Atheism Anecdotes

Amazing!!!

Jim Downey

I've probably asked this question before, but I was just thinking about it again today. What do you do or say, if anything, when you or someone around you sneezes? We are a thoroughly godless family, so "God Bless You" just doesn't ever happen. Nor does "Gesundheit", because, you know, we don't speak German. If anything, we'll say "Good one!", if it's a particularly good sneeze. Or maybe, "get a tissue!" More often it is politely ignored.

But most folks feel the almost pathological need to acknowledge your sternutation by asking an imaginary superfriend in the sky to "bless" you with his magical sneezetastic anti-nose-demon ray - or something like that. I'm a little hazy on the details, to be perfectly honest.

So, what is your sneeze-acknowledging ritual, if any?

I was recently in a neighboring town, about 15 miles away from my little town, doing some business with the local irrigation collective. I decided to stop and eat at one of the lunch cafes instead of driving all the way back. [Hey, I was hungry! :)]

In any case, I chose a small coffee shop/cafe, and entered. It was pretty full, but seemed OK, and there was one table open in the back where I could set up my laptop and work while I waited for my meal. So, I sat down and opened the menu and was surprised to see not food on the first page of the menu, but bible verses. There was also a bible verse collage in one of those plastic table-stand deals that they usually display the lunch special in.

I was a little uncomfortable, but decided I'd stay and eat anyway. The sandwiches looked pretty good.

So, about ten minutes go by and no waitress. I mean, she's there, flying around between all the tables, but she has yet to stop and even ask me if I wanted coffee. I take another look at the multitude of bible verses staring me in the face, then at the waitress who is now obviously trying NOT to even make eye contact with me, and decide that I'll walk next door to the calzone place and try that instead.

I close my laptop -- and realize that I've got a red Out Campaign 'A' sticker dead-center where a computer logo should be. I had forgotten all about it.

Shaking my head and smiling a bit, I walked out through the front. The girl behind the register, who had not seen me yet since I came in through the side entrance, said brightly, "Hope you enjoyed your lunch!".

"Never got one," I said, and walked through the door, across the little parking lot, and into the restaurant next door where a delightfully profane Italian chef made me the best calzone I've had in a long, long while.

My point? We can indeed "formally" fight for our civil rights all we want. However, like the "whites only" lunch counters of the last century, it'll take a long, long time before regular religious folks accept us without us having to pretend to be something we're not.

(Tip of the ballcap to VJack at Atheist Revolution.)

Most recent pet peeve: Referring to someone as an "avowed" atheist. Unless there's some special atheist vow out there that you have to take before you can be considered an atheist, there's not a lot of reason to use that label.

Perhaps it's meant more in the context of I vow that I'm an atheist. This doesn't make much sense either. Why would you need to vow that you're an atheist?

"Hey Frank, what religion are you?"
"None. I'm an atheist."
"Really? Huh. Um...really, dude? I don't know..."
"No, seriously, I swear dude!"

Or perhaps it's meant as I'll be an atheist for the rest of my life. This would make a little bit more sense, then. But it seems like you could get away with the cliched "ardent atheist" or "staunch atheist" titles, instead of resorting to this confusing "avowed atheist" label.

It's almost as bad as "fundamentalist atheist" (What fundamentals!?)

That is all. Carry on.

An atheist writes to the God Squad and asks the good Rabbi why people feel a need to plaster "God" on everything. He's a good husband, a good father, but he thinks that god-beliefs are "silly" and when people start spouting off about God when it's really not necessary, he thinks they "just sound crazy".

Ahem. I agree. Heh.

Gellman responds:

[Rabbi Marc Gellman] In the end, though, I feel for your pain at being castigated as an atheist (actually, you describe yourself as agnostic). If you can get through the valley of the shadow of death without a good shepherd, God bless you...oops. As for me, I’m glad for the addition of any kindness to our broken world, regardless of its source and beliefs.

Shorter Rabbi Gellman:

"The truth scares me, so I lie to myself."

Look, this is what I do these days. I scour the InterTubes with my Pipe Cleaners of Godless Justice, in search of oafish nimrods dissing nonbelievers. My feelers are very sensitive (the pipe cleaners are not capitalized for nothing), and in my quest I can sometimes be suddenly thrown off course, like blowing air horns at a cave of bats; the sonar goes berzerk.

