Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Zane on April 1, 2010 at 8:30pm

Not too long ago I approached my English teacher (whom I happened to know is an atheist) and asked if she would be willing to be the advisor for a secular club I wanted to start, mostly in response to the Christian clubs (not as bad as Yvette's there, but there are a few), and was informed that, while the students don't seem to particularly care about each other's beliefs, if she were to accept the other teachers would harass her about it. I, honestly, was shocked by that, but after thinking it made sense. So while the atmosphere among students is quite relaxed, there seems to be a bit of tension among the staff. Who knew?

Permalink Reply by Tyler on April 1, 2010 at 9:28pm

Well, I recently stated in an Nexus Blog that a friend of mine brought and 'Atheist Cake' to school, and the results were... interesting.

On the cake, he drew the Dinosaur eating the Jesus fish. I find that hilarious and so do some of my other Christian friends. However, there were a few that couldn't eat cake... 'because of religious reasons'

I'd like to call bull on that. I mean, I go to church some times with my cousin, drink some juice eat the tiny cracker... and then eat some of the best food I've ever eaten... That Church knows how to cook. Yet, while doing that I'm eating good food, while maintaining my 'lack of faith'

I think it says something about your religion or personality when you think cake is a 'temptation by the devil'

Permalink Reply by Callie Bookman on April 28, 2010 at 8:24pm

I've always had a few atheist friends, but for the most part everyone is either Christian or not religious, but believes in a god of some sort. Always bombarded by Christian groups on all sides, with either no atheist one or, now that I'm in college, only a small one that has meetings while I'm at work. :(

Permalink Reply by Jezzy on May 2, 2010 at 5:49pm

Almost everyone at my school is Mormon, but finally I've found a few self-pronounced Atheists. I think there are 5 others. Pretty impressive, considering.

Permalink Reply by Luke Hanna on June 2, 2010 at 1:31pm

My school is very open and tolerant of peoples beliefs whether they are gay, atheist etc. I never have to deal with religious crap in my school unless I choose to engage in an argument with a friend who is religious. It just so happens that almost all of my friends are Atheists and it's really nice.

Permalink Reply by Reid Marple on July 11, 2010 at 9:01pm

I am the only agnostic-atheist in my school. There are agnostic-theists, but i'm the only atheist. If there's one thing that sucks about living in the Bible Belt, its that I have to put up with baptist freaks and pentecostal SUPERfreaks... If anybody has any pointers on how to start a critical thinking group in my school, please enlighten me.

Permalink Reply by Brendan C. Helliwell on September 18, 2010 at 5:13pm

I just helped found an SSA chapter at my college, where no such organization had previously existed. Interesting story:
During Club Rush last week, I showed up on campus really early with my friend Stephen (who happens to be president of the Gay-Straight Alliance), and set up a booth next to his, both because our interest in rights overlap, and for the purely practical purposes of decreasing by half the chance that we ended up stuck next to the school's Campus Crusaders for Christ chapter. We chose our specific spot because we knew that it would be in the shade all day (the north side of a building, under a shelter). The CCC ended up showing up a bit late, and they ended up sitting DIRECTLY across from our two groups (in the sun, sorry to say). So we had a staring contest for all three days. Perhaps they feared that our clubs (GSA, SSA) would merge into some ultra-evil organization, the Gaytheists or something (as one member pointed out).

At any rate, the worst that has happened to us so far (and surprisingly soon, as we've only been around two weeks or so): we had one of our flyers vandalized ["YOUR gon To HeLL" and "COrTIaNs 1:18:20" (Presumably, the author was referring to 1 Corinthians 1:18-20)], and we had our other flyers removed. Luckily, we have a fairly open-minded college (it's in a very conservative area, though, granted, not to far away is a huge LGBT community, in the literal sense of community), so they took the vandalism very seriously, and they were very helpful in our setting up the club. I was pleasantly surprised to see how popular our booth at the Club Rush was. People are open-minded enough, in fact, to where we ended up working out a deal with some of the other clubs (including the Jewish club -- the CCC didn't appear to be interested) to host a large event of some sort next month.

Permalink Reply by Jezzy on September 18, 2010 at 7:46pm

My college has a Gay-Straight Alliance, which I joined, but I haven't found anything secular or nontheist. :( And I haven't found any other atheists yet. I know there are jack-Mormons though, and it's a start I guess.

Permalink Reply by Brendan C. Helliwell on September 18, 2010 at 8:31pm

In my experience, the GSA is probably a good place to start finding atheists; 70% of our founding members (i.e. 7 people, LOL) were/are GSA members.

