User:Silent Tadpole

Silent Tadpole is a resident of Arkansas, United States. First and foremost, he is a skeptic and proponent of the scientific method. He's a former physics, math and computer science student at the University of Arkansas, and is currently training to enter the United States Navy's Special Warfare training program with the end goal of becoming a SEAL.

His sense of humor is dry, and he is a firm believer in the excessive use of sarcasm -- in particular, 3rd level sarcasm (though use of the simpler 1st and 2nd levels of sarcasm frequent his dialogue). He is too young to be divorced and yet managed to pull it off successfully and without going bankrupt, which he [not so] secretly considers a personal triumph over a broken socioreligious construct.

He's easy to talk to, primarily because he talks too much and therefore manages to fill any number of awkward silences with even more awkward monologues which, while exhausting, tend to at least be entertaining. Politically, he is a strong and opinionated independent (though fiercely progressive regarding social issues). In terms of religion, he is a staunch atheist who considers himself a 6 on Richard Dawkins' Belief Scale.

Further, it should be noted that Silent Tadpole ascribes to Penn Jilette's concept of Agnostic vs Atheist, which takes Dawkins' scale a step further in arguing that agnosticism answers the epistemological question, whereas atheism answers the belief question. In this sense, I am both agnostic (out of necessity, hence the level 6 on the Dawkins scale as opposed to the less reasonable level 7) at the same time that I am staunchly atheist.

I am quite new to RW, but have been for some time quite active in the global skeptical community via the internet as well as local, campus, and national organizations such as Fayetteville Freethinkers and The Secular Student Alliance.