The things the girls were saying were pretty repulsive like “I’ve chosen a higher standard in my life” and “I wouldn’t want to bring anything unhealthy into my body.” That unhealthy thing, being a relationship that is toxic. They even went as far as to compare a bad relationship, where someone suffers because of a broken heart…to cancer. Yes. Cancer. I guess I’ve had the equivalent of cancer. How can someone learn to deal with pain, develop a mature attitude toward love and compare different men/women in the world without…”shopping around” so to speak. Having a broken heart is a part of life. It happens. And I find it pretty insulting that I am living a lower standard of life because I’ve chosen to have sex before marriage. That’s just rude. -_-

There is a long line of events that has to happen before that cherry can be popped. First the girl has to let the male meet their father. Their father has to approve of the male. They have to group date with other people. Then all those group dating have to group date with their parents. Then the male has to ask the girls father for their hand in marriage. Then finally, on the wedding day… after the “i do”s…they can have their first kiss. These girls don’t even kiss before marriage. Their first kiss is at the alter, before God, their father and their family… pledging themselves to one another. I don’t know about everyone else, but it took me a lot of kissing to perfect it all. I’d hate for my wedding day kiss to be that awkward first kiss.

Besides the fact that this all seems somewhat perverted, incestual and against basic biological urges,  I have a few other issues. The first in the notion that if a girl doesn’t have a father in her life, they she is going to be royally messed up as she’s growing up and when she is grown up. And more ridiculously, she won’t be able to form any sort of normal, healthy relationship. Most people know this, but for those who don’t, I was basically raised without a father. He died when I was 8, so my sister and I both didn’t have a father. …But guess what? I am in a normal, healthy, loving, nurturing and beautiful relationship. And my sister is too. I can see why not having a father figure in someones life might have them miss out on a few life experiences and might mess a few things up. However – the lack of a father does not lead to a slutty, mislead, screwed up young woman. And I’m sorry – but if I had to pledge my virginity to my father, that would mess me up in so many different ways than the loss of my father did.

I have some friends that took this purity vow.

Case one: she met a guy, dropped out of university 2 months later and married him within the next 6 months. They’re up for divorce after a year.

Case two: she met a guy and married him after 7 months and had 3 kids within the first 1/2 a year. she had to drop out of university and lives in poverty because niether of them can get a job.

Case three: they actually got pregnant before they were married and were thus ostracized from their church, family and circle of friends. her mother didn’t go to her wedding.

Case four: he met a young lady, and had to go on 5 dates with her father before he was allowed to take her on one date. again, they married within three months and divorced after less than 1.5 years.

My point – they get married too fast, they get confused, they get tangled up in this idea that for some reason because they’re not having sex in those first few months that it means they’ve gotten to know each other better than those who DO have sex…because instead of screwing they spend more time talking and getting to know one another. …But given the divorce rate that I’m seeing, rushing into marriage just to have sex isn’t really worth it. (or is it…? i guess it depends how much the wedding costs…)

These kids are getting married after dating for less than a year. They end up dropping out of university to start a family, but then get divorced after there is a kid involved so its hard to just go back to school and start your life where you left off. It’s scary.

And finally, the most screwed up thing that I heard on this documentary: if they date someone else, have sex with someone else or kiss someone else other than the person that they end up marrying it is cheating. It is breaking a 10 commandment – committing adultery. Because they are GOING to be married to that person in the future, they can’t kiss anyone else before they meet that person, because it would be cheating on the person they’ve never actually met and who may not actually exist – or who may be the person that they didn’t kiss and didn’t feel that incredibly “za za zoo” for. Sometimes an unexpected kiss can be the thing that opens your eyes to the beauty of a person.

But no, if you kiss another person, or love someone else before the one that you are destined to be with then you have given away parts of your heart. Parts of your heart that you can never get back, and thus when you get married and find “the one” you will be unable to give them all of your heart and all of your love because you’ve given some of it away already.

