What Are Your Challenges In Being An Atheist?

Great Debates
21

As a bonus question, for those of you with kids: Are they atheist? What do they think about the whole thing?

My 16 year-old is very sweet to me and also very tolerant. He’ll defend me when his assface father starts in on my non-beliefs, and remind him that we all have the right to believe what we want.

My 14 year-old son has no opinion. About anything. “I don’t know” is his favorite phrase. But he’s never voiced an opposition to my atheism.

My 9 year-old son is very concerned about the safety of my soul, and he asks a lot of questions about it. And I mean A LOT. I’m very emphatic that he has the right to believe what he wants and talk about that, and I let him know that I deserve the same. I expect that as he matures, he’ll get over it.

22

[QUOTE=Bricker]
I imagine the knowledge that you’re going to be burning in a lake of everlasting fire would be a bit dfistracting every now and then.
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(I kid, I kid…)
[/QUOTE]

Ah, but the thought that we will spend eternity without being near any fundamentalists is very soothing. :slight_smile:

23

[QUOTE=Leaffan]
We’ve got it pretty easy here in Canada. Religious beliefs/persuasions don’t really even enter into political debates - the way it should be, of course.

Religion doesn’t get discussed at work either. I mean the person across from you could be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Atheist, whatever… Why ask? And more importantly, why care?
[/QUOTE]

This is very much the British way, too. And I’m very grateful for it. Even among friends, I can only think of perhaps three people whose religious leanings I know, and that’s because they’re regular church-goers. It certainly would be possible for particular situations to arise in the two church schools in which I teach (I don’t get to choose which schools I go to), particularly at this time of year…

Thankfully, however, involvement in music tends to be a convenient bypass of any other requirements in religious ceremonies. I’ve got no problem with providing the accompaniment for them, but would refuse, for example, to give a reading. But mainly because of the former, I’ve never been asked to do the latter.

[QUOTE=Alice The Goon]
Has anyone else found Easter to be particularly frustrating? It seems everybody celebrates Easter- even most atheists I know (admittedly few) do some kind of egg/candy/fake grass thing. I don’t, and a lot of people think that’s weird. I don’t acknowledge it it any way. My poor kids, missing out on all that candy.

I do celebrate Christmas. Does that make me a hypocrite? I’m really celebrating the winter solstice, not the birth of Jesus.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t see that there’s any greater problem with Easter being, for you, a solely cultural celebration in the way than the way Christmas pretty much is.

[QUOTE=Alice The Goon]
As a bonus question, for those of you with kids: Are they atheist? What do they think about the whole thing?
[/QUOTE]

Here’s an interesting one: my parents brought us up with no religious indoctrination, leaving all decisions to us. I do know that my mother, a lapsed Catholic, still has some spiritual beliefs, but I don’t know about my father. More interesting is that I have no idea whatsoever about either of my sisters!

24

Very little, fortunately. My grandfather, I’ve figured out now, was an atheist. My parents weren’t very religious - I went to Hebrew School, but I think they wanted me to in order to get the real, Saturday, bar mitzvah. MIT was not exactly a hotbed of religion. Maybe one person of the 50 I knew ever went to any kind of church. (MIT has one and only one nondenominational chapel.) The people in my research group in grad school weren’t religious at all. I got married without the mention of god, at the Ethical Culture Society. Very few of the people I worked with in Bell Labs believed, and in Silicon Valley there is so much diversity that Christianity does not have a plurality - maybe not even a majority, though I’m not sure.

Both of my kids are atheists. I made sure to not oppose them going to church with friends, so religion was not forbidden fruit. They’re both also very smart. :slight_smile: I showed them the basic illogicality of the beginning of Genesis, and since we aren’t the least bit ashamed of not believing, they don’t see a problem.

My wife isn’t quite an atheist, she’s a weak deist. Her mother was a believer but her father is an atheist also. I married well.

25

It makes some of the questions people ask me a bit awkward to answer. Questions like, “what made you decide to become a minister?”
Answering “Easy cash and giggles” tends to end things on a sour note.

26

No problem here either.

Most of my friends are atheists or agnostics, and the few Christians i know are very low key about the whole thing. My best friend who’s a Christian is an Episcopalian which, as far as some fundamentalist types are concerned, is almost the same as an atheist anyway.

I remember putting my foot in my mouth during my first year living in the US. It was on Ash Wednesday, and i thought i was doing the guy a favor by telling him that he had smudged newspaper ink or something on his forehead. He politely educated me. It says something about the importance of religion in Australia that i don’t recall seeing this practice in three decades of living there.

27

No challenges. I always get surprised when someone I know turns out to not be an atheist.
[QUOTE=Alice The Goon]
Has anyone else found Easter to be particularly frustrating? It seems everybody celebrates Easter- even most atheists I know (admittedly few) do some kind of egg/candy/fake grass thing. I don’t, and a lot of people think that’s weird. I don’t acknowledge it it any way. My poor kids, missing out on all that candy.