So here's this piece from the Daily Texan. You're already offended, right? It gets better, because it's the newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin. Fantastic. This is going to be fresh meat: a young, intolerant oaf. Should be ripe for some UTI snark. The guy's name is Joshua Riehl, and I'm ready to take him apart.

Sorry, Grandma. I went to an atheist meeting last week.

I'm not going to reference an article today. Today I'm going to give an example of where theists go wrong. We have a small discussion group at work. One of the topics given today was something in the news that I hadn't read and still haven't read. The topic discussed memories from being reincarnated. One of my coworkers brought up the topic after having read something online. The coworker gave the headline which was something along the lines of, "Study shows evidence of former life memories gives credence to past life experiences!" (w/ a reference to reincarnation which I can't recall at this point, sorry)

Keep in mind, I haven't read either the article or the study. My coworker brings up this article and immediately afterward another coworker exclaims, "And you say you don't believe in God."

My immediate reply afterward was, "What? Why would you bring God into this?"

The coworker was incredulous. He wondered why an atheist would reference an article which gave the idea that reincarnation was possible.

Why is it that every time an apologist uses Lee Strobel to bolster their argument - they almost always seem to also claim to be a "former atheist"?

In a discussion about the over-influence of religion in British government on MetaFilter, the predictable give & take about activist atheism got going. I read these threads because they provide another snapshot into the current "temperature" of the debate, but once in a while I come across something either insightful or well stated that I like to share. Two such, this time:

Why is it that people complain about atheists evangelizing, but don't complain about the much more ubiquitous evangelism from the religious?

Because atheists are a threat to religion in a way that religion isn't to atheism.

It's like they have open-sourced morality and are undermining the business model of religion.
posted by srboisvert at 4:34 AM on December 28 [24 favorites]

I really like that idea: atheism is an open-source system, versus an entrenched and closed-source authority.

And then there's this:

Jim Griffith, an op-ed columnist at the Times-Herald in Georgia, decided to write what he undoubtedly thought was a pithy, wry, down-home tongue-in-cheek column for the Saturday edition.

What happened instead is that he showed showed what a bigot he is, and how ignorant he is about atheists and Thanksgiving.

In one column, three short paragraphs, he claims to have intimate knowledge of what all atheists think and feel at Thanksgiving. He implies that we lack friends and families, and that we are miserable and confused about whether or not a god exists, or whether or not we have 'souls', etc.

Oh yeah - let us not forget that according to good-old Jimbo us atheists are nothing more than God's end-of-the-week "mistakes" that He created when He was tired.

Who knew that an omnipotent being could get tired? (Sounds pretty fishy to me...)

[link] A few religious thoughts to ponder

Thanksgiving must be a terrible time for atheists. They have no God to thank.

They do not have the privilege of gathering with family and friends to express gratitude by saying: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." An atheist on his deathbed faces serious uncertainties. Gazing upward, he pleads: "Oh God, if there is a God, please save my soul -- if I have one."

This shows that when God created man, our Heavenly Father wanted to let us know He was big enough to make a mistake, or perhaps this is a better explanation: "God made man at the end of the week when He was tired."

The fun part of all this though is the comment section of the article. It is, at this time, 100% full of atheists telling old Jim that he's a bigoted moron. So much so that I'll bet every time he burps this week it tastes like feet.

I'm thankful for my fellow atheists who don't let crap like this slip under the radar. Great job!

I have some good news to report. As you may or may not know, I'm a member of the Abimelech Society. You can read more about them here. We are dedicated to the legal removal of religious materials from the public sphere. In other words, if someone offers us a tract, we ask how many we can have, take them all and then round-file them. Those Gideon bibles at hotels; gone! Prayer meeting announcements on the grocery store pin-board; removed. Etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum because it always comes back.

Until yesterday......

Anne Rice, author of the "Lestat" vampire novels, and recent returnee to her childhood Catholicism, on how tough it is being an atheist.

[Anne Rice] "It’s a more strenuous path than the religious path, because you’re then going to say that there is no God, there is no reason (for anything), that people on Earth are the only (way) to provide any meaning. That’s a rough road to travel.

"When you lose a child, you’re telling yourself as an atheist, ‘I’m never going to see that child again in any form.’ That’s a hell of a lot harder than a religion, which gives you the consolation that you will see that child again in heaven. It’s hard being an atheist. It’s tough.”

