OH! THE ATHEIST!!!

[Bumblebee]

First, before you read:
I do apologize to those who are indirectly offended by my words, but I do not apologize for my thoughts or my beliefs. What I say here is- although probably not scripted very well -what I MEAN. I'm sure others feel the same way, or have felt the same way. This is about discrimination more-so than religion. DO NOT READ if you are one of those religiously devote people who wish this world to, one day, see that your religion is THE RIGHT religion.

Lemme make one thing straight; this isn't going to be a happy post. I try and I try to be a nice person, and people tend to fuck things up in the most annoying ways.
Now, five people at this board( Mak, Rina, Lisa, Jon and Jasmine((I believe she's on the board)) )- as well as my brother, Abe, knows about this story, so lemme skip the story details.

To summarize all of this up, I- while walking around with Jasmine -was approached by two guys who were asking about how to set up a free-speech area. Now, keep in mind that I'm an Atheist. I have been insulted(well, I've been faced with the ATTEMPT to be insulted for the most part) by religious people NUMEROUS times. I've been told I'm going to hell, I've been told that my choice in life is WRONG, and I've been told that I'll "come to my senses"- be it in the form of ' your choice is a phase' or 'this isn't going to last forever'. In defense of the 'this isn't going to last forever', I will die. I will be eaten by worms, I will be the waste of these worms and become part of Earth's soil. I will no longer be an Atheist human, I will be an Atheist human who is now Atheist soil. The Earth will die and explode, and I will be Atheist space debris. That debris will crash onto other planets, making me Atheist meteorites, and from there, Atheist unknown lifeform, etc. etc. So yeah. I will be an EVOLVING Atheist. Hehe. Atheist Space Debris...

ANYWHO!
These fucks take it upon themselves to insult me for my choice while I'm telling them " Look, I'm happy where I am in life, and I'm sure you guys are too"- you know, the whole 'can't we all just get along' deal. Persistant in being close-minded assholes, they make the STUPIDEST attempt at an insult with " 'god' doesn't believe in Atheists"...What? How is that supposed to make me feel bad? I replied with " well, Atheists don't believe in 'god'." See! It's already a working relationship. Neither of us exist to each other. It's a grand world.
So anywho. I was trying to be a nice guy, really, and these people have now given me another reason to dislike people like them who sprint about telling people their choice in life is WRONG.
So thanks to that bastard, I'm on "level Red" on my Atheist chart. This is the last time I try to be a nice person only to have some religious bastard act like they can preach to me. I thought I could sleep this over, really. I'm really more pissed off that this is a classic scenerio of trying to help a person with their quesiton(in this case, they wanted to know what to do to hold a free-speech thingy, and I answered him very nicely, tellin him that if he wanted to hold one in the auditorium, to consult the Art dept., or if they wanted to hold one in the plaza-area, to talk to the student life peoples or put up some advertisements or something), and INSTANTELY, this became an assault on my character.

...sons of bitches.
So lemme put this clear and simple. I am really growing a newfound intolerance for any kinds of religious preaching. I don't want to hear anything about 'god', Jesus, Satan, whatever. I notice how Satanists, Devilworshippers and those kinds don't give religious people hassle, yet those who's religions dwell into Heaven are quick to insult the others.

So look. NO RELIGION IS RIGHT. My religion isn't right. YOUR religion isn't right. HIS religion isn't right. HER religion isn't right. At least not to the other person. To us, we made the right choices, but the MOMENT you insult me or speak down to me because I choose to live for myself, you've gone onto the shitlist QUITE fast.
I'm not saying Atheists NEVER insult religious people, but from where I'm standing, I've been religiously insulted by fundies of numerous times while TRYING TO BE A GOOD PERSON to know that I don't think these people care anymore. It looks like so long as you are NOT of their religion, there's a problem...so you know, I can't be like them. I can't just assume that because someone has a different path in life that I have to discriminate against them. That because the vast majority of the world believes in something different than I do, that that makes them HORRIBLE people. I don't think that, and I never will.
...but I can think that so long as SHIT like this keeps popping into my face, I will never have complete respect for people who ever mention religion as a means to live a proper life. I've known shitloads of people who ARE of religion who do TEN TIMES worse than what I could ever wish upon a person.

So yeah. I didn' mean to be a bastard on the 'Food of Food' Day (a.k.a., Thanksgiving), but before I can sit down and "give thanks" for the good stuff, this time about, I just had to give thanks to the assholes out there that give Atheists more fuel to their fire.
You want to change an Atheist? THEN LEAVE THEM ALONE. They will probably not change( I will NEVER change my religion for ANYONE, but who knows, maybe someone else out there is weaker with their choice of Atheism), but if you ever wish to change and Atheist, then SHUT THE FUCK UP. We're big boys/girls. We can decided for ourselves.

So anywho! Happy Thanksgiving/Food of Food day! I know that in the back of my head, I will be thinking of some very not nice things about this guy. I think by tomorrow night, I'll be over this. Just annoys me that I get insulted for no reason at all.
...yep. Happy Thanksgiving/Food of Food day! Mmm..food.

[Reverend]

......

I'm hoping that you feel much better after having been able to get all of that off of your chest man, because believe me when I say I know where you are coming from.

Technically I have a religion, that of Unitarian Universalism ([link]www.uua.org[/link) but we are the first to admit that we have absolutely no idea as to what we are supposed to be worshipping. We're humanists who happen to love spirituality.

That being said, let me say that I too believe that organized religion is one of those things that gets out of hand way too often, but that should not stop people from being religious. I guess that's the one problem I have with an atheist stand point, I could never say for sure that there isn't anything larger than me.

