#badatheist

Yes, Hello, totally going to shamelessly ride off having Atheist Experience in the title

Yes I am shameless!

Sorry Matt Dilahaunty.

Love you man!

I often feel that there is a disconnect between different kinds of Atheists

The Atheists that left a religion and those that never really did

As someone who grew up in an extremely secular family

Went to public schools where they taught evolution and had a halfway decent science education

I did not grow up in an overly religious area

Grew up in Big City Toronto Canada

Teachers had halfway decent teaching degrees and actually knew what they were talking about

While, from the point of view of eight-year-old me anyway that is...

We did not have the shitty presidents

I mean they professed their religious leaning, but they did not think that the world was 6000 years old

That’s still up for debate for Stephen Harper!

We don’t have the same issues with religion creeping into government as the US

Canadians, we are just a little bit more easy going than the US.

I mean at least we don’t have the freaking Bible Belt here!

I often feel like I can be a bad Atheist

I mean I don’t really remember not being Atheist

I embraced science from a very young age

But I bought and absorbed science much like a young child would be taught to and absorb religion

It was all I knew.

I was just given scientific facts to remember

I did not properly comprehend the scientific method and how scientific knowledge is collected and put through the rigorous peer review process until I was past high school.

By the way, this is the scientific method!

Oh, that’s how you do it. Maybe I should think a little more critically rather than just focusing on memorizing facts and numbers

Like what’s the distance from here to the Sun? 150 million kilometres

I never had to grapple with going to Hell, or losing my religion or what it is going to take to break me

Why is this not true? I just knew it sounded absolutely ridiculous.

But because of this

I feel like I did not have the where-with-all to hold myself back from being a loud and proud Atheist!

Kind of like the Gay kid who was out and proud in his old school, moves to another two and suddenly faces homophobia for the first time.

Am I describing a really bad sitcom?

I would just wave my Atheism flag loud and proud at any opportunity I got.

Oh, my gosh, you are going to hell!

I did not just get that from the Christians. I got it from every which angle

-Even people who were not particularly religious thought I was closed minded and un-accepting because I did not believe in God

Oh, I am not really Religious, but you know, there is something out there

Yeah, I got that one a lot!

Oh, I am not an Atheist, I just don’t want to commit either way

Like I have met more people who just don’t are not religious but are afraid to take on the title o Atheist, you just can’t win can you?

I feel like I am a really bad Atheist sometimes

Like I personally understand why most of the God arguments theist throw at me are bunk

I just simply do not think that the burden of proof has been met for the God claim

I understand evolution, but I just laugh when I am actually confronted with someone who doesn’t

I wouldn’t know enough about the bible or any other religious book to go toe-to-toe with people like you do.

I just know that most of these stories are not true, that the I don’t accept the God claim and I understand the importance of humanistic morality

I would get into arguments with people that eventually regressed into shouting matches and neither one of us was going to win

Many people say that I should not say that I am an Atheist because I have not properly evaluated every single claim from every single Religion

And use that to shut me down.

Like whatever, did you examine every claim from every religion before deciding what you are

I remember being 14 and trying to explain to someone why religion is a choice

And they just told me that they believed whatever their parents did

I don’t actually believe that God is a literal man in a white robe up in the clouds

I never said that that is what a God is

I always thought that the concept of a God was ill-defined and quite frankly inconceivable

Much like how the religious say that the absence of a God or a world without a God is inconceivable

And that would often just lead me into a stalemate with theists, like I just could not relate to them

Which pushed me away from engaging and just led me to think that there was something wrong with me

Whenever someone said something to me like “God loves you,” I would say “Actually...”

“O, But he believes in you!”

Ya, come again? I am just going to back away slowly now

I did not lose my family

I mean, sure my relationship is not great

But they don’t constantly try to bring me back into the fold

And they still talk to me

I mean, when your first kid was an Engineer and irreligious and your second kid is, well me

You kind of got to roll with the punches

I always kind of felt like my parents got a bit lazy after I was born.

Like they went overboard with James and just completely missed the bar the other way with me

I actually got my dad to admit to me that he wishes he raised me religiously

He thinks he could have saved me from the clutches of Satan!

Like sorry, I was still a rebellious punk, and I can tell you right now, had I been raised religiously, I would have only rebelled twice as hard!

It often feels like I am riding off the wave that others pushed for before me

Like why have a parade, I never had to fight tooth and nail!

Sometimes that hardest part of never having been in the closet