That is so. screwed. up. …And essentially what I would deem as child abuse, again. Fair enough that some of these girls are 18 – 25 years old. ..Fine. If they want to give the rights of their vagina to their father, let them. Its their loss. But there were girls as young as 4 – 12 at these things. Thats a scary age to be telling kids that by experimenting, dating and loving people before they are married is committing adultery and that they thus should pledge their life to their father. And let him be the one that she loves until he decides that shes met the right man. …ew.

I’ve read a crap load of books on “emotional intelligence”. Most of them I find to be a bit shaky and questionable, but I see some validity in the arguments and ideas that are being presented in a general term. Emotional intelligence, in very simple terms is one ability to interact with people, gage their emotions, have an idea about social discourses and the effect that their inputs will have on the overall social feel. One gages their own, and other’s, emotions and make what they deem to be appropriate judgments on how they should react. There are three main models that I’m not going to explain in any sort of depth. I imagine if you wikipedia it you’ll find them all nicely laid out for you.

In general they all have the same premise: see the emotion, capitalize on the emotion, understand the emotion and properly manage the emotion. Some say its the ability to fit into social groups and adhere to social norms, other say its the ability to manipulate and use people in those social groups. Either way, it all starts with those four basic function of using emotion.

Just as I am aware of what EQ is, I am also fully aware of all the problems that other people have pointed out in the philosophies, models and theories… so you don’t need to explain them to me. What I want to be clear on, for the purposes of this post, are what *I* mean when I say “EQ”… I mean having the skill to read, interact and appropriately mingle with and manipulate individuals or groups. I think that’s pretty straight forward… I am not claiming that we could call it a form of “intelligence” or that it is measurable or denying that there is an ability to fake this type of “intelligence very easily”… etc. There simply exists deep social skills that allow a person to literally read and gage the emotions of a person and use those to their advantage or use them to approach situations appropriately.

This is the part when you all start to get mad at me – all these “science types” have very little of this EQ. I will admit, up front, that some of them aren’t missing this important social quality but most indeed are. The sort of group we get at CFI, the people I knew in my physics program in first year, the types that talk to me after our science lectures… etc all have this shocking inability to blend into social settings. Not only that, but when I talk to them its as if they’re not registering any of the emotion that is attached with my words. If I’m joking, they don’t get it. If I’m being sarcastic, trying to get a serious point across or getting really angry – they don’t react. And it’s not like I’m an emotionally blank person…You can tell very clearly when I’m happy, sad, joking, angry… etc. well, if you’re able to gage emotions you can, anyway.

Not only does this make conversations that aren’t about science, rationality or critical thinking a total snorefest and completely awkward, but it’s also…why I think… it’s difficult and almost impossible for them to grasp the emotional happenings of the other side of things. Such as cultural relativism, (I’m not saying things like the definition for the word “book” should be accepted as relative, but things such as a definition of spirituality and religion…could very well be…or something) or seeing religion as something valuable to someone else. This is a problem because it’s a whole new area of narrow mindedness. The only things that are valid to them are what they have empirical evidence for – the emotional arguments for things are just not understood…instead, because they have a lack of understanding about science they’re just seen as carbon blobs. And when they attempt to make philosophical arguments it has to be totally logically sound instead of adding in some emotivism.

The lack of understanding of emotions, (or …as I learned from Larry Moran not too long ago – he just doesn’t care about emotions…) and inability to put themselves in the mindsets of other gives them no consideration of the effects that could be happening as a reaction of their actions toward others. Calling their entire value system and view of life as “ridiculous”? That’s just not acceptable, it hurts people. If they’re choosing to live the way they are, the most we can do is offer services, lectures and educational programs for them to be exposed to. If they choose not to use these resources, that’s fine. We don’t need to destroy their religions, we just need it out of the public sphere. There is a time and a place for emotional decision making such as creativity, empathy and comforting…, just as there is a time and a place for empirical/scientific or statistical decision making such as in the lab, school or when you’re attempting to find the scientific truth to life.

I’m sorry – but not everything in life can have science trailing right behind it, and just dismissing the emotions of people doesn’t make them disappear.

