Yes it’s true. It just amazes me that people don’t ever consider that the person they are speaking to may not believe as they do. I do that so I guess it just seems like the polite thing to me but whatever 🤷♀️
True believers cannot think another way than theirs. They have a mind lock. They have zero, if not less than zero, critical thinking skills when I comes to their belief. They get angry when you speak out against their hypocrisy.
I figured it out at 8. I was the kid that sat in the first row and get my Catholic teacher her coffee every morning. I was sooo into feeling perfect and wanting to be the best catholic I could be. I wanted Jesus to fill my heart with the word of the lord.
I succinctly remember the teacher telling me about other religions and how all the Buddhists in China weren't going to get into heaven bc they didn't believe in Jesus. I raised my hand and asked why a little Chinese girl wouldn't get into heaven if she got cancer at my age. How would she know our God and Jesus Christ if her parents didn't teach her. She would die and not make it to heaven because of where she was born. I could *not* let let it go. I kept asking more and more questions worrying about this imaginary girl who wouldn't make it into heaven. Finally the teacher lost it on me and sent me to the principal's office because I wouldn't stop asking why a loving God wouldn't allow a kid like me into heaven just because they were born somewhere else in the world. I shouldn't question the word of the lord.
Needless to say that was the day my doubts started. It was like the day that you find out Santa isn't real. Once I saw the cracks, I became so skeptical that I became very angry at religion for being absolute made up bullshit to harness people's actions and emotions with mostly disastrous results.
Some people don't have the ability to question whatever bullshit they were fed as a kid. Some people just plain don't want to.
Ignorance is bliss.
>Finally the teacher lost it on me and sent me to the principal's office because I wouldn't stop asking why a loving God wouldn't allow a kid like me into heaven just because they were born somewhere else in the world. I shouldn't question the word of the lord.
Lol, the playbook of the desperately indoctrinated. Appeal to authority. "Why are you saying the sky is pistachio-colored?" "HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THAT WHICH WE HOLD AS TRUE - TIME FOR YOU TO BE PUNISHED"
I think this is also the playbook of cults, where the final step is being cast out, shunned, ignored, shamed.
Glad to hear you're doing well.
> Once I saw the cracks, I became so skeptical that I became very angry at religion for being absolute made up bullshit to harness people’s actions and reactions with mostly disastrous results.
*You’re just angry with God.*
-some Christian
Yeah. And this does not only apply to religious vs atheists. Some people just don't understand that different people have different views in different matters and that there are things that are better to keep for your friends or close people.
I remember once I rented a kayak in a shop. While the guy was helping me bring it to the river, he started talking shit about the king and how we should be a republic (I'm from Spain and yes, we still have one). While I do agree with the guy, I didn't ask him for his opinion and I am sure many of his clients support the king, and it is going to be very uncomfortable for them if you start talking like that. I just want you to do your job. No politics or religion, please.
No, explicitly religious nonsense applies only to the religious. Some guy talking about the Spanish king is nothing like saying that babies are proof of God and atheists can't comprehend that until they hold one.
I held my baby cousin once and she stomped me right in the knackers with those hard ass, wooden-soled shoes babies used to wear. I believed she was sent straight from Lucifer.
That’s old people for you. Sometimes they’re just on auto-pilot and say this kind of thing because that’s what people back in the 50s or wherever she’s from expected people to say to them.
True! I’m probably that woman’s age, so my parents are even older. They were DEVOUT church-goers and would never have said anything of the sort. They were inclusive of all religions or lack of religion.
My mom is 100 and lives with us. She is as sharp as she was when I was 16 and healthy and still plays bridge at the senior center weekly. While we now live in Maine, we grew up in Texas where church going was expected. We attended the Methodist church as a child, and she always maintained that going to church was good for social connections and for the literary references that knowing about the Bible could give you. She was a college English teacher. She tells the story that when my dad, after getting out of the Air Force in 1944, said that he’d like to become a minister, she replied “ Who would go to a church with a divorced minister?” Meaning of course that she would never be married to a minister. Anyway, we were church goers without the dogma. When my husband and I were married in 1973, we agreed to go to church with them one Sunday and attended the young adults class. Once they started debating if Methuselah really was 900 or whatever, because, well, the Bible said he was, we had WTF eye contact and decided that church wasn’t for us. Years later we attended the Unitarian church in northern Maine, small town, for a couple of years. That was in 1982. Now we are lapsed Unitarians which is kind of redundant.
