Answering that question is pointless: I couldn’t give a single solitary flying fuck what a mentally deranged person thinks of any demographic unless it becomes a threat to somebody other than themselves.
There is this strange idea that atheists are just rebellious against God because they don’t want to be responsible for being moral, kinda like disobeying your parents and sneaking out to party.
Also, lots of theists assume atheists used to be religious, they don’t really consider that people are raised without religion sometimes.
Yeah, the first one is really frustrating.
No, I don’t need the threat of everlasting punishment to be moral. I’m a secular humanist, and the idea that the only reason you’re not evil is because of threats of going to hell is way scarier than just being kind because it’s the right thing to do.
A lot of people like to say that atheists traffics with demons to solve their daily problems, routinely play with Satan’s gigantic cock, and do a fuck ton of drugs and I’m here to put the rumors to rest. I have never once even seen Satan’s gigantic cock, nonetheless held it in my hands.
That we have to have faith to be an atheist. Complete nonsense, of course.
That I can’t do religious stuff! I don’t have to believe in the religious components to participate in an event that holds meaning to you. To me it’s not sacred – all just normal words being said and ordinary matter being handled according to some rules. I do that every day at work at the direction of a different kind of “higher power” (clients) without anger or discomfort, it’s really not a big deal!
I’m not angry at god for not existing, nor am I angry at all the people who believe otherwise. If the invitation to your religious event is in good faith, I’m honored to attend, and will just keep to myself or make small talk. Plus I’ve studied enough faiths I can probably fake it, if keeping the situation under control requires it ;)
I’ve discovered that in practice, many people of different faiths are not sure what to think about this position. Most are OK with it, some not (I just give them their space). With the interesting exception of Buddhists! They’ve always been super excited to bring me along to the pagoda somehow. No one ever tried to convert me, and the monks often speak a surprising number of languages and are interesting and well traveled. It’s become a set of surprisingly wholesome memories (I immigrated to a primarily Buddhist country)!
That it’s a religion. Except for a few groups, which I find kind of strange, being an atheist is the lack of religion and belief in a god. It’s not a religion or anything like a religion and so often I see atheism discussed by the religious in religious terms l, as a monolith, and other ways that just totally miss the mark.
If religions and beliefs are like the different broadcast channels you see on TV, you get Atheism when you turn the TV off.
It’s easier to group it up as a religion for information purposes, the amount of atheists are relevant if someone’s researching which religions people believe in.
Not parent poster, but I don’t think that’s what they were getting at.
Atheists are often generalized in the same way one might make generalizations about Catholics; the problem is that, while Catholics share a common set of beliefs and values (generally) based on doctrine and scripture, atheists don’t necessarily have anything in common about their beliefs or values, aside from an absence of theistic belief.
I rarely eat babies
We don’t know right from wrong because we don’t fear retribution from an almighty.
That actually makes me boil, cause i remember the live interview with a religious dude around 2008. In which he said and i quote “i don’t fear the law of man, i only fear god”, the bastard said it after killing someone in the name of jehova (i don’t even remember if it was only one victim or more, my monkey brain was just baffled at his response to the question).
They don’t play with the same social rules at all, and then they rage because “us” r the crazy ones.
Perhaps not exactly what you’re asking but one thing many religious people don’t seem to get is that they’re “atheists” aswell when it comes to all the other gods out there. The difference to atheism is that we just don’t believe in their god either.
I don’t know how many gods there are but for the sake of an argument, lets say 500. A Christian believes in 1 out of 500 gods and an atheist believes in 0 out of 500. We’re not that different from each other after all.
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
We don’t really eat babies.
Yeah, Satan is very strict on his new policies.
(Ex-atheist here) That our beliefs are rigid, and won’t change.
What made you religious?
I won’t use that word. From atheism, I went to igtheism.
Oh, I would still consider that a form of atheism, colloquially if not formally.
I know nothing colloquial in the concept of igtheism. Formally, by its very existence, igtheism proves that atheism can only be conditional - hence it is not even a proper concept.
I know that, formally, you can’t lack a belief in a god that isn’t properly defined, and I agree with you that many religions’ gods aren’t properly defined. But I think the colloquially definition of atheist or agnostic could still cover igtheism.
As for theists, the gods are equally undefined for atheists/agnostics. For an igtheist, beliefs of atheists/ignostics (or lack of belief) cannot be taken any more seriously than those of theists, until definitions are provided.
Take an example. There are people who say that god is nothing but merely energy. Can someone call herself an atheist if this is definition of god?
Sans definition of god, theism/atheism do not make sense.
If we just hear “the gospel” enough, we’ll come around. In reality, I hear street preachers, and see “Jesus loves you” stickers on street corners, and it turns me off even more.
That we nessesarly think God does no exists and then start asking us for proof. Atheism means no belief in God, believing there is no God is a subset called “strong atheism”.
Where I am in Australia, if as a group (say of coworkers) talking about a new person, we might be like ‘maybe don’t say “Jesus fucking Christ” in front of Lisa, I’m pretty sure she’s extremely Christian’ or ‘let’s do lunch instead of drinks to celebrate the milestone, I’m pretty sure Vish is Muslim so we don’t want him to feel left out’.
Majority of my peers are atheist. Religion only comes up in our lives when we’re trying to be inclusive or respectful of the religious minority.
It’s funny how some places can’t do the same in reverse.
Edit to say, the thing is, to the majority of us, belief in a god is silly hocus pocus, drummed up by humans when we just didn’t understand how things worked and the scientific method didn’t exist. But as a respectful person living in a society, I live by the rules that you don’t make fun of those silly ideas, and also that religion is intrinsically linked to people’s cultures too. So I have a live and let live attitude to it.
Pity many Christians can’t be that Christian.
I think we’re stereotyped often as the militant and belligerent atheists quite a lot. We have been painted as unsympathetic assholes who like to talk down to religious people to make us feel better about ourselves, not to mention a weird overlap with some parts of the far-right, usually by way of transphobia, homophobia, racism, social darwinism and the enforcement of poorly understood or straight up incorrect “science”
Eugenecists inhabit this space, as well as people who might call themselves “race realists”, as well as people who think their middle-school-level understanding of genetics and sex encapsulates the entirety of gender and sexuality. It’s those atheists who claim to love science, hate ignorance, but remain ignorant of science. They give us a bad name, and their loudness makes it seem like they represent us
