The Freedom From Religion Foundation is looking for videos about how you came out as an atheist. View the ones they’ve already got, and send in more!
This one takes a little more nerve than just saying you’re an atheist — you’re going to have to put your face to the message and explain why you’re a freethinker.
That reminds me, PZ. Whatever happened to your “why I am an atheist” campaign? Surely you didn’t run out of people submitting their essays to you?
But what if you never came out, just finally realized one was an atheist and was totally comfortable talking as one in casual conversations? errrr… I still haven’t told (nor talked like one to) my dear old Catholic mother, that I am one. I guess that would be my moment of coming out if I ever flat-out tell her so (I think she suspects, though). … I guess I failed to come out, I find this invisible closet quite comfortable.
The “Why I am an atheist” series ran into serious difficulties — as more accumulated, over time, more and more people were having second thoughts and were writing to me asking to have their entry deleted. When it got to be every day that I was getting requests to edit or remove the posts, I had to decide it wasn’t worth it any more.
Every once in a while, I still get requests like that. And I have to honor them, but man, if I’d kept it up, it would be overwhelming now.
Even better than a simple coming out video: reaction shots!
Oh wait, we already had that last week :(
But in earnest, it’s a bit disheartening that PZ had to take so many offline after the fact. Very telling, still a long way to go…
Yeah, it was unfortunate…but another factor was that putting their name on Pharyngula instantly made that the top link in any search, so people were dismayed when they were on job hunts and discovered that any googling of their name returned that godless liberal site.
Yeah, I get the second thoughts that people might have.
My hubby keeps fairly quiet because he works with some real RWNJs who are also creationists.
Since I’m no longer working, it doesn’t affect me as much, but I tend to keep quiet because we live in Texas and are surrounded by uber religious types. It disgusts me that the first thing that people here ask when they meet you is “Where is your church home?”
Sad, but understandable. If it means anything, I’m thankful that you published mine before you stopped.
It seee a weird, religion-centring framing to me – I was never in the closet about being atheist, so I have no ‘coming-out’ story to tell.
‘Seems’. It said ‘seems’ when I typed it.