People who have made the pioneer woman's cold noodle salad, would it be crazy to make it 24 hours before serving? I have already sliced up most of the veggies, but have not cooked noodles or put the dressing on.

My atheism has become more hardline over the past year. I've found my tolerance for religious people has become strained. It's kind of isolating.

My atheism has become more hardline over the past year.

Why do you suppose that is?

I think my atheism has intensified in recent years, but pretty much just the nutjobs I read about on political blogs piss me off.

I really don't discuss my atheism that much with my friends. And I'm still not out to my family about it.

Me too, Allyson. But one of the very best things about living in Brooklyn is that there are a LOT of other atheist Jews around. (Granted, there are also a lot of ultra-orthodox Jews around. But they mostly keep to themselves.)

Preakness winner - relaxing after the race.

Do you think it's in response to the craxy from the religious right that gets craxier all the time?

But not us, right?!?! Loves on athiest buffistas.

For me, it was just a matter of turning 30 and letting go of a bunch of mental litter I'd been carrying around. Agnosticism was one of many things I finally discarded.

Pantheists represent. I am one with all the universe and all humanity, and man, part of me is freaking CRAZY, yo.

These days, close-mindedness in general pisses me off more than religious nutbagerry. It's the climate-change denialism, the conservatives who won't face reality but instead engage in magical thinking about the budget, etc., and the whole anti-science thing on the right (and somewhat on the left, but the political effects of that are nowhere near as bad).

Sometimes I think we're just too stupid as a species to survive. We evolved to deal with short-term threats, and it seems we as a nation (and world) just can't prepare for the long-term threats.

Anyway, just rambling here....

I was raised Southern Baptist, H was raised Byzantine (not Roman, not orthodox, yet another offshoot) Catholic. We were both indeterminate when our kids were growing up. I wanted them to have a childhood grounding in the Christian faith because it had been comforting for me in confusing times as a child, because it gave me something concrete to rebel against in adolescence, and because having some knowledge of both Old and New Testaments gave me a comparison point when exploring and discovering other religions. H was in full rebellion against any organized religion at the time, and when StE, at 9, objected to spending his Sunday mornings in church, H told both kids they didn't have to go.

Both of them retained those Sunday School teachings into their teens and twenties. I've seen and heard both of them counsel a peer in religious confusion from a place of compassion, with a broader overview. I've seen them take an aggressive street evangelist down verbally in scripture quotage. One classifies himself as a Zen Jedi, the other was a compassionate a-theist when he married a woman who couldn't tell you what the Christmas story was. He was a moral, ethical man who died with no particular faith.

His ex has since married a succession of fundamentalists (it's about the only religion available in the wide place in the road they call a town), and now, though she hasn't formally been "born again," she's working hard to present that public appearance. One grandson has bailed at 17, the ten-year-old is under forced indoctrination. He's trying hard to remember the benevolent open-heartedness he remembers in his dad, but it's difficult. The ex remembers that I was a practicing pagan when last she knew me, and she knows StY is no Christian, either. So she's being extra militant about what we can and cannot discuss with the kid. We're not to tell him different than what their church says, not to provide alternate information, or food for thought. And she can keep us from seeing him, for the next five years, at least.

Religion. I don't think it means what it was originally supposed to mean. Rather than worship and an expression of gratitude and an umbrella of charity to the less fortunate, it's become another means of divisiveness and an excuse for treating people we don't like, or who don't agree with us, badly.