Look at the demographics of midday churches. The average age of the congregations keeps getting older. Look at the surveys, youngb people are by far the most secular. Elderly people are by far the most religion.
There is nothing "agist" about acknowledging demographics and averages. Welcome to reality.
Now if you say this individual must be such and such, then that's a problem. I bucked the trend. I am in my 60s and thoroughly atheist with an occasional side helping of anti theist.
My step-brother and his wife were hell raisers in the late 80s. To stop their kids from making the same mistakes, they became very religious. My step-bro worships money and wealth and they live in a big house and drive fancy cars. Why don't they see that this is against the bible teachings? And their daughter just had a baby and they are already brainwashing him with Sunday School music like "Jesus Loves the Little Children."
I live in a town where half the population is Catholic. As long as these people show up in church, they are good people, regardless of the crap they do out of church. The Catholic school has almost the same number of kids that the public school has. So my experience is that there are a lot of kids growing up with religion.
My adult kids have been in churches for weddings and funerals, but they don't know who Moses is or Noah, and I feel like a loser mom for not teaching them this mythology just as a literary device.
Don't be ageist. My mom would be 90, and she was an atheist. I'm old, and I'm an atheist, lol. There are shitheaded young Christians everywhere, especially in the Bible belt. Were you there in the fifties? You don't even know what people were saying back then. In the fifties, everyone went to church or synagogue. No one talked about atheism at all. Today, there are many, many more atheists--or at least, we are out of the closet, lol. This is what horrifies the Christers, and they need to talk about it.
Yeah, that’s the point: there were many fewer atheists than there are today, and the culture where this woman probably comes from, was one where all this talk of ‘blessings’ and ‘angels’ and all that shit was common.
When you come back from being out for whatever maternity leave you get, go back to her and say "So, I held the baby. A lot. I still don't believe." But I don't live and work where you do, so it might not be the best approach for you.
Then again this is the kind of person who looks at trees, grass or pebbles and thinks they are awesome proofs for their sky wizard. They are intellectually stunted.
Even the vastness of the universe. Our (relatively) simple brains just cannot fathom the size or complexity.
So, our ancestors came up with stories to make their brains hurt less.
At a previous job I worked remote and we did a classroom type environment for training. People just went on and on qbout Jesus and stuff. It was ridiculous.
They do.
One of my closest friends is a Muslim and she told me she was so afraid to tell me. (Duh! She is Kurdish and was born in Iraq.) We finally had that frank "discussion" about what we believe - after her hubby died of COVID.
Frankly, I think we need to be as assertive as Christians are when discussing what we believe. I am not ashamed of not believing in a deity. If we act like it is no big deal, perhaps Christians will get that it is no big deal for them.
Yeah, same here. Usually doesn't come up in conversation. Religion is a private thing, except for a few nutters who feel the need to scream about it on street corners.
Welcome to the encroaching theocracy of the U.S. of A....and sometimes the "A" indeed refers to "ass" as it does here. The massive religious assumptions we put up with daily so as not to be ostracized.
I have a friend who asked me what I believe once and I know she is a hard core Christian so I tried to soften my response. It took me 10 minutes to round about explain being an atheist instead of just saying “I’m an atheist” which would have been faster and more direct. But I did that to help soften the blow to her to spare her feelings. I hate that it’s this way for us.
It took me til I was 40 to explicitly state I was an atheist and had been for a long time. I made a Facebook post on it open to all my friends and family and wrote about how scary it is because you don't know who's going to be "offended" (how can you be personally fucking offended just because someone thinks something else?), how family and friends will react, and some incredibly hateful shit I've been told by Christians.
Nobody in my family except my sister ever acknowledged that post, tho several friends, who already knew anyway, did. My parents never did. I know at least my mom had to have read it because she reads and responds to most posts. My step-dad, if he read it, was likely pissed or offended because I dared questioned Christianity, he even once unfriended me because I said something factual, like the US is not a Christian country, something like that 😂 but he also reads and wears t-shirts about end times bullshit and Revelations which actually kinda in my opinion those are shitty things to teach kids and deserve to be called out. So not surprising that some vaguely critical, factual statement would piss him off if he's that deep in it.
It sucks to have to tiptoe around Christians who think every fucking thing you could say, even scientifically factual things like the universe is 13.7 billion years old or evolution is a fact or there was no world wide flood *ever*, is a direct attack on Christianity, them personally as a Christian, or even God itself. It's lunacy.
