Atheists

As posted in the DWTS thread, being athiest and gay is really asking for trouble.

When my ex and I broke up, over said athiesm, sexuality and other issues, she went to the other extreme, married a Southern baptist and started praying for me to "change." Somehow we've managed to stay mostly friendly over time, but nothing can get either of us going or our eyes rolling faster than bringing up religion, sexuality or politics.

I think we are more likely to have a female president, an Hispanic president, maybe even a gay president, before we would have an atheist president.

I don't discuss my beliefs in my home. My mother is devout Catholic, my wife is sort of Catholic, and my kids are Catholics of varying degrees, though I think one is a closet atheist. We were married in a Catholic church, and all the kids have been baptized and received all the sacraments. Though I've never explicitly said, "I don't believe in god", I've made enough anti-religious statements that I don't think anyone would be truly surprised.

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Closet atheist here. I can't bring myself to make full disclosure to my devoutly evangelical Christian mom. Evangelical Christianity is very tightly woven into the fabric of my extended family. I vividly recall being forced to attend tent revivals as a kid growing up in rural NC. That's why to this day, the Jonestown, Guyana tragedy still leaves me cold. IMO there is something intrinsically cultist about all of Christendom.

Sometimes my situation is as unbearable as I imagine the gay closet is for some folks. Perhaps that's why I tend to not be so judgmental when middle-aged closeted gays & lesbians finally make the decision to come out, like Ken Mehlman. Offline, I've more or less lived in a closet of my own for nearly 50 yrs.

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Updated On: 8/31/10 at 01:03 PM

One of my ex's favorite saying is "God will provide."

Then how come ya always have your hand out?

I'm not exactly public about my athiesm but don't deny it when asked. My partner is a lapsed Catholic who wants to go back to church and while I encourage him to take that step, I do tell him he's going to be doing it alone.

My athiesm mostly stems from being 14-years-old, newly confirmed in the Methodist Church and suddenly being filled with questions about the virgin birth, resurrection, Satan and all the basic tenets and realizing that I didn't believe any of it was true. All the garbage done in the name of religion since just compounds it.

"even worse than being a Muslim."

Not so sure about that, at least not at this particular moment.

I do think vocalization is necessary. It is precisely because of their vocalization that I could no longer remain silent.

It's interesting reading this, because it's so different here in the UK.

I'm aware how secular we are, but honestly I can count the amount of religious people I know my age on one hand. From my experience, it's practically assumed to be at the very least agnostic. I know when I went to university, I became friends with a few 'proper' Christians and that was vastly out of the ordinary. Maybe it's just a generational thing.

My Mum and Grandparents are/were all religious, so I tended to stay clear of the topic...but I was pretty open with my questions about it, and they never satisfied me with a good answer. Must have been pretty frustrating to have a kid out-reason you. My Dad and Brother aren't religious, the former seems more traditional in the sense that he doesn't believe in God or Christianity but doesn't mind going to church. Weird.

I'm not sure whether it's seen as worse to be atheist or anti-theist? Simply saying you don't believe in a creator/deity is different from pulling apart religion. For instance, you can be agnostic and fall into the latter...but would a religious person really prefer you to be open to the concept of God but hate religion, or simply be atheist and not bother to engage? I guess they go hand in hand more often than not.

I always claim myself as Jewish in that I do believe in the morals taught through the religion, but as far as belief in God I'm pretty much agnostic. I guess I'm an agnostic Jew, which, I think, actually describes a vast portion of the Reform sect.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone can and should do whatever they want - practice or believe in what they want sexually, religiously - whatever - just so long as they keep it to themselves. When you start encroaching on others or dictating what others should do, that's when I start to have a problem.

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I myself and Agnostic. Perhaps with an Atheist leaning. I don't spend too much time worrying about death and dying. The day will come without me worrying about it. What happens afterwards? I will find out when I get there. Until then I feel it is none of my business. I know I will cross over not expecting much and will probably be not disappointed.
I tell people who ask, I was raised in the Christian religion but don't buy the stories of God or this magical son as fact. more as a means to teach a lesson. Much like Aesop.
How did we come into being? Who knows? We will never know for sure, being a part of the microcosm we cannot be objective.

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I am gay and atheist with a mother who is a recently ordained minister. I have told her I believe in belief, and the convictions that people have in their beliefs are powerful. As long as you believe and have conviction, and don't impose those beliefs on others it is fine by me. I do think organized religion is serious trouble and can create a cult mentality to be reckoned with, so I have issue there.

Now, my problem is it has taken me a long time to believe in anything at all. But, I do believe in belief, and conviction, as well as the healing power of the arts. I believe in redemption. Other than that, I think about everything rather existentially which can get me in trouble.

The closest thing I have ever had to a "Bible" is the work of Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, and Firefly). Those shows have shown me what power is, and helped me understand the grey area we all live in--despite people insisting everything is clearly black or white. Good or evil. Sin. These are all constructs we have imposed on ourselves, and I think they represent what makes us flawed and innately human. We are all connected in our flaws.

Seriously, Buffy and Angel told me more about the human condition than anything else. Whedon and many of his collaborators are atheists, and he cites Sondheim's early musicals as the source for his earliest understandings of human nature. He has a quote, and I'm paraphrasing, "I learned more about love and relationships from Company, Follies, and ALNM than anything else as a child." So true. Into the Woods helped me understand some tricky things about relationships, being a child, and storytelling. "Careful the tale you tell! That is the spell!" Joss Whedon has always been attentive to that.

As the shirt says, "Joss Whedon is my God now."

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"LONDON (Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the 'Big Bang' was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In 'The Grand Design,' co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

'Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,' Hawking writes."

Link to article.

I am a Christian but I don't follow a lot of what most Christians believe. I believe in what Jesus, himself, preached and not what centuries of the church have warped it into. I also, I believe that a lot of the Bible is not literal, but a metaphor for people to grasp the undrstanding.

People should (and need) to believe in what they want to believe in. Who am I to stick a finger in someone's face and say they are wrong? I don't know for a fact that they are, but I believe in what I believe in and I'm fine with that. Yes, I am a Christian but I don't believe in the concept of religion. Religion is man made, and with that, there are a lot of faults and power struggle.

Again, I am what I am and you are what you are. No biggie!

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Updated On: 9/3/10 at 03:44 PM

Wanna read a jaw-droppingly moronic column? This girl things vandalism is OK when the subject is an atheist billboard. What's more, anonymously defacing a billboard apparently requires great courage!
Her whole archive is a doozy, actually