I promised you a new post and here it is!
I decided to buy up the domain colormeatheist.com instead of using the .wordpress.com domain.
I like it soooo much better! Of course I’m still getting all settled in but I hope you enjoy in in the long run!
So go to www.colormeatheist.com and tell me if you like it! Thank you so much everyone!!!!!
Cheers!
Hey everyone! Sorry I haven’t been real active on here this past week. It’s been a very stressful week. My mother found out that I’m an atheist. She found out on on Tuesday and it’s only been today that my heart has started making it’s decent from my throat to where it’s supposed to be. She is angry, but it also slowly getting over it.
I also told my big brother today. He knew it was coming so it didn’t take him by surprise.
My emotions have been all over the place from being a nervous wreck, angry, frustrated, relieved, etc.
It really does throw you for a loop when people you love react in a way you didn’t expect. But i do feel better for being honest with them. I don’t want to lie to my family about my own personal beliefs. It’s not fair for me to pretend to be something I’m not. So this has been a good experience for me. Plus it’s also proven to me that I can handle myself and not cave under the pressure.
So that makes 2 out of 3 family members that know. The next one is my dad. I don’t know what to expect with him. I’m going to wait a little bit to regain my sanity.
I have been looking at all my regular blogs but haven’t been with it enough to form my own thoughts. lol
Tomorrow i’ll be better. Maybe even tonight. I promise to post something tomorrow.
Thank you everyone for your support!!
Before I officially came out of the atheist closet I did have an experience with homeopathy, it was also my last shred of hope that there might be a god.
I had a cat that I loved soo much. She was the best cat in the world. She was about 7 years old and I was expecting to get at least 6 more years with her. Well she had been losing weight gradually when I had moved into my husbands house but nothing to be alarmed about. Months had passed and one day I noticed that she wasn’t eating as much and I thought ok well maybe her teeth hurt because I knew they were really bad. So I took her in to get her teeth cleaned and when i got her back home she ate very little and then nothing the following few days. I started freaking out and trying to figure out what I could do to help her without spending tons of money because we had no money. My husband had a client that had done research on pet foods and was also a homeopath. I contacted her and she advised me to start feeding her raw food. With nothing working my husband and I decided to ask her about homeopathy. I was so blinded in trying to get my cat healthy again that I told her we would try anything she suggested.
We tried about 5 different ‘remedies’ and each time I would ask this gal “Ok what can i expect to happen?” Her response was always the same: “It could either help her perk up, do nothing, or help her in the dying process.” Ok at this point after getting the same response after the 2nd time I asked this, I was thinking “well those are the same things that could happen everytime I go to bed. 3 things can happen: I could wake up feeling fantastic, wake up feeling just the same as when I went to bed, or I could not wake up” hmmm. But I was so blinded that I still had hope homeopathy was going to work.
In the end it didn’t. I made the decision to put her down because she wasn’t getting any better. She was yellow and skinny. It was so sad. I put her down on July 1st this year.
I am still so mad that I didn’t get the other 6 years I should have had with her. I’m so mad I bought into homeopathy. I’m so mad that I bought into the idea that she would be waiting for me on the other side when really she wont be. I am happy though that she wont miss me, even though I miss her so much. I’m happy that she isn’t hurting. I’m happy that my friends didn’t try to tell me that homeopathy was just a load of crap when I was going through this. I probably wouldn’t have listened. This experience was honestly the last shred of hope that I had in order to prove to myself that there might be a god. I prayed so hard to have some kind of sign that if he was there that he would save my favorite cat. There was no sign. He didn’t save her. He wasn’t there when I put her down and cried for her to wake up hoping that the medicine didn’t effect her.
It’s true that I have always been skeptical of there being a god, but this experience proved it to me. I did cling onto the hope for years that there might be. I called myself an Agnostic during that time. I kept praying and searching, but it was all pointless during this. I did hold onto that last hope, but in the end it made no difference to pray to the christian god or to zeus. Neither were there. So to say I became an atheist over night is a lie. I tried so hard to believe for years, but it never came to anything.
RIP Beezwax 7/1/11
Hello Everyone!
Lots of things have been going on the past few days. Some I can talk about, some I can’t just yet(trust me they are really freaking cool!).
Of the things I can talk about, I am in the process of filling out an application to become a Secular Minister! The Reno Freethinkers leader has been performing weddings for a while and he’s getting overwhelmed with the demand for a secular minister. So I volunteered to help out. I have to fill out an application with Washoe County in order to be legal. I’m pretty excited about it! So if you want a Secular Minister to perform your wedding and you’re in the Reno/Tahoe area talk to me!
Reno Freethinkers is going to start doing 2 meetings a month! I’m so happy about this because I’ll be able to attend the meetings this semester! I was worried i was going to miss the regular last wednesday of the month meetings until school ended because I have a class that ends 45 minutes after the meeting started and by the time I would get there the meeting would be over. So yay more meetings! Nothing has been officially announced just yet but it will be soon.
