I don’t remember any out right hostile encounters except for a couple for times in college where Jesus freaks wanted to somehow blame atheists for the Christians killed in the Roman arenas… What? Mostly the “but you seem like such a nice person???” type thing, followed by a few odd queries about my morality. One woman in my government office was trying to tell me about Jesus one day when I blurted out “I didn’t practice a religion.” She shouted “You white boys don’t even believe in God” at the top of her lungs and, somehow, I was the one who was mortified. My shame was out there for all to see. Some Christians seem to be truly baffled by the notion of doing good, or not doing bad, without someone constantly watching over their shoulder.
The truth is I’ve never told my mom, who would be heart broken, and I avoid talking about religion to anyone outside the Dope. Friends who I’ve known for years have come back to the Church now that they have kids. They act like I’m hanging onto some kind of college fad that has gone out of style. At this point in my life I have no interest in converting anyone and just wish they would stop trying to convert me.
One nice thing about not believing in a god is that it doesn’t require any action on my part, as long as I dodge certain
I remember being in college and in the presence of some religious people (some of whom had tried to convert me) I looked up at the sky and said “Come on God, lightening bolt right here” (pointing at my chest). They stepped back and I said “Don’t you trust his aim”.
I don’t generally bring it up in conversation. It’s not like it’s a subject that warrants talking about that much in the first place.
“So, last weekend, while I was busy not believing in God, you wouldn’t believe the shot I made at the 9th hole.”
But I recall an interesting conversation I had with a Christian cow-orker, about nothing particularly deep, and I don’t really remember the subject except that at some point she turned to me and said, “You’re a Christian, right.”
I said, “No, I’m not.” And left it at that.
And the immediate response was: “Oh. I didn’t realize you were Jewish.”
“I’m not Jewish either.”
“Well then, what are you?”
I didn’t think I’d have to friggin’ spell it out. I finally just said something like, “I’m just not into religion,” or some weak sauce like that.
It completely baffled her. In her Stepford world, people were either Christians or Jews. Any other option was completely foreign to her.
Oh, there is one Born-Again woman at my train station who cannot utter a single sentence without dragging God and/or Jesus into it, kicking and screaming. She asked me point-blank about my religion, but when I told her I just don’t believe in religion (and explained that doesn’t just mean “Gee, I don’t go to church as often as I should”), she was more fascinated than anything–like she had just encountered a unicorn or a griffin the the wild.
OMG! You get a copy of The God Delusion and I’ll set up Religiosity on the DVD player, between us we can bring him back from the light!
Anyway, for me I think the closest I’ve come to an actual argument over religion as an adult was when I worked with a Jehova’s Witness who asked me (and I can’t quite remember how we got here) “do you believe in evolution?”. I said “Yes” and she responded “well I’m a creationist, and I don’t.”
I was pretty clear that there wasn’t any productive exchange to be had on this topic with her so I just smiled, nodded and avoided talking to her as much as possible in the future. Funnily enough all the other JH’s I’ve worked with have been really nice people, despite believing in batshit insanity.
My DIL is religious. Not extreme, but she does like to go to church on Sundays when it is convenient. It is not that she disses me for it or anything, but just seemingly cannot believe that is she scratches me hard enough she will not find a belief in god somewhere down there. I can even understand this because I find it so hard to believe that if you scratch her, an intelligent and educated woman (she is a physician), hard enough you won’t find at the bottom a serious doubt that god exists. So I guess it’s a standoff. We seem to have come to a tacit agreement not to pursue any more. Not that it proves anything (since the fact that my wife and I are nominally Jewish bothers her in the least), but last Passover she had us conduct a seder mainly for the benefit of the child.
Shame on you! Why aren’t you handing out tracts for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the Temple of OG - these are the only true religions!
I’m agnostic, but most people equate that with being atheistic and it really ruffles their feathers when I explain why they are wrong. I’ve been told I don’t know how many times about how I’m gonna burn in hell and all that, and it’s just amazing how pissed off people get when I ask them to show proof of the existence of a hell or a god of any kind. You gotta hand it to religions; they are the consummate pros at brainwashing.
Before I was “out”, I too was baffled about how it would come up.
But then I realized, all throughout my work history, I’ve been surrounded by openly devout people. They don’t stand on soapboxes and preach. But they do take for granted that everyone believes as they do.
I mean, even when I still sorta-kinda called myself a Christian, people would bug me with this. There was a Catholic guy I worked with who was telling me about how some people he’d met don’t believe that Mary ascended into heaven…didn’t they know that was in the Bible?! I didn’t want to go there, but I had to ask him if he’d ever read the Bible. He hadn’t…but still! It’s in there! I told him it may be in the Catholic Bible, but it isn’t in the Bible that Protestants read. And I also told him he probably should read the Bible before getting all guffawed about other people’s beliefs. He might be surprised about what is and isn’t in there.