I really enjoy Rice's novels. I think that she has a unique gift for storytelling, and her imagery is lush and fun to read.

She has now become a theist again after 38 years of being an atheist. She lost a child to leukemia in 1972, and her husband Stan Rice died in 2002. Stan was the outspoken atheist of the family, and I think that years of grief, the loss of her daughter and of her loving husband finally caused her to grasp at something that gave her a bit of hope - at the age of 67 - of seeing her beloved family members again someday - after death.

Her novels have always showcased her obvious fascination with the supernatural. She was definitely an atheist in the basic sense of the word though - God-belief was absent within her. However, she never seemed to have given up the magical thinking and supernatural beliefs that were inculcated into her at a very young age by the Catholic church. This is blatantly obvious to anyone who has ever read her novels. So her return to a liberal version of Catholicism - and God-belief in general - at the age of 67 after her severe depression over the loss of her husband to brain cancer, isn't really that surprising to me.

So, what are your thoughts? Is atheism "strenuous" and "...a tough road to travel" for you?

It's not for me. It's really the only choice that I have. Given what I know about the nature of reality, and the complete and utter lack of evidence for any sort of supernatural layer to our universe - as well as the complete derth of evidence supporting the existence of any sort of creator deity at all - what other choice could I have made?

So no. Atheism is not a tough road to travel for me. It's the only road there is. Theists like to pretend that there are other roads, and dress them up with convenient rest areas and pretty parks, and beautiful flowers along the side - but they are traveling down the same road that I am. The difference is that my eyes are wide open, and I can step around the potholes -- while the theists stumble through them, twisting their ankles on the rocks and debris, because their eyes are tightly shut so that they can continue to play pretend.

I'm awake. I like being able to see the road. And guess what? There's a bunch of nasty things there that we need to deal with - but there's also a lot of beauty and goodness to be found if you just open your eyes and look.

"Hi, um... do you know Jesus?"

I mean, out of the blue. It had been so long since I had been approached by an actual Christian attempting an actual "witnessing". My amused look and lifted finger - "...hold on a sec," - must have thrown him a bit. I could see his expression droop as I tried to hide my smile.

"My accountant's name is Jesus Morales," I said with an interested look. "Is that who you mean? I think I have one of his cards here. He's fantastic with taxes."

David Doster writing in the Faith & Values section of the Morganton.com News Herald in North Carolina quotes Chuck Colson from his book "The Faith":

[Chuck Colson] "The gentleman seated next to me greeted me with a blunt warning that he was an atheist. I looked at him for a moment — graying temples, a wise expression, handsomely attired — the very image of a community leader. I told him I was glad to sit next to him because 'I've never really met an atheist.'

As his eyebrows arched, I explained, 'An atheist believes the existence of God can be disproved. So please, tell me how you've done that.'

He looked momentarily uncomfortable, 'Well, perhaps I should say I'm an agnostic.'

'When did you give up studying about God?' I asked.

Now his neck began to redden. He admitted he'd never really tried.

'But an agnostic is one who says he doesn't think God can be known, and you can only be an agnostic if you've tried to know Him and exhausted the search.'

I'm not sure even now what made me so bold, but I added, 'So I would say that while you appear to be a very well-educated person, you've made an unsupportable statement.'

Not surprisingly, he was offended and rather quiet for the rest of the evening.

Ah, yes. You are so very clever, Sensei Colson. You have vanquished the mighty atheist strawman with your incisive, never-before-heard questions and cutting insight into the human psyche.

Colson is a tool, folks. No atheist actually thinks that atheism means "believing the existence of God can be disproved". The very idea is laughable.

Atheism indicates one single thing; the absence of god-belief within a human being. That's all, nothing else.

If the only way apologists can think of to "fight against atheism" is to redefine it into something they can "fight against", then we should stop engaging them. Engaging with them gives credence to their silly strawmen. We have to spend time first explaining why their argument is against a strawman in the first place - but by then they have galloped off into the distance, squawking and screeching like agitated spider monkeys.

Not so S-M-R-T.