UNR officially has a Secular Student Alliance! I was able to help out with the club fair booth this past friday and it was awesome to see so many students sign up! We had students who were real nervous to ask us questions and then we had students who were sooo excited to hear we are official! I was there to help out for a hour and a half and when I had left there were 25 students who had given us their email address. The event still had a few hours left so I’m sure we got several more emails. woot!
Those were the things I’m allowed to talk about. The things I’m not allowed to talk about are being kept a secret until we are given the ok to speak about them. But trust me it’s going to be frackin amazing!
As you all know I’m never very science savvy, I’m also not very politically savvy, but I have gotten a little bit better ever since I married my husband. He’s very much into politics and he keeps me informed, but that doesn’t mean I know EVERY thing about it. Anyways that’s not the point.
Our candidate for the presidential election is Ron Paul. Very simply put because he has been voting consistently forever. I like him because he is fighting to get our country back to the standards of the Constitution. We are soo far away from where our country needs to be and he has a plan to get us out of other countries business and get our country back on track. That’s the reason I’m voting for him.
A few days ago the Secular Student Alliance posted a video up on facebook of Ron Paul saying that he doesn’t believe in evolution and called it a ‘theory’. I do disagree with him on this. BUT this isn’t going to sway my vote for him. In the video someone asks him if he believed in evolution and he said he didn’t and then said “that question is inappropriate, and not what this is about” (or something along those lines) I completely agree with him on this! I am well aware that he belives in a god, but that wont stop me from voting for him. It’s the fact that he isn’t following the traditional politician path by changing his votes. He has voted no on things that could actually help him had he voted yes. He votes No if it’s unconstitutional.
There were a lot of people who commented on the post saying that they liked him at first but now that they know he doesn’t believe in evolution they wont vote for him. That’s crazy! You’re really going to NOT vote for someone just because disagree over ONE LITTLE FACT?! I don’t understand that! He isn’t running his campaign based on his beliefs! He’s running his campaign based on the Constitution!
I’m going to stop now because this just makes me mad at people in general for being so closed minded.
Watch the video below but you have to listen hard for the question
(This topic is not my normal biblical type post. I want to talk about other things like Science and vocal folds!)
Well school is back in session and I’m really excited about this semester. I am a Speech Language Pathology major and I’m currently catching up on all the undergrad classes so I can apply for the graduate program for next year. A lot of the time I get asked “What can you do with that?” and I tell them “A lot of things!” If I had the desire I could work with kids in the schools, but my heart is with the older populations. I want to work with stroke and traumatic brain injury patients. I also want to do endoscopes of the larynx and vocal folds along with swallow studies.
But to go with the title of this post for me the most beautiful thing in the world (well there are other things, but this one is awesome) is watching the vocal folds at work. It’s sooo amazing how fast these things move just to produce our voice. This semester I’m going to be working on a research project in voice normalizing. You might be thinking “what the heck is voice normalizing??” Well it’s techniques SLPs use in order to help a client normalize their voice after some kind of event that has left one or both of the vocal folds paralized. One kind of event that sticks out in my mind is when someone goes into surgery and they have to be intubated to breathe. After the surgery sometimes the intubation tube can pull on the vocal folds and damages it, resulting in a raspy, rough sounding voice. The techniques are taught to help the patient normalize their own voice so they can sound some what normal.
The first time I saw I endoscopy I had mixed feelings of being totally amazing by what I was seeing and also the feeling that I was going to faint because it’s kind of creepy to look at. But the more and more I see the more amazed I get and my feeling of fainting is decreasing.
If you want to see the vocal cords in action watch the video below. Though I will warn you that if you don’t like looking up peoples noses or into peoples mouths then don’t watch it because the endoscope being used goes up the clients nose and down the back of his throat.
I think the most awesome part is when the patient give a “E” sound and the clinician turns the strobe light on you can see the waves of the folds. In actual light they move soooo fast that you can’t see the waves. IT’S SO AWESOME!
And don’t even get me started on how awesome the mouth and tongue are when we talk! Well ok you can get me started, but I’ll save that for another post. I do encourage you to actually pay attention to how much your tongue moves and the fine movements it uses the next time you talk to someone. It’s crazy!!!
The topic of having a soul has been in my mind for a few days. The Mr and I were talking to our tenant one night and we were talking about souls. The tenant believes he has a soul and will continue on when his body dies. He finds comfort in that thought.
It kind of makes me sad to think that we don’t have souls, thanks to my childhood indocternation. But at the same time I like the idea of not having a soul. I like it because it makes me realize that this is the only life I get so I should do as much as possible. I do feel more excited about waking up day to day. I have no reason to worry about my immortal soul.
I feel soo much happier since coming out. I dont have someone or something looking over me deciding that if i step out of line that I’m damned forever. It really is a freeing feeling.
