I’m a 23 year old (well, I will be on the 2nd Sept) from Cape Town, Northern Suburbs. I’m final year postgrad at UCT. Yip, next year is the big working-finding-a-place-budgeting-paying-bills-surviving year, provided I can get this bitch of a word count on my thesis up.
I consider myself an atheist and generic anti-theist. Some days I’m more anti-theistic than others, but I’m all atheist all the time. I prefer Sam Harris over Dawkins, but Hitchens over Harris. I struggle with humouring Creationists and have a tendency of playing down my angrier opinions about religion and God to keep the peace in my very Christian, half very Afrikaans family. I do not believe in astrology, ghosts, angels, demons, Heaven, Hell, a soul, tarot cards, or homeopathy. I used to think I was spiritual, but now I’m not too sure, and I just don’t have enough time to give it much thought right now in any case.
It was recommended to me (by SkepticSheep on Twitter, a great SA skeptic to follow) that I join this forum to maintain my sanity. So hi
Why on earth do you even entertain the thought of ATTEMPTING to humour creationists? I just run the other way screaming my head off, I like my sanity, and they have a way of popping my eyes out of my head with their version of logic.
I struggle with creationists too - but struggle I will because I want to keep their mental virus out of our schools and textbooks.
I know the feeling of having an afrikaans very christian family - mine prays for my ‘eternal soul’ on a regular basis and would rather have me be a satanist than an atheist :
Cape Town - can only be less religious than Pretoria!
welcome, kelltrill, jissie that haz a familiar ring to it ;D…we’z ouks like you capies stief hey…(sorry GCG I had to try but you’re the bestest). You’ll have some fun here as long as you don’t take yourself too seriously like some ouks >:D
@mdg: Sheepeeh! Glad to see you outside of the Twitter world. The 140 character limit can seriously get me down sometimes. Thank you for punting my blog for me. I hate to do it myself (besides on Twitter) because I have blog-esteem issues.
@Faerie: By humour I meant stay silent, I guess. You’re absolutely right, they’re a very painful breed to put up with. The moment someone even hints at their skepticism of Evolution I just want to throw Logic for Grade 1s at them. I know skeptics must be skeptical about everything, but at least I admit my prejudices, which I’m hoping you will all enable.
@Mordred: Aah, that sounds so familiar. “Devil’s child” is a common phrase I hear. When I was finishing my third year at Rhodes I came home one holiday with half of my blonde head dyed dark blue and shorter than the other side, a billion piercings and torn jeans. They told my mom to get me tested for drugs when I hardly even drink (no moral issues. I either don’t get around to it, couldn’t give a toss, or don’t like the taste.) Paranoia I tell you. I agree with you regarding Creationism in the schools. I did this post on the seedy religious underbelly of SA a while back. I have a very Christian friend and her stories have been freaking me out lately.
@lowercasegirl: I don’t know if my writing skills could be categorised as funky. I just write the way I speak most of the time. I’m doing my honours in Linguistics so the pressure is generally on to keep my spelling and grammar decent and presentable no matter where I am, but I feel like the forum environment is the one place I get to kick back and just talk whatever (Ha! I used bad grammar. Take that, establishment!)
Hi, Mintaka Thanks for the welcome. Whereabouts in the Eastern Cape are you from? I did my undergrad in Grahamstown and have quite a few friends in PE, so I have a soft spot for the EC.
Live on the PE side, sometimes blurring into Jeffrey’s. Visited Grahamstown often some years ago - mostly archery and festivals. Had good fun there - especially at the Vic - and so much so that I could seldom recall how we got back home!
Not to hijack your thread but I just have to share this. I studied at Tuks in Pretoria, law of all things. Had my hair very long, 5 piercings, and being into the metal/industrial scene my clothes closet tend to look like batman’s - all black. Came home one day to have my mom, dad and the ‘dominee’ waiting for me. I was accused of being a satanist and gay (because of the earrings). Moved out as soon as I could after that.
Pretoria tends to be very conservative IMHO, and if I could live in Cape Town I would!
I checked out your blog, great stuff! Looking forward to reading more of your musings.
@mdg: Sheepeeh! Glad to see you outside of the Twitter world. The 140 character limit can seriously get me down sometimes. Thank you for punting my blog for me. I hate to do it myself (besides on Twitter) because I have blog-esteem issues.
;D I’m only too glad to punt it, it’s a good blog and the more atheist/skeptic blogs there are, the better.
@Mintaka: Glad you liked Grahamstown. It was a nice place to study but it tended to get a bit small and stifling towards the end. You had the right idea I reckon, coming over on occasion. Sounds like you live in a great area. I might be moving to a place that is 5 mins drive from the beach in Milnerton next year, which I’m really looking forward to. I miss the sea, salt, and sun.
@@Mordred: Hijack away, I’m not always going to have interesting things to say, then I expect you guys to have my back That’s absolutely insane about your family. The majority of mine aren’t that bad, although if I’d have lived with some of them I can easily picture them reacting similarly. Wow. I’m actually going to take a while to process that story. I forget that people can still be so belligerently against anything slightly liberal. My English stepmom exorcised my brother’s room a few years back. She woke up one night screaming saying she could see a rotting corpse hanging outside her window and that she could smell it. Then she said that there was evil in the house (because her two badly raised kids were off their rockers at the time) and that all of this evil was coming from my brother’s room because of his computer game posters. So she had a priest in there to tear up and burn the posters and sprinkle holy water and pray etc etc. I wasn’t living there at the time, which is probably a good thing because I would not have been able to keep my cool.
I’ve never been to Pretoria, but from what I’ve heard it is very Afrikaans, and with that there seems to come certain narrow-minded, conservatist Christian values.
@Mordred: Ha! Well I guess we all have to find rebellious outlets that in some way doesn’t involve copious drugs, sex and alcohol in the house. Your parents should actually be thanking you
@cyghost: Thanks It’s a combination of the first four letters of my name and the last four letters of my surname.
Thanks for the welcome. Whereabouts in the Eastern Cape are you from? I did my undergrad in Grahamstown and have quite a few friends in PE, so I have a soft spot for the EC.