Comments on: Atheists and Lent

By: LL

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:45:06 +0000

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.

By: It’s the Thought that Counts » Blog Archive » Choosing between God and Satan

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:55:59 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Z

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:24:46 +0000

Thanks a lot, Mike. I agree, there’s a lot of common ground to be shared.

By: Mike at The Big Stick

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:29:38 +0000

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.