That quote has exactly one source, and its provenance has been hotly debated. While you may believe it’s on the level, it’s dishonest to present it as though it were universally accepted as having been said.
Thrillsville’s currently Richmond, Virginia.
In Boston you have loads of liberal-type folk; you’re sort of known for it. Same with almost any major metropolitan area. I really don’t think anyone who lives in a place like Boston, New York, LA, or any other place known for its diversity is going to have a feel for the way the rest of the country works on this level.
I’ll happily shut up.
Once my friend stops sending me glurgy religious crap. The other one reciting how I screamed “oh my god” when I was in labor. When the 10 commandments are off the courthouse steps of my grandmothers county. When I stop being asked if I baptised my daughter. (I responded that I was jewish, I was at work surrounded by 10 folks who I didn’t feel needed to know I was an atheist) When I stop getting freaky looks from people when the subject comes up. When I stop being accused of lacking morals because I lack christ. When people stop using christianity as a way to pull the wool over your eyes into thinking that automagically makes them decent people.
When other folks allow me to believe whatever the hell I want to believe or disbelieve, the same way I let them.
Do unto others indeed.
And no, I’m not burying a statue of St. Whomever to get my house to sell.
Until you walk a mile in an atheists shoes and see how pervasive christianity is in every day life, you really have no idea. I liken it to a recovering alcholic walking around in a world filled with alcohol. It can be stifling.
In my case, it would be a person who doesn’t like alcohol being constantly pressured by people to “…just have one, one won’t killya.”
But if “not cheating” is a Christian trait, it does not imply that all non-Christians are cheats. If I’m done for drunk driving and someone rebukes me by saying “You’re a policeman, you should know better!”, does that imply that all non-policemen have no concept of whether it is right or wrong to drink and drive?
I am not really a policeman, btw
Your analogy only works if she’s saying, “A good PLUMBER wouldn’t do that.” If NOTHING else…she’s assuming that the plumber is christian!
I agree that it’s this kind of thinking that is the problem in our government. If most of the poeple in our government holds Christianity as the standard way to live our lives, then it’s hard for anyone to say to their friend/neighbor that they believe in stem cell research (for example) without them accusing you of being in favor of cloning or some such nonsense.
Thank you. This is the kind of thing I was unaware of.
But I do hope that when dealing with someone who is Christian/Buddist/Muslim, that Atheists don’t try to convince them that they are wrong. That’s where the “just shut up” would come into play.
I don’t know what I believe. I suppose if I had to give it a name, it would be agnostic, but I don’t walk around calling myself that because I don’t feel the need to.
I don’t know how it is in Tampa, but in NY this doesn’t seem to be a problem as you are describing. The worst I have seen is my sister-in-law who is “born again” and, while it’s annoying, I let her do her thing and say what she thinks. I ignore it. It doesn’t get under my skin. When she sends me glurgy emails, I hit delete without reading them. It doesn’t effect my life in the least.
Your analogy is flawed. It’s like you’re saying that you renounced Christianity and now it’s all around you and impossible to avoid being sucked back in. That’s not the case. You never believed to begin with.
The “Just Shut Up” was in response to things like trying to get “In God We Trust” removed from U.S. currency.
Personally, I get irked by any notion that if you don’t like someone they should “shut up.” As amusing as I find Keith Olberman’s snipes at Bill O’Reiley, it bugs me that he keeps suggesting that the guy shouldn’t be on the air.
As I suspected.
My parents live in a Florida suburb, and the people in that area are about as nice as you could imagine. But the in-your-face right wing political and religious attitudes are pretty overbearing. One church decided that a dandy Christmas decoration would be to fill their lawn with gravestones of aborted fetuses.
Too true. And in the interests of fairness, there certainly exist atheists who automatically judge any religious person they meet upon contact. But in what passes for my real life, I have certainly informed people that I’m an atheist, and immediately seen the looks of revulsion cross their faces. And honestly, I encounter damned few people to whom I felt the burning need and/or desire to explain my lack of belief. If I ever do, the person in question is one that I have known for a while, and to whom I have demonstrated that I’m a (fairly) decent guy. I’ve pretty much goten to the point where, if I feel it necessary, I will profess my atheism and then point out that I don’t dine on the tender, succulent offspring of believers. Usually such an over-the-top statement combined with my history help to offset the judgmentalism.
You’re comparing NY to Florida?
I can tell you, the South can feel very oppressive even to a non-Christian theist, much less an atheist. Public religiosity is taken for granted, ignorance is rampant and atheists are evil. It’s true you can keep your head down and not say anything about it but it’s kind of like a milder version of being gay. If and when people find out, they start bugging the shit out of you, and sometimes it can turn into harrassment.