I get these cutesy “Jesus wuvs you” emails from co-workers all the time…even though my agnosticism isn’t a secret. I don’t make a big deal about it. I just delete without opening them and keep on going with my life. But I refuse to get into discussions with people about religion at my current workplace, especially if they can’t even be bothered to actually read the Bible to know exactly what they are talking about. It’s just dangerous territory.*
*I did have pleasant albeit heated exchanges with a coworker who was a new convert to Catholicism (this occurred in an academic setting, where arguing for hours about nonsense isn’t out of the ordinary :)). He would start these conversations, so I would take it as permission to haul off on him. And he gave just as well as he took, so it was all good. And in that environment, he WAS the minority…everyone else was either some degree of atheist or just culturally “something”. So I gave him his piece without letting him take over the conversation, thereby maintaining the respect level between us.
It would never occur to me to bring up religion in a work environment. Of course this is in Canada, where frankly, people do not discuss such things at work.
Not just you. I’m 43 and have never, ever seen religion brought up at work. I’ve known that certain co-workers or clients have preferred one flavour of religiousity over another but it’s never been brought up in even casual non-work related conversation. It’s just not done in Canada.
The only religious debates I’ve had have been in a bar with friends and acquaintances after many drinks with nobody really arguing either side too seriously (or coherently, for that matter).
Yeah, I’ve been working with my current set of colleagues for about 9 months now and while we’ve discussed past and present boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands, best recipes using goat cheese, Jude Law, various bodily functions, and the time that someone’s dog expressed its anal glands all over a white chair, religion has not once been a part of the conversation.
I just chalk it down to yet another of the sometimes small but nonetheless significant differences between the U.S. and Finland. I remember feeling just as confused in high school in Texas when “What church do you go to?” came up as about the second question that people always asked. I don’t. Most people in Finland really don’t. It’s not much of an issue.
The only time Ive had religion brought up was in school during philosophy class, and during a minimum wage job I had with one co-worker. I didnt even know what religion I “was” until grade 9. Im serious. Nobody ever talked to me about it before then. We had a few books about bible stories or whatever but that was it. I said I was Christian just because I didnt know better, now I say athiest.
As far as I know there are very few religious people in my area. It really is a bit of a non issue here.
Pretty much a non-issue in my life nowadays too. I don’t think it’s ever come up, or if it has, it resulted in no more than an “oh, ok” response.
For a while as a pre-teen my sister struggled with my atheism, because she was struggling to figure out her own faith and didn’t like the thought of being “separated” from her family “after death.” Or something… it never really got discussed profoundly; I understand why she turned to religion (dealing with disease at a young age) but she’s not all that adamant about it and she doesn’t adhere to a particular brand of Christianity or attend church. It was more typical teenage squabbling where somehow bitching about her using up all my tampons resulted in 'you’re going to hell!" responses before she got old enough to argue back effectively (and wow, is she ever much more quick-witted and vicious now hehehe!)
When I was a kid, we had some sort of religious instruction at school, something like an hour a week - I really don’t remember. I just thought it was story time involving a continuous stream of related characters until grade 4, when I asked how it was possible to build such a big boat for all the big animals, and did Noah know about the animals what scientists are just discovering now? I got yelled at and sent to sit in the hallway for the rest of that hour. I think that’s about the time I realised that some people took this crap seriously!
And the one time someone nagged at me repeatedly, “Do you know Jesus? Have you accepted him as your saviour? Do you love him?” I just told her my beliefs were private and told her to eat her lunch. She accepted it. The kid was 4; I didn’t think saying more was necessary!
The most trouble I ever had with this was when I worked as a delivery driver at a fast food restaurant. There was this flaming gay guy* who would always sing hymns. He was very loud. I found him very irritating. He kept asking me about my religion and I told him I was a Buddhist, which is my polite way of saying atheist. People really didn’t like that, and after that he basically tried to take moral high ground for everything. Like if his slowness was pissing me off and I was getting frustrated, he’d lecture me about brotherly love or some shit.
*only relevant because he was deeply in denial
Later, I tracked down an old friend on Facebook. She was married with kids and she’s become a Messianic Jew, in a social context I can only define as cultish. If she had kept it to long, boring posts about how great Jesus was, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but she was constantly trashing atheists. The final straw for me was when she wrote that agnostics (which she defined incorrectly) aren’t capable of experiencing real love.
That ended that.
Honestly, I’ve only ever disclosed my atheism to a group of acquaintances one time. It was at a Toastmasters party, and I didn’t start it. One of the guys started talking about his own skepticism, and someone else agreed, and so I chimed in to say I felt the same way, and that was it.
I suspect there are a lot more of us out there that choose to remain silent as well. We think we’re alone but that’s only because we’re not open about it.
