Conference is going well so far. Saw talks by Eugenie Scott, David Sloan Wilson, and some professors I’m interested in for grad school who were really nice. Also saw an awesome professor from Canada who gave his whole talk (titled Origins & maintenance of sex: The evolutionary joy of self sex) not wearing shoes (yay hippie evolutionists). Though the best thing by far is how often people giggle about creationism and Intelligent Design, how people joke about us all being heathens and atheists, how when people refer to religion or religious people they’re doing so as outsiders like religion is this weird cultural phenomena (instead of actually believing it)… For the first time, I am somewhere where I am an atheist and I am a part of the majority. I can’t explain how awesome that feels. Thank you, Evolution 2009.
Maybe one day I’ll feel this way all the time. Maybe I just need to move to England.
I'm an RE teacher in the UK. It seems to me that most people are agnostics (and the Christian God is the one they aren't sure about but don't want to rule out). It's a funny balance between people expecting me to be religious and being shocked when I admit to being an atheist.
(Actually the way it tends to work is that they say "what's your religion?" and I reply "I don't have any". They then get rather confused as to what that means. That's the most awkward thing for me. Not that they might be surprised by my athiesm, but that they find it confusing that someone might have no religion.)
I’m an RE teacher in the UK. It seems to me that most people are agnostics (and the Christian God is the one they aren’t sure about but don’t want to rule out). It’s a funny balance between people expecting me to be religious and being shocked when I admit to being an atheist.(Actually the way it tends to work is that they say “what’s your religion?” and I reply “I don’t have any”. They then get rather confused as to what that means. That’s the most awkward thing for me. Not that they might be surprised by my athiesm, but that they find it confusing that someone might have no religion.)