Hey

[MinMin]

Hey,
I stumbled across these forums a few minutes ago and thought "hey, why not? It may be a great outlet for me." My name is a Emily, I'm a 30 year old mother of 3, I'm from a very small, conservative blue collar town in SE Texas, I work in insurance, I love to read, I love crime shows, documentaries, coffee, movies and music of all sorts......and I'm an atheist! I feel like I need some comraderie. I work in a small office 40+ hours a week surrounded by Christians...and they're not the quiet closet kind. But I need this job and in this town they're hard to come by. So I zip my lips, sometimes even smile and nod at their ramblings about Jesus and miracles and prayer and I silently fume at my desk at their bigotry and hypocrisy and biasedness. Don't get me wrong, the people I work with aren't horrible people. Just mindless sheep for the most part and most of the time I feel pity more than anything and a yearning to try and engage them in some analytical thinking. But enough about that.. I was raised church of Christ, very strict denomination. I began to seriously question about 14/15. I struggled for many many years with the notion of no God. However, I couldn't shake the nonsensicalness of it all. 24/25 I began reading and watching documentaries about evolution,I learned about other religions and the striking similarities they had with Christianity, I watched countless religious debates with Hitchens, Dawkins, Shermer, etc. Throught this time I went from diest to agnostic to full on atheist....and I feel liberated as shit!

[Munch]

Hi Emily, welcome.

I can sympathize with your position, finding a jobs a pain enough, and sometimes you need to do whatever it takes to keep it, especially if you have a family. 

Just a warning this is a no holds barred site, and most of us will just say what we feel like about something, though our lovely mods here try and keep things discrete, like about not safe for work stuff.

And from what I've seen, theres a lot of folks here who have been in the same situation as you, stuck in religious settings surrounded by people they can't share their real feelings with, so you have good company and those who understand here.

Hope you enjoy your stay here

[Baruch]

Welcome and good luck with that!  Isn't Southern culture ... interesting ... too much?  When I moved South 20 years ago, I expected to see some differences.  The idea of having Bible study at lunch time, at work on the work site ... wasn't something I was expecting.  Of course the politics is much more ... provincial and conservative than the big city where I came from.  Hope you can find both here and at home, someone who can understand you, and who can listen to your ... concerns.

[Green Bottle]

Hi Emily and welcome to the madhouse but not all of us are mad, a couple of us are slightly deranged, but good people,mostly.

[SGOS]

Emily,  I hear you.  I know that's a cliché, but I hear you.  I worked with a woman who got the copy machine to work by praying for it.  LOL; Really! 

We've had an upsurge of new people checking in and introducing themselves lately.  It could be coincidence, or maybe it has something to do with people leaving organized religion as the latest polls seem to indicate.  Naw, it's probably more coincidence, but I can still hope.

Welcome

[Baruch]

Praying over the copying machine usually doesn't work, but laying on of hands by the maintenance guy, usually does ;-)

[TomFoolery]

I'm from a very small, conservative blue collar town in SE Texas

Which one? I was born in Dallas and grew up in Garland, which is more Northeast I suppose, but I have lots of family out in Tyler.

Throught this time I went from diest to agnostic to full on atheist....and I feel liberated as shit!

Scary and freeing, isn't it? When you go from wanting to believe, to realizing the fact that wanting to believe is just proof you don't.

Welcome!

[Munch]

Hold on I need to try this.

*downloads new game with several gigs of date*

"Machine, By Odin, I command you to speed up!"

*2mb/s drops to 100kb/s*

Dammit Odin, okay lets try zeus..

[Baruch]

Odin liked to hand around on the World Tree and lose a good eye ... all to gather greater shamanic magic.  This is also present in the Vedas ... showing that Nordics are just shivering Indians ;-)

[GrinningYMIR]

Hello, welcome. You and I started questioning at  around the same age, but I didn't out myself to my friends, my closest ones anyway until I was about 17. You've got 10 years on me but I wish the best.

[Solitary]

Welcome aboard Emily! Nice intro! 

[aitm]

greetings and welcome to the show.

[Sal1981]

Your journey is a something, I would guess most, Christian apostates go through. Reading through your intro, I remembered back to my grueling 4 years of doubt and coming "out of the closet" so to speak at age 17 to my Christian parents.

[Mike Cl]

Welcome home, MinMin.  Your time here will be well spent. 

[MinMin]

Thank you, everyone, for the warm welcome. Sorry for the delayed response.
Munch, yeah sometimes we just have to bite the bullet and take a job that's not ideal. I've only been in insurance for about a year and 1/2. I got my license in February. Hopefully, after a few more years experience I can move from this small agency to bigger and better things.
Baruch, southern culture is "interesting" to say the least. Religion is a huge integral part of most southerners lives.  I embrace, love and am proud of most of what it means to be a southerner. Fortunately, although the majority of my family are Christians, the very close nit are pretty liberal when it comes to people having the freedom to believe and live how they choose.
Green, I think we're all just a little crazy lol, and those that don't admit that are probably the most deranged of the lot.
Sgos, wow. Yeah one of the girls I work with is a Pentecostal. If our copier went out I wouldn't be surprised in the least if she started speaking in tongues over it.
Tom, YES! that's exactly the realization I came to. I spent so much time struggling to believe and when I realized that I truly knew the foolery all along it was like a light bulb went off. I'm from Dayton, it's about 45 miles east of Houston.
Grin, thanks, all the best to u as well
Thanks, atim
Sal, it's a crazy thing to recollect. It was sort of heart breaking to me to face the realization and be honest with myself. Telling my family was probably the scariest, fortunately the ones that opinions I regarded the most were very accepting. I'm thankful that my children will have it much easier than I did.
Thanks, solitary :)
Thanks, mike. I'm looking forward to it