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Permalink Reply by Becky on May 12, 2011 at 7:17pm

It depends on where you are and who you associate with. I live in a town where 90 percent of the kids are sheltered, and are only exposed to one belief. Ergo, most of my friends are religious, and most likely have a problem with me being an atheist. I'm long over it. It's depressing, but that seems to be the general idea in small towns.

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Permalink Reply by Gunnar on May 11, 2011 at 9:00pm

Me and my mom were talking about how souls and heaven and stuff

Me: So you think once we die, everything in our brain just magically gets teleported to some place in the sky, where we "live" forever?

Mom: No, not our brains, our spirits. You know, us.

Me: But "we" are our brains. Every memory and aspect of our personality is in our brain.

Mom: You're thinking way to hard about this.

I facepalmed in my head

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Permalink Reply by Shai on May 12, 2011 at 5:44am

I personally have gotten rejected by a few friends for not believing. Supposedly I'm under the mind control of my other atheist friends, instead of making my own grown adult decisions. My atheist friends showed me some contradictions in the inerrant word of god; after about a year i fell out of religion. i used to be in a christian band. This was not an easy deconversion.

My mom, a Mormon, tells me i'm not godless because I'm a good person. I guess she associates being a bad person with being a godless one.

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Permalink Reply by coffeycake on May 14, 2011 at 8:41pm

To give a little backstory on me, I've had a lot of awful experiences in my life. I used to be a pretty devout Catholic (taught Sunday school and went to church with my grandmother). I tried to turn to the actual bible for comfort and guidance while suicidal and found none inside, which caused me to doubt Catholicism. That's where this all started.

Lest I give the impression that this wasn't a rational decision, one day I was discussing religion with my fiance and realized that I was basically saying, "Yeah, you Abrahamic religions are so fake, but these ancient Celtic gods who have just as much evidence to support their existence as you do TOTALLY EXIST." Once I realized my hypocrisy, I became an atheist, and it was like a breath of completely rational fresh air.

A few months later, I decided I should tell my "salad bar Catholic" mother that her daughter is a heathen. Here's the conversation.

Me: Mom, I have to talk to you about something important.

Mom: Okay, what's wrong?

Me: Well, nothing's wrong exactly. I just thought I should let you know that I'm an atheist.

Mom: *makes a strangled noise like I'd told her some friends were coming around for dinner and I'd prepared kitten a l'orange.*

There was a very, very long pause.

Mom: You're... you're an ATHEIST? How can you possibly be an ATHEIST?

Figuring it was the best place to start, I thought I should explain the whole process. I tried to enumerate the reasons that had caused me to doubt the existence of a creator as described in the bible in the first place: Emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive boyfriend, broken-up family, divorced parents, one of whom implicitly blames me for said divorce, etc.

Mom: Well, did you ever think god wanted it that way?

We didn't continue the conversation for very long after that, because I saw it was pointless to try and talk about the science I had learned since becoming an atheist, or the evidence that supports atheism (meaning, all of the evidence).

The part that makes me laugh is her hypocrisy. That's probably the single most amoral thing she could have said, and yet she thinks of herself as (and would be lauded as) a "good christian."

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Permalink Reply by David on July 12, 2011 at 6:27pm

My Sister: Mom saw that you joined a Atheist group on Facebook. 

 

Me: So? 

 

My Sister: She was upset and asked me "what did I do wrong as a mother?"  I said "bringing him to a fundamentalist cult-church didn't help." 

 

Me: Why didn't she just talk to me? 

 

My Sister: That's what I asked. 

 

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Permalink Reply by Meddlesome on July 18, 2011 at 3:01am

You should have said, yes, im an atheist :)

 

M.

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Permalink Reply by booklover on July 18, 2011 at 9:04am

lol.  Yep, her teaching convinced you how silly it all was.

 

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Permalink Reply by Joshua Billingsley on July 20, 2011 at 3:43pm

I had a friend who was shocked that I was an atheist but never told me until she heard me say "Goddamn" one day. Now she says that I must believe in God because of that. Refuses to accept that the phrase just popped out. She just walks away when I correct her.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Ramos on July 21, 2011 at 7:15am

Wow, these stories, feel bad for some of you. I grew up in Hampton Roads Virginia and it was never a big deal to other kids at school. I used to answer "not really" or "I don't know" and it never caused much of a fuss except for with the odd super Baptist.

I think the funniest comments I've heard weren't negative but just revealed the persons lack of scientific knowledge. Like when I mention I'm an atheist, they ask me to explain some inane point related to creation science or something.

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Permalink Reply by Bizu Dana on July 21, 2011 at 1:48pm

Same here. It is never a big deal in our highschools or collages either. Now in my university,the common attitude towards this subject is... whatever! 

Although I remember a girl from 9th grade telling on me to the school's director, very alarmed, that I am not a "believer" !! I usually felt very relaxed talking open with my friends but that girl was a typical  hyper-spoiled brat with only 2 very lonely neurons in her head , who couldn't see anything past what her grandmothers have tought her. For a second i actually felt terror over my spine but i looked over to the director's face i saw total indifference. 

Small lesson: i will never make statements around ignorant people anymore. they always respond agressive when they don't understand. And they always, ALWAYS think that other people must  share the same beliefs as they do. ( that a genuine proof of narrow-mindedness)!

That they're beliefs are the most logical, and true and just. They never learn anything else. So they close they're minds to new information. For them, it's just backround "crap" that isn't worth "digesting". 

 

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Permalink Reply by Geoff on September 11, 2011 at 6:58pm

Lol "2 very lonely neurons in her head".

In my mind a god is like an imaginary friend. When people are told that a deity doesn't exist they perceive it as an attack on their best friend, hence aggression. Sad really.

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Permalink Reply by big_dan44 on July 21, 2011 at 12:19pm

I keep getting told by the few friends I've "come out" to that they "see god in me" even if I do not. Hell, my own wife keeps saying that she "believes enough for the both of us." Whatever. What they actually see in me is a good person that grates with what they've been told about how godless people are inherently not good people. So observation does not equal hypothesis and that is mind-blowing to the few people that I've "come out" to. 

 

Religion does not equal morality, yet to SO MANY otherwise logical and intelligent people, they are one and the same. 

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