Websites for Atheist Teenagers

May 20, 2008 By Guest Contributor 16 Comments

Colin M in the Forums writes:

I was wondering if anyone knows of any websites specifically geared toward atheist children and/or teens. It seems like a good chance for children to talk to like-minded people from all over, and share their stories & questions with each other… and most importantly feel a sense of belonging.

There are tons of such sites for Christian teens, Jewish teens, Muslim teens, etc… blogs aren’t what I’m looking for; more a place with community / forums / support / etc.

Any suggestions for Colin?

If you are a teen atheist, which websites are you visiting?

(Umm… please disregard the absolute creepiness of the previous sentence.)


[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]

Filed Under: General 16 Comments
  • mike

    Well I’m 18, if that counts. Mainly I visit Badastronomy.com, Deusexmalcontent.com, cectic.com, rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com, and mikesweeklyskepticrant.blogspot.com. They’re not all entirely religion, or lack thereof, related but they generally deal with reason and science. They’re also not teen oriented but I’ve always objected to the concept that teenagers are somehow incapable of carrying on an adult conversation.

  • Ron in Houston

    Hemant

    You’re funny. I didn’t think of that last sentence as creepy until you said it. You’re a teacher right? Maybe you’re just overly sensitive to appearances because especially in context that sentence wasn’t creepy at all.

  • http://feveredintellect.blogspot.com Viggo the Carpathian

    Hemant,

    You conjured a mental image I didn’t need… yikes.

  • http://josephbales.com Joey

    The Rational Responders have developed a site called Free Thinking Teens. I am not a teen so I don’t visit it, maybe someone else can comment on it.

  • http://www.wordsfromtheway.com/between-the-trees Jake Meador

    Doesn’t beliefnet have a site for secular teens? I used to frequent the Christians teens board in my fundamentalist days in hopes of converting someone… Never worked out… probably a good thing.

    Anyway, it might be worth looking into although I could easily see it being a place where Christians troll around looking for converts. Worth a try though.

  • Caroline

    I’m a teen and this is the only place I know to go. Not much for socialization, but I feel like I get a good example of how to act as an atheist.

  • Julia

    I’ll be honest, I sort of don’t understand the question. I’m no longer a teenager myself, but I considered myself an atheist from a pretty young age, and I never really felt compelled to join societies or clubs about it. I never really understood what religious kids did in those clubs — sit around and go, “Yup, we sure are all [religious adjective] in here”? I guess they could at least have meetings to discuss and study their holy texts, a few of my high school friends were involved in a weekly teen Bible-study/discussion group… but it’s harder to organize a meeting like that around a lack of something. At any rate, I never personally felt the need to have support in my atheism.

    So why do I read all these atheist blogs now? I started reading blogs about science, and blogs that those ones linked to often, and it turned out — shocking, really — that a lot of the people debunking creationism/ID or writing about opposition to vaccinations or explaining other rational scientific points of view just happened to also be atheist.

    I don’t mean to be passing some sort of judgment on Colin. I just say this as background for the advice I’d give, which is to seek out communities based on your interests and hobbies, if you’re having trouble finding atheist-specific online communities. Particularly if you’re interested in science, as I am, you’ll end up meeting plenty of atheists and agnostics anyhow.

    I’m also curious if anyone here could clear up my confusion about what exactly atheist clubs and organizations are for in general. Are they basically just to say “Hey, we’re here too” when you read down the list of extracurricular clubs at a college? What do/did you get out of them?

  • http://talesofordinarygirl.blogspot.com Ordinary Girl

    For girls (and guys) there’s also Skepchick.org. They’re aimed at skepticism more than atheism, but both subjects come up.

  • Junior Mint

    Like Caroline, I’m a teen and this is the only site I visit.
    I like to think that I don’t need to be at a site mainly for teens, though. Most kids my age that I actually know are either insufferably ignorant mind-numbingly hypocritical.

  • http://www.tuibguy.com Mike Haubrich, FCD

    One site that I have had in my blogroll is Diary of a Teen Atheist. It is written by an anonymous teen woman in an undisclosed island country. She has some pretty good essays sometimes.

  • http://wanderingink.net Kris

    I’m a teenager, and I like to frequent the RichardDawkins.net and Skeptics Guide to the Universe forums. Not teen-oriented, of course, but as long as you have something intelligent to say, they’re quite accepting.

  • http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/ miller

    Come to think of it, I’m still a teen! I keep track of a wide variety of blogs including this one, Pharyngula, Bad Astronomy, Cosmic Variance, etc., but none of these are teen-oriented. I imagine it’d be difficult to maintain a teen-oriented atheist site. Think of the criticism you’d get, in addition to the criticism any atheist site gets.

  • Kori

    Mike, I don’t think there’s really an implication that teenagers can’t carry on an adult conversation so much as we often feel comfortable among people with whom we can relate – having a generational and religious community raises the probability for that to happen. *shrug*

  • http://liberal-debutante.com Katie Kish

    In about 2 weeks campus leaders across north america are launching a website that is totally geared towards ages 12 – …like 25ish or whatever. It’s all set go, just needs a couple more tweaks. It’ll have discussion boards for teens/young people to talk about atheism, and networking capabilities, and fun podcasts to listen to and a lot of opportunities for them to write their own articles on the blog section. It’ll be highly interactive and super fun..

    When it’s actually launched and working I’ll send the link a long, it’ll be a good stop for the younger crowd. (and a ton of work is going into it – so it should be real good)

  • Lee

    To me, it seems that any website for teens that has intelligent content and lacks religious messages would be for atheist teens.

  • http://www.atheistnation.net/ atheist nation blogger

    I go to atheist nation, where a teen well versed in logic and reason can find themselves at home. We talk about all sorts of stuff like science, religion, urban myths, etc. We swap de-conversion stories, have arguments with each other, attack trolls (but not well-meaning theists/deists), vent to each other about prejudice and dumb religious people, and talk about life in general. We’re a close knit family but we always welcome new members!