I live in Kimberley (the capital of the Northern Cape province) in South Africa. I'm a lawyer by profession and work for a parastatal organisation which provide free legal representation for the poor and indigent. I mainly represent people accused of heinous crimes such as murder, rape, armed robbery and racketeering in the High Court.
And, of course, I'm an atheist. For a relatively short time in my life (from about 16-17 years of age to 22-23) I was a christian. There was however too many things in christianity that didn't make sense to me. So I decided to step outside of it; and not assume whether it was real or not. After taking a critical look at it, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't real. As from that time I regarded myself an atheist. However, in retrospect, there was times that I still dabbled with residual beliefs (e.g. that the total energy in the universe was god, the existence of a spirit world etc.). Later these also fell away. During the latter part of last year, I decided to come out as an atheist. For that I have to thank the people who initially befriended me on facebook. They were mainly people I new from my days at high school, and the majority of them are christian. It was their irrating christian messages that kept cropping up that decided me to just lay out my cards on the table.
I was a member on RDF before its collapse; after that I floated around a bit and then joined RatSkep. Rationalia is often mentioned there, so I decided to broaden my horizons a bit and sign up here as well.
I'm interested in science in general; astronomy; genetics; evolution; fossils and the like. I enjoy cooking; gardening; reading; photography and a bit of mountain biking (in summer) and of course: drinking large amounts of brandy after 5pm (would someone please point me in the direction of the pub on the forum
)Dries
EDIT: I also like posting when drunk
EDIT(2): Shit, another thing I've left out: Music: I'm a huge fan of Metallica
Shouldn't you be trying to