This morning, a co-worker was mentioning to me about a series of accidents in our area that have killed people. How sad that is she said, and then said she hoped they were going to the right place.
“Heaven” I asked? “Yes.” she replied. “I don’t believe there’s an afterlife. I haven’t heard of any evidence for it” I said. She looked at me with pity. “That’s too bad” she said softly. I reassured her that it was OK. “I don’t believe in the bible or hellfire, so I’m not worried about it.”
She said, “There’s evidence in the bible.” I shook my head. “No, there isn’t. The bible isn’t ‘evidence’.” She looked at me with pity again and said she had hopes for me. I told her I was an agnostic. “What’s that?” she asked.
“You don’t know what that means? You’ve never heard that word before?” “No, what is it?” she asked. I told her to look it up. She’s around my age (45) and should know by now what that word is—she works in education for crying out loud!
She looked it up in the dictionary and read the meaning. “Oh, so you aren’t’ sure there’s a god, but think there COULD BE. At least you’re not an atheist, that would be bad! So, there is hope for you!” she said proudly.
“I used to be a Christian but I got out of it a long time ago after I delved into the scriptures and found horrible things that god sanctioned…” and I proceed to relate the OT story about Lott and serving up his daughter to the thugs at the door to save his own ass.
Once again, she looked at me with pity. Then it was time for the pledge of allegiance. Afterward, I told her I’d like to see the “under god” removed from it. She said “Our founding fathers agreed with it.” I told her the “under god” was added in the 1950’s in response to the red scare and McCarthyism. She looked surprised and then told me to have a nice day.
and that was my conversation with a person of faith today.
I understand your frustration. I am surrounded by ignorance, superstition, and sheer stupidity. I am the only acknowledged atheist in my town that I know of. People do not want to hear the truth or use reason. I believe the founding fathers would be disgusted.
Pretty sad discussion. Hard to believe actually. Some people are so sheltered. If she had never heard the term agnostic, I am quite sure she has not read any Sam Harris either. LOL
Yep, there is a lot of proof in that 2000 year old book of myths, written by tribal, superstitious, ancient goat herders.
It has been my experience that the reaction of the religionist is relative to their relation to you. When my sister became aware that I “don’t believe in anything” she said, “how sad” and “you just don’t want anyone telling you what to do!” Exactly. There was the whole “you just believe in science… science is your religion” which leads to more attempts on my part to explain how science isn’t a belief-system. I still feel as if she looks down on me with pity. (What’s with religionists and their pious pity ploys that we don’t need nor deserve? Religion spawns megalomaniacs it seems.)
The woman I nanny for is a “lapsed catholic” who baptized her third son herself. She figures she has as much authority as a priest. So, she’s on the right track. She’s more of a deist if she cared to clarify her beliefs… but she doesn’t. God is just there… although she does wonder sometimes why her family is so plagued with the cancer.
Another mother of a boy my son plays with on the baseball team is catholic and afraid to even discuss its or any other religion’s validity (she seems particularly protective, as in pc about any truth of the badness of islam, yet will make fun of the mormon moms on the team), while her son has come to the conclusion—with a little help from his friends—that all religions are man-made. However, he believes the catholics have the church christ would have wanted…. He’s only 14, so he’ll come to an age of reason eventually I think.
Another mother of a team mate is highly religious, and while at first she was taken aback, my hubby and I are her favorite parents to sit next to during the games. We kid each other: she about our liberal ways and we about her overly strict and conservative ways. Her husband had a heart attack a year back and she said to me, “thank god he’s going to be alright” to wit I replied, “wouldn’t you have more reason to thank him if he didn’t allow the heart attack to happen in the first place?” So that’s how she found out I was a non-theist. She wouldn’t let her son come to our house at first. But now she sees us as good people who just don’t go to church. (Me thinks she’s secretly envious.)
You don’t even want to know what I found out the mormon moms were gossiping about moi.
Well, that’s enough sharing of personal experience for now…
memory-inducing thread, rab.
She looked at me with pity. “That’s too bad” she said softly.
That’s about when I begin to strongly suspect no one’s really home over there, in that person’s head, not when the topic of religion is at hand. I find the pre-programmed responses like that amusing. They say more than a full sermon worth of blather. They tell you no intelligence allowed in here ... when it comes to religion (at least the host’s franchise). I’m just as amused by other pre-programmed responses as well, not just blatant manifestations of religiostupidification.
It’s not the slightest bit hard to believe for me, but I’ve lived in the South for about 16 years, so I’m guessing that might have something to do with why.
