Maybe he can celebrate his new-found freedom by teaching his son about hard-boiled eggs or something. Just a thought.
I am wondering what kinds of books you read on Christianity. And why you spent so much time reading them if you didn’t find them as interesting or helpful or worthwhile as reading about physics or astronomy or music.
As a theist and as someone who has read a lot about Christianity and about science and music and lots of other subjects, I believe that studying or reading a lot about Christianity is only worth doing if you, personally, find it interesting.
I know how you feel. If they only taught me how to change the frickin’ oil and not how much a sky murderer loves me back in catholic school, I’d be more fulfilled.
There’s a bright side though. With all the christianity you’ve studied over the past years, your atheism, your rationale and your reason and knowledge are stronger. I’ve always said that the first step to reason and rational thinking is to read the bible in full. If you get by the book of Joshua still thinking this invisible jerk loves you, than you’re simply not reasonable or you’re still a scared child.
Kudos to you! 
Agreed. Crusades, holy wars, blocking knowledge about the universe is VERY interesting. 
I’ll take that as a compliment. 
And, well said Diogenes. Humanity is like a celestial Reeses peanut butter cup.
Good for you.
So? Start studying them now. You won’t learn everything there is to learn about them, but since no one else can either, no great loss.
Whilst I agree with this, I am also becoming increasingly obsessed with the game of contract bridge. We can’t all spend every moment of our waking lives on the really important stuff.
This is evidence that we both spend entirely too much time online…
Maybe spend some of your free time looking up the meaning of ‘humility’. ( You’d think all that religious studying might have touched on it, but somehow you didn’t get that. )
My experience is that people who start by telling you how much smarter than the average they are, usually aren’t. Prefaced by the words, ‘in all humility’, made me laugh out loud. Thanks for that.
Isaac Newton wasted a good amount of study on alchemy, yet gravity uses ideas he probably picked up from alchemy. Maybe he didn’t waste so much time after all.
The study of alchemy its self lead to chemistry. As astrology lead to astronomy. What enabled their growth was not people going on about waste from delusions, but people finding and testing what was and wasn’t truth to them.
Maybe we’d be in the stars by now if people didn’t waste so much time lamenting about what they don’t have, and should have did, and acting all superior, and instead started investing what they do have into personal growth for themselves, and their fellows.
My friend, as another atheist, I’ve sometimes worried and wondered about the lives and manhours lost on purely religious pursuits…but then, I realize that people spend just as much time obsessively studying points of canon and dressing in silly costumes for avowed works of fiction, too.
People were probably just going to geekily waste their time on things, no matter what. We probably wouldn’t be among the stars by now; we’d just have a lot more RPGs. 
(You can always count on me to counter misanthropy by using…even more misanthropy. )
newcrasher, happening to remember another thread you started I feel like a heel for posting this. You’re already doing that and way more.
Newcrasher, good for you. Welcome to sanity. I’m sorry you misspent so much of your study but happy to consider the potential before you.
Theism is dishonest and a shame. Your potential to do good for the world has just improved tremendously, as has your potential to make the most of life.
MonkeyWithGun, what is the matter with you?
Yeah I did come off as a prick. Didn’t mean too. I can always count on Dopers to keep each other honest.
The study of ANYTHING also develops your brain, your critical thinking skills, your ability to undertstand arguments of any sort.
Thinking is never time wasted.
Great. Another holier than thou atheist.
:rolleyes:
Who is holier than thou?
ahem…
OK, so you found a new path in life. That’s cool. But you have fallen into the recent convert - true believer trap in that you think that you have found THE WAY. You ever talk to a recently converted vegetarian? One who believes that if only we were all vegetarians than all the world’s environmental problems would be solved? Vegetarianism is the only intelligent way. Or a recently converted communist? One who believes that there would be no injustice if the world if governments converted to communism? Communism is the only intelligent way. It’s tiresome. “I’m smarter than most, and if everybody would just follow THE WAY that I have recently found, the world would be so much better” is an attitude that is not only naive - it’s not going to earn you any friends or respect.
Monkey, you conflated two statements with different contexts there. Newcrasher did not say he was “head and shoulders above the average theist” in terms of basic intelligence, but in terms of how much he has studied about religion. That’s not particularly arrogant (certainly not “holier than thou”), and is frankly not a very high bar.
It was study like that that made me an agnostic, not an atheist. Atheists are just as wrong as believers, just 180 degrees opposed.
No one knows if a god of any kind exists. Period. Those who say they do are lying if they cannot provide conclusive proof of that existence.
Now you see I’m agnostic, and yet I can recognize atheism simply represents a different philosophic argument without calling them liars, or insulting their integrity over a difference of opinion. It’d be nice to live in world where that was shared, and we could demonize each other over important things, like choice of soft drink.