Permalink Reply by Riley on October 12, 2010 at 6:20pm

I knew an atheist that went to my school, but I'm not sure if he's still an atheist now. I hope so, but he hasn't been around for me to talk to, so I'm not completely sure.
I'm doing an independent study on evolution, so I'm sure that's bound to bring up religion soon enough, but so far nearly everyone I know disagrees with evolution. That means that there probably aren't any atheists in my class that I'm doing an independent study in. D: It's in a gifted class, so I expected at least one person to at least believe in evolution.
One time, in my English class, I was discussing my musical taste with two guys that I know. They aren't that smart, and they disagree with nearly everything I say, but hey - I was finished with all my work and had no access to a library to get a new book. So, I was telling them that I was interested in heavy metal music, and they were fans of the average hip-hop, rap, or country. One of the guys (the more talkative one) mentioned how metal music talked about the devil, but I decided not to say anything about it. Then, he mentioned it again, and I was pretty annoyed with him by them. So, I snapped: "I don't believe in the devil."
Oh, FSM, bless me. That did it. He (I'm going to call him Thomas now, because I'm annoyed with just saying 'he' and that's his name) was very shocked. "You don't believe in the devil?! So, you don't believe in God either, huh?"
I replied, "Nope."
Then he was even more shocked. He looked over at his friend, with the "How is that possible?" look, and then he looked back over at me. I was kind of freaking out, because that was the very first time that I'd admitted to being atheist in real life, other than with a close friend, but she didn't really act like I was an atheist anyways. Anyways, Thomas told me, "How do you not believe in God? I mean, God is real."
So, I was starting to get really excited. My first debate in real life? Somebody knew that I was an atheist. I just told them. What? How? I wasn't thinking fully, but I think I still did pretty good in the debate. "Give me proof that God exists. Proof."
He of course whipped out the straw-man argument. "How are we here? Huh? God made us, that's how we're here, there's no other way!"
"We got here through evolution. A giant invisible man in the sky didn't make us; I don't understand that theory at all." I wasn't remembering everything, but that is the stupidest point that a Christian can make in a debate, so I was annoyed too.
"God isn't an invisible man in the sky! And we didn't come from monkeys, that's stupid. If we did, then how come monkeys are still here?" -.- I was about to reply, then he cut me off - "And, and, and, the Big Bang! A big rock didn't collide with something and make the universe, that's stupid."
I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was probably one of the smartest things that I've ever said. XD It was something like this. "Evolution does not state that we come from monkeys. (insert longer explanation of the theory of evolution here) And also, I don't think a big rock collided with something and made the universe. I think that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, and a scientist wouldn't come up with that theory unless they had proof. The real Big Bang theory is actually like this (yada yada yada; explanation of the Big Bang here)."
I actually didn't finish explaining the Big Bang when he replied, "Well, whatever. You're wrong, I know it. God is real, and none of that scientific stuff is true, I know it." ;)
Man, I feel like I'm ranting. Oh well, here's the last encounter with religion that I've had since I became an atheist (which was about three months ago...).
I was talking to two of my friends, and they're both one grade above mine, so we were on the bus. We usually talk every day. Tim is an extreme metal head, and he actually shows it. He has long, messy hair, and he wears band t-shirts every day, but he's actually a really cool guy. Brenden is more quiet, but he's mostly the same way. Tim was telling me about how he had painted his nails black and how they weren't coming off, so I asked him why he painted them. Tim replied that he went to church and had this rock program; I don't exactly remember what.
I was shocked. He joked about God and sending people to hell and 'Jebus' all the time. "You go to church?!"
Tim: "Yeah, I go to church. Did you think I was Satanic or something?"
Me: "No, no, no, definitely not-"
Tim: "Or did you think I was an atheist?" (He seemed a bit more shocked on that one, lol.)
Me: "Well, sort of. Just your choice of music and the way you act, kind of made me suspicious. I'm actually an atheist." *nervous laugh* (I'm afraid of not getting accepted for being an atheist, just like any normal person would be, because these two are close friends.)
Tim: "Oh, really? Cool, that's pretty awesome." He wasn't shocked or anything.
Brenden: "Are your parents really mad about it and want you to be religious?" He seemed a bit curious.
Me: "Not really, they don't care. They told me that I could be whatever religion I wanted. I haven't really told them yet, though."
Brenden: "Oh, nice." (My parents are very strict and protective, and he knows that. So, I was secretly cheering, because some people actually didn't care.)
So then Tim went on about this joke about atheist being used as an insult, and then we came up with a bunch of stupid insults like "noob-a-saurous", ect..
So, that's about all of my ridiculously long story.

Permalink Reply by Stormi C. on October 29, 2012 at 9:44pm

I live in the Bible Belt, and I'm a sophomore. I only have 4 atheist friends. Allthe other "atheists" just use that name because they believe it heightens their social statuses among their friends. Everyone else at school is Catholic or Baptist, or the majority, Pentecostal/Assembly of God. Us atheists are looked at with the same disgust that Jeffrey Dahmer is looked at with. It's insane.

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