So I would like to tell you all a little story,
I came out I was Atheist during my sixth grade year of school. Of course, living in West Virginia and being in the backwoods, they were very Christian people, and I was pretty much an outcast. There was a very specific group of girls who decided to make it Hell for me. They were the church-going girls who were the preppy, perfect girls. One of them, a girl named Asa Burcham, decided to really lay it on thick. She constantly told me in my French class that I was "going to Hell" and I was going to "burn in Hell." Honestly, it did hurt at first, maybe it was because I thought it was going to be easy, being accepted and such, or maybe it was the fact that everyone around me was Christian and I was the outcast. All through my sixth grade year I had faced these problems, which was the cause of my depression. Then sixth grade ended and that summer helped me out a lot. When my seventh grade year started, I began to face the same problems. I kept being religiously discriminated and I couldn't handle it. I fell into a group of people who actually seemed to be okay with it. Then after a while, I started to see the underlining tones of what they had said and the jokes they made, and it hurt, a lot. I began asking myself these questions:
Why is it so bad to be an Atheist?
Why are they doing this to me?
Why can't they just accept me?
I began to look for answers to these questions, but I kept finding the same thing. "You will burn in hell" and stuff along those lines. I was very hurt. My eighth grade year was actually good. The girls had finally left me alone, and no one bothered me about my religion. Things had started to look up. I graduated from middle school, and then last year I started my ninth grade. In high school, no one made a big deal about it. I was quite happy about it. I passed and then this summer was the worst for religious discrimination yet. This girl, made a big deal over being Atheist, made me feel really bad. Felt as if it was wrong to be an Atheist again.
I am just looking for an answer to a few questions. If you don't mind answering, here they are:
How do you overcome the religious discrimination?
Why do people have such a problem?
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Hmm I cannot give you a solution since I wasn't in the same situation.
However I did have similar situations.
What I do is to trust in my jugment of the evidence.
You need to be convinced of your conclusions first before thinking of having the strength to overcome those situations.
If you are sure that you are in the right(by doing your homework, be unbiased and try to attack your same arguments), then all you need to do is view other people as intellectually inferior creatures that haven't reached the same level of logic as you.
This way it doesn't matter if the entire world is against you since you know you are in the right. All geniuses that we know of walked this path.
No genius in this world was accepted at first, they were all ridiculed for most part of their lives if not all.
This includes Einstein, Tesla, Darwin, Leonardo Da Vinci, etc...
Personally I tend to pick up arguments with everybody even atheists because I'm a perfectionist and that hinders with my social relationships.
So i think i understand your position.
Don't pick up arguments and avoid them where you can, sometimes it is best to leave people think that you agree with them even if you can find flaws in their argument(don't be like me :P)
Christians tend to think of themselves as being good people.
use this against them.
Tell them; "that Christ would want you to help me be saved and lead by example to the faith".
Show them that if they are nice to you, you are more inclined to accept their religion.(just make them believe that there is hope)
If they are mean, it just shows you how Christianity is, evil in nature.
If they don't get this message, just say the same thing to their superiors or friends.
Their friends/families will think that they are not true Christians that way.
This truly works, use their brainwashing against them.
I can confirm that this works.
"Why do people have such a problem?"
When god himself shows them by example that peope that don't agree with god are tortured for ethernity, it just comes natural that christians have the same attitude towards unbelievers even if they don't realize it.
You just have to make them realise the good parts of their brainwashing applies to you too.
Give the other cheek, Love everybody like yourself, Christianity is for the sinners.
Whoever has not sinned cast the first stone, etc....
Remind them these, it helps to use their theology against itself.
I live in a christian country more then USA, though i had no problem being an atheist because Christians were quite friendly and tolerant in most cases here in Malta.
Though I did face some Christians that were bullies and use Christianity as an excuse to bully people. The strategy to remind them of their theology worked in most cases. Where that didn't work, reporting them to better Christians worked.
Being knowledgeable about the christian theology is important if you are living in such a habitat :P
That is evolution for you :P
All Jeff says above is true.. As some one who has been where you live I can say I love the area its the people I have encountered there that have given me pause.. If not for the people I would likely live there. The West Virginia backwoods has fertile soil moderate climate and beautiful mountains. If were not for such a strong theist culture, racial tension I have experienced there and resistance I have felt being an outsider in West Virginia I would find a place to live there.
I know several atheist living in West Virginia for the most part they don't make a big deal about it and you would not know they were atheist if you never asked. I'd say they are a bit older than you are and they are no longer in school. If this is a case of school bullying chances are it has nothing to do with you being and atheist verus them being a christian and more to do with them being,,, how can i put this nicely, assholes, no! Jerks, no but I'm getting closer, juvenile delinquents, not quite right but probably as close as I'm going to get.
