Greetings, Riley! I notice you haven't been active at Atheist Nexus since October. <sigh> Sometimes it can seem a bit fragmented, with different groups for every interest. Please consider a group for socializing, where we talk about whatever's on our minds, Hang With Friends. :D You might feel more at home.

Honestly, I’m not all that worried about my mother, either way. It just sucks any time she needs me to go over to her house and do something for her. None of my siblings help with anything. No worries about my father. He died about 13 years ago, so I got over it a long time ago.

Have you never talked to your parents about religion? Does your family not go to church at all?

Hmm, yeah, the age issue is annoying. I know there are plenty of atheist groups in colleges, but most high school students who are atheists don’t really think about it much. Most people don’t get serious about politics until after high school, and politics is what gets lots of atheists thinking about it seriously, when they start paying attention to what religion is doing to our country, our society, and the world.

It’s still worth trying to start up a group, though. It just takes one person to advertize and attract others. I don’t know if you particularly have a leader mentality; I know I don’t.

I’m right there with you on the intelligence, thing. I always stuck out horribly, in school. My IQ scores are way the hell up there in the freak category.

Yeah, I just discovered the Atheist Experience this past summer, actually. It’s been great for seeing a lot of the arguments that theists use and have the logical fallacies pointed out as they happen. It’s also just gotten me a bit charged up on the subject in general.

Edward Current is great, too. I can appreciate his material, since I’m also trying to work my way into the comedy field. My approach is completely different from his, of course, since I’m working on standup.

And jeeze, I haven’t even looked into the Quran, yet. How’s that working out for you? I had enough trouble making my way through the whole Bible. I know what you mean about the time-consumption. I’ve got 40 hours a week for work, another several hours a night working on committing my standup routine to memory, and then not a whole lot left for much spare reading.

Heh, all I can say about your brother is to just answer him honestly about your beliefs and play 20 questions with him, if he wants to. People are so malleable at that age. Maybe you can rub off on him, a little.

Ouch, yeah, small-town Missouri. There are probably other atheists around and about, but finding them is a wee bit difficult. Meetup.com will probably work well for you, when you get a bit older. Right now, it's probably a bit difficult for you to get anywhere that would have a decent-sized Atheism group.

I was thinking about what you said about some of the conversation on here being a bit advanced. You can look up 'The Atheist Experience', a public access show out of Austin, Texas. They have every show from early 2004 archived online, on their website. That's http://www.atheist-experience.com/. The link to the archive is the third one down on the left side. That show is a sort of outreach show to the community, explaining what atheism is, what we believe, and taking calls from all over. It's also absolutely hilarious, at times, with some of the theists they get calling in. Usually about the first 45 minutes is discussion and education on various topics, and then the rest of the hour and a half is taking calls. Some episodes are just pure call-in shows. It varies. It's entertaining as hell, and you can learn a lot about religion and atheism.

Wow, sorry, I babble a lot. Maybe you've noticed?

You're lucky with your family. My mother is a bit on the religious side. She's not a fundie or anything, but she's committed to a vague belief in God and gets upset anytime I bring up atheism.

I suspect my father may have been an atheist, but he died 13 years ago. I can't exactly ask him anymore. He was studying to be a Catholic priest, at one point, and I suspect he lost his religion after learning too much. That happens sometimes. I was surrounded by science and learning as a child, which may have been his way of compensating for not being able to be an out-of-the-closet atheist. I suspect that's one of the things that made me reject religion, despite the weekly mass, when I was 5 or 6.

Hello Riley and welcome to this friendly world of rational sense and intelligent reasoning, with its thousands of freethinkers who recognise how religions deceive and control vulnerable people beginning with innocent children. How sad, too, that women and minorities have been so mistreated during these last two millennia and more.

Terry Meaden
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