Esther Damaser of Yellow Springs, Ohio has a rare form of cancer called "ocular melanoma" which is resistant to treatment and almost 100% fatal after it has metastasized. Over her 28 years since being diagnosed with the disease she has basically taken treatment into her own hands. It's not that she doesn't trust doctors - indeed she says that she "marvels" whenever one of them freely offers their knowledge to her while she is seeking out treatments - but rather that she wisely recognizes the reality of her situation. That is to say that her cancer is a rare form that does not receive a lot of research dollars, and that doctors, while helpful and educated, are not omniscient. It is a "do it yourself disease", as she quips, and she has been remarkably successful as evidenced by her long-term survival and quality of life.

She's also been an atheist all her life.

The process of seeking new treatments and trials, taking risks, then finding if those risks have added time to her life or taken it away has sometimes been wrenching, Damaser says. And while many people find that facing a life-threatening illness leads them to become more religious, she has not taken that route. A lifelong atheist, Damaser found she hasn’t followed the maxim that “there are no atheists in foxholes” — those who find God while in a life-threatening situation.

“I’m in a foxhole here,” she said. “I’m facing my imminent demise. And I’m still an atheist. Religion gives me no comfort.” -[Original news story written by reporter Diane Chiddister of Yellow Springs News Online]

My very best wishes to Esther, and here's to her courage and tenacity! She's truly an inspiring human being.

Jeff Mullin is a "Senior Writer" for the Enid, Oklahoma News & Eagle newspaper. A few years ago he wrote an article "poking fun" at atheists for having the unmitigated gall to suggest that traditional god-belief was exactly the same as belief in an Invisible Pink Unicorn (blessed be Her unseen curly mane.) He subsequently received a letter from an atheist who asked him what gave him the right to ridicule atheists for their lack of belief?

Nothing, apparently. He just likes to ridicule atheists. So, nice Christian guy that he is, he decided to do it again. This time in a column dripping with insincere pity for the poor, deluded atheists.

How very thoughtful of him.

More below the fold...

Some days, there's nothing I like better than to go find a forum somewhere where a Christian (normally) is trying to convert an atheist.
I used to be a regular forum poster at Austin Cline's About Atheism forum, but after a year or so, I seemed to have little enough to say any more. But I still like to read them, even if responding to the threads seems pointless any more. I hope to regain some desire for re-engagement soon, but it's no challenge to plink at such a large target. OE's (Online Evangelists) are a game permanently stuck in god mode. And like video game zombies, there are always hordes more of them banging on the door, no matter how easily they go down.

But I do enjoy reading the fight, especially in the morning. It angries up the blood.

This morning, on the forum of my local newspaper, The Indianapolis News (which is either a wholly-owned organ of the Republican Party or staffed entirely by Gun-snatching, Constitution-hating, ACLU-membering Nazi Communists, depending on who is complaining at the time), I read through a lengthy and pointless...and ongoing...clash between an atheist and an OE.

Illinois state Rep. Monique Davis has apologized to Rob Sherman, who has graciously accepted her apology, for attempting to deny him his civil rights in a public hearing that he was invited to testify before last week.

Apparently it's OK to be a bigoted, unconstitutional, theocratic asshole if you're having a bad day.

One of our favorite guys, Rob Sherman, testified before the Illinois House State Government Administration Committee on Wednesday related to Gov. Rod Blagojevich's proposed $1 million grant intended for Pilgrim Baptist Church, and was blindsided by wackjob theocrat Rep. Monique Davis who seems to think that atheists don't have any right to exist, and that we are "dangerous to children".

[link] Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous--

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court---

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

You can listen to the whole sordid thing here.

(Tip of the ballcap to Twitter and Hemant!)

It's a serious question. Many of us who are non-believers nonetheless are in family or other situations where some kind of participation or observation of this most important of Christian holidays.

Many times, even after I had left my Catholic faith far behind, I would attend Easter sunrise services with friends, or spend the day with family. My maternal grandmother always put out a big spread of food, and throughout the day the family would come by and try to avoid eating it (she was an OK cook, but her safe-food-handling skills were notoriously bad, and almost always someone in the family would get hit with a mild case of food poisoning).

Lots of atheists will still decorate eggs, or give the kids candy for Easter, because it is so much a part of the culture.

For me and my wife, it is just a routine day - since my mother-in-law passed on last month, we no longer need to even pretend to observe the holiday. But this is perhaps the first time in several years when I'm not doing *anything* in connection with the day.

So, what are you doing today?

Jim Downey