I do celebrate Christmas. Does that make me a hypocrite? I’m really celebrating the winter solstice, not the birth of Jesus.
[/QUOTE]
I celebrate Easter, Christmas, and whatever else shows up. I couldn’t care less about its religious ties if my life depended on it. It’s tradition, now, that’s all. I’m celebrating neither the winter solstice nor the birth of Jesus, I just like eating Christmas dinner and exchanging presents.

28

[QUOTE=Alice The Goon]
I’m really celebrating the winter solstice
[/QUOTE]
My experience with Solstice parties is purely from a few Wiccan/pagan folks I used to know; I’ve never heard of anyone celebrating solstices outside of that context. Did you genuinely mean ‘celebrating the winter solstice’ or is that just shorthand for “I’m in the mood for a big party 'cos the days are officially getting longer”?

This about sums it up for me, too. Unlike Priceguy, though, I’m not actually a fan of Christmas or Easter, etc; I just use them as a marker for when to catch up with the relatives I don’t see very often. Though I do like the public holidays associated with those occasions. :smiley:

29

Life is sometimes very challenging as an atheist; but then I did marry a 7th Day Adventist Christian girl…

We couldn’t disagree more about any of the big questions. There’s some stuff that she believes that I find truely jaw-dropping - for instance that all the scientific evidence that doesn’t support events in the bible is essentially falsified (by Satan, not scientists) and that there does exist evidence pointing the other way, it’s just that Satan has made it difficult to find. I struggle to cope with this kind of thinking, being a Physics graduate.

So long as we stay away from any big philosophical questions, we get on fantastically. So aside from that life is pretty relaxed; she does respect my point of view. The only major consequence is that we aint never having kids. Quite apart from the fact that I’m really not attracted to the idea, she doesn’t want to raise kids with an atheist husband.

30

No “challenges” at all.

The only minor things are biting my tongue on the incredibly rare times that people proselytise - though in my regular personal life, this really never happens. They’re usually new agers, rather than ‘traditional’ religious people.

I also feel obliged to attend church with my parents at Christmas, etc. to keep them happy. It’s boring but really only a minor chore. I like looking at the architecture (the church is nearly 1,000 years old) and some of the singing too.

31

I suppose the main problem was back when I was still dating…I kept encountering women who wanted a “good Christian man”. Perusing the online ads, it seems that if I wanted to try dating again, it would be a problem again. As for holidays, I’ll celebrate any holiday that looks like fun to me, regardless of its religious or ethnic origin. Pretty lights? Lots of food? Presents? Laughter? Count me in!!

I got ‘talked to’ about my refusal to say “under god” during the pledge of allegiance in grade school, but I resolved that issue by refusing to say the pledge any more till it reverts to its original phrasing. I’ll stand respectfully, but that’s it. I’ve found that hospitals don’t have counseling for atheists; but only one of the chaplains I met wouldn’t leave before trying to save me. (He DID leave when I suggested that it was bad enough knowing I was expected to die without having him tell me I was going to be tortured every moment for the rest of eternity as evidence of god’s infinite love and mercy.) Oh, and I quite happily discussed my atheism with one chaplain, but she was a very attractive 40-something. :smiley:

I don’t count the proselytizers in my driveway; I figure they can’t know my religious status until the conversation starts. I usually just tell them to leave and they do; I only talk with them if I feel like having fun with them. (A Catholic friend of mine put me up to it. He said I should just have an honest conversation with them; he was amused by my account of the event.)

32

No challenges. People here are culturally Christian, but not very religious. I have had some problems explaining that I don’t celebrate Christmas, but it’s not because I’m an atheist, it’s because I’m culturally Jewish. In fact, I doubt any of my coworkers know I’m an atheist, I bet they all think I’m religiously Jewish. That’s fine with me. (I know it’s none of their business, but in Bulgarian culture, it is traditional to bring in treats for your friends and colleagues on special days, like your birthday or name day. I don’t want to look miserly, but I don’t have a name day and my birthday is in the summer. So I have occasionally treated my colleagues on Jewish holidays.)

Back in America, meh. My parents and most of my relatives are atheists. I have one aunt (out of four, on my mom’s side) who’s still a practicing Catholic, I think. My dad’s grandparents were communists and so rejected religion, so no one on that side is religious. Like jjimm, it’s more about biting my tongue when people go on about “new age” stuff. I had an argument with a coworker about astrology once. Note to self: STFU!

When I read about people having serious issues with their parents regarding religion, I feel really fortunate. That must be just awful.

33

I don’t ever talk about my religious beliefs,or lack of, I should say,mainly for the consideration of my family.I really don’t consider myself an atheist,but I guess thats what I am.
I don’t care if their is a god or not…I would have no interest in it or him even if he was proven to exist(at least the god I was “taught” to believe in).

But the problems I encounter are with my family as most of them are all very religious,but like I say its never discussed, so it aint much of a problem…but it could be someday.A really bad one.

