Meetup, Teaching, and Religion

I finally worked up the nerve to meet up with one of the other bloggers that I've been corresponding with since I started: Mike from Random Thoughts in My Life. Due to my sporadic use of this blog and limited visits to other blogs I don't really have much of a following, so I appreciate that Mike (and Aek as well) has stuck around. It was cool, and I'm glad I did it.

We talked a bit about his student teaching. Today the idea of teaching high school biology was pretty strongly on my mind. I had never been interested in it before because I figured I would want to teach students that actually want to be there. Now that the university level has soured in my eyes, I'm giving it another look. There are advantages to teaching high school age students too. They aren't as set in their personalities and life goals as a lot of college students might be, so you have the opportunity to affect their lives in a much more substantial way it seems (the smaller class sizes would help too). The disciplining might get old, but I suppose it depends on the class you have. I guess the number one thing that gives me pause is the job prospects . . . especially in this economy I know that high school teachers are having a rough time finding work. My area being science would no doubt be beneficial, but still . . .

I had another conversation with my cousin, mostly about our favorite subjects of current events and philosophy. But I did refer briefly to our previous conversation (basically that I was still reeling from it, haha). It was fine, no awkwardness. We are officially still cool, haha.

One aspect of my personality that I dealt with during my sophomore year of college is my spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof). At the time I lived with three Christians, so it was a good opportunity to evaluate where I stood on such issues. In the end I decided to identify as agnostic. I took it to mean that while I do not believe in God, I do not claim that there is no God either. Basically, I lack enough evidence to make a claim either way. If evidence were to be presented to me, I might change my position. I read something the other day (I forget where), that said that outspoken atheists are actually less likely to be elected than men who are openly homosexual. It's quite remarkable how religious the U.S. is, especially compared to other Western nations. The conflicts that arise between religion and modern society are something I find very interesting. In fact, it's been coloring my recent chosen reading material. I'm almost done reading Salman Rushdie's controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, which forced him to go into hiding after religious extremists in the Middle East condemned him to death for writing it. Next up is Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. In it, he supposedly makes an argument for why agnosticism is not a viable alternative to atheism, so I'm looking forward to seeing what points he makes.

Wow, I'm believing that election statistic more now. I feel more hesitant admitting my agnosticism/atheism than I do about my same-sex attractions, haha. What a crazy country we live in.