Sunday, April 12, 2009

How I (don't) Celebrate Easter (as an Atheist)

OK, I hadn't planned on blogging anything special on Easter this year but a Christian friend of mine replied to a microblog post I put up earlier today and it got me thinking about a few things:

1) The majority of Americans are Christian.

2) A tiny fraction of Americans are atheists.

3) Atheists don't get holidays.

4) When we get snarky in the face of quite a few public displays of affection for God, Jesus, etc, why aren't we just ignored like we usually are?

It seems disingenuous, to me, that the majority feels the need to defend itself against the minority. As an average atheist, it seems like I should have the right to be exponentially louder than the average Christian since there are so many of them out there. I need to speak up in order to be heard over the voices of all those believers.

Yet, I feel like I get lectured when I do speak up for myself and my beliefs.

I don't need to be told about how there's a God, or how Jesus died for my sins or whatever else. I've heard it all before. None of it is enough for me--not that I'm saying anything against you.

My friend explained that he felt the need to defend the intelligence of believers despite me not saying anything about the intelligence of believers in the first place. Really, it's not about how smart or dumb you are--it's about what you choose to believe and what you choose to do with that belief.

If it helps you to believe that there is a benevolent being watching over us that can be appealed to for help, by all means, believe in Him. Personally, I'd rather assume that there is no God and behave according to my own morals.

What bothers me is when people who normally talk about politics, current events, or other non-God-related things start talking about how "He is Risen". Suddenly, I'm wondering why they felt the need to say such a thing to me. Yes, OK, you're Christian, Happy Easter, enjoy the chocolate.

Then I see it again and again and I'm suddenly feeling like a freak for not believing that Jesus even existed. But whatever, man--people believe what they want and I'm fine with that. But on days like today, it's hard to move on, so I joke about how I'm going to take a moment to marvel at how the seasons work at keeping us alive and then watch "The God That Wasn't There" again.

Of course, my snarkiness is taken as disrespectful, or, at the very least, in need of a reply/counter-argument/etc. It seems like the majority can't leave the minority to it's whinyness. And that's ultimately, fine, too--I mean, it's the Internet, right? The majority of the web is porn and what isn't porn is divided up between illegal file sharing and useless arguments (it would seem).

What bothers me is when a belief in something un-provable replaces the known facts of a situation.

I could die of an aneurysm before I finish typing up this post. However, some of you would suggest "well, say a prayer, make sure God is happy with you and He won't let that happen."

Right, or I could just understand that I could die and move forward with the idea that I should live my life to the fullest because I could die at any time.

See? It's up to personal choice.

No right or wrong answer. Both sides can't prove they are right.

So, if you're a "believer" please, the next time you see one of us "non-believers" commenting about how we don't believe or are annoyed by religious holidays or whatever, keep your opinion to yourself. You're the majority. Anything you say is going to sound just as pompous, self-righteous and insulting as what we said in the first place. The difference is, we've already heard what you have to say and that's why we're atheists.

It might serve you to listen to our opinions since you may not have heard them before--it's not like we atheist have dramatically influenced culture for centuries the way y'all have.

Orignal From: How I (don't) Celebrate Easter (as an Atheist)

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