I have been “out” as an atheist for about eight years now and have lived with the associated consequences through the cut throat environment of high school, the holier than thou (excuse the pun) world on university and the politically correct arena of real life employment. Out of all those experiences it was the time at university that I found the need to explain and defend my position almost inescapable. Maybe it was the inquisitive and argumentative nature of students, but at school and at work the topic of religious belief has never really been an issue.
It was this thought that has inspired a series of articles that I am going to be releasing over the next few weeks. There are five in all, but I think that the final two will probably get posted as a single piece as I feel that the flow is better suited that way. So, for those of you that have been ignoring my posts recently due to the lack of real or meaningful content should start refreshing those RSS feeds and rechecking those bookmarks!
The article series is called Living as an Atheist and will hopefully highlight some of the issues that are faced by atheists when trying to apply the principles and ideas that tend to be associated with an atheistic world view to real life situations.
The first piece will be on what it means to be a young atheist in sixth form/college and then university. The main thesis is that the 16-25 age bracket is the key defining period in how an atheist will develop their wolrdview and what features of that worldview persist into life beyond education.
The second article is about university atheist societies and it is aimed to coincide with the anniversary of the official press launch of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies. The focus of this article will be on sustainability and leadership within the student community of an atheist society. This is a subject which I have been invited to speak on at the AHS Conference in Oxford att he end of February.
The third part of the series is an essay on working in a multi-ethnic environment and the clash of British capitalism and religious imperatives. The key points under exploration will include the compatability of the market system with Islamic ideas on trade and finance as well as the human element of actually working alongside adherants to a number of religions and how “office banter” can lead to difficult situations and damaging misunderstandings.
The fourth and fifth articles will be a short history of my own journey to atheism and then an in depth analysis into the development of my world view and how that is implemented both in my student world and my professional world.
So, keep your eyes peeled as I am unsure yet as to which day will be ebst for publication but will probably depend on when I need to kill the msot time at work over the next week.
Today I missed my alarm and ended up sleeping through our lunchtime A-Soc event – God of Emotions, something that I would never normally do. Now I do not want to excuse this by bringing up my sleeping problems, but I must admit that they probably played a part. A lot of people have made comments about my post on not sleeping (check out the Facebook page) and suggested a variety of ways to cope with the sleep pattern disruption. I am touched to see that so many people are concerned about my well being, a feeling that I have not always been privy to, and is on of the reasons that I maintain that the years spent at university are the best of one’s life, not school.
Just as a quick follow up to the last post I would like to say a few things. Firstly, insomnia is a condition that has plagued my teenage years, a condition that I pretty much could write the book on regarding cures and remedies. I think that over the years I have probably tried every known trick in the book to improve the quality and quantity of my sleep. I have come to the conclusion that whatever method you choose you have to accept the fact that it will work some of the time and not at others. I find that when trying say reading, or meditating you can get stressed about the fact you are not falling asleep and then you can’t fall asleep.
Anyway, back on topic, as I want to continue to talk about Atheist Week. Yesterday was the final day of Riley Smith activity and I thought it went OK, but not great. We only got a few people to come to Ask An Atheist (our give it a go session) but we got some realy good discussion going. The same happened at our evening debate on the positive and negative influence that Richard Dawkins has had on atheist thinking and actions. Although we never really came to a conclusion on that topic we delved quite deeply into what is faith and religion and whether we can ever really answer the philosophical questions we raise without them. All in all, I thought that this, along with Gijsbert’s talk yesterday were the highlights so far. Jerry Springer: The Opera is being shown tonight in Roger Stevens (LT23, 1900 if you are interested).
Then its London!
Saturday was the raison d’etre for me heading home for Easter. With Jon back from the Falklands and Dom and Beki up from London it was the ideal opportunity to relive some our youth.
Lunchtime saw us shake off our hangovers from the night before and fire up the barbeque for some lunch. The four of us were joined by Izzy and Nikki for some light refreshments and a few sausages and burgers. It was a glorious afternoon, good food and drink coupled with some lively company. We tend to get together a few times a year, but these BBQ’s tend to be well worth the effort. As the afternoon rolled on we headed our separate ways to get changed etc ready for our big night out.
I used the chance to go into Preston and pick up a new car stereo, one with a CD player and RDS – review to follow. Ended up at Izzy’s getting some CDs burned and came up with a plan to head over to Chester Zoo on Monday. Having got changed and ready I drove back over to Dom’s for the pre-party.
Joining Jon, Dom, Bekki and myself for this night of fun were Ash (Dom’s brother) and his girlfriend Jemma, Anja and Kirsty. We started off at Dom’s with a few drinks. The few drinks turned into many drinks and by 9pm we were getting ready to go into Blackpool. We have not been out in Blackpool as a crowd since we were at sixth form so we were all up for this night.
The taxi dropped us off at Schofield’s and we set off with the night. Drinks have definitely gone up since last I was in Blackpool – £20 for a round of 6 drinks! The tequilas were cheap though, so I got a round of them in! Walked up to Syndicate at about 11ish and after paying the princely sum of £10 to get in, we set about partying.
The rest of the night was somewhat of a blur, Jon and I were on the quadruple vodka and redbull’s! The music was funky house and the lights flashed a lot. It was a really good night, clubbing the likes of which I have not experienced for a good 5 years! Leeds has some good clubs but it just cannot compete with the size and atmospehere of the Syndicate. It may have been one of those nights that the fact I was with excellent company mean more than that quality of the environment, but still an excellent night.
Taxi and a kebab at 3am and we were back to Dom’s for some post-party drinks. Next thing I remember was waking up in Dom’s spare room. We fired the BBQ back up and had ourselves some BBQ bacon butties!
