Introduction

In my first (short) post, for those of you that don’t know me, I just want to take the time to tell you a little bit about myself.

My name is Nathan, aka NathanTheSkeptic, but I haven’t always been a skeptic.

I consistently hear other ex-Christians talk about having to overcome their indoctrination from youth and how that had a detrimental effect on their thinking, but I didn’t really have that experience. I think I had something just as detrimental to my thinking, but it wasn’t due to indoctrination – at least not religious indoctrination. While I didn’t grow up particularly religious – culturally Christian at best – critical thinking skills weren’t exactly promoted in my family.

I don’t recall a lot of credulity growing up, but certainly as I grew older and moved out of my parents home, it became pretty clear why I so easily bought into Christian ideology.

I love my parents, but they didn’t exactly teach me critical thinking skills. I am grateful for the things they did teach me, such as respect, kindness, love, work ethic, and things of that nature, but when it came to thinking about things critically, challenging ideas, making informed decisions based on logic and reason, it just wasn’t encouraged that much. And, unfortunately, as far as I can tell, that seems to be fairly common amongst a large portion of the population (especially as I update this blog after 2020).

I’m very much an advocate for public education, I wouldn’t even be as educated as I am now – very minimally – if it weren’t for public education, but, I’m afraid it, too, failed to promote critical thought adequately. While, there certainly are exceptions, and I do think this is being addressed in some regard, it seems there is little emphasis on teaching children how to think, rather than what to think. The systems that have been used in the past, and to a large degree, are still being used today, are failing us – they certainly failed me.

So how did I become such an advocate for science and skepticism? Well, that’s a long story that I’m quite sure I will write about it extensively over the course of my future blogging experience. The long and short of it is, after going down a very deep and dark path of pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, very fringe views of Christianity, and years of trying to justify all these ridiculous ideas, I finally got honest with myself and admitted I really didn’t have good reasons to believe these things anymore.

In the coming weeks I would like to focus on some of the things I used to believe, why I believed them, and why I no longer believe those them to be true. After that, I will get into my new found love for science and skepticism, what these things are about, why I believe they’re are so very critical (pun intended), and why I think you should join me on the road to a more rational world.

Thanks.