I think “Just shut up” would be a good rule for everyone to follow about religious beliefs, mainly because whatever you believe in within yourself, and may bear little to no resemblence to how you live your life, or what you tell other people about your own beliefs. You believe in God, or the IPU or Nothing? Fabulous. Just shut the fuck up about it, and no one will bother you.
But the cultural context in which we live is so blatently pro-religious that it often seems as if the default position is “Believers can yak yak yak yak about their belief systems all day long and we won’t pay any attention because incessant yakking about religion is just a normal part of life.” There are entire huge structures in every city, called churches and mosques and synagogues, where they have huge signs out every week announcing the subject of that week’s yak-yak-yak fest, and whole TV channels devoted to it, and worst of all is the presumed God-given right of every believer to brainwash his own helpless children in this stuff from birth so that by the time they begin to have their own thoughts, they’re the result of years of indoctrination. So atheists feel that they need to speak out against these injustices, and then people begin saying, “Aw, why don’t those damned atheists shut the fuck up already? No one wants to hear more of that shit!”
You know the joke whose punchline goes “Fight fair, nigger, fight fair!”? Well, that’s how this issue feels to atheists.
Not really. The plumber is acting in his plumberish capacity when he’s ripping her off, whereas presumably I (as policeman) am acting as a private citizen when I drive drunk. So in both cases the interlocutor is appealing to some other standard to which the wrongdoer is supposed to hold himself; the plumber to his Christian ethics and the policeman to his professional awareness of the evils of DUI.
(There’s a slight culture clash going on here as on this side of the pond most people would think rebuking another person in the name of his Christianity was a custom that went out a couple of generations ago.)
I don’t. How does it go?
I don’t feel like a victim; I feel like those who are bullied and brainwashed into a belief are victims.
I don’t know much about how atheists are treated in the country at large, but I will tell you that I recently had an experience that made me uncomfortable.
I would describe myself as a secular humanist. My family knows this, my roommates know this, but hardly anyone else does. I have never brought up my (lack of) religion with anyone, but if someone called me out on it, I imagine I would–but always in a respectful way. My roommate is a very devout Catholic, and we get along very well. We even sometimes have informal and respectful academic debates on the nature of religion, with no hard feelings.
I go to a college that is very liberal, even as colleges go. In our dorms, we have fire doors that connect adjacent suites. These doors are notoriously thin, and you can hear very well through them. The other night, I was brushing my teeth when I heard my neighbor, who had clearly had a drink or two (or three), talking to one of his friends. He said, and I quote, “I mean, atheists are all horrible people. They just want to steal everyone’s hope. They should really just shut up. And if they don’t do it on their own, I’ll help them do it.” I immediately felt very uncomfortable. Had he somehow found out I didn’t believe in any gods? Was he talking about me? What if, in the future, he did find out? I was shocked and a little scared that such a strong (and vaguely threatening) viewpoint would be expressed without provocation.
I know it’s an isolated incident and it probably doesn’t mean much, but it for the first time made me realize that even here, at a liberal university, I might want to keep my personal beliefs hidden. I’m generally for everyone just keeping their religious views to themselves, but feel that it should really go both ways–religous people and atheists should both keep their beliefs to themselves if either of them are expected to.
I won’t lie about it if asked but I do generally keep it to myself. There is a lot of prejudice against atheists out there. Many people think that you can’t possibly have morals and ethics if you’re not a believer.
A black man is sentenced (long story short) to be buried up to his neck in sand and then to have a mad bull, with razor-sharp horns etc charge him repeatedly, but the clever guy figures a strategy of twisting his neck as far as he can to one side, deking the bull out, and as the bull misses his first pass, the guy would reach his neck as far as possible upwards and bite the bull’s testicles (again,very long story short) and he succeeds, painfully castrating the bull and inclining it against making a second charge. The response of the watching crowd of racist onlookers? “Fight fair, nigger, fight fair!”
It works as a joke better if I can do my impressions of the snorting bull, of course.
No, because I said “I don’t know about Tampa”. I can’t compare NY with a place I know nothing about.
I agree with that. I guess I don’t experience any kind of harrassment because I don’t have a strong feeling for any religion or belief system. It’s pretty sad that at 36, I still don’t know what to believe. I used to consider myself Christian*, so maybe that’s why I don’t see the disparity between Christianity and Atheism as much as someone who has never believed in God.
*I believed in God, but wasn’t very good about following his rules. It’s the “rules” part of the religion that bugged me. I can be a good person without being a Christian.