However, once every few weeks on there, a thread will discuss religion, and the battle will inevitably come up - you're either with us (atheists) or with them (fundies). The battle is more in the comment thread, which started lightheartedly because I really didn't want to start a battle, but then, again, I refuse to be held accountable for the actions of other people with whom I only share a marginal belief in a sky fairy, and I said so. I then was called an ignorant ape and held accountable for paying tithes and going to church, which was news to me, since I can't think of a form of neopaganism that involves either church attendance or tithing, which was a way of saying that all theists enable the fundamentalist whackaloons.
This black-and-white pisses me off coming from them every bit as much as it pisses me off when I am not considered a "person of faith," since they don't count people who have faith in Brighid or Odin "people of faith." You worship the wrong God, you shouldn't worship any deity at all, you don't belong to us, go away. Pagans are the bastard children of religion, and I'm sick of not being allowed to belong anywhere, not because I want to belong, but because I do belong - to both. I am a person of faith, I am a progressive, and I am equally both, and neither takes away from other other - rather, they feed each other.
I'm sick of it. I'm sick to death of it. For every decent ten atheists, like my boyfriend, there is one asshat who thinks that all theists are raging loonies who are willing to do anything to appease the voices in their heads. They completely ignore the power that Christianity (because they are bitter due to the oppression imposed on them by Christians, usually) has had for good in movements for social justice, they completely ignore the fact that many secular humanists are privately religious, and they completely disregard the fact that many religious people are perfectly capable of divorcing their personal religious views from their public political views.
How on earth is it not bigotry along the same lines of the discrimination of the religious right when atheists start questioning the liberal credentials of anyone who so much as considers the possibility of a higher power? Why is it that people on both sides can't grow the hell up and work together? Why do any of us care what the other believes as long as we're on the same bandwagon? Liddy Dole calls Kay Hagan a godless atheist and Kay Hagan's response is to say that she's not and it's defamation, which is true, but how about addressing the underlying issue there - who gives a flying fuck whether she is an atheist or not? What does it matter? Will she govern competently? And then I go on one of my favorite websites and am called intellectually subhuman and a detriment to a movement that means a great deal to me simply because we disagree on the existence of the supernatural. It's insane.
I'm truly sick of it; it's enough to make me want to jump ship and just be an independent sometimes, because the bigotry on both sides (and most atheists aren't bigots, just like how many Christians aren't bigots) is disgusting - and the sanctimoniousness of evangelical atheists (my boyfriend takes offense to the term, understandably, but it's accurate here) is worse because they think themselves absolutely immune to bigotry. Of course they can't be bigots; they don't believe in God! It's just an irritating reminder that sanctimoniousness is not restricted to the Religious Right.
I know it's a fringe issue, and that I'm not being oppressed by atheists; I really do. I just also happen to have been personally discriminated against for my religion in other settings, the same way that atheists are. It's in the military, I've lost childcare, and it's rare that a day doesn't go by where someone makes some kind of casual comment about witches (a mother came in a few days ago and started to gossip about how a woman who had stolen from her company was a witch, and I had to keep my mouth shut because this daycare is marginally Christian). I'm a part of a fringe group that is more hated than atheists by the wingnuts, because I'm too stupid to know that I'm actually a secret Satanist (which is what my daycare provider told me when she cut me despite my trying repeatedly to explain to her that we don't even BELIEVE in Satan, much less worship him).
And then I'm supposed to just sit down and shut up whenever I'm told that I don't count by people whose hallmark is supposed to be inclusiveness? Give me a damn break; get over yourselves and your need to control others' beliefs and let's actually work against people who hate all of us, shall we? Because I'll be damned if I'll have it otherwise.
And then I go on one of my favorite websites and am called intellectually subhuman and a detriment to a movement that means a great deal to me simply because we disagree on the existence of the supernatural. It's insane.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Personally, I hate that shit. Seriously, it gets on my nerves. I really don't understand why some people aren't willing to just have some respect and tolerance.
Maybe your experience on that Pandagon thread was an example of people being as rude as they want to be, because they don't see you face-to-face, and don't have to feel afraid. If so, that's sad.
I am interested in geo-politics and when considering why states act the way they do an important factor is often religion. Perhaps because I tend to think about geo-politics I tend to be a bit more realpolitik about it, a bit more tolerant. I don't know the reason. But yes I don't like the, to my mind, ignorant assholes claiming that all religious people are idiots or whatever. It just seems so superfluous and pointless and mean.
Maybe some of those other atheists had bad experiences with religion that I did not have, or something like that.
"This black-and-white pisses me off coming from them every bit as much as it pisses me off when I am not considered a "person of faith," since they don't count people who have faith in Brighid or Odin "people of faith." You worship the wrong God, you shouldn't worship any deity at all, you don't belong to us, go away."
ReplyDeleteThis is a very profound point
Thank you for visiting, Atheist, and I truly appreciate the thought. I agree that it is much easier to insult someone via the internet than face-to-face - however, sometimes I wonder if it's really what they mean or not. I'm torn between thinking that they really do think whatever they're saying, or that they're just projecting something they think that they need to project, if that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Red, as well, and I will reply to the comment that you replied to my comment when I get around to it...with election day tomorrow, I don't think I'll be much coherent until it's over, but I appreciate your replies.
they're just projecting something they think that they need to project
ReplyDeleteYou mean, there is a certain feeling which builds up in them like a fluid, and which they then want to release? And the feeling comes from a kind of unbalance within them?
Could be.
Not so much that, I think, as that they think that they are supposed to behave a certain way, and so they do - it's easier to behave a certain way that is perhaps unnatural to you, with a certain degree of disrespect or whatever, if you do not have to look the person in the eye and say whatever you're saying.
ReplyDeleteHell, I'm guilty of it with wingnuts sometimes, and I've been guilty of it definitely when I was younger and I had a blog that was heavily trolled by the godbots.
Wondering if we can continue this conversation, as I've tried to answer you:
ReplyDeletehttp://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/pragamatic_politics_for_atheists/
Absolutely, Grammar. I'm sorry that I kind of dropped it; I go through phases where I will post frequently in whatever forums I actually utilize and then I go through dry spells of days, weeks, months, and sometimes years of silence. Where were we?
ReplyDeleteI'm working on a reply to your most recent Pandagon comments re: this, Grammar. It may be slow going because I have starts and stops due to a) my doing this at work, b) my having a small child at home, and c) my having the attention span of a fruit fly, but I'm working on it right now. It may be Monday or later, but it's coming, okay? I appreciate your wanting to continue dialogue.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind any delay, and won't be online much myself this weekend. I just didn't want to leave that perpetually hanging when we both seemed to be making sense. I guess one more thing I should ask is, for those of us who are likely to continue to view all supernaturalism as inherently dangerous, how can we take on that topic without seeming to communicate that progressive theists are unwelcome?
ReplyDeleteLike the UNICEF white supremacist thing. Please take me at my word that I was never intending a moral equivalence of any kind; I only meant to use that example to say that beliefs divorced from behaviors ought still be open for criticism. Obviously a belief like "the universe is aware of us" is not equally likely to be a powder keg.
And here you bring up believers' work in social justice, but I'd suggest that these are good people who'd have done the same work if they were nonbelievers. Essentially, Weinberg's dictum that "with or without religion you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." I don't think it's correct to assume that asshole atheists are unaware of any good religionists have done, rather, we're inclined to attribute that to their own personal morality that they learned through social interaction, the same as everyone else did.