Do you lump all Christians in one group and characterize them similarly?
Do you believe that all atheists are alike and should lumped together similarly?
Well, yeah, a few…
That atheists are Satanists, which, I am ashamed to say, is what my mother actually believed.
That atheists cannot be moral because there’s nothing keeping them in line, which makes me wonder how tenuous a grip Christians have on their desires to rape, pillage, kill, and maim.
That an atheist’s primary reason for living is to convert everyone, whether they like it or not. Come on. What are we, Christians? Just kidding…sorta. Seriously, my primary reason for living is to make gobs of money, and as I am no where near even one gob, I have no time to waste on stoking religionist fears.
I’ve never had a believer make an assumption to my face, so I can’t really say there is one.
I once had a certain christian acquaintance of mine tell me that she thought it took more faith for me to be an atheist than for her to think that there was a god. I told her that atheism is the absence of faith until good evidence could be presented. I would say that is the biggest misconception I’ve come across. I really haven’t faced a whole lot of backlash with the exception of my parents.
Oh yeah, I have to correct people all the time that I like my babies deep fried. 
For me, it’s that I’m angry at god because something bad happened to me. It’s f-ing insulting, like I’m a scorned child. I came to my atheism through reason, thought and observation.
I used to say I was agnostic but so many people tried to use that as lever, that I just started with the straight denials.
Ah, you mean the good ol’ Hollywood Atheist.* Yes, every atheist is embittered because his or her mom/dad/sister/dog died when he or she was ten. :rolleyes:
Continuing the theme of atheists’ “coming out” experiences, I have to say that I’ve never received any sort of calumny for my views. My parents are devout Catholics-turned-Episcopalian, and the only negative reaction I’ve ever gotten is my dad asking me not to wear a cap with an atheist symbol on it in his house. (His house, his rules, so I comply.) My evangelical born-again cousins are sad for me because they think I’ll go to Hell when I die, but they accept my unbelief, and have even asked me about atheism.
As far as work goes, no one cares. Well, one coworker, who belonged to an odd evangelical/fundamentalist church, asked me if I would believe if her church’s Apostle - yes, that’s what they call him, the pastor, I guess - could prove to me that the Gospel was true. But she was very respectful, and we actually had an interesting discussion on Biblical criticism.
*My apologies for linking to the Great Internet Time Sink.
There’s an atheist symbol?
More questions for the OP.
Much of Europe, at least the native people, have dropped Christianity and have switched to more of a humanistic/agnostic/atheistic belief. However Islam is filling that void now. As I understand it Islam is now the dominant religion of France. They are having numerous children while most atheist families have 1 if any children.
So the question is, is it only a matter of time before Moslems, because of numbers, will have the political strength to start changing European society?
How will atheists deal with this?
Also will people rally behind secular humanism as strong as they did Christianity?
You need to trust that Jesus will direct your search. Mark 14:51
There’s the Darwin fish, which is basically “lol I can parody this old Christian symbol and you can’t do anything about it neener neener neener”.
I never had a belief in any kind of god, never seemed to fit and never seemed important.
I’ve never heard of any evidence or any reason why belief in a god would be sensible or rational, so I have no belief, so I’m an atheist.
By that I mean I don’t believe in god, not…repeat not, that I claim there is no god.
People get very hung up on the atheist/agnostic distinction but seeing as one can have an agnostic theist then I think for the sake of clarity, atheist fits me better.
Of course, as I’ve said previously. atheist is merely the starting point. Just as “theist” tells you absolutely nothing about the ethical and moral worldview of someone, so it is for the atheist.
The hat I was talking about has this symbol on it.
That link doesn’t work for me. Was it a variation of this symbol?
I don’t think that increasing Islamic population will have a major effect on Europe. I am not a political expert, nor am I a fortune teller (though I’m a pretty decent magician 
) but the reason I think this is because I think that secularism will ultimately win out. Why? Because if you look at all the extremely secular countries in Europe already (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, The Netherlands, Belgium, etc) they have the lowest crime rates and lowest prison populations. People in those countries rate as being the most happy. I think the other European countries will eventually move to those secular models. It may take a long time, and the future is never certain, but that is what I think.
Its actually the other way around. Satanists are actually atheists that use the symbolism of the devil to actively mock other religions.
Here is a link to The Thinking Atheist Podcast where Seth Andrews interviewed a priest from the Church of Satan. They discuss what the church is and is not.
My response to that is that if the only reason a Christian (or anyone else for that matter) is not going around raping, pillaging and killing is because of their religion or god belief, then I hope they continue to believe and stay in their religion. They are effectively telling me that they cannot make those moral decisions for themselves.
I’ve never had anyone ask me why I’m angry at god, but I also wonder why it is such a hard concept for believers to understand that I came to my unbelief through evidence and reason. Just give me proof and I will change my mind.
One thing I don’t like is the endless debate I’ve seen others go through. The believer keeps giving the atheist flawed arguments, one after another. So one thing that has been effective for me in keep the conversation from rambling on is that I say, “Give me your BEST argument for the existence of a god.” This way I can keep the conversation short and eliminate any long, drawn out debate. This also helps keep tempers down because there is very little arguing.
I( believe I tried that on this board…and it didn’t work. It’s been awhile, though-perhaps you’d like to ask that question in Great Debates and see what happens?
That is a sensible approach, you can take it one step further and ask them to clearly define the god they are talking about and say that you’ll only talk about it further if they can.
They very rarely can, so you can safely avoid the conversation.
I usually use this strategy in a live conversation, and only when the believer first tells me that there is evidence for a god.
The conversation usually goes like this:
Me: I’m an atheist
Them: Really why?
Me: Because I don’t see any good evidence for the existence of any kind of a god.
Them: Well there is plenty of evidence.
Me: Ok. Give me your best argument.
They then give me their best argument which usually falls under a couple of different categories… The “Where do you get your morals from,” argument and the “Creation points to a creator,” argument. (I’ve gotten a few others, but those 2 are the most common that I’ve experienced)
After carefully examining their arguments, I tell them why I think their arguments are faulty, then I thank them and say, “Thanks for giving me your best argument. I’m still not convinced, but I enjoyed the discussion.” Usually they stop arguing at this point, but if they then try to continue, I remind them that they already gave me their best argument and that I’m not willing to argue about it any more.
“There has to be a god because pocket watches are hard to build”.