Thus it is use most correctly when we are using it in response to liberalizing modern biblical hermaneutics – or to give this some modern condentation, those that strive to keep the constitution in its original form, those that treat it as a pseudo-sacred text and as the inviolable foundations of which the U.S law is based on.

When people start talking about “fundamentalist islamic terrorists” or something of that nature I want to rip my hair out. Not only are the more common areas of Islam *not* fundamental on any level, that entire phrase has almost lost meaning.  Its the same as when people refer to the conservatives in the United States as fundamentalists.

The American movement of American Portestantism that came up a centruy after the fundamentalists stressed the infallibility of the Bible, all the way through to historical records, such as creationism and a physical resurrection. However – just because someone is a conservative who doesn’t believe in abortion doesn’t mean they’re a fundamentalist.  If you’re refering to a creationist who wants to stone gays and ignore millions of years of history … then fine, throw out the word fundamentalist. But seriously, Fox News, CNN and bloggers everywhere throw the term around like it holds no real context. This is tres stupid, and not to mention, tres annoying. Please stop.

Now I understand the argument that “words change meaning” over time. That is absolutely true…like naughty, the immediate thought with crack, gay, nice, queer, punk, brat, hot (or hawt)… etc. But the issue with fundamentalism is that people are still technically referring to what it *used* to be, it hasn’t changed meaning at all – people still mean it as being a totalistic commitment to something. If people were using the word correctly there wouldn’t be any “fundamentalist atheists” out there…and someone deeply in love with Christ but who is a member of the United Church of Canada also wouldn’t be called a fundamentalist.

[/rant]

I do love Christians. My mom, sister, step-dad, aunt, grandmother, cousins and best friend are all Christian. And I love them all, very much. I don’t support people who cut them down intellectually, emotionally and socially because of their faith. I don’t support people who don’t want to hear their side of issues, who don’t want them to be able to practice their faith or who think that talking to them is a waste of time. I don’t support the Rational Response Squad because of the horribly intolerant attitude toward religion. I am *not* intolerant of religion. I am intolerant of religion in my legislation, I am intolerant of religion controlling my decisions on birth, I am intolerant of religion starting wars, I am intolerant of religion being pushed onto children who have no choice, I am intolerant of religion in the class room, I am intolerant of my taxpayer dollars going to religious schools, I am intolerant of my gay best friend not being allowed to get married, I am intolerant of people thinking I have no morals because I have no religion, I am intolerant of the militarism that is portrayed through religion, I am intolerant of hate crimes…

I may be nice to Christians, and I may want to hear what they have to say…and I may also not want to listen to atheists bitch and moan or listen to them talk about how stupid Christians and religion is – but this in no way translates to “I’m a scared little atheist girl who is just so scared of the big scary world! I’m just not ready to tell religions to go away, and I just want everyone to get along!” … I don’t care if everyone gets along, as long as there are capitalists there is competition and as long as there is competition there is fighting. I’m totally cool with that. I just don’t care about what religious people do in the privacy of their homes.

It’s like sex… don’t force it on me or any children to do it and don’t do it in parliament or the schools or in public and I don’t care what you do. Do it in your own home, of building that YOU pay for with consenting adults.

I feel like my history has a lot to do with why I think like this, and why people never understand where I’m coming from. I am a previous evangelical Christian. I worked at a christian camp for years, where I met practically all of my friends that I was close with. I was a member of the “Clarkson Crusade for Christ” at my high school and would go to the flag pole to pray every morning at 7am. I went to church with my mom and my step dad (a minister), and at church I was an active congregation member. I sang in the church choir, I ran the 30 hour famine with over 40 students at the church, I went to retreats to learn how to further my relationship with God and I taught Sunday school classes to younger kids. I thought abortion was wrong, I thought that gays were a little off and I was against the evil media trying to put horrible ideas of sex, alcohol, drugs and consumption into my head. I wanted to travel to Africa to be a missionary, to teach others how to love Christ. I wanted to go to the honor academy in Texas so I could devote my life a youth minister. I even went to those horrible Acquire the Fire rallies in Hamilton (they mostly happen in the states) with host Ron Luce who would convince me that I was a horrible person. With my hands in the air, tears streaming down my face, I would sob to the “Lord” to wash me clean of my sins. I would fall to my knees and beg Ron Luce, Jesus and God to forgive me for being such a horrible person.

