I thought this might be a fun little ice breaker and help me get a better feel for the community. I thought I might share some aspect of myself, and start by touching on misconceptions of Atheists and Atheism I used to hold until I “woke up”. So lets get the ball rolling and feel free to have a laugh at my ignorance that was born of lack of curiosity and my own mothers ignorance I was too dim back then to even try to challenge on that front.
They’re a religion of nothing!: A few years back I held the ignorant thought that its just another religion starting to draw baseline parallels between any other religion and Atheism. Really flimsy like they had followings, some form of congregation, a book that might as well had been a bible. Sadly I don’t recall all the batshit things I thought.
Atheists hate God: Not that I’d blame anyone since it seemed like God was indifferent towards suffering but happy to deal out punishment for stupid shit like gay sex. It was only once I started digging into the position that I shelved that assumption and felt like a moron for even having it in the first place. Now I tell anyone who thinks as I used to “you might as well ask the Japanese if they’re mad at Godzilla”.
Yep, these two assumptions kept me from knowledge for the longest time while grappling with my eroding faith in a higher power with all these conflicting religions and suffering towards good people and bad people seeming to not face any kind of punishment. So, what misconceptions did you hold?
Subscription Note:
Choosing to subscribe to this topic will automatically register you for email notifications for comments and updates on this thread.
Email notifications will be sent out daily by default unless specified otherwise on your account which you can edit by going to your userpage here and clicking on the subscriptions tab.
Embarrassingly enough, I was the misconstrued Atheist that did hate god for a period of my life.
I thought I was an Atheists and identified myself as such. It had slowly crept up on me, but one day I realized that "I hate god", which didn't make any sense. How can someone hate something they don't think exists?
I came to the conclusion that I had deluded myself into thinking I didn't believe in god. I had long felt that religion as a whole didn't make any sense, but I hadn't shed the belief completely. That led me into a lot of introspection and searching, reading.
And, that of course led to becoming an Atheist, agnostic, pragmatic/rationalist and anti-theist. As an agnostic, the small percentage that there could be a god shrinks and approaches zero, every day.
The biggest misconception that I deal with, even today is that atheists are dour, unhappy and argumentative. Especially online, I have dealt with my share of, for lack of a better word, jerks who were professed atheists. Even on this site, I have noticed that a fair number of posters don't seem to be all that happy. I certainly understand being defensive given how we sometimes are treated, but being a butt-head just perpetuates the stereotype.
I understand your point, and agree to a certain extent.
But I can really sympathize with some people who are Atheists and seem bitter, unhappy, argumentative.
Some people who have become Atheists, have done so after they have been through a living hell; growing up in families of extreme fundamentalism, with all the horrors of serious indoctrination, punishment, fear tactics, skewed views of reality and sexuality, denial, etc.
I have both read about and been told of complete horror stories that gives chills down the spine and makes the hair stand on end. Deaths, suicide attempts, physical or psychological abuse, and so on.
Some people can have had their entire lives ruined and their families torn apart, and every day is a struggle to take one more step to recover from the damage of theism.
(Sorry Xyber-Demon, for the depressing comment in your thread :)
I think mine was also that atheists are angry and bitter. But I don't see it that way anymore - yes, some can be irritated and frustrated (perhaps over having spent a lifetime on nothing?). When I watch Christopher Hitchens rip theists a new one on Youtube, when he seems angry and bitter.... I don't know.... it doesn't feel like anger to me anymore. He cared deeply about his "fellow creatures" as he used to put it. So seeing them suffer so deeply offended his sense of justice. The difference between Hitch and a fundamentalist christian or muslim IS that anger. The fundie is out of control ANGRY over other people having universal human rights. The fundie is ANGRY when an icon is made fun of and supports (and sometimes even carries out) murder of those who poke that fun. Someone like Hitch is level-headed, rational and composed at all times - always in control of his feelings but yes, irritated for a good reason. Of course I'm not saying all atheists are like Hitch - not many compare to him. But I think the reasons are basically similar and just because of the reasons..... I just think there's a world of difference between anger and irritation in this context.
