My personal experience with relationships as I came out of religion.

When I left behind my religious beliefs about ten years ago I was at a loss at how to live in a number of ways. I had organized much of my life around bible studies, church, religious conferences, etc. I was even in the process of looking for a job as a youth leader after college graduation while I was in the middle of my doubting process.

Dating was particularly frightening to me. To be fair, I can't blame religion entirely on this situation. Brace yourselves for this revelation, but I was something of a socially awkward nerd in high school and thus didn't get a lot of dates. In fact this lack of popularity was one of the things that made me susceptible to religious conversion in the first place; I was lonely in high school and a ready made social group was a pretty attractive selling point for me.

Unfortunately, being socially awkward tends to create a feedback loop, especially in high school. You need experience in social situations to get over your awkwardness but high school students are not notorious for their willingness to forgive perceived social faux pas. I was actually the brunt of several jokes in high school where people wrote notes pretending to be from a female student who liked me.

I wanted to believe things would change when I got to college, but what I didn't realize was that my social situation was only part of the problem. I had been through enough negative experiences with the opposite sex effectively kill my courage to act on any attraction I felt towards most women I knew in college.

Of course my freshman year of college was when I got involved with a campus ministry and my "I kissed dating goodbye" came out. The author, Joshua Harris, goes a step further than the traditional positions on purity and dating within Christianity and suggests that people not kiss until they are married, and give god complete control of your dating life. He also advocates for more traditional dating rituals like asking a father's permission for dating and marriage, which I now recognize for the sexist nonsense that it is.

To be fair, a lot of Christians have criticized parts of Harris' approach, and for his naivety. After all he wrote the book in his early 20's while still single. However, excepting the whole no kissing rule most of the ministry leaders I looked up to in college echoed many of the same sentiments. Of course like Harris most of these leaders were in their 20's and either single or had only been married for a few years. Perhaps not the best people to take relationships advice from but like a lot of people early 20's we were full of fire and convinced that we could fix the worlds ills if only people would do things our way.

Looking back on this I realize that part of the reason I was so willing to buy into this argument was that even then I was terrified of dating, or perhaps more specifically I was terrified of asking women out on dates because of the rejection I had faced in high school. Perhaps without the specter of religion I would have gathered up my courage and asked more people out than I did in college or perhaps not. What I do know is that this approach to dating allowed me to justify my unwillingness to pursue relationships as being submitted to God's authority. If I was too scared to ask someone out I could rationalize it not being His will instead of just admitting that I had low self esteem.

I remember one situation clearly, one of the few times in college I decided that god had told me to ask someone out. I took action this time, abet nervously, only to be rejected. I spoke with a friend after this and expressed confusion because I knew god had told me to ask her out. (which I naively thought guaranteed  I would not be rejected) "If god told me to ask her out then why didn't he tell her to say yes," I wondered in this conversation. I look back on the response I got and realize it was one of the first times I harbored doubts about religion. My friend told me that perhaps god only gave me permission to ask her out, not to actually date her. Even at the time I remember thinking that seemed more like a rationalization than a sound conclusion.

Of course, I didn't pull a 180 on all of my sexual mores when I stopped believing, but suddenly I was left with the uncomfortable situation of choosing for myself. I had to decide if things like premarital sex were actually allowable, and if so in what contexts. I felt as if I was stuck between two worlds for quite a while, many religious people I knew would have thought I was pretty horrible for even entertaining that question, but I knew that most secular people out there had settled the answers to these questions when they were years younger. I felt out of place with fundamentalist Christians and woefully inexperienced with everyone else.

Even after I had settled most of these questions on a philosophical level to my satisfaction I was still left with several problems. First as I have previously shown I was still incredibly inexperienced with dating in general. Second I was doubly clueless when it came to the rules of dating outside of Christianity. I had spent years being told things about who non-religious people were, and what their motivations were. I knew enough to know that a lot of that stuff was wrong, but I had no idea what parts, or what the right answers were. I had no idea what an atheist woman wanted from a relationship or from sex, nor was a sure what I wanted from those things.

I was particularly afraid that any of the women I might date would be more experienced than me, both in handling relationships in general and sexuality.  What kind of person did i want to date or marry? My main requirement from a woman had been that she be a strong Christian. I had no idea what I was supposed to look for now. What kind of things did I want sexually? Would I be bad at it because I was inexperienced? Would I be dumped me because I was bad in bed? I had no answers to those questions. Luckily without the excuse that god would just provide a relationship for me I eventually pushed myself out there. Dating a few people gave me a better idea of what I wanted, and the realization that there were women who found me attractive and sexually competent built up my self esteem enough to get my out of that spiral of self doubt that started for in high school.