I sit and pray with them at meals when at their house…celebrate religious holidays with them…I even worked and lived at a christian camp for kids for many years…going through the motions I needed to go through.

34

Sometimes I have to tiptoe around my (Christian Scientist) wife’s feelings with regard to how I say things (but not the content of what I say). That’s about it.

Otherwise I don’t really let door-to-door religion salesmen or fundie nutjobs who hate my pentagram t-shirt get to me. Way I see it, they’re the ones with the problem, not me.

35

None, thank God.

Er…

36

It wasn’t much of an issue for me until I moved to a country where most people take it for granted not only that you are an ardent believer but that you are a Catholic, and failing that, an evangelical Christian. Other religions are not considered to exist, and atheism is only really used a a synonym for evil.

The main issue has been with my son, now 7. How to explain our world view without causing problems for him. My line is more or less - different people believe different things, you should never mock anyone’s belief no matter how silly it sounds, you should also expect people to respect your beliefs, and no one has the monopoly on the truth anyway.

37

My only real challenge in being in atheist has been maintaining some sense of direction and safety when things get difficult. I remember what it was like to be religious–you got to trust that Everything Was Okay and God Had a Plan. You didn’t have to worry about life, because God was doing all the worrying for you. I find doing things on my own to be infinitely more difficult and scary.

I guess I work with some religious people, but they aren’t proselytizing freaks. The other day a co-worker I like very much was reading a book, and I asked her what book she was reading. She started gushing about it and handed it to me. It was a book written for Christian women about how women have always wanted to be treated like princesses and live movie-star lives. The message in the book was essentially, ‘‘You deserve to be treated like a princess! Don’t settle for anything less!’’ There were extensive passages about how natural it was for women to wear make-up and wear dresses and act like children. Really awful stuff.

I said, ‘‘Thanks for sharing that, I’m glad you’re enjoying it so much,’’ and handed it back with a smile.

I don’t begrudge people their personal beliefs. In fact, I think there’s something kind of beautiful about the way religion can bring out peoples’ natural instinct to love. I think the OP’s attitude is a bit patronizing. You try to keep in mind that they’ve been brainwashed, but don’t note the irony that they feel the same way about you?

38

[QUOTE=Leaffan]
We’ve got it pretty easy here in Canada. Religious beliefs/persuasions don’t really even enter into political debates - the way it should be, of course. Religion doesn’t get discussed at work either.
[/QUOTE]
It’s the same over here, in the Netherlands.

Some data: about one third of the population says they believe in (a sort of Christian) God, another third believes in “some greater unity or some benevolent Plan or Power” (this group has been named to be of the “Somethingism” faith, after their most common creed “Well, I do believe there is Something” :slight_smile: ) The remaining third are true atheists.
As for church attendance, those figures are far lower: the last polls indicate that about 19% of our population describes themselves as a regular church-goer. That number is divided like this; about 7 % visits some kind of Protestant church, 7% regularly attend Catholic mass, and the remaining 4 % is “other” and that includes Moslims visiting Mosque’s.

As for my personal challenges, I am most bothered by the way religion (Christians, Moslims) in general seems to pollute debate. In general debate everywhere, rational arguments and facts are the norm. If you can’t back your position up with scientific facts, poll-results and arguments, your position is weak and everyone knows it, including you. Even the unions can hardly get away anymore with their now decades old, formerly religiously adhered tenet of “capitalists bleeding labourers dry”.

So everyone has to abide by those rules of debate, except the religious folk. They can say: “because the Bible/Koran says homosexuality is bad” or, if their debating opponents come up with contradicting parts of their holy books, with, “Still, that is how my religion sees it”. That usually ends the debate, eiterh because of fear of offending or by giving up by the non-religious opponent. And personally, I am deeply annoyed that manners and social custom forbids us to confront such “debaters” on their inconsistent and illogical ways of thinking. Religion seems to be a reservation where the normally firm rules of a scientific approach and tried and true debating methods simply don’t apply.

Usually, moral debates with atheists are far more fruitful. Such debates lead to the discovery of fundamental tenets, and to the application thereof in situation where two or more of such tenets conflict. That is fruitful. No such moral discussion, in my experience, is possible with the average religious person I have met in real life.

39

[QUOTE=Maastricht]

Usually, moral debates with atheists are far more fruitful. Such debates lead to the discovery of fundamental tenets, and to the application thereof in situation where two or more of such tenets conflict. That is fruitful. No such moral discussion, in my experience, is possible with the average religious person I have met in real life.
[/QUOTE]

I know we’re supposed to be griping about problems we face in here - but good Ford, this is one of the really neat perks of atheism. You get in the habit of thinking deeply about morality, and trying to do it logically, and you reach interesting conclusions. Good times.

40

I don’t think I face any challenges in my day to day life as an atheist. And I don’t think I know anyone who does.

Around here religion doesn’t seem to be a issue.