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For a while, I used to hope something would change my mind. I’ve fantasized about finding religion in some romanticized way, like those washed up actors who suddenly have a mid-life epiphany. They spout Bible verses like everything finally makes sense.

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I am the only one of my friend group that is still a virgin at the ripe old age of nineteen.

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You’re at a friend’s or significant other’s house for dinner, and you hear “Ok, time to say grace!”

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The religious and the not-so-religious or not-religious-at-all, tend to be equally condemning.

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Atheists are smarter.

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19. If someone is making an effort to ignore you, he is not ignoring you.

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There will be a Christmas tree, yes, but it will be called the Slowly Dying Conifer. Why the Slowly Dying Conifer? Well, the Slowly Dying Conifer serves to remind us of the terrible truth of our lives: we did not ask to be here, but here we are.

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To know evolution is to know the story of life on earth, and to know the scientific story of life is to feel connected to the world as you never have before.

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I am descendant from apes, this is true, but I am nogorilla, and in that light I admit I am the descendant of religious folk but am no longer a believer. Religion is my coccyx bone, and the fact that its residual echoes choose to surface during moments of passion is something I have come—pardon the pun—to relish.

“

“Vow” – the first song off Garbage’s 1995 self-titled debut – came on. When Matt and I first met, we had bonded over our mutual childhood love for Garbage – and how much we (without even a shred of irony) continued to enjoy them. We sang along, loudly, until Matt slammed the volume button and turned to look squarely at me, his face lit up with one of the biggest grins I’d ever seen.