The flip side of this is that I saw the beauty and wonder in the universe, that I also saw as God’s creation. I now see the beauty and owner in the universe in science, discovery and exploration, but that’s beside the point. I felt happy every single day, because I was important to god. It made it easier to deal with horrible things that happened in my life. It made it very easy to think I was doing good in the world by praying. I felt good.

One day someone asked me “What’s so horrible about TV? The bible is more violent than the shows I watch.” …I thought that was pretty valid. When I asked my Sunday School teacher he brushed me off, I didn’t like that. So I asked “Why is there suffering if there is a God? There must be no God.”…I got an evil glare and was asked to leave the class and go back to class. When I got home that Sunday I started reading. And within a few nights decided there was nothing wrong with being gay. Soon after I decided there was nothing wrong with abortion, TV, premarital sex, and that there was probably no God. At the time I kept a live journal and wrote that on there. It got Googled and was found by my camp, I was asked not to come back. I lost all my friends. Soon I lost all my friends at school too, because they were C4Cers. I lost my faith, family and friends in a matter of 2 weeks.

The rest is pretty much – I did radio/writing/blogging/debating about religion, I found CFI and thought it was cool, I joined and now all my friends are atheist and I work there. (Only that happened over the course of like 3 years)

So now I’m left sitting in this post-Christian life, and those of you who have never been in that religious life can honesty – never understand what I’m sitting with. I have deep internalized guilt about almost everything I do. I cry so incredibly hard sometimes because I am so guilty about my life. For some reason, I think that because I’ve left religion I am a horrible person. I have been indoctrinated with the idea of heaven and hell. I am worried that I will be in hell. I have been indoctrinated to think that the abortion I decided to have was killing something that had a path in life. I still, for some reason, cling to this idea of “a right to life” for all humans even before sentience. There is absolutely no logical reason I can think of as to why, but it brings up all kinds of sad, guilty and angry emotions.

So, why have I shared this? 1) I understand what Christians feel, see and go through. I’ve been there, and for some people, it is a great thing. They need religion to cope, live and love. That’s fine. 2) The reason I am so incredibly against religion is because of what it does to children. I am a living, breathing example of a child who was indoctrinated with this bullshit and now has to attempt to deal with it in their day to day life. It rips me apart inside.

Hopefully this little rant can give people a little more insight into how I think, and why I write what I write. I am a critical person who takes criticism poorly. I am support of religion that says in the private life, because I know how much comfort it offers people. I am against religion being pushed on, taught to and slammed into children and confused teenagers. But to those who aren’t doing it? I refuse to call them irrational, I refuse to call them stupid and I refuse to attempt to take down their support base. As Voltaire said “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will fight to the death your right to say it.” I will also fight to the death to keep religion off of women’s bodies, out of children’s minds, out of science and out of politics. That is why I work where I work. …I spend every waking hour that I’m not at school at the Center for Inquiry promoting secularism, freedom of expression and proper political strategies.

I don’t think the poster boys are elitist. I just don’t think they understand me, religious people or what I stand for. So I don’t support them. The next person to tell me it must be “easy” for me to be an atheist in Canada… really needs to reread this. This is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through in my entire life, and I would not wish it upon my worst enemy.

Nica Lalli is a mother of two (two who sound intelligent, and adorable), a PTA mom, painter, has a master of fine arts and married to a man she met when she was 21. ( I love love.) She is also the author of Nothing:Something to Believe In, and an atheist. Most importantly (at least for the matters of this post) she is the first atheist who has come to speak at CFI that I’ve ever been able to relate to. Ever.

