Another Explanation

We atheists only care about ourselves and our next pleasure. We are not human. We cease being social or family creatures who care about others because we are atheists. Is this really what these people believe?
This is the height of religious ignorance and bigotry, and it is exactly what Falwell and his supporters want to believe. This is why we non-believers have to push back against these jerks who want to define us in ways that protect their prejudices and beliefs. If they had to concede we were even human, with shared thoughts, feelings, and compassion, how could they hate us? What then, would be the advantage of belief?
Griff

I can't let statements like these affect me, or how I act, or what I say. I know I feel grief, as I certainly did, and still do, when my father died a few years ago. I will be equally upset when my mother dies. I will grieve deeply everyone that I love when they do indeed die.

How I react when one of my loved ones dies, how I react when someone I don't know but seems like an okay person dies, and how I react to when someone like Jerry Falwell dies are all very different things. To act any different than I would naturally react, as who I am, as a person, as an atheist, and a daughter, friend, lover, hater, heretic, stranger, etc, etc, etc, just because some jackass who has no idea who I am makes some idiotic sweeping statement based on not one once of actual personal experience with atheists is useless to me and I just can't be bothered.

She says "I imagine...yadda, yadda, yadda..." That means she doesn't know, she's admitting she doesn't know, she's telling everyone that her statements don't amount to anything. We all do what we can to help express to the world that atheists are decent people, but as far as I'm concerned, we're human beings first, and human beings all act different ways to different things. I wasn't ashamed of my grief when my father died, nor am I ashamed of my mirth when Falwell died. Mary Grabar can kiss my ass.

"Please don't beat Teddy." - Teddy, Night of the Seagulls

Years ago, we held a funeral for my cousin who died at the age of twenty-one. He was younger then me. I felt anger and sadness that this person who I knew all of his life was gone. That he never could become the person it was possible for him to become, that my memories of hom could be more then some annoying boy. In otherwords, the normal reactions that come when someone dies too young.

Ah, but that service. A baptist minister who did not even know him spoke to us about his death. He had nothing to say about him. All he could talk about was that life can end at anytime so in order to enjoy 'eternal life', we better accept Jesus now. It was all I could do to keep my rage from screaming out. This is the same kind of stuff I can hear from a downtown street preacher everyday.

I was highly insulted that my grieve could be so easily pushed aside in order to tell me for the ten thousanth time in my life that I need Jesus. And having these ghouls like Grabar and D'Soaza(sp?) that I feel nothihg when some one dies.

For what it's worth, I sent the following to the Grabar column, apparently enlisting myself in the conservative revolution in order to do so. There's a huge list of comments after that commentary, so I doubt this will be read anywhere but here, if even here. (How odd, though, in light of what I wrote, that her column should be dated on what would have been my mother's 90th birthday, at which she probably would have thrown herself a party.)

Dear Ms. Grabar,

As an atheist, I want to say that I do not greet death with relish and glee. When my father died twelve years ago, I felt a deep loss for somebody whom I deeply loved, from whom I had learned much, and with whom I used to have conversations unlike any I have had with anybody else. While his funeral was marked with the rituals and honors for somebody who had spent his life in the military, it was a moving and emotional occasion that, for me, marked the transition from one phase of life to another, in which my father, through my memories of him, now plays a different role.

Nine years later, when my mother died, her funeral provided the same moment of transition, and we then went and did what she had asked us to do at her funeral, which was to celebrate her life. While there were prayers said at both occasions, they did not mean as much to me as the surge of love and respect that we felt from each other and from the friends who had gathered there. Even though I have not seen many of those people since then, the feelings they exhibited stay with me.

I have a very deep respect for the sanctity of such occasions, because they are a way of marking and celebrating transitions in our lives, not because they are required by or sanctified by some deity. I have a great many solaces and sources of meaning in what you called my little kingdom of one, and very few of them have to do with what I expect you think sordid pleasures.

Lately, the group most responsible for showing egregious disrespect for funerals has been the Phelps family and their hateful protests in the name of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. Their actions are a disgrace, and I know of no atheist group who would act in a similar way. If I learned of one, I would have nothing to do with it. I am a very tolerant person, and I limit that tolerance based on people’s actions, not their beliefs.

Atheism does not negate notions of sanctity, respect, tradition, morality, or fullness of life. While there are certainly individual atheists who transgress in all of these areas, they are no more emblematic of atheism than the Phelpses and others who spew hatred in the name of religion, or Paul Hill and others who commit murder in the name of religion, or faithful church-goers who cheat on their wives, or priests who violate their vows in sexual pursuits of young acolytes are emblematic of Christianity.

Frank Moorman, skeptic

...is that with any religion where the departed then are brought into the Kingdom of Heaven to party down with God, they'd have much more reason to *rejoice* at the death. Those of us who do not believe in an afterlive or eternal reward don't have that option, and see death as permanent terminus, a permanent and irreversible loss. Why on Earth would we celebrate such a death of a loved one? (Though I still say good riddance to Jerry F.) That whole line of bullshit from Grabar just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Jim Downey

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