The Mr and I are taking a vacation to visit my grandparents up in Hagermen, Idaho. Its a small little town with less than 1,000 people. I love this town, but with all small towns its very religious. My grandparents are religious so we’ve been keeping quite with our own beliefs. Its a lot better than what i expected. I was honestly worried that they would pray at every meal and they would ask us to say a prayer and have to deal with that awkward situation. But there hasnt been any of that. Anyways this isnt the topic of this post…
On the 8 hour drive up to here we started listening to Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion”. I LOVE this book! Every single point he brings up makes total sense! The thing he says about kids is fantastic. He says kids should not be refered to as ‘a christian/mormon/jew/etc child’ they should be reffered to as ‘a child of christian/jew/etc parents’. Kids are to young to know what religion they choose to be. They should be able to choose what they believe in when they are old enough to understand whats happening. Religion uses the scare tactic with kids. It also allows adults to push the “dont you dare question adults/higher being” so a adult tells a child “you are christian and thats what you will be forever”. The child doesnt question and thats it. If they get older and no longer believe their religion its hard to accept breaking free from what they’ve been brought up in. No one tells the child “its ok the explore your options. Its ok the question your beliefs”.
To me this is sad. When we have kids, we will tell them its ok to believe in something different than what we believe. It allows the child to become who they want to be. It gives them the choice. By not forcing them into a religion allows them to actually be a child and to not grow up to fast.
If our child wants to go to church then we’ll take them. If they later decide that they do believe in a god then we will support them. Its just the same thing we would do if they come up and tell they are gay. We’ll still love and support them. There are much worse things they could tell us than their religious beliefs or their sexual preferance.
I do encourage everyone to read The God Delusion wheither they are atheist or religious. It will make you think about your beliefs. I doubt anyone who is religious will read this book,but i would hope that they would.
Ok here we go. I’m coming out the the facebook world. I made it all ‘official’ by changing my religious status to Atheist. So by the rules of internets if you say it on facebook it’s official right? (lol) And today I really wanted to post something here and publicly announcing the new post on my regular newsfeed as apposed to just posting on the wall of the Reno Freethinkers group page. (Man it’s really ridiculous how seriously we take facebook. It’s embarrassing!) Anyways after some wine here it is….
I’m an Atheist.
Don’t worry I wont bash your religious views just because my beliefs have changed. And just because I believe something different than your theist views doesn’t mean that I will stop respecting you. Which in turn I would hope you would still respect me just the same. I support my friends beliefs even if I don’t believe them myself.
Everyday I keep it hidden the more I feel like it’s eating me away. This wasn’t a light or fleeting decision. I’ve thought about this for a while and I didn’t realize it until a few months ago. So I would ask you to please don’t pray for me or try to convince me that I’m wrong. I don’t do that to you so please respect that. I don’t believe in a heaven or a hell so please don’t tell me that I’m doing to hell just because I don’t believe the same thing as you.
I’m no different, I don’t have a desease or koodies, so there is no need to keep away from me. I wont raise my kids to be devil worshipers (because I don’t believe in the devil) but I will raise them to be intellegent and allow them to make their own decisions as far as their beliefs.
I know I’ll be nervous as soon as I post this onto my facebook, but I’ll get over it and I’ll feel better. If you can’t accept my decision and want to try to ‘condemn’ me to hell or tell me I’m wrong then you don’t have to read my blog or you can just ignore me or “defriend me” (oooohhhh nooooo!…please).
Just keep in mind that Atheists want respect just as much as Christians/Jews/spaghetti monster/etcs want respect.
So cheers to you all. I’m celebrating my out-ness (I know it’s not a real word) by drinking some more wine (or beer) and watching tonights Nightline with James Randi showing that all psychics are fakes.
Here is my official scarlet letter! I’m damn proud of it!
The True Story of Abraham and Isaac – Friendly Atheist
This is soooo fantastic!! The story of Abraham and Isaac is crazy to me. Why would someone kill their own son just because a voice told them to? I wouldn’t! To hear voices telling them to kill someone is called Schizophrenia.
Plus why would a ‘loving’ god make you kill your own flesh and blood just to prove your devotion to it? That isn’t loving at all!!
In my opinion god is very much bipolar. He should really get that checked out and get on some medications to mellow out a bit.
If god is a woman, maybe she’s just PMSing and Abraham did something to really piss her off and told him to kill his own son.
Or maybe it was one of those funny dares between good friends of “You wont kill your son right now…” and Abraham was like “haha you wanna bet? watch this!” and then god yelled down “No I was just kidding! i didn’t think you would actually do it! wow dude…”
Again why would a god tell you to kill your own child? Maybe god just needed a ego boost and needed to be reassured that people loved him so he went to the extreme.
Well whatever his reason was still wont make me believe in him again.
Happy Monday everyone!
