Thanks, that's nice to know · May 10, 01:34 AM by Amberlee
At the end of March, my husband got to find out exactly how distrusted—even hated—he is by the majority of America. You see, my husband is an atheist and a study released by the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota intended to gauge the acceptance of religious diversity in America revealed a startling fact: you could be a Muslim terrorist and you’d be more respected and tolerated than an atheist.
My husband linked the new release and the data from the study to me not long after it came out. As a young man, he was raised in a Catholic home. He considered the priesthood for many years and, in fact, was encouraged toward religious vocation by his family and his church. But when it came time to start college, my husband had a radical change of heart. Not only did he decide that being celibate was just not something he was willing to do for his whole life but his intense study of world religions, in depth knowledge of Catholic dogma, and his scientific mind caused him to reject the idea of a deity all together.
Please know that my husband is not an intolerant man. He will go to religious events such as weddings and bow his head with others when an invocation is done at a graduation or sports event (whereas, being a Buddhist that doesn’t believe in a Christian god, I do not because I find it hypocritical of me). He’s perfectly fine with people having their own beliefs but if they are brought up around him he will engage people in spirited and direct debate as to the reasons they are the specific religion they are. He will challenge them and call them on faith statements and will point out esoteric parts of their religion that make no sense, contradict one another, or have no basis in logic. He will force people to admit that they are not being logical and that their religion is illogical. He will say, “it is perfectly ok with me if you choose to hold an illogical and improvable belief as long as you ADMIT to me that you have no good reason other than faith for doing it.”
The only exception to this is Jehovah’s Witnesses. He is unmerciful when they visit our house, tells them he’s happy to talk about their god on one condition—that they talk about his. He then pretends to be a Satanist and asks them to participate in his worship service and let him reveal the truth of his Lord and engage in debate. They never come back to our house. Ever. It’s a total lie on his part designed to get door-to-door Christians to leave him alone. And, I have to say, it works like a charm. He does it once and it takes between six and ten years for someone to even consider knocking on the door again. Of course, the best part of this tactic is that my husband (like myself) is so well versed in world religions that if forced to debate these people it could easily be done in a convincing manner. He actually used to keep a container of table salt by the door and for years I didn’t know why. It’s a prop for when these people come to visit so he can tell them he was just about to draw a pentagram. Wow.
But I kind of digress.
The point is that I know of few people on this planet that are more intelligent, kind, hard working, tolerant, and helpful than my husband. Sure, he’s got annoying habits that drive me nuts—like the fact he can’t put his damn socks in a hamper—but everyone has such things. Yet, in spite of the fact that you don’t get more “boy scout” (trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, brave, thrifty, and clean—he’s not that into being obedient and he’s definitely not reverent but he is respectful) than my husband. Still, he is apparently the worst of all evils if you go by the cross section of this study. Here are some examples:
hen asked to identify the group that “does not at all agree with my vision of American society,” 39.6% of respondents listed Atheists, well ahead of Muslims (26.3%); Homosexuals (22.6%); and Jews (7.6%). Conservative Christians drew a negative response from 13.5% of those surveyed, slightly ahead of recent immigrants at 12.5%.The survey presented respondents with the following statement: “I would disapprove if my child wanted to marry a member of this group.” Once again, Atheists were at the apex of this negative-image cohort at 47.6%, followed by Muslims (33.5%); African Americans (27.2%); Asian Americans (18.5%); Hispanics (18.5%); Jews (11.8%); conservative Christians (6.9%) and Whites at 2.3%.
To say my husband was, on a certain level, rather shocked by some of the statistics in the study was to put it mildly. Since, unless a friend starts tossing their God statements around, my husband keeps his religious views to himself means that he doesn’t have to deal with a lot of direct animosity. My husband engages only people he knows in spirited debate on this topic—and with good reason. Still, he was pretty disheartened by the content of the study and it made him feel a bit odd.
I bring this up partly because is should be discussed and partly because, on live journal, someone linked to this post:
http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/237324.html
Having also seen the movie “Thank You for Smoking” (and having an atheist for a husband) I certainly understand what this individual is talking about. In addition, as a non-Christian, I am constantly confronted with an overabundance of exclusionary and uncomfortable situations in my daily life thanks to the saturation of Christian identity in American culture. From direct mail flyers that encourage me to come to revivals to “Jesus Fish” and billboards that say things like, “Please don’t take my name in vain – God,” Christianity is omnipresent in this country. People like myself and my husband are FORCED to be tolerant of such things because if we speak up we are bashed for it and treated like nutcases. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe in your God and, therefore, I do not feel it is appropriate for me to “bow my head” in respect to a deity I don’t believe in. If your God does exist, and I were him/her, I would be a little pissed that someone that didn’t believe in me participated in my worship services. Call me crazy.
But J. Brad Hicks says it better than I could:
“…he is the second-rudest smoke-nazi I’ve ever met in my entire life. Completely past rational on the subject. No, it seemed to him, the only thing that science fiction fans could be persuaded to be intolerant of was his religion, Christianity. (Another pet peeve of his.) And having just come out of Thank You for Smoking, I thought I’d finally thought of the perfect metaphor that would finally explain to him why that was. I told him that science fiction fandom, being a hot-bed of atheism and of non-Christian religion, is as sick of Christianity and as angry about constant exposure to Christianity as he is about frequent exposure to cigarette smoke, and for exactly the same reason. We don’t get to pick whether or not somebody else shoves their Christianity into our space and down our throats. And like the people who ask smokers to put their cigarettes out, we’re treated with great hostility by anybody around us when we object to it, like we’re the intolerant ones. I told him that second-hand Christianity and second-hand smoking are, in fact, the exact same issue. And, I confessed, while I’m not the banning personal behaviors kind of guy? If I had to choose? If one of the two was going to disappear from this earth and never have existed, I’d choose to keep tobacco and excise Christianity. Christianity’s more obnoxious, done more harm, killed more people, and Christians are much less considerate about involuntary and unwelcome exposure to their religion than any smoker I know is about his or her smoke.And the part that enraged me was the overt denial of reality that came next: both of them, bright people who really do respect their non-Christian friends, seemed to have never heard of the idea that anybody was involuntarily exposed to or inconvenienced by Christianity. It seems to them that anybody in America is hardly ever exposed to Christianity, and certainly not in any kind of unpleasant or pernicious way.”
And that’s the really crazy thing—how the majority of people have no idea exactly how subliminal and omnipresent Christianity is in this country because they either ignore it or they ARE Christian and, therefore, let it all blend into the background. But, for those of us that aren’t Christian, it’s actually offensive. We don’t talk about it because we are both tolerant of others and because we don’t want to deal with the vehemence and nastiness we know will ensue if we do but it DOES offend people. A lot of people.
In his post, Hicks suggests that someone take a “clicker” and try to count the number of times a person is confronted with overt or implied Christian thought and dogma in a day. I’m pretty interested in seeing people do this and finding out what the real number is. Hicks suggested to his friends that it would be at least two times an hour. I would venture to say more.
What can be done about it? In all honesty, nothing. My husband and I will continue to try to educate people we know about the fact that atheists are not people to be feared in some fashion. I will continue to explain when I don’t bow my head in public events that I’m not Christian but I’m happy to keep my head up and remain respectfully silent. And if someone wants to engage me or my husband on the topic we’ll continue to talk.
I just think it’s pretty sad that a guy that is a stand-up and fantastic as my husband has to deal with the kind of statistically marginalization that the U of M study revealed.
