Lord

I recently 'discussed' the issue of where the Power of Swear or Cuss words comes from - in my position of the subject I hypothesized that they were all based in religious dogma - and that they should have no meaning to a person who claims to be an Atheist.

Still, he was offended by the use of such a word towards him. He claimed that it was because of the intent behind the use of the word that caused the offense to be taken. I argued that was nonsense, he was an Atheist after all and so there was no contextual offense to be had, that it was because he had grown up and been surrounded by people who actually did take offense to it and due to that environment he responded to it as an offense.

Circle Widdershins

Absolutely. And they are generally the ones who are content with their own choices and who usually resist trying to convert others.

I have to disagree with this. I don't think every religious person ends up being exaggerated (if by exaggerated you mean dogmatic, fundamentalist missionary style) about their religion. Belief is such an entirely subjective thing and is unique to the individual. A person may have unshakeable beliefs, that != they try and convert others who don't share it.

Many, many people adopt a religion in the hopes of conforming to a society and what is prevalent/powerful in that society. Especially when you have political neo-conservatives seducing the (previously anti-political) fundamentalist Christian groups into politics, dragging their flocks behind them. When the population sees the amount of power being wielded by the politicians and their hand in glove attitude towards fundamentalist church rhetoric, that will influence choices of the population.

It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy: where you have aspiring political leaders trying to out-do each other on the fundamentalist Christian 'ethics' ideal, the fundamentalist Christian ideal gets more and more strident and frothy until other voices are criticized for being unpatriotic!! And just what the hell does religion have to do with patriotism?! NOTHING. Unless your governmental ethical system is predicated on the game of one-up-manship in fundamentalist values with your rival for power.

Oh and then have a 'News' broadcaster reduce the news to biased, 'god-fearing' infotainment commentary.

I agree that not every religious person is an asshat. Most of them are indeed very nice. Unfortunately the ones speaking out the loudest are complete bigots with an axe to grind.

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Cristiano We need to make 'endless celestial sex' into a thing.

Casey Pelous

Ever heard, "The meaning of the message is the response it illicits"?

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"I am not more than a lossy Human being, and think that we all are equals..." - Wasted Engineer

"Casey, I've already established that you have no idea what you are talking about." - Perphides

Maggiedoll Alter

No, I meant that it exaggerates themselves. An asshole believes that God agrees with his asshattery, and a person who respects others believes that God wants them to respect others.

People attribute their own basic beliefs to their religion, and it makes them more confident (?) about those things.

Chip Midnight

I personally wouldn't join an atheist group that existed solely for the purpose of getting together with a bunch of other atheists to say " Yay! We're awesome!" If I wanted that I'd become an Evangelical. That said, in a country where bigotry is as strong against atheists as it is I fully support any group that fights to strengthen the separation of church and state, fights against anti-atheist bigotry in the workplace, law, military and anywhere else, and that gives support to people who suffer under those circumstances or who are tentatively throwing off the bonds of religious indoctrination. Those are all worthy goals, and goals that many religious people also support. The fact that it's often the most strident and often overbearing atheists who fight the hardest for these things can be off-putting for sure, but it doesn't diminish the worthiness of their goals.

Ann Otoole

The only time atheism matters is when someone violates the constitution by asking what church you were baptized/confirmed in. Then you know they intend to violate the law of the land.

Eris

Lo Jacobs

I just want to make it clear that I am a compassionate person and I was fuzzy, personally, on how I felt about atheists being persecuted because for me, it seemed ... exaggerated. Hearing George H. W. Bush talk about denying citizenship to atheists as if they were some kind of organized Satanist group didn't mean me to me, a nonreligious person, though ostensibly it would mean me.

I don't mean to step on anybody's toes or minimize their personal experiences; I want to hear about everybody's personal experiences.

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Cindy Claveau

I just realized why the title of this thread has been making me feel uncomfortable. (I realize they weren't your words, Lo, but taken from the article you cited.)

