Do Atheists Grieve?

Over the weekend the Denver secular community lost an ally, a friend, a good man. He was an astonishing man who cared about his wife, his dog, and his friends. I met him too late and only got a small portion of his good nature, humor, and ingenuity. He will be missed.

I got the news of his passing while leaving work Monday afternoon. I happened to look at my email before shutting down my office computer for the night. I had to sit in my office chair and sob for a few minutes before I was able to compose myself and keep it together to walk out and drive myself home. My coworkers did not notice a thing. Which is what I wanted. No one likes to cry at work.

The next day I was speaking with a coworker who has become a close friend. She is a Christian. We have a good friendship in and outside of work. We have a different opinion about religion and that's all. We have always been able to speak about religion without it turning into an argument. Not being familiar with much about religion other than her own, she uses me as a way to understand other religions as well as secularism.

When I told her about losing my secular friend she asked me, "Do atheists hold memorial services? Do they grieve like everyone else?"

My initial response was, "Yes, of course!"

But, now I wonder. Do we really grieve like everyone else? Sure, we become sad. We cry. We celebrate their life. We get mad about the stupid situation of death. But, we don't justify it the way others do.

Many times growing up, I remember being told that people die for God's reasons. He needed another angel, he had a different plan that we did, it was their time to go to heaven....whatever. I heard them all. Christians are able to comfort themselves with all these ideas of their loved one being in a better place. They believe that they will be able to see them again in heaven.

I don't get that luxury anymore. There is no way for me to be able to tell someone after they die how I really feel about them. I won't ever get to see them again.

Since I became an atheist, I feel like my connections with people are more real. I feel more inclined to make genuine friendships. My relationship with my SO is very strong. I feel like I don't have time to make false friendships. I don't have room to spare for feelings of hatred. The connections I have with family and friends must be real.

This short life is all I have. I don't get another chance and I don't get a reward in the afterlife. My reward is what I make of it here and now. I have a great group of friends and we go on adventures together. I have few best friends with whom I can share anything. I have older friends from whom I can gain advice. I have younger friends I can pass guidance on to. I have a wonderful SO with whom I can be challenged by, be encouraged to grow, and be silly in love.

So, yes. We grieve. We feel loss. We feel anger. We rejoice in the brief, but wonderful, time we had with someone. We never forget. But we don't take comfort in fairy tales. We take comfort in each other.

We have to. Now is all we got.

I'm not surprised but I do feel bad.

Weeks ago there was a big scandal about the cheater's website, Ashley Madison, data being hacked. Thousands of names, addresses, emails, and account information for its users were obtained by a group which threatened to release this information to the public.

I found the whole situation funny, yet unsettling. What grown, consenting adults do in their spare time is none of my business. There are lots of things people do that I would never do. Have an affair? Nope. Get drunk in bars and bring home a stranger? Not in a VERY long time. Go to church? Never again.

My only issues were that , one, some people are going to get really hurt with this. For a person in a monogamous relationship to cheat, that's one thing. But, what if the cheater picked up a disease and spread it to their partner? What if they got pregnant or got someone pregnant? That seems like a lot of heartache. Personally, I wouldn't want to go through it nor would I want a loved one to go through it.

My other issue is the whole idea of this website getting breached. It sounds like a scary security issue. We recently had the Home Depot and Target credit card information hack. It seems like it's a rising trend that online security is becoming more of a problem.

Today, however, came the not-so-shocking news that Josh Duggar, from the recently-cancelled TLC show 19 Kids and Counting, had an account on the Ashley Madison website. For years.

Here is the story from Raw Story:

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/josh-duggar-admits-to-porn-addiction-and-being-unfaithful-to-wife-i-have-been-the-biggest-hypocrite-ever/

I, at first, reserved judgement on this one. The family has had a lot of controversy recently with the learning of Josh's teen molestation scandal. So, I wanted to make sure I heard more information before I wrote about it or took it too seriously.

Josh put out a statement this afternoon addressing it and it seems to be a true story.

All I can say is that I'm not surprised. The church I grew up in always called us hypocrites, undeserving worms, and all other sorts of things a 4th grader shouldn't even be aware of. We were constantly being told that we were sinners, our bodies were not for ourselves, and the devil would try to tempt us into doing wrong things. By being able to call ourselves such hurtful things, we were able to accept Jesus more easily. He was the only one who would truly love us regardless of our sins. To err was to be human. Once we did wrong we were then able to ask for forgiveness.

That's what our church wanted. They wanted us to need Jesus.  So they made every natural instinct we had into something vile and dirty. They made us ashamed of ourselves and our natural desires.

I can only assume that Josh was taught nothing about his body. Only that his urges and sexual curiosity were shameful. Am I condoning his actions, both as a teen and now? Of course not. I was taught the same bullshit and I never once tried to molest anyone. Nor am I a cheater. However, I had the advantage of having outside resources and education away from the church.