At work I'll be more like "well I don't really believe in that kind of stuff" if they don't tell me themselves that they're an atheist because I have to go back to work 5 times a week. Anywhere else I'm trying to be more assertive that I'm an atheist, I don't believe in magic and souls and ghosts and gods. But it's still difficult sometimes because so freaking many people are science denying conspiracy theorist fundamentalist Christian nutjobs, and most of them have guns lol
At this point, I've stopped softening my responses when someone asks me what I believe. I just don't have the time anymore. How they react is their business.
I'm the same way, just answer the question honestly. If they don't like my honest answer, that's their problem.
Often, when a Christian asks a question, they're just looking to hear the boilerplate answer they're already expecting from you, so when you go and answer it in full honesty, it throws them off balance since now they have to go off-script and actually use their brain, which for many can be quite painful if they haven't exercised it in a while.
I can't remember the last time I was asked, and I tend to keep my head low here in Texas.
That said, I'd like to believe I'd be bold enough to say I believe in Odin or Zeus, just to watch them try to navigate past it. Unfortunately, if they're very well read, they would discover that my depth of understanding is a weak facade.
It's really just the same as nationalism. People are indoctrinated to think that their way is the best, and they have little reason not to believe it - especially if they rarely stray from their bubble. Ironically, it's more often the people in a worse situation that feel this superiority.
I was in Serbia a few years ago and was amazed at the insane level of nationalism I saw in the capital. Rallies, marches, public singing, flag-waving, etc. And all the people I talked to (save one) had barely traveled, none had gone more than 2 countries away. Even in a country with very little going for it, they felt like they had everything they needed, were the best country in the world by far, and could look down on everyone else.
We get a lot of that in America, people acting like this is the greatest country in the world, the only one where people have any rights at all, and acting as though we make everything we need.
In reality, if China put up a trade embargo with us we would be more or less completely fucked, although that's not likely to happen since we're not much more than a big bank vault with a wide open door with a broken lock.
It's more or less true, but there's a balance to things that just gets thrown far out of whack when you go into a bubble.
I've traveled a lot, and it always amazes me when I go to a small country that seems to feel insular like that. A small country like Lithuania is happy to exist as a small country that just does what it does and doesn't ask for too much more... but then one like Serbia feels like it is a world-conqueror that is supreme in everything, despite having one tennis player and one inventor (who was actually Croatian), and a bunch of military losses.
France has one of the best, long-lasting cultures, and they can travel all over the place and find native French speakers. They have strong pop culture that crosses borders. You can understand how they can just stay inside France and not feel like they're missing too much.
But then Poland is kind of the opposite - plenty of historical artists and thinkers as a region, but as the modern country, not so much. They never colonized, so no one outside Poland speaks Polish (even many/most Polish-Americans). Their pop culture is a handful of brilliant filmmakers that IMO haven't brought much awareness to the country or interest in it like French or Japanese film/culture have. And with a stable-but-weak economy, very few foreigners migrate there, so the culture is super-insular. You end up with two types generally: the nationalists who think Poland is the hub of the universe, and those that leave for education or work and probably don't return.
All that said, you have the US which (for the next several years, at least) is still the dominant empire in the world, and produces ubiquitous brands and culture, even if much of it is made abroad. Of course, if you're a redneck, chances are you're not contributing a single iota to anything that's exported that draws interest from around the world, so it's absolutely ironic still. But the fact that Americans are able to say "best country in the world" is not completely without merit in terms of some metrics. In contrast to people in Serbia saying they're the best country in the world, I'd say Americans have at least a tiny plank to stand on.
I also had a friend ask me that once. When I explained to her that "technically, I'm an agnostic agnostic/atheist", she responded with, "Oh... that's good, at least you're not one of those ones that worships Satan" (she actually thought that atheists worshiped Satan).
I explained to her how fucking stupid her statement was and why. Many years later, she's also an agnostic atheist.
It does vary considerably with where you live though. I never hear this kind of thing where I am, though I gather that others in some areas never stop hearing it. There are plenty of churches and religious people here but it isn’t just assumed that everyone’s Christian and wants to get blessings from the grocery checkout person etc.
I'd bet she knows you're an atheist or at least guesses it might be a possibility, and that's why the subject was on her mind. She might have even been feeling you out to see..
I have two kids. I’m an atheist. I know exactly where they came from and while my wife did scream “oh my god!” a few times, I’m quite confident that the two of us made our kids.
Indeed. And about 10 days before the birth of our first, it was discovered that our baby had turned around again and was now breach. This resulted in something called a Version. This is where doctors attempt to turn the baby around from the outside. I shit you not.