I don't see myself as a victim. My atheism is a conscious choice for me, the result of struggling and searching most of my life for what *I* felt was intellectually honest rather than a regurgitation of someone else's ancient notions of the universe.

That doesn't mean I don't think atheists are persecuted. I do think (hell, I know for a fact) that this culture has a deeply embedded disliking for people who reject their God. I don't think I can be anything other than an atheist, quite frankly, but I refuse to use it to take the label of victim.

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Aschen

Alright, since it's asked for, personal story-time.

For a while, I was working in southern Georgia while attending classes. I was fortunate to be white, female, nonthreatening, and able to fake Christianity enough to pass; but a couple of my friends, notably guys, were not nearly as lucky. One remarked to me over the weekend that his boss had been asking increasingly leading questions about what church he attended, with my friend trying to brush it off as casually as possible, without ever saying explicitly that he belonged to a church at all. He had far more compunctions than I did about lying about my religious beliefs.

The following week, he was let go. The reason given? "Unsatisfactory customer service." The irony, of course, is that I had seen his name listed as one of the top five most complimented employees on the leaderboard at the front of the store every time I had gone in to say hi to him. The person who handled his unemployment benefits further told him that the manager/owner had attempted to withold paying him, that he had tried to say that my friend had stolen from the store. When she asked for proof, the man had stumbled over several excuses as to why he didn't have any documentation, or why he hadn't contacted the police.

Myself, I'm still in a customer service position. At least several times a week I will hear something along the lines of "You're such a nice, Christian girl." There've been a handful of times where I've smiled and said, "I'm actually not Christian, but thank you for the compliment." A couple of those times, I've been told that the same people who had just verbally complimented me then proceeded to send in written complaints about me. So I don't mention it anymore, and receive no complaints whatsoever.

So let me just say...Neither I nor my male friends are what I'd consider 'activists'. Neither of us sought to actively pursue some agenda. We all just wanted to quietly live our lives. It was other people who sought clarification from us as to what our religion was, and got upset when we didn't fit into their view of what people should be.

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eighthdwarf Checchinato

True. And it was so in the '90s as well, when I traveled through the States.
Telling them which country I grew up in (East Germany), and my expensive (for an atheist) knowledge of the Bible was an excuse I got easily away with though: They simply believed that those "bad godless commies over there" just never had allowed me to go find the "truth" and infected poor me with their "godless teachings".

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Chip Midnight

It can be hard to see depending on where you live. Where I grew up the people are very religious. There are more churches than bars, and there's a lot of not just religious, but freakishly, disturbingly religious people. But I was young enough when I lived there that it never affected my life.

Since then I've lived near NYC and DC and it's very atheist friendly here. I've overheard religious people say some truly obnoxious anti-athiest stuff but I've never encountered discrimination or had a bad reaction when telling someone I'm an atheist. It's either no big deal or people find it interesting. What it's like here is nothing at all like it is in places in the South, Midwest, and other scattered pockets. It's like Children of the Corn in a lot of places in this country.

Aribeth Zelin

Where I live, our church was 'threatened' with the 'We hope God strikes them with lightning' because we had an atheist as a guest speaker. Sometimes I wonder if they are alone at the bottom of the 'horribles' since Pagan get much the same treatment, and the UUS do too, even though technically they are christians too [personally, I find them to be closer as a whole to being real ones, but that's me]. I'm a UU, but I still don't consider myself christian, because I don't want to be associated with the hypocritical ones who use religion for power instead of spirituality.

I think that if there is to be no state religion, that religion should also stay out of politics - and the hope of our founding fathers that all are welcome should be honoured, not trashed to use faith to control people [which it is and has been since at least the Nicene council].

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Beebo Brink

One reason I still consider myself UU is that Christianity is optional. You can believe or not believe in anything and still be UU to your core. The ideals are ones that can cross all lines of faith or lack of faith.

