Atheists and Lent
A few days ago, I saw this post referencing a year-old article about Anti-Lent. The point of the article is that when most Christians are celebrating Lent by giving up things, atheists ought to do the extreme opposite: try new things, especially things considered sinful. Honestly, I’m ashamed to have this sort of stuff on About.com where people looking for information on atheism could easily stumble across it. It plays right into the scariest and most misguided stereotypes about atheists. When I saw the article featured again, with the comment, “I love this idea!”, I decided it was time to say something.
Being an atheist is not about being anti-Christian. If you’re an atheist because you hate Christians and you want to piss them off… you should think harder about what you truly believe about the world, how it got here, and how it works. Atheism means a lack of a belief in any deities. Atheists don’t subscribe to Christian dogma wholesale, but it is possible for atheists to agree with ideas that Christians happen to have as well. It’s not as though every time a Christian says something, atheists all stand up and yell the opposite thing. (Seriously, guys, given the number of times the Bible contradicts itself, that’d be a pretty counterproductive strategy.)
If you look at a set of rules and always take the action that breaks them, your life is defined by those rules as much as someone who always chooses to follow them. If you’re so vehemently not a Christian, why give their rules so much power over your life?
Then there’s the issue of sin. Many Christians, particularly the outspoken evangelical ones, believe that atheists have turned away from God and Jesus because they want the freedom to do whatever they want, no matter how immoral. Now, we know that it’s always a Christian who ends up making the argument that without God’s rules, they’d cheat and steal and kill all willy-nilly (and therefore God is necessary for morality). Atheists are perfectly capable of being moral and upstanding citizens without the threat of eternal damnation. Nothing advocated in this list is actually that outrageous if you read it — “Test Your Clothing Comfort Zone” turns out to suggest wearing a hat or a Hawaiian shirt, not a miniskirt and thigh-highs — but a quick skim through the taglines makes it look like atheists are a bunch of promiscuous, gluttonous alcoholics. (And worse, that we are that way just to spite the Christians.) We can do better than that.
Finally, I’m irked by the false dichotomy between atheism and Christianity. It’s really between atheism and religion. In the US, it seems like Christianity is the only alternative because of demographics. It turns out that lots of religions have holidays where you fast or give up things. In fact, most religious teachings aren’t that specific to one religion… probably because religions are just a formalized version of social norms, borne out of our intuition about what good morals are.
Getting too obsessed with your material wealth can lead to emotional strain or weakened friendships. Not always, but it might happen before you notice. It’s not a bad idea to take a step back, look at your priorities, and see if you’re really getting what you want out of the life you’re living. You can think of Lent like a religious version of a New Year’s resolution. You might not make one of those every year (I know I don’t), but you also don’t start out each year intending to be worse than ever before.
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4 Responses to “Atheists and Lent”
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It’s interesting that I am usually much more successful with my Lenten sacrifice than with my New Year’s resolutions. And I’m not a particularly devout person…so it’s not like I feel I will be struck by lighting if I drink a Diet Coke…. maybe because I know it’s only for 40 days?
Anyway, great post. There’s a lot of ‘christian’ concepts that I see no reason why atheists can’t accept and still be true to their non-beliefs.
Thanks a lot, Mike. I agree, there’s a lot of common ground to be shared.
[...] Him and the threat of eternal damnation we’d all be terrible people. (Weren’t we just talking about that?) Someone pointed out, as evidence that atheists hate doing good, the fact that some atheists had [...]
It’s a pleasure to see someone asking people to think about this sort of thing. So much atheist internet stuff seems to be of the “I hate Christianity!” variety – never getting past juvenile name calling (cue cries of “you’re delusional”, “imaginary friend”, and mentions of the FSM, unicorns, tooth fairies and the usually misspelled Santa “Clause”). It’s not likely to make anyone think deeply, let alone sway anyone toward atheism. It’s just offensive – and I speak as a non-religious person. I’m not Christian and never have been; I’ve no fondness for organised religion, especially the Abrahamic ones. (Faith and spirituality aren’t the same as religion, something that seems to be forgotten often enough.)
You’re quite right to point out that the Christian/atheist dichotomy is false; I’m pretty sure it’s the predominance of US net users that sways the squabble that way. I would think it also influences the image of Christianity as heavily fundamentalist, simply because of the noise fundies make in the US. They are hardly representative even there (I’m in Australia and football is probably the biggest religion here, lol).
All one ends up with is mirror-images: it looks like fundamentalist Christians versus equally fundamentalist (as in closed-minded) anti-theists insulting each other. Not a recommendation for either side. And as for things like PZ Myers and his desire to be blasphemous – hello, this is the quality of behaviour coming from the kind of people who call themselves “brights”? Spare us the stupid ones, then!
Hmm, I’ve gone on a bit of a tangent here … but thank you for posting this blog, I think it was well-considered.