Atheist Reactions
by k3vin on May.28, 2008, under Personal Experience
This is continuing the discussion from Friendly Atheist. When you tell people that you’re an atheist what do they say? How do they respond?
Personally, I’ve had a series of reactions:
- When I told one girl that I’ve worked with for over year I received a very interesting response. With horrid in her eyes she said “You don’t…? Aren’t you afraid of going to hell?” That’s actually a typical response for me but this one was surprising because I’ve known her for so long and I thought she was, for the most part, an opened minded person.
- When it comes up in discussion at my college I usually get an interested response. There’s a lot of diversity in my school that it would be silly for the “but won’t you go to hell response” to fly without getting some asinine looks. It’s hard to be ignorant of other beliefs (or lack of) when there’s a diverse amount of them around you.
- I’ve also received some good responses. Sometimes it promotes long discussions where I can explain why I’m an atheist. I can say I’ve “deconverted” one person this way. My place in hell will be special.
- And in other times I just get an “okay” and the discussion moves along like I never said the three dirty words (I’m an atheist). I’m not sure but it seems like some people treat me differently after I tell them that which is very unfortunate.
So, what are your experiences?
Or, if you’re only an out of the closet atheist on the internet what stops you from telling people?
4 comments for this entry:
June 26th, 2008 on 11:15 am
[...] mentioned some of the responses that I’ve gotten when telling people that I’m an atheist. The ones that were negative, I believe, were causes [...]
July 24th, 2008 on 12:23 am
It’s strange reading this. I consider myself to be an agnostic, but most of my friends are unaware atheists.
It’s very intriguing to me to see a country in which so many people are controlled by religion and it’s the commonplace. I know how it is in the USA, I’ve read a lot of articles and yet every time it puzzles me… the nation with so many scientific research and inventions…
August 7th, 2008 on 8:58 pm
I’m 47 years old and married for 22 years. Deconverting as late as last year. It’s been a struggle as I’ve been surrounded with well-meaning, though superstitious, Protestants (who protested my unbelieve) and Evangelicals (who began evangelizing my losing soul). The greatest, most painful arguments have been from my wife, Calla, and my best friend, Brad, of 30 years (who’s going to be a minister some day).
This Monday, while riding with a coworker on our rounds, he had asked if I was gonig to church anywhere (he had known I was unchurched). I told him “no,” to which he promptly asked if I still believe. Again, my answer was “no.”
He was horrified. He took the angle of “where’d it all begin?” I told him I didn’t know, that I was wasn’t knowledgeably enough to draw a conclusion on the origin of the universe, and “how the universe began has no bearing on how I live my life today.”
“Well, where do you think the nations came from?” he implored.
Now, I had knowledge; and he was silent after my brief history lecture.
“People create nations and societies. The US rebelled from Britain and created this nation. The british rebelled against Rome. Romans rebelled against Greeks. The Greeks rebelled against Macedonia…”
October 22nd, 2008 on 1:58 pm
[...] know tend to put all of these characteristics into someone who is most likely a Christian. In fact, people are often astonished when I tell them of my views on religion and the question of a god’s existence. This annoys me. A [...]