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Noob: "okay.... im in a house with cages and people in gags and the door just locked and i cant get out :c"

Zaida Gearbox

<failed attempt at humor> I was driving through Lancaster County, PA this weekend and I saw a church sign that said, "Evangelical Free Church." I said to my SO, "Hey look! They're so proud of not having evangelicals in their church they decided to advertise it!" </failed attempt at humor>

Some of the most dishonest morally bankrupt people I have known have been supposed people of faith.

I don't care about the religion or lack of religion of my banker. I care about if he's competent to do the job.

I would like to say I don't care about the religion of the president, but I really don't want a Mormon president. I'd much rather have an atheist president.

I might care slightly about the religion of my therapist just because it is nice to know that my therapist understands my perspective, and the various factors that are at play because of my religious beliefs. Even if the therapist is an ex-member of my religious group, and currently a practicing atheist, it would be nice to know that he or she gets it.

Tracer Graves

Speaking of funny church signs, we came across one that said "there are no atheists in hell" a while back. I was like *whew*, guess I don't have to worry about that.

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Asher Bertrand

Humor time? I believe it was Trout who once said: "I don't always believe in god, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis"

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Kris Ritter

It's a funny thing. I think there is a certain stigma attached to the word 'atheist' itself.

I live in the UK. We are, on the whole, a much, much less religious lot than America. If you believe the statistics, somewhere around 35% of Brits will answer 'yes' when asked if you believe in God. Of those, a tiny fraction actively go to church or practice any religious beliefs.

But in my experience, if you follow up with the majority who say no and ask 'so you're an atheist, then?', they look at you in horror like you might as well have asked 'so you're a devil worshipping satanist, then?'

I call myself an atheist. A lot of people berate me for it, if we ever stray onto the subject, calling me closed minded for not being agnostic.

But then, a lot of people, even those that call themselves agnostic, don't really use the correct definition of agnosticism. They describe themselves as agnostic and in the same breath use it to demonstrate how open minded they are, like it's a middle ground between believing or not: 'I'll believe it when you prove it' (basically, 'Pics or it didn't happen!').

But actually, agnosticism is the belief that you can't possibly KNOW of the existence of <deity>. So it's not really a middle ground at all; someone who describes themselves as agnostic can also be an atheist or theist.

Which is, in truth, somewhere around where I sit. I'm an 'agnostic atheist' - but it's easier to just describe yourself as an atheist.

I have never really been victimized for it, as it's the basically the default position in my country, even if my fellow countrymen struggle to define themselves clearly.

Right. That's far too much seriousness for one day. Therefore I shall post lolcats in response to any reply.

Maggiedoll Alter

Why call it an atheist organization if an organization has the goals that you mentioned? As you point out, plenty of religious people support those goals too. Making it a specifically atheists organization would just exclude potential supporters.

Wrong Weatherwax

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Cindy Claveau

There's a whole spectrum full of minute gradations between "believer" and "hard atheist".

Personally I don't understand how anyone can insist beyond a reasonable doubt that there cannot be any powerful unknown force behind the universe. To me, that's as counter-intuitive as saying that there definitively is a Judaic God who handed down the Ten Commandments written on stone tablets.

My own position leans heavily toward atheism in that I see no convincing reason to invest belief in gods. The universe (as we know it) works fine without supernatural agents. To me it's an unnecessary layer in our definition of the universe. But that doesn't mean that I'm closed to such belief if someone offers incontrovertible scientific proof.

Like ... if beautiful beings with golden wings floated down out of a sunbeam and gave me the secrets of life...



Or they could be porpoises...

Kris Ritter

That's exactly my position too, Cindy. That's why it can be difficult to convey your position in a word like 'atheist' or in my case 'agnostic atheist'.

I've quite literally had people respond to my saying I'm an atheist with 'so if He came down and proved His existence beyond any shadow of a doubt, you STILL wouldn't believe?!'

Cajsa Lilliehook

My favorite of these is Home | Americans United

Tracer Graves

Cindy Claveau

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