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About Me:: Long term atheist.
Retired Internist as of 3/2016
Living with gastric sarcoma (gastrointestinal stromal tumor) since 3/2013. Living with cancer makes one think differently.
Active gardener, hobby orchard, sourdough breads and pie baker, and reader of history and social interests.

Why are you here?: Community of atheists. Intelligent group. #1 interest is Reg's Sunday school, great reading.

Why you left your religion.: I left fundamentalist Baptist religion because it was a lie. It was a gradual process over about 5 years.

Part of that was military service post Vietnam era in Turkey, where I discovered that non-Christians were just normal ordinary people like you and I. I recall, I got into arguments with the Chaplain over that. Which is kind of hazardous, with the Chaplain being a captain and I was just enlisted. Part was reading the bible thoroughly, with an open, then questioning, and honest, mind.

Part was subsequent training as a scientist, which led to microbiology research PhD, which led to study of medicine.

Religion might be a nice way to find community, and turn off the thinking cap, but it's not real. Religion causes or supports tribal thinking, causes dangerous us/them dichotomies.

Think Atheist Travel Network Couch Availability - Are you able to host anyone now?: No

How did you hear about Think Atheist?: online search. Long term active on another site as well. Important to keep atheist community supportive and vibrant.

At 8:07pm on March 19, 2017, Pope Beanie said…: Ha, ruminant entero-ome, eh? Yes, obscure to non-scientists, but increasingly relevant wrt species and even higher taxanomic level interactions (eg viral and parasitic), effects of antibiotics, microbe evolution... it's an awesome field. I have textbooks on disease and micribiology that don't even mention C. diff, which my mother got a year ago nosocomially after antibiotics... an increasingly endemic problem.

My Japanese brother-in-law is a gastro-enterologist in Japan. My ex-wife imports Opus One wine into Tokyo. Yikes, we're all connected by microbes, at least!

I listen to http://www.microbe.tv/science-shows/# weekly audio podcasts, mostly TWiM, TWiV. TWiP, and TWiEVO.

At 3:51pm on February 26, 2017, Pope Beanie said…: Daniel, did your research focus on a particular aspect of microbiology?

At 12:05pm on May 8, 2016, Stephen said…: Up until now its been a 500 error message but this time it says, Hmm, we can’t reach this page.and its been saying that for five days.