Am I offending you?

Charles and I were fortunate enough to spend the last week and a half visiting with some family from Arizona that we haven't seen in years. It was a great time, and we spent each night talking and laughing into the wee hours of the morning. It was everything a family visit should be - laughter, embarrassing stories revealed and a little bit of good old fashioned family drama.

One night as we sat around the table exchanging stories from the years past, I recounted a story of mine from elementary school where a friend told me I would be going to hell if I didn't attend her church. Even at the time, I remember thinking that was absurd; surely God couldn't send everyone else in the world besides the 100 or so people who went to that church to Hell. Hell simply wasn't big enough!

As I was telling the story, Charles's Grandmother told me I shouldn't tell the story because it was offensive. I immediately felt terrible for offending, but at the same time I didn't understand how the story was offensive. Is it offensive because it highlights a Christian behaving badly, or is it offensive because anything that mentions Christianity in a negative light is offensive, or is it just plain offensive to talk about Hell flippantly?

This is what I struggle with the most in admitting that I am Atheist. The fear that I will offend others without even realizing I am being offensive. I am a very non-confrontational person, and I despise pushing my beliefs on others. This is the main reason I haven't told most of my family and friends that I am Atheist, but at the same time I find it unfair that I should be silenced because I have a belief that is in the minority.

 I feel like I am in a constant battle of the person I am in my private life, and the person I am in public and it's exhausting. I feel like I'm starting to ramble, so I will end this post here; but my question is where do we draw the line between being proud of your beliefs and being offensive?

Naughty Blogger

I've been a naughty blogger lately, and have seriously neglected this blog. We've had family visiting for the past couple of weeks, and general summer relaxing have gotten in the way of me being productive. However, I promise that I will be blogging every day this week talking a little bit about my fear of offending others with my beliefs, married life and a little bit about the doggies. Thanks for being patient, and I hope you stick around!

A little Peanut Lovin for your patience. (Yes, I realize it looks like we aren't wearing any pants in this picture; I assure you we do have shorts on!)

Why Darwin Fish?

I'm sure people wonder, why the name Darwin Fish out of Water? The truth is, it came more from a joke than anything else. Charles and I were out driving one day, when we were cut off by a vehicle with one of these lovelies on it...

and when I got done using some four letter words and laughing and the irony; I told Charles I wish they made Darwin fish. He then proceeded to inform me that I live under a rock, and they do in fact make quite a few varieties of Darwin fish. In case you were under the same rock as me, here's a few examples...

 Obviously, I told Charles we needed to get some ASAP because they were awesome, but sadly he reminded me that we live in central Indiana; and a Darwin fish would either get our car keyed or us shot. He also threw in that quite a few family members would probably stop talking to us if we rolled up with the ol' Darwin fish. I told him he was right (he gets a few every now and again) and forgot about it.

Then a few months later, I decided I wanted to blog about being an atheist living in Indiana, but I couldn't think of a good name. Charles suggested Darwin Fish out of Water, reminding me of my secret desire for a Darwin fish on the car and it stuck.

So, that's it, a little road rage and a name was born.

Who is Emma?

Hi! I'm Emma!

This is Charles,

We kind of like each other.

No, these are not our real names; due to the extremely religious and conservative population of our area we don't feel confident using our real names and keeping our careers. Sad, but true; womp womp.

As we've established in the previous post, we are those crazy devil Athiest people you hear all about on the 10:00 news. We like to do crazy sinful things like watch sports, play with our two naughty dogs, listen to good music and attempt to make it up to watch Hannibal on Thursday nights. I know, crazy buisness!

Truth is, we're boring, very boring; in fact we love boring! Our idea of a perfect Friday night is ordering Chinese take out and renting a red box movie that we will inevitable forget to return until the next Friday night. We hope that you will enjoy following us through our boring life adventures on this blog.

In the future we will post more about ourselves, what we do for a living, where we are from and how we became atheists, but for now we just wanted to say a quick hello and get to know our readers a little better.

So tell us...

1. What is your idea of a perfect Friday night?
2. Are you a member of any religious institution, or are you a darn dirty atheist like us?