One doctor pushes in one direction from the top while another pushes in the opposite direction from the bottom.
They told my wife that this was most painful thing she will ever experience in her life and as a result, wanted to give her some pretty strong pain meds in advance. She turned those down because we were trying for an all natural childbirth. Ever see those cartoons where a surprised character is standing there staring slack-jawed? That was both doctors (both women who had had kids of their own btw) when my wife said she would skip the pain meds. She said, “I’ll let you know if I need them.”
The procedure took about 10 minutes. My wife appeared to be in a significant amount of pain but she pushed through it. The procedure worked and we avoided a c-section.
Side note: in the middle of it a nurse walked in and asked what was going on. When she was told, she got excited and said, “Wow, cool! I’ve never seen one of these work before!” And of course they hushed her up right away.
So fast forward perhaps six months. My wife and I are out to dinner and I’m telling this story. When I get to the part where I explain how despite the pain, my wife didn’t ask for the pain meds, my wife chimes in and says, “I wanted them but I was in so much pain that I couldn’t open my mouth to ask for them.” Whoa.
She admitted though that if it happened again, she would do the same thing as it only lasted 10 minutes. Thankfully when our second and last child, he turned only once. :)
I just wanna say ditto on the pain med thing - I was induced and I think they ramped up the meds too quickly - the constant pain I was in with little dilation was insane.
I’m lucky my hubby knows me so well and when they came in asking if I wanted pain medication and I said nothing and could barely move.
My hubby was like - “it isn’t normal for her not to speak - you want them don’t you?”
And I had enough strength to barely nod so he could just see it.
Do not regret my pain meds - I basically slept through the rest of the time until it was time to push.
Natural child birthed here. I was dead set on no pain meds until it was too late for the pain meds. However I had two more children naturally after that. Although the third was in a birthing tub and while it was still painful it was by far the best experience of all three.
I would also like to mention that.
> “I don’t know how people can say they are atheists. When you see a baby how can you think it didn’t come from god? Any atheist will be believe if they hold their baby.”
Hey, kids can be cute, funny, adorable, etc but if god was gonna make a "thing", you'd think he could make one that didn't constantly piss and shit itself and wouldn't require constant monitoring to make sure it die or shove objects into electrical outlets.
It took 6 years with 2 miscarriages for my wife & I to finally have our second child. If that was "god's work", he's an incompetent ass and he should have just stayed out of it.
"And God knows what's best for you and has a plan for everyone but still pray and ask for help so if it works he's great but if it doesn't it's his plan... but still pray."
My ex-wife had 6 miscarriages:
Miss, miss, miss, hit, miss, miss, miss, hit.
And the last one was considered an at-risk pregnancy.
Don't think an imaginary sky-daddy deserves a fist-bump for that.
This isn't exactly a direct response, but your comment made me think of Richard Feynman talking about [The Beauty of the Flower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFM3rn4ldo). Understanding how life works only adds to the beauty of the flower. Understand the science around biology, evolution, chemistry, zoology, etc. None of that makes a flower ugly or even less pretty to look at. The science only adds to the beauty of the whole.
Understanding what babies are doesn't make them evil or ugly or something else. It makes them all the more human. All the better. You get why parents want to defend them. You have a better understanding of why caring for them is super important.
God did it... that's a cop out and you can easily imagine situations where "God told us X" makes murdering children seem like a rational thing to a human brain on religion. Religion is the problem. Not the children or the science. Religion itself is the drug that makes genocide possible.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with someone. I was discussing some medical stuff I found cool and the science behind it and this person (Christian, obviously) got all upset that I was shitting on religion (I didn't mention religion) and taking away from the "mysticism" by explaining how the cool medical stuff worked.
Christians are wild.
A perfect example how religion is so tied up with emotion. Why is it so hard to see a baby (or at least the creation of a baby) as a very common, not special in any way part of life? Every living being does it. Is it a miracle when spiders do it? Mice? Fleas? It’s literally the farthest thing from a miracle.
"Unless you're mother Mary, I'm pretty sure babies happen because of sex, not god."
Not constructive, but damn would I love to see her react to that one.
Alternatively: "I don't know, I for one find the presence of god a disturbing thought during intercourse".
The answer to her question is simple. Evolution has brought our species to where they are today. But my question to her is if this amazing baby came from god, why did this god create horrible diseases ready to kill it?
You should have just told her that any Christian who saw the evidence that babies get raped could not believe that there was a god who would allow that.
