The Jewmanist

Fantastic post and so timely for me.

I had lunch with my Christian daughter yesterday and of course the subject cam up. She is worried for my soul. Whenever I say “thank you but I’m fine” she says “when you die you will understand, but it will be too late”.

I just want to live my life, enjoy my family and not have to face constant encounters with those who “worry for my soul”.

excellent post Hussy. I have made this point often. Believers accept you as long as you believe in something supernatural no matter how incompatible it is with their belief, but believe in nothing and you are off you rocker.

Can I repost this at Secular Earth with a link back to you?

That’s the thing with a lot of these people. Just the mere fact that we exist sends them into a tizzy. I think that Christians would prefer that we atheists were immoral and depraved people, because when we just go about the business of living our lives, we become a walking, breathing refutation of their beliefs.

Hi Alan,
I’m not stereotyping Christians… This is my experience with theists, not necessarily Christians. I may have mentioned Christians once or twice but my post was about theists in general.

Also, I was raised Jewish, so I’m not the one to debate Christianity with. I barely post to this blog anymore… I have moved on from ranting and debating.

Thanks for stopping by.

To exist as an atheist is to be a constant reminder to the theists that they are delusional. And they don’t like being reminded of that one bit!

And I concur with Tommy re: immoral and depraved. Why do people like living with all that silly guilt? It’s one thing to live a life calling yourself those things, but to insist that everybody else is immoral and depraved is just plain ignorant.

To me it’s a category problem – not being part of one of the divisive spiritual teams doesn’t seem to be an option, so there is a label called atheism that puts you on the same conceptual plane. It doesn’t really work.

There are attitudes and values that some religious folk try to own as exclusive to religious communities. Kindness, patience, ethics – these are all, fundamentally, separate issues from doctrinal religious belief. I try to gently remind fanatics of all kinds that if there is some kind of God, our words probably cannot function to capture truths about that God-figure.

I like this post a lot – thank you.

I’ve tagged you with the big bang meme – play if you like, no worries if you don’t.

When you believe in an absolutist ideology, people who think otherwise are psychologically threatening.

Sorry ’bout that…I thought I put it up, but its up now!

I really enjoyed reading this post.

I have seen examples of people being defensive through my own experiences as an atheist. I ask people about their religion out of genuine curiosity, but when they inevitably return the question and find out I don’t believe in any gods, they immediately appear to feel ambushed like I’m going to try to take their soul or something.

Discussing religion is interesting especially when you discover different people’s misconceptions about beliefs. I have a Christian friend and a Buddhist friend and we were discussing musicals. The Christian mentioned Jesus Christ Superstar and I stated that it was a good musical. She seemed confused and then said, “But how can you like it? You’re atheist.” She thought that I couldn’t possibly like something that I disagreed with. I asked her if she liked our Buddhist friend, and when she said yes, I replied, “But you don’t agree with her beliefs so how can you like her?”