Atheists UNITE!

Welcome to The Atheist's Log. The goal of this blog is to become a repository for personal stories and thoughts about day to day life as an atheist. The idea (and the name) came from a blog some of my friends started called My Vegan's Log. If you haven't got the pun in the webaddress yet, you'd better head on over to their first post, where they talk about its punny glory. The other inspiration for the blog came from the following experience:

I'm working as an intern at an Air Force base over the summer, and on my second day we're getting our government driver's licenses. The man who is showing us around asks us, out of the blue, whether we have accepted Jesus as our lord and savior. The other intern, a Christian, says yes, leaving me in the awkward position of expressing my unbelief to two people I've just met. Thankfully, I've recently decided that I'm just going to be completely open about my atheism to everyone. I say something along the lines of, "Uhhh, actually I'm a total atheist, hehehe..."

He replies something like "Hopefully you'll change your tune" soon enough. As he goes on to talk about how Jesus came to him and changed his life, I'm standing there thinking "This is a federal government facility and we are all government workers on the job... shouldn't I be safe here?" Apparently not. The guy was actually really nice, and after we got our licenses he told me how much he respected that I was straight with him about my Atheism. As a strategy to avoid further preaching, I simply started talking about anything and everything, from my experiences with Hinduism in India to those with Catholicism in Mexico. I felt a mixture of empathy, dread, awkwardness and anger after the experience, and wished there was a place to share it.

How many other people have a story like this? Lets get blogging!