I think you can be an agnostic (meaning when it comes down it “I don’t really know”), and still have a strong amount of faith of God. Stephen KIng is an example. He believes that a personal savior may exist and (I beleive) attends church. He has more faith in Chritianity now, apparently, than in his early writing years, when he often he expressed his fears of an uncaring indifferent universe. Some of the comments he makes in interviews are strikingly agnostic, such as :“I beleive we’re living in the center of a huge mystery.”
I could also use myself as an example, but my faith that any religon could be true has waned even since I first started posting on this site. King’s faith, though, seems to have strengthened.
I have claimed agnosticism for over 20 years now but I am starting to consider myself an atheist. Agnostic means more than just-don’t know. It means that the supernatural world cannot be known or proven, so why worry about it. If evidence shows up tomorrow, I’ll believe. But…..I am not holding my breath.
Atheists seeme to be more absolute in saying that they know, there is no metaphysical world. Agnostics tend to say that there is no evidence for one right now but….who knows what may happen in the future.
It seems that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of any god. Thus I would have to technically call myself an agnostic. I certainly do not believe in any personal savior. If god intended to be a personal savior, then god is playing some sort of twisted mind game with us mortal humans. Nevertheless, if a deity exists, it certainly does not seem interested in providing any evidence of god’s existence. Perhaps god has some type of antisocial personality disorder. That would explain some of the horrible things that god appears to condone in the book of inconsistent ancient fables called the Bible.
My agnosticism has more to do with an intelligent unconscious that is part of nature and natural, physical laws, sort of what Carl Jung talked about. I’m atheistic when it comes to the bible or any other religious text. I wish I had thought to tell my co-worker that the other day. I think she’s under the impression that I may come around to her god because of the word agnostic.
It was sort of surprising because this is the first time she’s ever proselytized to me in the year we’ve been working together. I’ll be more forward in my disdain for the bible next time. The reference to Lott and his daughter and housemaid obviously went over her head.
T T’s Ghost, let me guess, this is an interview done AFTER he got hit real hard by that car….
This interview I recall was written years before his accident.
I have claimed agnosticism for over 20 years now but I am starting to consider myself an atheist. Agnostic means more than just-don’t know. It means that the supernatural world cannot be known or proven, so why worry about it. If evidence shows up tomorrow, I’ll believe. But…..I am not holding my breath.
Just an observation. If there is a God, and he wants us to accept him on faith, then he is not going to give us conclusive evidence for the literal truth of Chrsitianity, Islam, Judism. If any faith is correct, then we would not expect God to reveal himself. If He did, there would be no need for faith.
T T’s Ghost, let me guess, this is an interview done AFTER he got hit real hard by that car….
This interview I recall was written years before his accident.
I have claimed agnosticism for over 20 years now but I am starting to consider myself an atheist. Agnostic means more than just-don’t know. It means that the supernatural world cannot be known or proven, so why worry about it. If evidence shows up tomorrow, I’ll believe. But…..I am not holding my breath.
Just an observation. If there is a God, and he wants us to accept him on faith, then he is not going to give us conclusive evidence for the literal truth of Chrsitianity, Islam, Judism. If any faith is correct, then we would not expect God to reveal himself. If He did, there would be no need for faith.
What sort of demonstration would it take for you to KNOW that there is a God? In these days of photoshop and computer generated effects would you have to be present at the demonstration? I guess God (if there was one) could configure an event that would be played to all of us at the same time. Maybe a big voice? Time running backwards? Something with the sun and moon?
I was thinking along the lines of the Rapture.I remeber of fundementalist friend from my Church youth group who used to scare us with the End Times he was certain would happen, and we’d better believe it. If Christians were suddenly wisked up to heaven all across the country and it was on all the news channnels, or if Jesus were to descend from the clouds for all the world to see, sure, I’d believe. It would truely be “THe End of Faith.”
Not very likely though. After over 2 thousand years, still no Jesus.
I had a really interesting experience yesterday. If someone was telling me this story, I would be skeptical. I assure you that it is absolutely true. Most everyone in town knows that I am a non-theist.
I was standing in line at our small town grocery store. An elderly lady approached the line with just a few things and I offered to let her go ahead of me. She looked away and quickly scurried to the other check-out line. She loudly told the woman next to her, “I would rather leave than stand next to that Satan worshiper.”
Although she would not look at me I said to her, “With all due respect, Madam, there is no Satan and I do not worship anything.” Everyone else tried to look away and act like nothing was happening. The small, frail, aging woman then said out loud, “He will change his mind when he is burning in Hell.”
I do not have a good enough imagination to make this up. I often have people shun me, but they rarely are this brazen.
I told her to have a pleasant day.
