Note: I'm pretty much skipping most post so I can write something down
BlahISuck said:
Not so much about the value of atheism vs. religion, but what does it mean to you?
Atheism pretty much means what you said in the first post. At its core, it's the lack of faith or believe in a god/gods/goddesses of any/many religion(s). I usually break it down to go with either agnostic or a firm non-believer and even go further with the last one as a weak or strong atheist. Basically, I go with the normal terminology that comes with atheism and can be found on quite a few sites.
BlahISuck said:
For those of you who are atheist, how does it feel with respect to your community? What does it mean to your identity, and how do you reconcile that with friends or peers who have faith? How does this affect your worldview?
Well, most of the people around me are a mix of Christian (baptist and catholic) who seem to dislike each other and other atheist (who also seem to dislike each other). So, I guess you could say it's great. We don't really care what each other believe, except the extremely religious people who have the only church in the middle of the city and like to wait on people who stop at a red light or stop sign to walk to their car and give out those fish key chains. They are kind of annoying.
For the next question, we generally don't bring it up. We've tried to talk about it before but I'd quote something, he'd quote something, etc. etc. until one of use is pissed at the other. We basically know that the other isn't going to change and stay off the subject. Plus, there are more interesting things to talk about.
As for atheism affecting my worldview, I guess I have to struggle to understand why people would do something in the name of their god/religion. It seems to silly to me to cause so many people to hate/fear you because of your religion. I also dislike it when people put other down in the name of their god/religion.
BlahISuck said:
How about some personal stories about you interacting with atheism/religion, or witnessing a conflict between friends and describing you how felt or what you took away from it? The interactions you've witnessed between atheism and religion can't all be non-interactions can they?
Hmm, I guess I have two stories, one involving the religious when I was younger and another that happened last december/november (one of those two).
The first one is when I was younger, around 8 or 9 and freaked me out for the longest of time. Some evangelist knocked on our door (I'm guessing Jehovah's Witnesses but not sure). My dad, who was sleeping because he had to work third shift (which is pretty late), saw them coming up the porch and told me to answer it and say no one is around; Basically ask for them to leave. So, they knocked, I answered, they asked if my parents were around, I said no and that they should leave, which worked out. Maybe 20 minutes later, knocking again, asking if parents were here yet and then leaving when I said they weren't. Problem is, they did it again. I answered and they said no one else on the street answered so they asked if my parents were back yet. Same answer but they started to ask if I knew about Jesus and trying to hand me one of those little bibles. I took it (which was a big mistake) and they left. They came back again and tried to give me a stack of them to give out to everyone else, which I wasn't going to do, so I closed the door on them (mistake number two). They started knocking again and talking through the door, which happened for a while and scared the crap out of me. I freaked (mistake three) and started to scream at them through the door to leave but they didn't so my dad had to get up and tell them to leave. It scared me about how persistent they were to get me to answer the door and even though I can laugh about it now, not so much when I was a kid.
My next one is with an atheist who was in my philosophy class at college last semester. We had gotten into a debate (our teacher liked to do them for fun) about abortion, which usually has people bringing in their religion as a source for their opinion. Well, it was going pretty well until a girl said she didn't believe in abortion because of her religion, which sort of sparked the flames of this other chicks rage. The second chick started to attack her believe and religion because of how "sexist it was" and how she was an atheist because of how intolerable it was. This went on for a few minutes and every time the first chick would try to say she didn't mean anything bad, the second one would ramble on again. I had to, unfortunately, sit next the the rambling chick and told her she needed to calm down and stop attacking peoples religion as it's disrespectful. She mouthed off saying something like "If your religion can't respect me then I shouldn't have to respect it". I got angry and told her I was also an atheist and for her to stop being a jack*** because it reflects badly on every atheist and that she was the reason we were so hated. It wasn't really nice but neither was she. We stopped talking and she moved to another seat.