Although our back-stories are extremely different (she was raised secular by non-religious parents and has never been religious …I was raised Christian by Christian parents and a minister), what she has to say now resonates with me deeply. I knew as soon as she said “I didn’t want to be the voice, I just wanted to be one of many” that I was going to like her much more than the other “voice” I’ve heard. (that makes me sound crazy…) But what we both are, is “interested in why religion is interesting” to us.

At first I thought she was going to be a cope out because she was calling herself “nothing” instead of slapping the word atheist on her forehead. But once she described that she wanted something “outside the debate” it made a lot more sense. All the other words, atheist, agnostic, freethinker, bright [thats the worst], humanist, rationalist – all have a stigmata (heh) behind them from being inside the religious debates.

Her book doesn’t fit in, where her book is about living life as an atheist – raising kids, dealing with in laws and just being her the other books about atheism and religion. About why atheism is the be all end all marvelous anti-faith that is going to save us all from our narrowminded and blinded views. Dawkins et al don’t show their weaknesses or talk about their lives rather they’re more interested in telling everyone else how stupid they are. Where Dawkins and his posse make it very hard to like atheists, Nica makes it very easy to fall totally in love with her. The poster boy atheists are making it very hard to say “I’m an atheist” without getting a million nasty glares and grilled with a lot of questions based on the assumption that you think just like them. Nica tries to describe and help us learn how to live in this world, where we’re not quite liked yet. Unfortunately the poster boys are very good at describing what it is that makes us angry, so they go off and get angry. Everywhere. All the time. And look silly. But Nica is right in saying that it is good that we have someone expressing those views – I just wish it wasn’t the only “mainstream” (so to speak) view out there.

Near the end of her talk, she did it. She did what no other atheist speaker I have ever seen has done before. It was like she was sent from God to help me understand my non-belief. She described what she believes in. She describes it with a story where she is in New York, surrounded by people while she’s in her car. At that moment, she was thinking, that all those people are thinking something. Thinking, remembering, wishing, dreaming, hoping…and being an individual. That was so overwhelming to her, and it is to me too. Although I take this a bit further, and include the sheer overwhelming feeling that the universe in general gives me. The beauty and power of discovery, the inconceivable size of the galaxy and yes, like Nica, the amazing thought that everyone is here, thinking, being and living.

Nica wrote her book to show how normal she is. So believers and non-believers could read it and relate to what she had to say. And then, perhaps, turn to the person beside them, no matter what denomination, and share a story with them. Stop the bickering and build a stronger relationship with those around you. A relationship that goes beyond lables and the armor so that we can just be, and understand one another on a new appreciative level. It’s pretty pathetic when you can’t have a discussion because religion overkills. Nica, like me, is unwilling to say that all belief is bad. It is absolutely tragic that there is an automatic assumption that they hate us, and we hate them. Then the world just seems so much more fragmented.

It’s too bad that she isn’t tough enough for Americans. She isn’t spitting in people’s faces and tearing down the religious fundamentalists that threaten our lives, rights and countries. Instead she is too normal, so people pay far to little attention to her. She is not an arrogant scientist. She’s not stuck up. She doesn’t act like she has the answers. She isn’t untouchable. She is approachable. She is intelligent and well spoken. She is a good writer. And she says what is in my head. She is someone I can relate to, which makes it a lot easier for me to call myself an atheist, or rather…nothing.

We tend to have a pretty scientific crowd, and that’s not surprising. Generally speaking a lot of those who are interested in skepticism and the secular outlook on life are science majors of some sort. Evolution, stem cell research, abortion etc. can all be justified and argued as valid with science and are often argued as wrong and invalid by the religious. So it doesn’t come as a surprise to see those with a science background falling into secularism.

I get it, women like being included, and that’s fine. Honestly now, it’s not like we’re excluding women in this faction. But! Before I get to the meat of Chris’ post, I just wanted to comment on a couple smaller pedantic issues:

Constant reminders consisting of everything from TV ads to misused pronouns don’t let us forget the struggle with basic civil and social rights that women have battled, past and present alike.

