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Atheist unite!!

I consider myself to be on a permanent religious hiatus. Since my delayed onset in 2013. So many things I made myself forget. My father, psycho who made my early years h*ll, drove us home from church (where he probably prayed for forgiveness for what he did at home) and decided to yell one day that he was going to kill us all by crashing into the nearest tree. After the divorce he "found Jesus" if Jesus was actually there you'd think the times I prayed as a kid this stuff would have magically ended.

My mother and step father beat me for years and made me terminate my first child at 18. Then sent me to be in the church nursery with other women's babies to make it up to god for what I'd done. You guessed it they are clean and Scot free because they got more involved in the church. Even shunning me if I suggested on having mothers day in the morning with her because she had to come first. No you can't expect us to not be in choir for one day. Its how we feel important.

So yes I've stopped praying or believing. Those who warped my life decide they get to be free. While I'm in h*'ll alive doing the payment for their "sins" they were eager to give me.

If religion is so peace and love, why is it not for all? I've had it beaten out of me. Beaten into me with words that I'm not good by certain standards. By the very same people who believe they can be forgiven their evil treatment of me if they accept those standards. The irony of all of this is that my first name's meaning is follower of christ. :rolleyes: as if anything "pure" could come of that home environment.

By their religious standards I'm damned. For things that were done to me. And because I won't ask for "forgiveness" for what I've been through and been made to do.

My husband was raised catholic and he's fine with us not going to church. I only attend once in a while for him when there is a mass being done for his dad who was a good man.
 
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I'm really having a hard time navigating Christianity in the US. And I'm having a hard time just ignoring the issue, despite it not really impacting me at all.

Where I come from, at least regionally, the baseline is for people to not be religious. Christians (and other religions) are the absolute minority and at least in my area it's just not a thing you encounter in day-to-day life.

Whereas here in the US the baseline is to be religious. And while I thankfully end up surrounding myself with people who aren't in-your-face about it, it still leaves a weird feeling. Because you always have to assume they are (and hence tailor your comments appropriately because you don't want to hurt them) and over time, eventually, it will come up in one way or another in conversations and interactions.

When I meet someone new, my inherent state is to assume they're not religious. Because I'm not meeting them in religious contexts. I fine-tune my assessment over time by their behaviors, stances, comments, ... and it just absolutely clashes when every assessment points towards non-religious life styles and thought patterns ...only to suddenly be confronted with "Please keep xyz in your prayers" or "God was kind with me this time" completely out of the blue.

I know I have religious friends back home. Heck, I have religious family. But never have I ever heard those kind of comments in conversations. Ever.

I do wonder how other Atheists deal with this here in the US.
 
Yeah, that'd for sure be a shock to the system.
NZ has a pretty non-religious baseline too (though in comparison to the US I feel like most places do), except there is a particular cross walk in my city with an almost permanent fixture of a mindlessly blathering Christian guy.
siniang said:
I do wonder how other Atheists deal with this here in the US.
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Granted, I can't relate directly to this. But just wanted to say:
siniang said:
Because you always have to assume they are (and hence tailor your comments appropriately because you don't want to hurt them)
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People will find a way to be offended about anything. And religious folk (not all) seem to be particularly good at it.

When I was in highschool, my English teacher (who was a Christian) would completely stop the class if anyone said "oh my god" etc. She'd just stare at you until you apologised. :rolleyes:

In hindsight I wished I wouldn't have apologised when I said it.
I mean, hypothetically, I could worship a god called The, and be offended everytime some said the word The, that wasn't in reference to their holiness.

I mean we could all have differently named gods, and then spend all day getting offended by each other not obeying each holy doctrine, as opposed to furthering humanity...

It's when a single religious faction becomes the majority, as Christianity is in the US, that things become more difficult for us. But there has to be a balance between not wanting to hurt people, and being true to yourself. After all, I'm sure you aren't actually saying anything inherently hurtful. They are just the ones getting upset over it.

I know when I lived with two fundamental Christians a year ago, I would listen to atheist podcasts etc in my alone time, to restore my sanity. And it did help somewhat.
When interacting with them, I'd remind myself that I value their right to freedom of speech, but I don't need to value their words or actions they take. And in fact, it's perfectly ok to remain polite but very unengaged to whatever disturbed fairytales they've chosen to spew forth today :)
 
I mean, I don't have a problem with (non-fundamental) religious people. I don't agree with organized religion at all for all what's wrong with it (of which brain-washing and guilt-tripping is up top, also all the atrocities that have been committed in the name of religions). And I just inherently don't understand how someone can believe in some omnipotent deity that has some impact on their life -- but neither do I understand how someone can't like cheese, and I'm living with one. So there's that, to each their own, live and let live as long as they don't bother me with that (for example have I never felt the urge to try to convince a religious person of atheism...I'm not a fundamental atheist....I'm actually generally more of an agnostic -- I just don't care enough about whether or not there is a god or not, but I don't think if there is, it has any influence over us).

So, I don't actually care if someone is religious or not as long as it doesn't impact their moral compass, their scientific thinking, their sociality, their interactions with me. Also, lots of legit good and social things are organized by religious people. As long as it doesn't actually impact me, even indirectly. And it does start bothering me when people are public about it because it shows their need to broadcast it -- which kind of is a form of proselytizing or at least it shows their assumption of me being religious as well. As if it doesn't even occur to them that someone might NOT be believing in God. And granted, I'm a hypocrite because my baseline is the exact opposite, but I at least don't try to convert them...even subliminally.
 
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It's tough being a non-believer in the most Christian country on Earth. Luckily, outside of the Deep South, most cities contain many other non-believers. The New England region actually contains more non-believers than believers. It was nice living there.

You just learn not to talk about religious stuff with people and to excuse yourself if people try to talk about religion with you. And if people get in your face with it, you just get right back in their faces.
 
I just have to post about the other forum I go to. It just bothers me so much. Most of the folks there are very, very religious and for some of them it's a great comfort. But for far too many of them, their beliefs are just one more thing keeping them ashamed and silent. Their religion is just dragging them down - they constantly worry about what God thinks or what their co-religionists are thinking or both, and it simply paralyzes them.

Religion is just one more layer of shame - and sometimes MANY layers of shame - that they're going to have to dig themselves out of. And for some of them, they're just not going to be able to do it. It just makes me so sad and angry.
 
And some like my parents use religion as a tool to abuse others. And expect that the person they hurt will never talk about it due to religious shame.

They and my neurologist made me have an abortion at 18. Then decided I'd spend every Sunday with other women's babies in the church nursery to "make it up to god" for what I had done. I was not allowed to mourn my loss and going there did a lot of psychological damage.

I was in the nursery for at least a year before someone decided I'd be better used as a higher grade teacher. I don't know who had me moved, but the damage had been done. Its the anniversary of that trauma until end of January. Religion has been a trigger ever since I started re experiencing this.
 

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