Talking With Random Strangers - and - How Are People Finding my Blog?

First an update on my blog. I still keep track of my stats and quite enjoy it, even if some people think I rub the numbers in their face. Really I'm not. I'm betting 80% of my blog hits are due to the amazing pictures I put up. Either way, I also keep track of what Google search keywords bring people to my blog, though I do not know what pages. I can only guess based on the keywords. Here's some I've had in the past:

byu atheist
underground byu party group
jacking off byu jerking off boys jerking (etc.... - all in one search)

Here's some from more recently:
byu liberal facility
nerds are atheists
things going on at byu
cognitive dissonance for stay at home mom
do mormons date atheists?
hot atheists 2011 (obviously me)
mormon food storage (im glad this has moved to be one of the top results for people)
byu men who masturbate

So obviously atheists are nerds, we're happening, i'm hot, and lot's of people have a fetish for byu boy's who beat the meat. I enjoy looking up these search results, they make me laugh.

So I was having dinner with a friend and he asked if I was an atheist and two girls by us overheard him and decided to talk to us. Yes, no segue into that and barely any information about what happened prior to this but you don't need to know that. So one girl proceeded to talk about some unconfirmed miracle of a girl being impaled by a stick in the mountains last year on a 4-wheeler and how her guts where hanging out and her stomach was torn out and everything. Sounds horrible, and perhaps this all happened, but generally unconfirmed stories like this that I can't seem to find online anywhere are either hearsay or heavily exaggerated. I'm going with the latter. The women also was able to talk about what the paramedics were saying and giving some really good details which only leads more credence to the story being a fabrication of something real. Then she finished and left it at that implying, "so, how can there not be a god?"

I had wanted to say, "so because of this one situation you will believe in a Mormon God rather than any other and you will flippantly toss out all the times people do die from much less or are in miserable situations at this very moment, all over the world?" But I didn't cause I truly thought it would be pointless.

Which, I must say, you don't die from having your skin impaled. You organs are mostly just sitting around and are quite moveable if you don't have flesh to hold them together. I mean, I know someone who had part of their intestines come out and the doctors simply stuffed it back in a sewed him up. I also know that you don't need your stomach fully intact to survive for awhile, and my medically-interested gf confirmed that you don't need a stomach at all with proper procedures. Why didn't the girl bleed to death? I can't say except people somehow live having their limbs blown off, probably something to do with shock and other people around them trying to save their lives. Of course, this is all just ideas being thrown out and I decided not to.


Ends up the main girl use to be Catholic, went on about that for awhile and then brought it back to atheism. In the beginning it was made clear by both girls that even though they were drinking coffee they were both Mormon and knew it was true. I explained that I did not call myself an atheist alone, but rather an agnostic atheist, and then explained what that meant. The story girl mentioned a friend of her's who didn't believe in a god but thought the universe heard our thoughts or some such so I explained that he sounded like a pantheistic deist, though he probably wouldn't call himself that.

Story girl went on for a while, cause my friend is Catholic mind you, about how she didn't like confession but likes Mormonisms version of repentance (which baffled me while she sipped her coffee) and how she didn't like how non-Catholics thought they worshiped Mary and the saints. Then it came back to me about how I was quiet, which I said I was still debating if I should debate with her at all, if it would be worth it, to which I didn't allow her to respond but quickly asked why it was bad to not believe in a God as she had said that in passing during her stories.

She didn't feel she could back it up so she said as long as I believe the Golden Rule I'm good. Which I said "or any modification of it" and then explained that I don't believe any moral system works, morals from religion are self-serving and enforced through the risk of eternal punishments, and morals from an evolutionary standpoint also lead down perverse paths. I compared Jesus to some other moral thinkers of the time and prior, I still like Confucius. And I said that overall I don't think it matters, most people live ethically regardless, enough so for society to function though some do better than others, such as Sweden or Japan for completely different reasons.

Overall the conversation never approached "do you believe in God" but rather I tried to show her that her thinking was leading her down a path to believing atheism is bad. Both girls admitted to having been wild sex fiends partiers and drinkers and don't go to church but still believe in Mormonism. I may not be too far behind them on those things, but I believe my morals, by their standards, are far better than what they live. We shouldn't wait for a perfect person to tell us how best to act, we would wait for a long time, but I get annoyed when people somehow believe atheism leads to ruin. America has roughly 2% of the population being 2nd or higher generations of non-believers (where their parents or one of them were non-believers or 'devout' atheists.) And some foreign countries have been that way much longer. Some may say "the prodigal son didn't lose everything at once" but I view that as sick wishful-thinking. Annie Laurie Gaylor of Freethought Radio proudly states she is a 4th generation atheist. She's probably one of the most law-abiding citizens in America, lol, and continuously points out flaws of old Christian morals and present-day ones.

Regardless, it was fun to have the conversation though the story girl was a bit intense and made me wonder if we should even talk about it. Her, like some other girls (for some reason only girls) wanted to talk on FB but hasn't replied. Usually I present my reasons, which I pick and choose as there are many, for not believing in God. Often I think they are surprised to hear that I still don't know any atheists who KNOW there is no god and that deism or agnosticism are philosophically sound in my mind though I don't live by them.

I also realized that just about any Mormon will eventually resort to "I know it's true" when the argument starts asking for evidence rather than a stated view trying to find facts that support it. Also, that, like my Catholic friend, that though many theists say "I know" they still harbor doubts. It was a fun conversation. But I'm off now, time for an USGAY meeting. Oh, and today we had a heathen lunch on BYU campus where a half-dozen of us met up for a bit. And then I ran into 2 other atheists on campus. Very fun day on campus.