I'm gonna have to come out. Just don't want my mom hating me.

Bill and others are not wrong about this.  If I had known more openly secular  people in my life, I'm certain I would've examined shit sooner.

---

(August 1, 2015 at 2:37 am)Exian Wrote: I'm gonna have to come out. Just don't want my mom hating me.

What's you mom like? Do you literally feel you're mother could hate you? Or do you mean hate the idea of you being secular and worried about your eternal soul?

Yeah, more the second part. My sister is openly atheist and secular, and I don't think my mom could handle me being that way. Both her babies burning in hell.

(August 1, 2015 at 3:15 am)Exian Wrote: Yeah, more the second part. My sister is openly atheist and secular, and I don't think my mom could handle me being that way. Both her babies burning in hell.

That's something to consider. No one wants cause their mother suffering or emotional pain.  How far do you think you can go to keep the truth from her? Btw, I'm not trying to be judgy or anything like that. My mother doesn't know either.

Well, it's not usually all that bad, but I do bite my tongue a lot. It's getting to me more and more lately, because there have been more opportunities for me to speak up, with the recent Supreme Court ruling and all of the instances of police brutality.

There's an afternoon radio host who's sidekick is openly an atheist. A while back, they wanted to prove they had street cred so they started The Black List where their black listeners called in and had the show add them to the list. Basically to say "Look, this isn't just for white people!" Anyhow, it's a pretty funny bit. So I've tried to call in a few times to see if I could get them to start an atheist list to let other people in NE Ohio know that they aren't alone, and to encourage them to speak up...but I know my dad listens so I chicken out, which is totally hypocritical of me. I think that would be nice for my area, but I don't want to upset my mom. :/

(August 1, 2015 at 4:40 am)Exian Wrote: Well, it's not usually all that bad, but I do bite my tongue a lot. It's getting to me more and more lately, because there have been more opportunities for me to speak up, with the recent Supreme Court ruling and all of the instances of police brutality.
...

I find it easy to be okay with the Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage without mentioning religion at all.  The religionist arguments are, for the most part, deranged and silly.  The only honest one is that they believe God doesn't like it and so it should not be done.  Everything else I have heard is completely irrational drivel, that is easy to demonstrate is irrational drivel.

Take, for example, the idea that gay marriage will destroy marriage.  You must have heard that claim a few times.  The only way that would be true is if married people all said to themselves, "damn, if only I had waited, I could have married someone of my sex," and so they get a divorce to do that.  I am a heterosexual man, married to a woman.  Whether someone else marries a man, marries a woman, or does not marry, makes no difference for my marriage.  My marriage is what it is, regardless of what other people choose to do.  It is just silly saying that gay marriage will destroy marriage.  Frankly, it would be hard to come up with something that is more personally irrelevant to my life than same sex marriage.  The same is true of every other heterosexual person who has no desire to be in a same sex marriage.  Having same sex marriage legal means, for them, that they now can legally do something that they are not going to do anyway.  So it being legal or not seems completely irrelevant to them personally.  (By that, of course, I do not mean that they do not care about it, but that it does not affect them personally.)  Either way, they don't marry someone of the same sex, so it has no impact on the options they would consider.

You have probably heard the claim that it is "unnatural."  First of all, that is demonstrably false, because quite a few different animals engage in homosexual acts.  So as a matter of fact, it is natural.  Second, even if it were unnatural, that would be totally irrelevant to whether it is good or bad.  If you break your leg, going to a doctor to have it set is "unnatural."  But no sane person is going to tell you that that is the wrong thing to do.

Notice, no mention is made of religion in these arguments, because they really have nothing to do with religion.  Religionists use arguments that are not directly connected to religion because they want to pretend that their position is objective or universal, rather than just that it is part of their religion.  If they were to just argue on the basis of the Bible, one could then throw at them all of the other prohibitions in the Bible, or one could argue about the wisdom of enforcing a particular religion by law (as was done in the Dark Ages).  But they typically use bullshit arguments like those mentioned and demolished above.

(August 1, 2015 at 4:40 am)Exian Wrote: Well, it's not usually all that bad, but I do bite my tongue a lot. It's getting to me more and more lately, because there have been more opportunities for me to speak up, with the recent Supreme Court ruling and all of the instances of police brutality.

There's an afternoon radio host who's sidekick is openly an atheist. A while back, they wanted to prove they had street cred so they started The Black List where their black listeners called in and had the show add them to the list. Basically to say "Look, this isn't just for white people!" Anyhow, it's a pretty funny bit. So I've tried to call in a few times to see if I could get them to start an atheist list to let other people in NE Ohio know that they aren't alone, and to encourage them to speak up...but I know my dad listens so I chicken out, which is totally hypocritical of me. I think that would be nice for my area, but I don't want to upset my mom. :/

OK one of my dumb questions what does "police brutality" have to do with atheism or religion? To me that is just people being people. Also the media trying to make a dime.

Oh yeah, they are definitely separate social issues, but when these different issues sit inside an individual (at least some of the people I know) their opinions tend to come from the same place, or there abouts. In my experience, a religious person is more likely to be bigoted, and to proudly voice their opinion. Oh, I guess I should also mention that I meant the racially charged instances of police brutality.

I have become more openly secular to my friends and I have gotten pretty good responses. I have even discovered some of my best friends are secular as well. My only fear is coming out to my parents. My brother and I are both atheist and Im sure it would not sit well with her. Especially because my brother is only 14.