Yes, and consistently feminists all over North America are using these “reminders” to slam men every chance they get. But for some reason the sexism against men is completely over looked. There are ads in the Toronto subways right now for the restaurant Moxies. I hear a couple of girls talking about how “sexist” the ad is because the woman is depicted in a pretty slut-tastic dress and all her jewelry is being pulled to the man beside her who is wearing an outfit that would make him out to be a magnet. They ended their conversation with “the guy is pretty sexy though”. … WTF?

It’s hardly a secret that there just tend to be more men in science.

So is it because our “movement” is so science oriented that there are fewer women? Maybe we should focus on the arts more in our programming to draw in a new (and possibly more feminine […stereotype alert!]) crowd? Hmm. Just a thought.

This is one of the more unfortunate side effects of “new atheism” brought up by the (otherwise exceptional) lead of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris: the “big three” of non-belief nowadays.

I’m not sure that it’s their gender that is the unfortunate thing about these three men, it’s the lack of connection with individuals and how many people can’t relate to them that is truly unfortunate. What I’d like to see is someone who can talk reasonably about religion and life – but not be full of fluff with whom I can relate to. Woman or not.

Anyway, onto my real points!

The “new face” of atheism – as it seems to be called – is indeed very white male oriented. But why does this matter? Secularism in the public sphere is a somewhat innovative fad we’re diving into. Only recently have people felt comfortable enough to leap out and declare atheism as a way to brand themselves. Realistically, it just so happens that those who had the time and money to start this whole atheistic movement were white, well-off men. But the important part, is that it happened! And that it’s still happening! Now about who is running it.

Being involved with secularism, the movement, is a privilege. It’s a privilege that many people simply don’t have. It’s like complaining that you’re soup is too hot – people with another option can do it. And it seems like the people who did have this option, were white males, so they started this new stream of atheism. And it’s that, new… you can’t expect it to be a plethora of sexes and races when it’s barely accepted by the public at large!

But that entire point is extraneous, much like actively attempting to get women involved. It’s futile. The people who are currently involved are the ones who desire to be; at this point we should be attempting to get more people in general involved, not simply encouraging women to step into the movement. If I spent my time trying to get our women volunteers more active and encouraging them to be more vocal within our groups – I’d be wasting a whole lot of time where I could be doing more productive things like giving support to our already active volunteers.

Aggressively encouraging women to get involved is just like affirmative action. We start overlooking a plethora of capable people simply to be more inclusive. We look at a group of say 10 individuals, where 1 is a female…we ask the female to do the work simply because she’s a women and it turns out she’s the least capable. I’ve just wasted all of my time and invested interest in this person who is less capable than 9 other people, but I overlooked that point because for some reason we think that having women involved with organizations makes them more successful? Makes them more appealing? Makes us look less sexist? What?

Who cares what sex we have working with us? I don’t feel like I could relate to a woman Paul Kurtz any more or less than I can relate to the male Paul Kurtz. It’s reverse discrimination, as this unwarranted need for a closer male to female ratio requires the very discrimination that supporters are seeking to eradicate.
I personally think we have bigger fish to fry than putting energy into getting women involved. To be completely straightforward, I don’t have time to wave my hand at all the women screaming at them “Hey! Look! It’s fun! And non-patriarchal!” …Because those who want to be involved are already here, and are already contributing.

There is no “anti-women” sign on any of our doors. The exact same opportunities are available to women as are to men. When I’m looking for someone to fill a position, I’m just looking for a committed body and mind, not a gender. Why not invest our interests somewhere that it makes sense, like putting time, energy and money into art programs. (By stereotypical nature this would eventually lead to an increase in women, but that’s not the point.) It’s an entire social, cultural and academic side of things that we hardly ever touch on, but where there is a market for our mindsets and thoughts. Some of your are going to argue that women add more diversity, and different thoughts. …Any number of people despite sex, age or race are going to add diversity! I have the same opinions and thoughts as most of the guys in my little secular group. I don’t add diversity.

A social movement such as secularism is equal opportunity. If there are women out there pining to save the world from religion, teach other about science education or explore the paranormal they’re more than welcome to come on it. But I’m not going to waste my time convincing them that it’s okay to do that.