I'm only trying to say that, once you make something taboo, people have a tendency to be drawn to it. I believe that's what happened to Josh. He became curious, hated himself for it, and tried to condemn it as much as possible publicly. He worked hard to not only make it shameful to himself, but to make it shameful to everyone.

In the end it caught up with him.

I do feel sorry for his family, though. In all honesty, I think the family tried to do the best they could. Isn't that what all families try to do? The best they knew was through their faith. These people truly believe in their god. And they were trying to do the best they could with their holy book. The problem isn't always with the people who believe, it's with the things they believe.

What's made this worse is that Josh and his family will cling tighter to their own personal cross. They will wail harder about how we need Jesus all over because he apparently missed a spot. The Christians will be reminded that even the best of them can be reached by the devil. I guarantee this will somehow become an internet censorship issue. At the very least, it will be traced back to abstinence only sex-ed. Just watch.

We will also get to hear about how this is being blown out of proportion by the liberal media.  Fox News won't touch it. I can't wait to hear what my conservative family and friends have to say about it- if anything at all.

My heart hurts for the family but not my head. My head thought, "Well, it's about time!"

Planned Parenthood was there for me

About 12 years ago I walked into a Planned Parenthood in Chicago. I was scarred and slightly annoyed.

I was told that only whores go to Planned Parenthood. Except now I was going.

Maybe I was a whore.

I was told that if you were responsible enough to have sex, you should have been responsible enough to take care of a child.

What horseshit.

I was visiting my then-boyfriend at Loyola University.  So, of course, I was staying with him in his dorm room.

The condom broke.

We were both scared. We were 18. Both of us freshmen at our universities. He, in Chicago and I was in NOLA. We had dated throughout high school. This was to be our 'goodbye' trip. I came up to see him once more before we both moved on with our lives. There was no way either of us wanted a pregnancy.

He found a PP location online and off we went. I was scared that there would be protesters screaming at me. I had heard of them being there. I was taught growing up in the church that they were there to protect the unborn babies. They were the ones doing God's work in the trenches.

There was no one. Thank goodness.

We walked into the clinic, filled out some forms, and were quickly taken into an exam room. The doctor who saw me was very helpful and understanding. She asked me questions that I had never been asked before. Allowed me to ask as many questions as I needed. Even my boyfriend had some questions, which she happily answered. She explained basic biology to me that I had never heard before. She wrote me a prescription for Plan B.

And that was it.

I went to a local pharmacy and filled the prescription. No problems whatsoever.

I'm not sure if I would have actually become pregnant or not. But, because of Planned Parenthood, I didn't have to worry about it. So many women don't have to worry about it.

Women and men alike go there for contraceptives, STD checks, education, screenings, assault and rape help, and so much more. And, yes, abortions. 3% of what PP does is abortion services.

In my home state of Louisiana there are currently two PP clinics. Neither of which perform abortions. Another location is under construction in NOLA. It was recently firebombed. Yay for religious nuts!

Governor Jindal is trying his damnest to cut Medicaid funding to PP just so he can stop abortions from happening in his state. Will he also try to cut Medicaid funding to other clinics for some other unpopular reason? I'm sure this is all about 'women's health' and not his presidential campaign. Of course...

Abortions are not popular with certain groups of people but it is legal. And, it's legal for a reason. It's legal to protect women from back-alley abortions with unsanitary tools. It's legal to stop survivors of rape and incest from being continually victimized by being forced to carry an unwanted child. It's legal so that a woman who needs a life saving procedure can do so without being sent to prison.

It's legal because it's my fucking body and I have a right to it.

Corpses have a right to their body parts. No one argues this. I can write in my will that even though there are desperate and dying children who could use my healthy organs, they can go fuck themselves because I'm going to rot in this coffin intact. No one would say a word. In fact, many 'pro-lifers' would fight to the death my right to be able to do that.

But, while alive, I better not get pregnant and try to abort. My body is nothing but a vessel for this little bundle of cells. Once it's born, no one will give a shit about it.

Am I saying that I really want to go out and get pregnant just so I can get an abortion? Of course not! No one WANTS to get an abortion. No one is running around screaming, "YIPPEE! I get to have an abortion today!" That's absurd.

But, please, let's all de-fund an organization that is trying to prevent abortions in the first place. Let's de-fund a group of dedicated doctors and nurses who are trying desperately, with limited resources, to keep poor families' heads afloat. Let's pretend that abstinence only education is actually working.

The more you prevent the less panic we will have in the future. I really wish more people would look past the veil of their religion and see the actual culture. We need Planned Parenthood. Our people cannot afford our expensive medical system. We cannot afford more children on the welfare system. We cannot afford to pretend there isn't a problem.

You want less abortions? Try allowing us to actually prevent pregnancies.