As I may have mentioned before, I’m an atheist.
Which is why I’ve just donated a tenner to help put an advert for atheism on the side of a bus.
If you fancy helping out, you can donate here.
As I may have mentioned before, I’m an atheist.
Which is why I’ve just donated a tenner to help put an advert for atheism on the side of a bus.
If you fancy helping out, you can donate here.
7 responses to “Ad Break”
I’ve always wondered why atheists are so keen to tell others they’re atheists or that atheism is a good thing. I’ve always thought it akin to a Jehovah’s Witness knocking on your door and expounding the word of the Lord, only opposite.
There’s also the argument that by saying that God doesn’t exist, an atheist is validating God’s existence – because if they really didn’t care about God or a lack of one, they wouldn’t even conceive of the notion, it’s completely irrelevant.
Me? I’m neither religious or atheist. OR AM I? Arf.
Have to respectfully disagree, Lucy – compared with the historical excesses of religious folks, the odd overstatement from Mr Dawkins seems pretty much fair play to me; if atheists were as vehement as some of the more extreme religious people, they’d also have a lot more targets – all places of worship, for example.
I’d be intrigued if atheists did door-knock and try to convince you of the rightness of their beliefs, mind – after all, a stranger intruding on your life and telling you to reconsider your whole worldview does smack of the sort of thing that couldn’t happen in a world ruled by a loving deity, as anyone who’s ever been roused on a Sunday morning to answer the door will surely agree…
J
I didn’t actually mean LITERALLY knocking the door John, but have you never encountered a half-cut atheist in the pub? I’ve had ones going on at me there for bloody HOURS.
Ah, I see – not surprised you’ve been cornered by atheists in the pub, though; seeking refuge in the temporary oblivion of alcohol is probably one of the few ways they can bear to carry on living a godless world. Wasn’t it Oscar Marx who said that drink was the opiate-like curse of the religious masses? No? Oh well.
Underlying all this, though, is something I find to be a perenially interesting aspect of modern behaviour; as a society we tend to relate what other people do or say or think back to ourselves, and all too often people seem to think that because someone else believes in X, the fact that they themselves don’t believe in X is in some way being challenged or criticised. Our actions are often seem as implicitly saying ‘this is the right thing to do’, when in fact they’re more likely to be saying ‘this is the right thing for me to do at this time’.
I’d be interested to know if this tendency is the case on an international level, or whether the ‘everything somehow relates to me’ approach is something which is peculiar to the Western world…
J
Having spent a lot of time with EFL students, I think it’s a British thing, John. I most often teach Germans, Austrians and Swiss advanced and fluent speakers and have never witnessed them insisted their points of view are right apart from one Swiss bloke who was absolutely shunned for it. He wrote a letter to the class which said, “I am sorry, I have been in the UK too long!”
I always rather liked the quip “work, the curse of the drinking classes”.
I know it’s vaguely off topic and already been alluded to but I like it and I’m terribly easily pleased.
Dear all … I’ve just vented my spleen on this very subject. Please do have a read of it here.