What is Atheism? April 5, 2007
Posted by Joe in : Unintelligible Rants , trackback
As the first line in the entry for Atheism on Wikipedia puts it:
“Atheism entails the absence of belief in the existence of God or other deities”
That’s all you need to know, because that’s all there is to it.
A lot of people tend to ask me what religion I am. I can’t emphasize how reactive they are when I say “I don’t believe in god”.
One person asked and when I told them what I was, she turned and with an expression of awe asked, “Well… What do you do?”
This question didn’t bother me nearly as much as my answer bothered her, which seems to be the average response in that situation. I just told her I get up in the morning like everybody else, eat breakfast, shower, watch TV, go to work, go home, go to bed… Its not all that difficult just because I’m not going home and praying to a deity. Trust me.
For the twenty-one years that I’ve been around, I’ve been surrounded by people deeply attached to their religion. Family, friends, TV, the news, pretty much everywhere you could get a taste of someone’s religious views, opinions, or beliefs. My family never made me go to church since we were not generally religious. My parents are rather agnostic instead. So as I grew older, I likened religious groups more to highschool cliques than useful, effective organizations to achieve peace, happiness, or whatever it is that they promote these days.
And don’t get me wrong - I don’t care what they do or what they believe, that’s fine. I’m not against anyone. But I do have a problem when people try pushing their beliefs on me. I don’t go around door to door handing out Atheist Movement pamphlets or asking for donations to the Atheist Club. Religion is big business, don’t ever forget that.
The reason for this post is not to bad mouth or degrade religion or any religious group. Rather, it is to point out that Atheism is a relevant belief system - granted, a lack of belief - that should be respected next to everything else all the same. I’m not a worse person than someone who believes in god, and anyone who seems to think that’s what Atheism is about has been brainwashed.
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