To be sure, when I first started dating I did have some bad experiences that I might have avoided if I had been more experienced, but that would simply mean I would have had those bad experiences a few years earlier than I did. It's rare that a person doesn't have some bad experiences, and in fact sometimes it is those very experiences that allow you to succeed in future relationships. Christian apologists often warn of the dangers of secular dating and premarital sex, but honestly from my perspective there are at least as many dangers and pitfalls in their solution. A little more than six months ago I met great woman through online dating, we are now engaged and have moved in together. If I followed the advice of my campus ministers I'd wager I'd still be waiting on "the one," or I would have rushed into marriage with first person who showed the slightest interest out of a desire for sex. Relationships aren't about some deity or mystical force fating you to be together, they are about people choosing to share a life together, and in my book the latter is far more meaningful than the former.

Fundamentalists suddenly offended by "under God" when pledge was recited in Arabic.

It seems I can still be amazed at the lack of self awareness fundamentalist groups can display.

Outrage as high school recites Pledge in Arabic saying 'One Nation Under Allah'

So to sum up, the principal of a school in Colorado encouraged some sort of multicultural program at his school. As part of this people were allowed to recite the pledge over the loud speaker at school other languages besides English. Spanish and French had already been used with no complaints. 

However, on the day in question they recited it in Arabic, which of course means that "God" was translated as "Allah," because that is the Arabic word for god and would be used by Arabs no matter what religion they belonged to. Unfortunately, our country is filled with those who are, shall we say, linguistically ignorant. Because of this, people in his school district have become angry, claiming that this is un-American and and promotes Islam.

What strikes me as funny is that I cannot count the number of times that I have had Christians tell me I was overreacting to things like the "under God" in the pledge or the "In God we trust" on our coins. When I suggest that I feel as though those of us who do not believe are not being treated equally as citizens with such things on our coins and in our pledges I'm told that I am "being too sensitive" or I'm making too big a deal out of it.  

I've often wondered how those same believers would react if they felt that someone was asking them to pledge allegiance to some god they didn't believe in. Of course I've asked, but I've never been able to get a real answer from them.  I suppose I have my answer now. 

If I thought it would do any good I would point out to them that if "under God" wasn't in the pledge in the first place this wouldn't have happened. This sort of thing is exactly why we should be keeping religion out of government in the first place.

A typical rant on Fox News about plan B.

Dr. Manny Alvarez goes on a rant about how the government is intruding into medicine by allowing 15 year old women to purchase plan B pills with no prescription:

He says that at 15 these women are still children, which, while true by cultural standards is, totally untrue by biological standards, which is they key and warns that 15 year olds will be unable to understand the medical warnings on the packaging. I guess he never stopped to ask if someone unable to understand medical warnings has any business being a parent, or to consider that pregnancy carries more health risks than plan B.

At one point he even suggests that next the government is going to suggest selling plan B to infants which makes me question his medical qualifications. He does know that infants can't get pregnant right?

It always strikes me as funny that the opposing side always manages to miss the most important point in these debates. The only teenagers who are buying plan B are ones who have had sex and are worried they might get pregnant from said sex. Teenagers have been having sex since always, and the average age of first sexual experience in the U.S. is about 16 years old. Abstinence only programs have never increased that age by more than 3-6 months. Making plan B easier to get will lower both abortions and teen pregnancy rates so it should be an easy sell to social conservatives who say they want those numbers to go down.

Unfortunately for us, social conservatives take an "our way or the highway" approach to moral issues. In their mind the there is only one valid way for these numbers to go down and that is by only having sex in a manner they find acceptable, which usually means within a marriage.  Any other way of making those numbers go down is cheating the system, and they would rather have pregnant 15 year olds than let us cheat the system.

Found an interesting note sent to me when I was a Christian.

I've been cleaning up for moving and I found a note that was sent to me back during my senior year of high-school by some fellow campers at a religious summer camp I went to.  I attended Methodist church in high-school and they would have us break into small groups, the last day of camp everyone in the small group got a note in which everyone else in the group and written things about you on it.

I was surprised this even still exists since it's from about 17 or 18 years ago. Clearly I am a very different person than these people knew me as.

Edit: Realized, after looking at the note more closely that this was actually from just after my freshman year of college at a camp called Kaleo. I would have been 20 at the time, so it's only 15 years old.

Anyway, thought you guys might enjoy this: