The effects of damning.

"Atheism is a form of hiding, hiding from god, from judgment, from prayer"...
This comment was made in class, and on first hearing it I bristled and thought up a hasty retort. "Atheism isn't hiding from god- my reasons for not believing in him have nothing to do with fearing his judgment"... but then I realized that to scrutinize a religion so deeply in class, to pick it apart, to look at it as a social instead of a divine entity, may be just as hard and bristling for a Christian as that comment was for me. So I held my tongue.

Attacking a person’s belief is one of the most effective ways to anger them. At least for me, it puts me on the defensive faster than any other insult. I believe that this is because, generally, people want their beliefs to be relatively stable and secure. No matter how liberal, it is natural to want to be certain of one’s self image, world image and moral values, all of which are deeply affected by religious beliefs. When you say that someone’s beliefs are invalid, or as happened in class, simply a form of cowardice, you call into question the entire way they live their lives, and effectively tell them that their beliefs make them inferior.

I do not intend to focus this post toward that one class comment. My discussion is based largely on my experiences in middle school when a large group of Christians discovered I was an atheist, and began to bully me. They passed me a test they had made quizzing me on “how did the world begin, check one”, and “what happens after you die, a, b or c?” They kicked my chair as they passed and told me I was going to hell. Obviously I was very upset, and my mother and I discussed why they were doing this, why they cared so much that I didn’t believe what they believed. What we decided was this. Their beliefs, how they interpreted the bible, was that only a Christian was a good person, and thus only a Christian should be happy and have good things happen to them. I was very happy, had recently been given the lead in the school musical and me, the sinful atheist, got better grades than they the Christians. I didn’t have to say anything to be questioning their religion; my very happiness went against the rules of who’s allowed to be happy and who’s supposed to be wallowing in sin. I hoped that this petty, childish behavior was just a middle school thing, that once I became a “grown up”, stuff like that would never happen again. Boy was I wrong. The world today is filled with exactly the same nonsense. Too many religions hold the belief that all other religions are wrong and its members damned. That’s a very dangerous belief because it leaves you vulnerable to contradiction every time you see someone of another faith getting something good. If your beliefs are true and god punishes non-believers, shouldn’t they be hit by lightning instead of winning the Nobel Prize? Why did that happen? So many people go around telling people that they’re damned, the damned people turn around and say, “We’re not damned, you are!” Then the entire world starts damning people in a “fire ze missiles” kind of way and everyone gets damned. And no one is happy when their damned.