I love the comment about Godzilla and the Japanese. Priceless that one, thank you. :)
I grew up with a step-dad that was very catholic, talked to Jesus everyday and read the good book every night. Sometime between the ages of six and eight (my age) my step-dad's father died. To make a long story short my step-dad had me up late at night crying over his own dad and it didn't make any sense to me at all. Here's a guy that reveled in telling about how wonderful existence would be after life, crying over the death of his own father. I grew up trying to understand it but my step-dad never forced anything on me so it was only years and years later that I realized my feelings had a title: atheism/agnosticism/whateverYouLiketoCallit. So I come from the opposite end of the spectrum, I had no misconceptions about atheism, I had misconceptions about Catholicism.
A very good example of one of the most obvious flaws in Theism. If someone you love is going to heaven, shouldn't they be very happy for them? They should be throwing a "Going to Heaven" party for the deceased.
I at one point thought atheists were militant (like my mother thought, despite her own atheism under 'a different name' haha)
But as it turns out, 99.9% of all atheists I've ever met, heard of, read about, etc. have been extremely kind, peaceful, non-violent people!
If nothing else, I'm the most militant atheist I know! Ohhh the hilarious irony!
*For any boneheaded theists who stumble in, let me clarify my definition when I call myself 'militant': I mean to say that if I was subjected to another 'inquisition' in today's age, and was given the choice of 'life accepting the church' or 'death for remaining atheist'
...I would choose death. I would gladly die on my feet defending my objective grip on reality than I would ever live on my knees bent to the will of mind-slaves.
I would not go around burning down churches, throwing bibles in ditches or flipping off nuns. That's not my version of problem-solving. Better to calmly, cooly explain the way the world actually works to people who just don't know any better.
Anyway, peace!
flipping off nuns.??? lol
Yea, I agree, the best way to solve problems is with a rational understanding of them.
I personally never had misconceptions of atheism because I live in a country that Christianity was so dominant that i have never heard of any atheists before I actually understood what I was.
Yes! Well, honestly only if they ever corrected me lol
And very true.... All I'd heard of it before was from my mother when I asked her what atheism was... She was very uncomfortable talking about it.
Except oddly enough, she's a skeptic/atheist/humanist herself! She just doesn't call herself that... She's a victim of misconceptions.
Even their excuses show their ignorance.
Since you like darmatter2525:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wguAQHWVcZY
I, too, heard the usual, "Atheists are angry, they hate God, they worship the devil," etc. Then I found out that they're just like everyone else, with different personalities, faults, and problems. Imagine that, people being the same regardless of their belief or lack of it.
As a Cold War baby, of course all atheists were somehow aligned with the Communist nations who inflict Cultural Revolution on their own people and who pound on desks at the United Nations with their shoes, saying "We will bury you" about my country.
Then, later, atheists were bossyboots who used the courts to forbid people from praying if they wanted.
Fortunately, even though my parents and grandparents were all Catholics, they believed just as strongly in critical thinking. They had lived through the Fascist horror of World War II and understood the value of independent thought. The effect on me was not what they expected. Oh well...
That is very insightful about the cold war aspect, Mary Anne. For Americans, at least in the 70's in the South, we were taught in school that the communist religion was atheism. Even though I didn't have a concept of religion at the time (passive atheist father, militant agnostic mother) this notion of atheism being a religion stuck with me. It probably wasn't my only misconception, but it was the primary one that was hardest to shake.
Thanks for that reminder, C. M. The single biggest obstacle I have found to rational conversation with a believer is getting through to her that atheism is not a belief system, but a way of looking at the world. Belief is so ingrained that it's difficult for believers to think in another context. Remembering that helps me keep my temper in conversations about faith and doubt.
Too true. I am guilty of the occasional loss of temper. It can be quite satisfying, but hard to recover from if I'm actually trying to defend my position.
Even worse is that it's not only believers that think that atheism is a belief system. My father, who is no believer but is not an atheist either (I have no idea how to categorize him), is convinced that atheism a belief system, and even calls it a religion.
I'd have to say that I've suffered from a mixed bag of things listed before I finally threw out my mental garbage. At first, atheism was its own religion, though I never bought into the idea of the atheistic sainthood of Darwin, etc. After that, atheists were simply confused, angry kids who weren't truly atheistic at all, but were simply 'mad at God'. Fedora'd gentlemen, if you understand the term. Ah, those were the days....