User:Graether

I was born in Germany to a German father and a Mexican mother. I grew up in 5 countries (Germany, Mexico, US, Cuba, and Colombia). My father is an atheist and my mother is agnostic. I was never introduced to the concept of a deity until I started attending school and other children brought it up - albeit rarely and never in an attempt to convert me. It is quite unusual to find someone wanting to "save" you outside of the US or even care about what you believe. Until I reached the age where my critical thinking abilities matured enough, I equated the concept of a god with Santa Claus, leprechauns, and invisible pink unicorns.

I was generally pretty open about my disbelief, until I came to live to the US about 9 years ago. It became painfully obvious that religion here indeed was deeply woven into the social fabric and had more impact on people's lives and actions beyond just attending church on Sundays. My interest in joining groups of this nature comes mostly from a desire to make deists around us understand that we are not evil people and that we do have the right to believe or not believe in a deity, wihtout being subject to discrimination, judgement, or margination.

We live in Austin, Texas - by far the friendliest city in Texas (and the biblebelt) to non-theists. We are rearing our children (boy and girl) to become critical thinkers, to question everything, while educating them about as many religious beliefs and groups as we can (under our supervision) so they see that there is no single right choice. Although many of them portray themselves as such. We want them to be knowledgeable of these beliefs and what leads to them, while encouraging the default position and always ask for logical and scientific proof.