden.  I will probably get some photos done and put them up here.  I've got a fitness test on the 10th of June so hopefully losing this weight will help me pass that.

Determination and willpower come in steps.

Intermittent fasting:
It has to be said that this is one of the best ways of losing weight but also one of the most trickiest to keep as a life-style change.  It does impact adversely on just about everyone's social life, especially if you have a social life that revolves around food.  Likewise, working a rotating shift pattern does make it more difficult too.  If you can use this method together with your life-style then great.  The second hurdle is riding past the natural hunger you get 1 hour after eating.  If you can ride through that, then the hunger subsides as your insulin levels then balance out.  If I was single and didn't have such impactive shifts to work, this would be my chosen method and showed great results.

Fitbit Flex and a Diabetic Diet:
So, I got the Fitbit Flex a while back now and have been wearing it almost non-stop and apart from nights/days where I have had to put it onto charge, I have been tracking my sleep as well.  This has given me insight into my sleep patterns (or lack of) together with how much exercise I do (or not enough as the case may be).  It should be pointed out that this is clearly designed for the US market as the UK food database pales in comparison to MyFitnessPal.com.  It is possible to link your MyFitnessPal.com account to your Fitbit account however, food entered on MyFitnessPal will show on Fitbit as a summary and not a detailed list.  e.g. Toast entered on MyFitnessPal shows on Fitbit as Breakfast Summary(MyFitness... and then the stats.  It would be really nice if the two fully communicated with each other but hey, they both have their own business models in place.  Well, I have diabetes waiting for me just around the corner and it is without doubt that unless I get my weight down soon, the choice will be taken out of my hands and my options severely limited.  The organisation that I work for will invariably throw me to the wolves if I get diabetes.  I have absolutely no faith in them to look after my best interests or welfare and with that in mind, I am adopting a near diabetic diet now.  This means not eating chocolate, sweets, cakes or biscuits.  This has inevitably resulted in a huge drop in my calories that I am consuming on a daily basis.  I am routinely eating less that 1700 calories each day and the weight loss is slow but steady.  When I get to my ideal weight, I may have the occasional chocolate or sweet treat but I will have to integrate this into my diet.  So far, I have got my weight down to 15stone 7 lbs (217lbs 98.4Kg) thus I still have a way to go.

Determination and Willpower:
This is where just about everyone falls down.  We all know, deep down, why we are overweight.  I have enough intellectual honesty to not fool myself into thinking it is because I have a slow metabolism or that I have a glandular problem.  The issue is really simple, I eat more than I exercise.  The answer is just as simple for everyone, eat less and exercise more.  I'll acknowledge that slow metabolisms and glandular problems are contributing factors and likewise, I know that some medication has the side effect of causing weight-gain but the simple fact is that if you burn more calories than you consume, your body has to attack your fat reserves for the extra energy requirements.  A slow metabolism simply means that you need to eat even less.  People who say that you need to eat more to speed up your metabolism will not be able to point you towards any study that shows this and you only have to look at the starving children in other countries to see that lack of food not increased food causes weight-loss.  Lets all accept that we know how to lose weight and that the actual issue here is putting into practice the theory that we know.  This is where I have been quite fortunate.  I have a very obstinate personality.  Tell me that my goals are unrealistic or impossible and I'll prove you wrong.  Give me a big enough lever and a hard place to stand, and I will move the world.  With this in mind, I was talking about my goals and that my Fitbit had told me that my goal is achievable by the end of October and I was told "That's not possibe."  I am willing to accept that it would be difficult.  I am willing to accept that it would be tight.  However, like F will I accept that it is impossible.  Never give up, never surrender!  So I have a determination in my heart now that motivates my diet and exercise with a solid conviction.  I will do it.  It is achievable and is not impossible.

Folic Acid Deficiency

So, I've got my blood test results and the diagnosis was a deficiency of Folic Acid and slight Anaemia.  Whilst a nutritional deficiency does not come as a surprise to someone who does not enjoy eating vegetables, how it affects my feet does.  It seems that it causes problems with the nervous system and my little toes are right at the end I suppose and thus the first to be affected.  I've been prescribed folic acid tablets.  I asked Jo if it would be cheaper to get them over the counter however it worked out that I've been prescribed 24 times the dose they give to pregnant women.  The thing I probably should not have done next was to look up the effects of taking such a dose and it would appear that long term use leads to increase risk of cancer.  And thus I am now trying to eat more foods rich in folic acid/folate e.g. Spinach.  and rich in iron e.g. Liver.  Now, I hate liver but I quite like liver pate, so this is doable.

I've also been looking at the symptoms of low folate and low iron and strangely enough, it includes poor sleep quality.  As part of my journey of weight-loss and fitness, a change in my diet may also contribute to better sleep.  The fitbit flex has been a real eye-opener in this regard.  

Two of the dashboard elements on the Fitbit.Com site shows the amount of sleep and steps taken.

It also gives a more detailed analysis of my sleep.  I had always thought that it took ages for me to fall asleep but it would appear that I average between 7 and 10 minutes to fall asleep.  I then get between 45 minutes to an hours sleep followed by very broken sleep.  The chart above shows a set of 4 night-shifts and me getting into bed about 8am and waking about midday.  You can also see where I have my afternoon nap.  You can also see the broken sleep even though I am in bed alone, indicating that it is not Jo waking me up.  There are some excellent resources online but very few appear to accommodate shift workers - One of the last things a shift worker wants to hear is "Try to get into a routine, going to bed at the same time each night."

As you can see above, I actually got 4hrs and 49min sleep which is really good for me.  I had been struggling to keep my eyes open for much of the evening and despite the following broken sleep, I do not recall waking up very often.  Obviously, exhaustion helps me sleep but so far I have not found anything else that really helps.  Whisky, rum, cider, ear-plugs, abstinence of caffeine and wearing socks in bed all had pretty much zero effect on my sleep pattern.  Also, regardless of the amount of time I spend in bed (11 hrs yesterday) I still average between 2.5 and 3 hrs sleep.  I think I may well try the intermittent fasting again to see if that helps.  However, this time I could try to not eat during the 16 hours following me going to bed instead of the 16 hours prior to waking up.  I know that this will annoy a lot of people who still subscribe to the "six small meals a day" and "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day".  

Whilst I really detest YOLO, it is important to differentiate between doing something stupid because you only have one life and doing something drastic to prolong said life.  You won't get me jumping out of a perfectly good aeroplane but making dramatic changes to my diet and life-style in an attempt to live longer makes sense to me.  With that in mind, it is now 02:15hrs and I will try not to eat until 18:15hrs.  Might try this for a week and see if there are any noticeable results.

Watch this space as as usual, feel free to leave positive/constructive comment (nobody has yet)