Hello, strangers! Well, that's what it feels like after being absent from here for so long! Going to school full time while working a job that generally consumes 60 hours of my week has been a
bit overwhelming. I'm not regretting a thing, though! It may be hard, but it's still fun.
Speaking of fun, Dixie is staying with me this weekend! No kids, but her little sister might join us. The highlight of the weekend should be our trip on Friday to get our very first tattoos! We designed them together, and we'll get the same design, but in different places. I'm a little nervous, but mostly excited. The reason I bring it up here is that the absolute best tattoo parlor in the area is an outwardly Christian business. Clearly, if I'm going to get artwork put on my body for the rest of my life, and on Dixie's body for that matter, I want it to be pretty amazing, and these people ARE truly amazing. Now, they do pretty much any design, and they will be doing our completely secular designs. But when you walk in this place, it's like walking into a church - BIG cross on the wall, tons of their own religious artwork. I am going through with it, but with some admittedly mixed feelings. I question whether I should be supporting a business that it outwardly religious. I have said in the past, and still hold, that if I were to get a tattoo related to Atheism, it absolutely wouldn't happen there. It would somehow tarnish the meaning of it. But this tattoo is about Dixie and I, it has nothing to do with religion in one way or another, and I tend to fall back on some more Objectivist views here, I think. They really are the best, and I'm making my choice based on their product and talent and not their religious affiliations. Funny that I never thought of this when buying pies from the Amish...
As for school, by the way, my religious studies class on the history of Christianity is one of the most fascinating classes that I am taking! One day, when the professor (who knows that I am an Atheist from some class discussions) asked the class of about 150 how many people have actually ever read the book of Leviticus after people seemed to be lost when she began discussing it. I was one of five people to raise my hand. She laughed and said, "So the ATHEIST has read more of the bible than the majority of the class and most of you said you were Christians. What a comment on the state of religion nowadays." It really is a little disturbing that many people devote their life to an idea that they never even attempt to fully learn. Of course, the more you learn about the history of religion, the more ridiculous it appears to be, so maybe that's an unrealistic expectation. Wait until we get to Joshua... Will they be surprised to find the utter violence and gore reminiscent of Americans' worst impressions of the Koran? How many people realize that the story of Joshua in the bible is the first documented Holy War? How do Christians who do know their stories feel about these holy Christian actions of killing scores of men women, and even innocent children as a sacrifice to God? It will be interesting....
S.A.M.
