What is your Atheism Sin?
What habits or actions do you continue to do that would get your Atheism card revoked? This is totally tongue-in-cheek, but I have realized how my somewhat religious upbringing has colored my language as well as other things.
So, I figured we could have a confessional discussion where we admit our sins against atheism. After all, if folk are going to persist in calling atheism a religion, maybe we should indulge a little and see how it works out for us.
My sins include using language like "God only knows" and saying to people who have sneezed "bless you". What the hell are you heathens doing that is the antithesis of atheism?
UPDATE: This post continues to get attention and one thing I have noticed, with both amusement and frustration, is that some people do not seem to notice that this is largely tongue-in-cheek. I posted this as a way of acknowledging the influence that religion has had and continues to have on our lives, our society, our language, and our habits. We all know that atheism is not a religion, goddammit! ;-)
Have a blessed day.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Steve Dustcircle on -
I tend to seemingly nod (in agreement?!) when someone's saying something I disagree with and not wanting to argue. This is usually around family or friends of friends.
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Permalink Reply by Jānis Ķimsis on -
I have a tendency to let things I disagree with slide, too. I still haven't decided if it's a good thing or if I should be more confrontational.
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Permalink Reply by NeonHammerer on -
Saying "oh god, oh god oh god" while having sex.
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Permalink Reply by Morgan-LynnGriggs Lamberth on -
I for a time said goddammit. Noe I'm trying not to be hostile to my Dell or anything else. To continue to do the former would be an act of blasphemy to reason, as that is superstitious!
Does confession ever make a person better? If so, Catholics ought to do better morally! Do they?
And some Protestants confess to sinning before the congregation. Do they act any better?
Ti's the divine protection racket that John 3: 1s- 8 vents forth.
No rational being would demand self -sacrifice to expunge the wrongs of others.So the Atonement was a farce and no Resurrection occurred!
Hume's corollary to the presumption of naturalism is that people have to adduce extraordinary evidence for extraordinary matters. Since after many millennia and tons of papers used, and doubtless no evidence will ever present itself so there indeed absence of evidence where theres hould be loads of it, we can conclude that there is no God without committing the argument from ignorance!
As sin is a theological concepts, we naturalists prefer other terms. Sin is an affront to a non-existing monster!
" I rest in my Socratic ignorance and humble naturallism." Fr. Griggs,
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Permalink Reply by Rose Trinh on -
I have a habit of telling people "bless you" when they sneeze however to me, it's just a set of words. I'm not sure how to explain it other than I don't find it an Atheist "sin" as it is just something used in every day language for me.
Did that make sense? I hope it did. :)
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Permalink Reply by Steve Dustcircle on
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i try to avoid saying this, but it'd be easy to get back into when you see the looks that people give you when you don't say "bless you" or "god bless you." When i don't say it, they look at me like i'm the rudest person alive. :)
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Permalink Reply by anti-supernaturalist on -
Commentary on Pope Benedict XVI's kneeling before Shroud of Turin (2 May 2010)
-- the de-deification of culture (including science) is a task for the next 100 years.
deeply implanted expectations haunt atheists' minds
What’s wrong with the face on the cloth? — the Shroud of Turin meets every conditioned expectation.
Consider the iconography of SoT -- an image which "looks like" Jesus. Really? No one has any idea what Jesus looked like. No physical descriptions appear in canonic xian texts. Descriptions appearing in gnostic texts lack any historical authenticity, are contradictory, and are designed to inspire awe — Christ as a shape-shifting immaterial being who walks through closed doors.
What pops up to the mind’s eye as a visual representation of Jesus/Christ? Perhaps a well-trimmed beard of an almost middle aged caucasian with flowing auburn locks who may (at the movies) even have aryan-blue eyes — dear white Jesus of Sunday school fame.
Yet it has not always been so. An early image painted in the Catacombs shows Christ “the good shepherd” as a beardless youthful Roman with “the lost lamb" draped around his neck. The beardless youth also appears carved on xian sarcophagi along with lambs.
A beardless youth cannot be an icon of Jesus Christ! He is a shock, a failure to meet long standing expectations.
A youthful icon of Jesus/Christ must be defended and explained by art historians. The icon’s youth expresses a symbolic meaning of joy, of life restored, of aging reversed. A broken, bleeding crucified “man of sorrows” Jesus must be seen as a post-resurrection Christ who emerges from the grave as the “new Adam” restored to beauty and strength.
What about Jesus' iconic beard? Roman men, old and young, shaved. Only Greek philosophers and barbarians beyond the pale of Rome grew beards. Beards got their medieval cultural boost when barbarians destroyed the western empire and began to rule in its dismembered remnants (ca. 500CE).
A medieval iconography for what Jesus Christ should look like has never disappeared from popular culture. Jesus had to display his solid physicality (true man) and his right of celestial kingship (true god). A well-maintained and trimmed beard had come to mean “manly authority”. Christ could not be a beardless lad. Jesus had to follow fashion.
Medieval images seared into memory belong to cultural conditioning accepted from earliest brainwashers — home, school, media, art. Countless repetitions of religious icons never allow these stereotyped memories to disappear.
To de-deify them requires de-conditioning. No one in the West succeeds fully. Not everyone tries. Some who do try are damaged by authoritarian schools, authoritarian clerics, authoritarian parents.
To see Jesus Christ in the SoT is a conditioned reflex that can defy every best effort to secularize those images once considered “holy”. SoT meets an expectation created in millions through more than a thousand years of conditioning.
That’s what’s so wrong with SoT — it meets every expectation.
the anti_supernaturalist
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Permalink Reply by Jon Heim on -
other then using the lords name in vein and saying bless you....just yesterday my facebook status said "gah...I missed it. Blessed late Lughnasadh to all of my Pagan friends". Also I buy my fiance books on Wicca and other Pagan beliefs. I was raised Christian, I am now an Atheist, my fiance is Pagan and man do I hate family reunions. Another thing I do is, when my family prays at meal time, I respectfully bow my head and close my eyes.
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Permalink Reply by Steve Dustcircle on
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I don't bow my head or hold hands or anything, but i remain quiet while they do their rituals. if i can be soundless, i even serve my plate some food, to further my lack of participation.
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