Wow, I'm so glad I stumbled onto slatestarcodex, and from there, here!!! You guys are all like smarter, cooler versions of me! It's great to have a label for the way my brain is naturally wired and know there other people in the world besides Peter Singer who think similarly. I'm really excited, so my "intro" might get a little long...

Part 1-Look at me, I'm just like you!

I'm Ellen, a 22 year old Spanish major and world traveling nanny from Wisconsin, so maybe not your typical LWer, but actually quite typical in other, more important ways. :)

I grew up in a Christian home/bubble, was super religious (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod), truly respected/admired the Christians in my life, but even while believing, never liked what I believed. I actually just shared my story plus some interesting studies on correlations between personality, intelligence, and religiosity, if anyone is interested: http://magicalbananatree.blogspot.com/2015/02/christian-friends-do-you-ever-feel.html The post is based almost entirely on what I've come to learn is called "consequentialism" which I'm happy to see is pretty popular over here. I subscribe to this line of thinking so much that I used to pray for a calamity to strengthen my faith. I chose a small Lutheran school despite having great credentials to get into an Ivy, because with an eye on eternity, I wanted to avoid any environment that would foster doubt. My friends suggested I become a missionary, but to me, it made far more sense to become a high profile lawyer and donate 90% of my salary to fund a dozen other missionaries. (A Christian version of effective altruism?) No one ever understood!

Some people might deconvert because they can't believe in miracles, or they can't get over the problem of evil. These are bad reasons, I think, and based on the presupposition that God doesn't exist. Personally, the hardest thing for me was believing that God was all-powerful. Like, if God were portrayed as good, but weak, struggling against an evil god and just doing the best he could to make a just universe and make his existence known, I probably would never have left the faith. It took me long enough as it is!

Part 2-A noob atheist's plea for help

Anyway, now I've "cleared my mind" of all that and am starting fresh, but my friends have a lot of questions for me that I'm not able to answer yet, and I have a lot of my own, too. I'm starting by reading about science (not once had I even been exposed to evolution!) but have a lot of other concerns on the back burner, and maybe you guys can point me in the right direction:

Who was the historical Jesus? As a history source, why is the Bible unreliable?

How can I have morality?? Do I just have to rely on intuition? If the whole world relied on reason alone to make decisions, couldn't we rationalize a LOT of things that we intuit as wrong?

Does atheism necessarily lead to nihilism? (I think so, in the grand scheme of things? But the world/our species means something to us, and that's enough, right?)

What about all the really smart people I know and respect, like my sister and Grandma, who have had their share of doubts but ultimately credit their faith to having experienced extraordinary, miraculous answers to prayer? Like obviously, their experiences don't convince ME to believe, but I hate to dismiss them as delusional and call it a wild coincidence...

Are rationalists just as guilty of circular reasoning as Christians are? (Why do I trust human reason? My human reason tells me it's great. Why do Christians trust God? The Bible tells them he's great.)

Part 3-Embarrassingly enthusiastic fan mail

Yay curiosity! Yay strategic thinking! Yay honesty! Yay open-mindedness! Yay opportunity cost analyses! Yay common sense! Yay tolerance of ambiguity! Yay utilitarianism! Yay acknowledging inconsistency in following utilitarianism! Yay intelligence! Yay every single slatestarcodex post! Yay self-improvement! Yay others-improvement! Yay effective altruism!

Ahhh this is all so cool! You guys are so cool. I can't wait to read the sequences and more posts around this site! Maybe someday I'll even meet a real life rationalist or two, it seems like the Bay Area has a lot. :)