BROADCASTS.com

b"Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com.\\nThe Library: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/library/\\nS4E7 TRANSCRIPT:----more----\\n\\xa0\\nYucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host, Yucca.\\nMark: and I mark.\\nYucca: And today we have an interview with a member of the atheopagan Society Council, Robin.\\nRobin: Hello. Thanks for.\\nYucca: So Robin, we were just saying right before hitting record, we realized you are the first interview that we ever had on the podcast. So way back in the early days, you came and joined us, and so we've got you back again. So welcome. So even before the atheopagan Society formed, I think.\\nRobin: I think so. I, I think it may have been pre pandemic or early pandemic, so, but wild, amazing times,\\nYucca: Yeah, So welcome back. We're really excited to have.\\nRobin: Thank you.\\nMark: Yeah. So, well, let's just dive right in. Why don't you tell us something about yourself and your journey to getting to atheopagan and within it. Just kind of what, what's your story been there, Robin?\\nRobin: Yeah. So I grew up, my family is kind of like nominally Catholic. But I realized pretty early on that that was just like not gonna be for me and decided. I was an atheist. But so like nature and going out into nature always played a really big role in my life. We were lucky enough to have this like little patch of woods at the back of our yard that it was technically our neighbors, but they didn't care that we played back there.\\nAnd so we just spent hours and hours playing in the woods. and my grandfather was really big into birding and he took us out looking for looking for birds. And then later on we got involved in like Boy Scouts, girl Scouts, me and my brother. And our parents decided to get involved too and volunteer with them.\\nSo we just went camping a lot and spent a lot of time outside. And so I really just always had that connection to nature and. One day in high school I walked into homeroom and my best friend was reading this book about Wicca. It was Anne Mara's Green Witchcraft, and I was intrigued. And I think some of that was just like, you know, it's like the forbidden thing, , like I'm willing to admit that it was, part of, it was just that like, Ooh, witchcraft.\\nMark: Great. When you're a teenager,\\nRobin: Exactly. Yeah. And. The other things that really appealed to me was that it was based in nature in the seasons and cycles of the seasons, and it was also very feminist, which coming from a Catholic background was just so refreshing. And so, I spent a couple years off and on kind of trying to be the stereotypical pagan.\\nultimately, that didn't really work for me either. And so I kind of went back to being nothing or being atheist again. But occasionally I would feel this like desire to, you know, light a candle meaningful in, at a meaningful moment or I, I ended up just kind of feeling like, like I wasn't pagan, I wasn't fitting in.\\nBut I also felt like a really bad atheist, so my, my cognitive dissonance was pretty high. So, and it finally just came to a head for me and I realized like I really wanted this sense of spirituality but one that would still balance with science. So I. For some reason decided the best way to figure this out was to start a blog and start blogging about it. And then I took a quiz on Beliefnet and they were like, Hey, you're a, you're a secular humanist.\\nAnd I said, cool. What is that? I had no idea what it was. What like secular, like I knew humanism from studying history, but I didn't know what a secular human witness was and didn't take very long. I started googling like humanist, pagan, and kind of stumbled onto this community, and it was, it was such a great moment.\\nJust like the sense of joy and relief, finding that like I wasn't the only person thinking like this.\\nMark: Hmm.\\nRobin: So it was, it was incredible finding that. And another thing that has been really amazing being part of th"