If we just hear “the gospel” enough, we’ll come around. In reality, I hear street preachers, and see “Jesus loves you” stickers on street corners, and it turns me off even more.
That because we are free from god or gods that we have no moral compass. I consider myself a good person and I have good moral standards. I don't need fear from punishment after death to do so.
Also that we have no spirituality.. Spirituality and religion kinda go hand in hand but aren't mutually exclusive. That being said, I have no desire for either religion or spirituality. Maybe when I'm closer to the later chapters
Perhaps not exactly what you're asking but one thing many religious people don't seem to get is that they're "atheists" aswell when it comes to all the other gods out there. The difference to atheism is that we just don't believe in their god either.
I don't know how many gods there are but for the sake of an argument, lets say 500. A Christian believes in 1 out of 500 gods and an atheist believes in 0 out of 500. We're not that different from each other after all.
Where I am in Australia, if as a group (say of coworkers) talking about a new person, we might be like 'maybe don't say "Jesus fucking Christ" in front of Lisa, I'm pretty sure she's extremely Christian' or 'let's do lunch instead of drinks to celebrate the milestone, I'm pretty sure Vish is Muslim so we don't want him to feel left out'.
Majority of my peers are atheist. Religion only comes up in our lives when we're trying to be inclusive or respectful of the religious minority.
It's funny how some places can't do the same in reverse.
Edit to say, the thing is, to the majority of us, belief in a god is silly hocus pocus, drummed up by humans when we just didn't understand how things worked and the scientific method didn't exist. But as a respectful person living in a society, I live by the rules that you don't make fun of those silly ideas, and also that religion is intrinsically linked to people's cultures too. So I have a live and let live attitude to it.
That I can't do religious stuff! I don't have to believe in the religious components to participate in an event that holds meaning to you. To me it's not sacred -- all just normal words being said and ordinary matter being handled according to some rules. I do that every day at work at the direction of a different kind of "higher power" (clients) without anger or discomfort, it's really not a big deal!
I'm not angry at god for not existing, nor am I angry at all the people who believe otherwise. If the invitation to your religious event is in good faith, I'm honored to attend, and will just keep to myself or make small talk. Plus I've studied enough faiths I can probably fake it, if keeping the situation under control requires it ;)
I've discovered that in practice, many people of different faiths are not sure what to think about this position. Most are OK with it, some not (I just give them their space). With the interesting exception of Buddhists! They've always been super excited to bring me along to the pagoda somehow. No one ever tried to convert me, and the monks often speak a surprising number of languages and are interesting and well traveled. It's become a set of surprisingly wholesome memories (I immigrated to a primarily Buddhist country)!
That it’s a religion. Except for a few groups, which I find kind of strange, being an atheist is the lack of religion and belief in a god. It’s not a religion or anything like a religion and so often I see atheism discussed by the religious in religious terms l, as a monolith, and other ways that just totally miss the mark.
That we care about religion and are constantly thinking about religion. Or that we hate all religious people and judge people simply based on religion. Sure, some atheists do but not all of em. I can only speak for myself but the only time I ever give a fuck about religion is when a religious person reminds me about it. I dislike evangelists and it's not an attack on all religious people.
Additionally, atheism isn't a religion nor a group, movement, etc. The only common denominator between us is a lack of religion. Even our beliefs on atheism are different. Therefore all of the above.
Like almost any marginalized group, atheists get caricatured by their most vocal members.
I probably would have become atheist a decade sooner if I hadn't associated it with the logocentric, Western chauvinist, and plain old bigots who first represented atheism to me.
There are plenty of us who aren't obsessed with religious debates; we don't hate religious people; and our cultural, political, and philosophical ideas are not frozen in 18th Century Europe.
There is this strange idea that atheists are just rebellious against God because they don't want to be responsible for being moral, kinda like disobeying your parents and sneaking out to party.
Also, lots of theists assume atheists used to be religious, they don't really consider that people are raised without religion sometimes.
I think we're stereotyped often as the militant and belligerent atheists quite a lot. We have been painted as unsympathetic assholes who like to talk down to religious people to make us feel better about ourselves, not to mention a weird overlap with some parts of the far-right, usually by way of transphobia, homophobia, racism, social darwinism and the enforcement of poorly understood or straight up incorrect "science"
Eugenecists inhabit this space, as well as people who might call themselves "race realists", as well as people who think their middle-school-level understanding of genetics and sex encapsulates the entirety of gender and sexuality. It's those atheists who claim to love science, hate ignorance, but remain ignorant of science. They give us a bad name, and their loudness makes it seem like they represent us
Honestly I am mostly bothered by the "reddit atheist" stereotype. Most of the atheist even on Reddit, that I have met, even in Reddit, were as annoying or pleasant as everyone else. But it feels like if you oppose religious nonsense as it gets pushed in your face online, "everyone" thinks you are some radical who hates all e.g. christians, while in reality you might intentionally buy some handmade crafts for the local church to support some charity and support your elderly local community by rewarding their social efforts.
Atheists are exactly like people of most other religions in that the only ones most people hear about are the loud, annoying, typically extremist ones.
A lot of people like to say that atheists traffics with demons to solve their daily problems, routinely play with Satan's gigantic cock, and do a fuck ton of drugs and I'm here to put the rumors to rest. I have never once even seen Satan's gigantic cock, nonetheless held it in my hands.
That it's in other places like it is in the USA. I think being an atheist or christian here in central europe is very different to what americans experience in their lives. And it's yet another story in other countries.
Not believing in anything, which is very true as people just replaced "believing in something bigger" with "numbing depression with consumerism".
But there can be atheist christians (like, they should be if they read the damn bible) and you can be spiritual and social without believing in some random interpretation of other people thousands of years ago, word by word.
They seem to have this sense that irreligious/non-spiritual people are "missing something". That " missing something" sense could range from them having some kind of weird pity for us to thinking of us as no different from talking animals.
It's like they think we're missing something that should be a apart of humanity. They don't think that we've actually overcome that part of humanity.
I said irreligious because I'm from a Buddhist country.
Answering that question is pointless: I couldn't give a single solitary flying fuck what a mentally deranged person thinks of any demographic unless it becomes a threat to somebody other than themselves.
We're not really smarter than religious people on the whole. Human intelligence is deeply flawed, being right about anything is a matter of luck and/or hard work
Believing/disbelieving whatever story about the existence/nonexistence of "god" (or anything else) matters not one whit to me. This obsession with stories that you people share. I do not share it.
That "you gotta be obsessed with stories like me" stereotype.
That we nessesarly think God does no exists and then start asking us for proof.
Atheism means no belief in God, believing there is no God is a subset called "strong atheism".