Skip to main content

Being rational is lonely business

By Rachel ~

I posted a month or two ago a letter I wrote to my fundamentalist father, essentially "coming out" as an atheist after his pressing invitations to join him at church and bible study. Interestingly, and to my relief, the matter has been pressed no further by my family, and thankfully they have been just as loving as always. I know they are sad and I'm sure they are praying for my soul but at least they have been kind and respectful, as I assured them I always would be. This post isn't about that relationship, but with a new and difficult road ahead that I'm looking at.

I'm a young (ish, 36) divorced mom, I am attractive and confident. Even though I don't "party" I'm fun, and I'm involved in my community. I have a wonderfully intelligent 7 year old daughter, and a great career so security isn't really an issue for us. However, as a romantic, I keep the possibility open that I could re-marry one day. I live in a small town, and thankfully for the most part it is a liberal one. Religiosity as I avoid it is not a problem, but there is another problem of compatibility that springs from one of the same sources as religiosity- human gullibility, wish thinking, and to put it basically, a lack of critical or skeptical thinking. I have always been considered the "hippie" of the family, and have generally been attracted to "hippies" as far as they tend to be outdoorsy, liberal, and have other similar interests. However, taste in music, fashion, and liberal causes aside, I think a lot of the "new age" life style alternatives and belief systems are equally as irrational as traditional religion, and any benefits seem to only be from a type of placebo effect. For an example, my most recent boyfriend is a very loving and kind person. Except for difficulties with steady work, he is almost a perfect guy. He is handsome, caring, and thoughtful, and dedicated to clean and healthy living as I am. However, he believes, no questions asked, in conspiracy theories, aliens, government cover ups, spiritual energy healing, crystals, and almost every gimmick you can think of. He is one of those people who, like people of faith, are impervious to reason and logic, because his beliefs proudly lie outside these constraints, and to challenge these ideas only makes him dig in his heels, stick his fingers in his ears, and cry "conspiracy!" I could go on and on about the things he believes and his reasoning (or lack of) but I'm sure you get the point. It seems that a lot of people, even if it isn't Christianity per se, fall into the same traps of faith and beliefs that are difficult to deal with for someone who has had their consciousness raised. Now I know that term seems very condescending, but I don't know how else to put it when you feel your blinders come off and you finally see the world clearly. I do feel that my consciousness has indeed been raised, and I can only wonder and marvel at those who absolutely refuse to "raise their consciousness", preferring to remain slaves to faith. Anyway, I find that in this state, it is of course easy to love and befriend those who do not see eye to eye with me, but to be attracted to and respect a partner, well, I feel like that is only going to work with someone equally enlightened, who feels strongly that this is indeed an essential quality for a relationship. So, while I never regret "coming out" or embracing my freedom from religion, I find I have dramatically narrowed my options for a partner. I know that is OK, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I really did try to stay with my boyfriend despite constantly cringing whenever the subject of energy or aliens came up. He knew I wasn't into it and didn't press it all the time. However at times he made it clear that he was SO into it (for whatever reason that still is unclear to me) that my lack of interest could be a deal-breaker. Ultimately it was, but for me. I really hope that I can find a man who values reason and intelligence and can find as much meaning and beauty in life through it as others find through faith, religion, and other types of wish thinking.

The next time I write, I'd like to address the problem of how to make a difference in this world for our children, and steer this country back to the secular foundation it was truly founded on, even WITHOUT breeding armies of like minded robots, like this Quiverfull/ Christian soldiers phenomenon. Please give me feedback about your experience dating as a non-Christian- I truly enjoy and am encouraged by everyone's posts. Thanks for reading! Rachel

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

THE FRIGHTENING FACE

By David Andrew Dugle ~ O ctober. Halloween. It's time to visit the haunted house I used to live in. When I was five my dad was able to build a big modern house. Moving in before it was complete, my younger brother and I were sleeping in a large unfinished area directly under the living room. It should have been too new to be a haunted house, but now and then I would wake up in the tiny, dark hours and see the blurry image of a face, or at least what I took to be a face, glowing, faintly yellow, high up on the wall near the ceiling. I'm not kidding! Most nights it didn’t appear at all. But when it did show itself, at first I thought it was a ghost and it scared me like nothing else I’d ever seen. But the face never did anything; unmoving, it just stayed in that one spot. Turning on the lights would make it disappear, making my fears difficult to explain, so I never told anyone. My Sunday School teachers had always told me to be good because God was just behind m

Reasons for my disbelief

By Rebekah ~ T here are many layers to the reasons for my disbelief, most of which I haven't even touched on here... When I think of Evangelical Christianity, two concepts come to mind: intense psychological traps, and the danger of glossing over and missing a true appreciation for the one life we know that we have. I am actually agnostic when it comes to a being who set creation in motion and remains separated from us in a different realm. If there is a deistic God, then he/she doesn't particularly care if I believe in them, so I won't force belief and instead I will focus on this one life that I know I have, with the people I can see and feel. But I do have a lot of experience with the ideas of God put forth by Evangelical Christianity, and am confident it isn't true. If it's the case god has indeed created both a physical and a heavenly spiritual realm, then why did God even need to create a physical realm? If the point of its existence is to evolve to pas

The Blame Game or Shit Happens

By Webmdave ~ A relative suffering from Type 1 diabetes was recently hospitalized for an emergency amputation. The physicians hoped to halt the spread of septic gangrene seeping from an incurable foot wound. Naturally, family and friends were very concerned. His wife was especially concerned. She bemoaned, “I just don’t want this (the advanced sepsis and the resultant amputation) to be my fault.” It may be that this couple didn’t fully comprehend the seriousness of the situation. It may be that their choice of treatment was less than ideal. Perhaps their home diabetes maintenance was inconsistent. Some Christians I know might say the culprit was a lack of spiritual faith. Others would credit it all to God’s mysterious will. Surely there is someone or something to blame. Someone to whom to ascribe credit. Isn’t there? A few days after the operation, I was talking to a man who had family members who had suffered similar diabetic experiences. Some of those also suffered ea

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two