This seems to be a common theme on the almighty Internet. Atheists are simply angry at God so they refuse to believe in Him. I see variations on this thought in nearly every corner of the web that I visit. To be fair, I also see some atheists responding to this nonsense with anger, or by belittling a person who professes faith. That's not cool, either.
I don't believe that there are gods or a God. I also don't really give a shit what others believe, whether it's the words of Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, Jehovah, Heavenly Father, Vishnu, Zeus, or Waheguru. To each their own. I know a lot of people who strive to be the best person they can be because their faith drives them to do so. I know plenty of other people who are awful, terrible, mean-spirited people because they believe that doing so is just according to a book that they own.
But it doesn't matter to me. Atheism isn't a thing. It literally means "without God(s)." The absence of a belief doesn't define a person. Atheism certainly doesn't define me. The only thing that you know about me when you know I'm an atheist is that I don't believe in something that you believe in. That's all. Anything else that you think you can interpret from that is probably false.
Just as if I made assumptions about you because of whatever deity you believe in, making assumptions about non-believers is equally fraught with peril.
There are a lot of things that I could address in a diary about atheism, but I'm going to try to keep my focus narrow. Today I want to talk about the perception that atheists are angry at something, that their anger makes them lash out at a thing that they don't even believe exists.
To me, this seems like Logic 101, but apparently it's not.
I also must add here that I speak only for myself. (The idea that all atheists are always on the same page is a topic for another diary, one that I will likely never write because it's simply too stupid and mundane for me to entertain long enough to address it adequately.)
ON ANGER
It's quite likely that you have detected anger in an atheist that you know, and maybe you attributed that to a lack of faith, or an anger at God. There are two common types of anger that I experience when this topic arrives, and it has nothing to do with a deity. The first type of anger is a fleeting one- one that seeps out of me because someone is needling me about what I truly believe. The second type is a more existential anger, and probably the reason atheists get a rap for being angry to begin with.
The easiest to address is the fleeting anger. This happens when someone engages me in a conversation about belief systems and proceeds to dismiss everything I say with a quote from the Bible. This doesn't make me angry but it does frustrate the hell out of me.
What makes me angry is the insistence that I truly do believe in something because. Just because. I've been in conversations so absurd that I was literally once told that the fact that I didn't believe in God was proof that there is one, because if there is something that I don't believe in it therefore proves that it exists.
I wish I was kidding.
I've also been told that I don't believe in God because I'm gay, or that I'm going through a phase, or that I'm just a rebel and don't really believe in nothing.
I get angry when people are dismissive of me or my life experience. It's a flaw- I acknowledge that, but it genuinely makes me angry.
The second type of anger, the existential type, is the more important one.
I am not angry at a deity that I don't believe in. How could that possibly work? I might as well be angry at the Easter Bunny for forgetting to drop Jelly Beans at my house this year- AGAIN- even though my favorites are the black licorice ones that everyone else hates.
No, I am not angry at a deity because I don't believe that there is/are one(s).
I'm angry at our culture for leading me to this place to begin with.
See, I was born into a religious family. I went to Church every Sunday. I was baptized. I loved the Bible stories and I especially loved praying. I adored Jesus. I feared God. I was always the first one in my Sunday School class to raise my hand. I took this shit seriously. When I was six or seven, I felt like we were all too spoiled and didn't learn enough from Jesus when he was here. It did not make sense to me that we were all so comfortable as we sinned.
One Sunday every month, we had to fast, and I really thought that was bullshit. Not because we couldn't eat, but because it didn't seem like enough of a sacrifice for Jesus. I mean, this guy loves me, he DIED for me. He promised me not only eternal life, but eternal life with my family so that I'd never really lose them. That's amazing, and that deserves respect. Not this willy-nilly nonsense we do every Sunday, but serious sacrifice in his honor.
No one else that I knew seemed to think about Jesus as much as I did. Everyone had a picture of him displayed prominently in their house, but I could see that they didn't think about him that much. Most people wouldn't even talk to me about him unless we were in church.
This troubled me a great deal as a small child.
I knew that JC and I were tight and that he loved me because I talked to him every day. Sometimes I'd even write him letters and leave them on my windowsill so he could pick them up overnight. I wasn't worried about us. We had it going on. I did everything a good Christian girl is supposed to do and I knew he knew that because we talked about it a lot.
Well, he never confirmed anything for me because, you know, he's more of a listener. But I could feel him, so I knew.
What I worried about was the adults in my life because they wanted me to love Jesus and read the Bible, but they didn't know anything about it.
I'd ask questions and they'd always be answered with a shrug or a pat on my head. "Don't worry about it, honey, it's all part of God's plan."
But that's not an answer! Jesus doesn't like us to kill each other but we go to war and we have to kill people, so are my grandpa's going to Hell? They both fought in wars! What if they killed someone? What does Jesus say about war? I haven't gotten to that part yet in Sunday school but I need to know NOW!
No answer.
This kid at school is getting picked on so I stood up for him today, but then I found out that he doesn't believe in Jesus and he doesn't even celebrate Christmas! I don't like the other kids picking on him but he's also on the road to Hell so what do I do?????
No answer.
My great-grandma died and I am very scared. This church that she went to is weird. They scream and shake and talk funny when they get excited. They told me she was walking on streets of gold with Jesus, but how can that be? That's not Heaven, these people are freaks! Is she going to be okay? Is my grandma really in Heaven?
Twenty different, contradictory answers.
So maybe you can see where this is going.
So, what's the big deal? Why am I still prone to anger about this lie that I was told? Well, because the idea of faith is something that I struggled with for a long time. Even though I was bothered by the contradictions in humans, I was comforted by the idea of Jesus. (FTR, this is why, to this day, I do my best to never denigrate someone for their belief in something, even if I strongly disagree with it.)
I sought Him out for many years; I wanted to believe the way I used to as a child. I wanted that relationship to be as strong and valuable; I wanted it to guide me in life.
So I went on my own spiritual journey to reconnect with Jesus, and that was when I lost him. This is, perhaps, also a topic for another diary altogether.
So why the anger?
Because I don't understand why this myth was created, or why we beat each other up if we don't believe that myth in the exact the same manner. I don't blame my parents for lying to me because they, to this day, don't believe that any of it was a lie.
And there is the rub: I hate being lied to, but how can I hold anyone accountable for lying to me if they don't even recognize the lie?
I'm angry that we do this to each other; that we use this to judge each other.
We create a security blanket named God when children are born, and if that child grows to decide that it's all a lie, that security blanket is ripped away. Not the comfort of knowing that something exists that doesn't exist, but the small, unspoken comfort of knowing that your family believes in what you do. My mom doesn't bother me about being an atheist, but it does bother her. And that, in turn, pisses me off.
Why was she raised to believe something so pernicious? Because her parents and their parents and their parents were raised to believe the same thing. And their beliefs mean that they must be tortured about the fact that I will never be saved.
In this way, religion feels like emotional blackmail of the highest order.
See, I'm comfortable with my beliefs- I was born, I will die, and a lot of cool, tragic, mundane, and wonderful things will happen in between. I'll meet a lot of amazing people, see a lot of sunsets, skips more rocks on a lake than there are stars in the sky. I will laugh, I will love, I will cry, I will grow tired. That's enough for me. That's more than enough for me.
When I'm gone I will leave very little beyond memories behind.
But there will be an asterisk in the hearts of those I left behind, because I don't believe, so where did I really go?
I'm okay with going nowhere. I will turn to ash and be carried away by the wind.
That should be enough. But for some that I leave behind, they will forever worry about my soul.
It makes me angry that we as a culture endorse a belief system that allows that sadness to exist.