To answer your questions:
You can overcome religious discrimination by either ignoring those who give you problems or by fighting back harder than those who discriminate against you. It a good thing you asked the second question with the first though because they go hand and in hand.
As to why people have such a problem, keep in mind different people do things for different reasons. You can generally tell what a person is out for by what they actually do combined with what they say rather than just one or the other. The intent of a person who is really out for religious reason will usually be to try and convert you or win you over. Someone just looking to pick on you, get you riled up, get a reaction out of you or just plains start a fight with you will usually be pretty easy to spot. However, they can be easily confused with someone who is picking on you to point out how you are different and they are like everyone else I think the saying goes: Common enemies make common friends. It is import that you determine exactly what the person causing trouble is out for and act accordingly.
I think part of what you are going through as you go through school is varying levels of maturity. As the children got older they stopped as they began to realize it was stupid to pick on you for your lack of religious belief. As they got even older chances are in high school this person who started it all again was not the most popular and saw popularity go up when they got a reaction out of you. If they were popular they may just be doing it because it got a reaction out of you, to them its just a game one in which they can't understand why you let it get to you so much. Not being there and knowing your exact situation I got to say I need more information tell us more about the people causing your problems:
Who are they?
What are their possible motivations?
Who were they before they started picking on you have they grown in popularity?
How have you reacted thus far?
How many people are in their flock?
How have you reacted thus far?
Sometimes the best thing to do when someone is mean to you is show that you can be a little mean back. I mean this in a playful manner, I am not saying to go for the jugular or to make them want to kill themselves, but you know, if its a game to them sometimes you just have to play it or show that you can. If someone picks on you pick on them back. People play games when they are young to experiment with caricature. Sometimes it can be helpful to view it as a game and to play the game back. However, if they are the person who I pointed out above who started out unpopular and saw gains in popularity you may be in for a world of hurt if you trivialize their little high school dream of popularity but the fact is they are hurting more than you are. If they are motivated by popularity, they might lash out at anything that threatens their popularity.
Finally, this could be a case of people banding together with common cause. Does this discrimination ever put you in fear for your life with these people? Have they ever been violent with you? If they are doing this because you won't accept their lord Jesus then well deffer to everything Jeff said about using their religious brainwashing against them.
You're always going to run into the discrimination. You just need to grow a thicker skin and understand that most people never think as deeply as you have.
Understand also that when you challenge someone's belief system ( just being an atheist might be enough ) that's the fastest way for them to not like you, shun you and even hate you. When their belief system is on the line it strikes people very deeply and makes them reflect that maybe their whole life has been wasted. This occurs almost instantly and the average person doesn't actually realize what is going on in their mind. They just get defensive and that is what you're seeing in their behavior.
When I was in the eighth grade (I'm a lot older than you are, by the way), I was called an atheist. I wasn't yet. I just mentioned to someone who, until that point, was a friend. I said that Christmas started off as a pagan holiday. I spent the entire year facing this hatred. In this area back then, nearly every student (something like 90%) went to the same 8th grade school, and then split up to our high schools in the 9th grade. I was fine; in the 12th grade, I was already a former Catholic. Someone I knew started a discussion on religion, to which I tried to avoid. Finally at her pushing, I admitted I was no longer Catholic (she was). She asked why and again I said it would make her angry. She insisted and after a long time I told her many reasons why I wasn't.
She got angry at me. Very angry. She tried to hurl insults and throw apologetics around. In my not so shining moment, I told her that her brother had spent the entire year claiming to be a Satanist and that their family was fine with it. (He really did that, so I wasn't lying.) Sure, I avoided her argument, but at least she was pissed at him now.
What did that teach me? Theists for whatever reasons cannot fathom people not thinking like them. I'm not sure if it's fear or what. If they believe Satan will drag our heathen souls into Hell to torture and burn, why should that affect them? I think it's because many denominations teach of the old fire & brimstone, where one wrong slip and you're no longer in good graces. Maybe they're scared that their god will drag them along with us in some sort of guilty by association trip?
I know it's hard to deal with these people right now. I hate to pull this card, but you're at the age where a lot doesn't make sense anyway. And now you have to deal with that, too. I wish I could say there's one or two things you could say to make them stop, but I can't. I'm honest about that. They're scared and that fear is making them lash out. They don't understand and they don't want to understand.
But listen to Jeff. Turn it around on them. Ask them how your non-belief hurts their belief. That same year I made a best friend of a girl who hated me because of what another boy told her about me. I confronted her and we became best friends. It won't be that fast for you. Mine was sheer luck. But eventually someone will realize you're not the one who's causing trouble.