Being an atheist and having an atheist girlfriend is GREAT! I don’t have to worry about heaven or hell, pleasing some deity I’ll never know or doing something that makes me look like an asshole. (Well, the last part…never mind.)
I lucked out, in the larger sense, in finding a girlfriend with whom I share so many likes and dislikes, particularly atheism. For example, if I were to look for a girlfriend that wasn’t atheist, I could always run into problems with her family and it just would make things difficult. (See American Wedding.) Atheism, though growing, is still in a vast minority position in the United States (though I’d be interested to see what happens with the 2010 Census actually, the 2010 American Community Survey) and she’s so great that I see no reason to keep looking. But that’s another story.
As it is, however, we do disagree on one thing about atheism. While she strongly discourages evangelism of any kind, I mildly support it, if only to balance the actions of evangelical theists, particularly (in this country, anyway) Christians. I’m not saying I would go out door-to-door and help spread the word of not believing in Jesus or anyone specific, but I can’t say I wouldn’t be happy knowing someone out there is doing it for me. It’s funny, because she hates the notion of ANY type of evangelism (even a bumper sticker can set her off), but I relish the thought of a group of people not believing in anything evangelizing. It’s more for the irony, really.
You can already find some atheists/”non-believers” who do certain forms of rituals that you’d experience with theism (marriage ceremonies with humanists; congregations of atheists in France). Those kinds of things sort of frighten me though. Danielle thinks I’m dead-set on evangelizing atheism, but I adopt her “live and let live” mentality, which should be one of the major tenets of atheist “morals”. But I think atheism may grow to a point where theists are forced to recognize them in this country, and I think the degree of headway made with regard to women, blacks and homosexuals by that point will tell us how long before atheism is fully accepted when the barking begins in earnest.
I was thinking about evangelical atheism this morning, and a story involving Portsmouth, NH’s major church (North Church) being destroyed by an asteroid and how some atheist mockingly suggested that “God must’ve done that for a reason” and so on. It was a better story this morning than the thought in my head, and I really can’t be bothered to dredge it back up after being up since 7 AM.
- Obey your master, master
- Master of puppets, I’m pulling your strings
- Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams
Recent Comments