[Righty The Wonder Ghoul]

I am techinally more of an atheist or agnostic than anything else, however i would like to consider myself strong-willed enough to practice Buddhism (an atheistic religion might i add). although you dont really worship buddhism as much as you follow some loose as its a philosophy than religion with no god. however i never press my beliefs upon people, because it pisses me off when people do it to me. My belief on that matter is that each person is different so from almost everyone else, so their beliefs are going to be different, meaning organized religion in and of itself is faulty because 90% of the people are going to be practicing something they dont believe. almost every catholic person i know (even the priests who taught at the school i went to) didnt believe all the things the catholic bible said. I remember when I had a baptist nanny who always went on about how her way was the right way. frankly i dont understand how she felt she had the right to tell me how to live my life, she was living in a 3 family house in the ghetto, i can tell how well her religion is working for her.

[reaper]

The problem with the Big 3 (christianity, judaism, and islam) is that in the very fiber of thier religious being is the beliefe that thier religion is the correct one and following it is the only way to "salvation". This is why they will never leave people like you or I (I am kinda iffy i guess im agnostic i dont know lol) because they think that they are doing you a favor and shit. And especially things like athiest which you dont have any religious beleifes except to not have them they turn into zealots or somethin.

But personaly I think that they should make a rule or somethin, that the entire religion has to get its shit together and form one big loveing peacefull happy comminity where there is no wrong befor they can actively convert people. Cause I am sick of hearing about all thier ideals that they dont even follow.

You should just view them as a annoyence as best, Nothin keeps you from turning your back on them after all.

[Shurikane]

Jeovah Witnesses.

Need I say more?

[Gryph]

[Ming]

I find it hideously ironic that the question he asked you had to do with free speech, and yet he was chatising you for not agreeing with him. Wait a sec...doesn't free speech mean that you can think and say whatever you want (well, within some limits, but not those...)?


Here's my take though. I'm a Catholic, but not a die-hard Catholic who tries to profess my beliefs on anyone else. I like to think of myself as a renegade. Rev and I have had many late-night discussion about this sort of stuff over coffee. Even though I come from what you could call the 'oppressive' religion, I don't believe in the way that we try to chastise others for their belifs. I mean, I personally believe that there is a God, etc, etc. But I don't see why that means you have to believe the same. You not believing the same thing from me is not going to keep me from getting into Heaven (whether you choose to believe in it or not). Nowhere does it say that I have to 'save' X amount of souls or else I can't go. The only thing that I can use to explain this behavior that these fanatics have (aside from fanaticism) is ignorance. Who cares what you may believe? It's certainly not going to prevent me from believing in whatever I want. I think that these oppressors are just afraid of a)that which they do not know and b)not having conformity. If anything, these fanatics should be happy. If there is, in fact, an afterlife and another world, all the non-believers just mean more room for them. Seriously.

And to tell you the honest truth, it's the fanatics that know the LEAST about their religions anyway. You could quote some contraditory quote directly from the King James Bible, and they'll swear you're making it up because it doesn't conform to their beliefs. One of my roommates is exactly like that. He goes to church every week, and yet when I said something (directly from the Bible) that he didn't like, he said I was wrong and some crap like that. Which brings me to my last and final point...

Most of these people are just hypocrites anyway. They say you won't get into their Heaven, but the reality of it is that neither will they. They go to church every week, not because they want to, but because that's the thing to do. They don't know why their worshipping, and they believe that going to church every week makes them a 'good' person. This is why, I believe, every Catholic church in the world was instructed to instruct its Parishoners how to conduct themselves during church...because people are becoming too lax. When I heard these 'changes that were to be made' at church last week, my girlfriend and I discussed how the 'changes' were not really changes because everything they said was something that we were taught back in Catholic school and Sunday school.

Alright, I'm done. Sorry for the longness of this post...

[reaper]

[Minosheep]

Religion is often more hateful than non-religion.

I'm not throwing my own beliefs out there, because someone will end up bashing me for them, but have you ever noticed that atheists don't try to press anything on others? To my experience, atheists don't bother anyone about it.

Now, what I have noticed, living in the middle of the Bible Belt, is that other religions try to press their beliefs on whoever they think needs to know it. They come around, knocking on people's doors, asking them to change their beliefs that they've probably had since they were children. They're mean-spirited towards anyone who doesn't care for religion. They start more fights and bring up stupid problems about it than anyone else does.

In short?

RELIGION SUCKS.

[BWS-1]

Well ... I beleive in my own ''religion''. I prefer call it a Way of Life, or a phylosophy, it could look like a mix of many already existing practices/beleifs (Zazen, Budo Tao Te Ching, Bushido, Tai Chi, judo)

I don't wanna make me feel special for that or scream it away with pride, in fact, it's the first time I mention to anyone that I don't beleive in any religion. I beleive in what most relegions where ment to be tho: a way to live happyly togehter in a big helping family. I say that because, obviously, this isn't the case if you practice a religion on this planet. Isn't it ironic that everyone wants happyness but tons of people start building hate around other people that just want happyness too, but don't happen to be preaching the same gods? (or preaching a god at all for that matter).

There is good in every religion, and I mean it, as hard as it might be to see good in Satanism, there is.

People don't accept differences, Mankind didn't changed/evolved much for the last 5600 years in that area, all that don't accept other people's point of view or decisions in life and try to impose, are closing there minds. And that, is the first step to spiritual non-evolution (I know there is a word for that, but I can't find it).

I preach one thing, acceptance. Even if in life things can be hard to accept at first, they must be accepted one day, or else you will not live happy with yourself, and that brings you to not being able to live happy with others.

I have trouble accepting people that don't accept the differences in opinions or religions, in fact, I wouldn't be suprised that if I had to be put in bumblebee's situation, I think I wouldn't have reacted not much differently.

Now here's the hard thing to do ... accept those people knowing that they might never accept you. That's hard, well, for me it is.