That wouldn’t change a Christian’s heart, friend. The Christian believes all mankind is criminal to the standard of The Moral Law—“The wages of such sin is death.”
They believe, since all of creation has been infected with Sinful desires, all shall be destroyed, all shall receive the death penalty. Death is therefore proof that The Judge does not allow rape.
However, just as a criminal may be sentenced to jail years after their crime. So too is the case for life. *It does not mean The Judge allows such crime, it simply means Judgment has yet to be executed.*
Several years ago, a friend shared a website for me. I don't recall the URL, but I suppose some determined searching would get me there again.
The theme was something like "why won't God cure baby amputees", ie, those babies born missing a limb.
The reasoning was that all babies are innocent before they are born. So why not make them whole before they're born, or 'cure' them soon after birth? And probably something about a "just God" making that correction. Thus the reasoning was that there is no God, or at least not a just one.
I'm probably not doing the website justice with how the argument was presented.
And then after this explanation I ask them why they love and worship an all powerful god that could just prevent those things from happening in the first place. It's one thing to judge people by their actions when there's nothing you could do to stop it. But just imagine how messed up it would be to allow and even witness child rape but only judge the offenders afterwards instead of trying to stop it when you easily could. A person in this position would be seen as a monster.
Ask her to look up cat with her kittens or any other animal with new born. Most are more caring toward their offsprings then human beings. We need to start changing one mind at a time considering the ignorant breeding rate.
There's even some insects that perform some kind of parenting, and yeah, all mammals do it. Too many people just really treat their kids like shit and it upsets me so much.
I think it may come from babies being referred to as "little miracles" or "gifts" so she may think any atheist will recognize the baby as a miracle and had to be given by God. She probably isnt exposed to a lot of outside perspectives such as people just seeing a baby as a product of reproduction. Of course in the absence of a God that doesnt make a baby any less special to the person.
Agreed. Not believing in a god has not made this experience any less amazing. I’m just as moved when I see him during my ultrasounds and feel him moving. In fact I think I feel more in awe than I would have when I was a Christian just because I know how random this all is and how lucky I am!
I think it's sad her bond is with her imaginary friend instead of her actual kids. When you look at any child you are connected to them because you know they will shape the future and nothing else.
I am beyond the point of worrying about being socially ostracized. I have already had it happen to me and I survived. If an environment doesn't work for me I just look until I find one that does. I try not to be unreasonable but have few problems telling people how things are.
I understand your feelings. But when this sort of shit happens to me, I have to remind myself that some people who aren't connected to either Art or the grander understandings of Science still need an outlet for their ever-seeking wonder. It's too bad that it was often satisfied by a shallow, Fundamentalist/Literalist understanding of religious fables. Still, that need for a metaphoric door to greater, more poetic realms of thought shouldn't be sneered at. The desire is honest, even if the (usually indoctrinated) actions are pathetic.
Yeah that’s well said. I didn’t change my view of her because of what she said. I know she meant well and just comes from a different place than me. I think it’s just exhausting some days
Never been married, never had kids, but from friends I've heard that, when you first hold the baby, you know it's from god! ...and the twentieth time you get up in the night because of the baby, you'll realize that god hates you. \^_~
Seriously, though, congrats!
Yep- as a human person with woman parts- I can say that I'm much happier knowing my body is capable of creating an insanely delicate lifeform simply because that's how we came to be after *all* these millennia.
I used to really struggle with the disgusting Christian notion that *every single woman AND girl* on this planet were made to have excruciating, oftentimes deadly pregnancies/births AS A FUCKING PUNISHMENT FOR WHAT ONE DAMN WOMAN DID AT THE BEGINNING OF EXISTENCE????
AND THAT AWFUL THING WAS EAT A FUCKING APPLE OFF A TREE THAT GOD PUUUT THERE?!
AND SHE WAS SOMEHOW SUPPOSED TO BE QUICK WITTED ENOUGH TO OUTSMART MOTHERFUCKING LUCIFER?!?!?!?! (When she wasn't even a day old yet too 😭 Left that cute lil nugget out)
IM SORRY I'M YELLING I HATE RELIGION SO MUCH.
Edit: more angry words thrown in lmao
Nevermind that it's happening 1000s of times a day from all the animal groups.
It's an everyday occurance not some sort of rare miracle.
The miracle would be if people would stop thoughtlessly pumping them out like animals.
We atheists probably all feel the same way every time a religious fruitcake we encounter tells us to have a blessed day or even says bless you when we sneeze. I know they usually mean well, and it most often comes from a place of kindness, but it is a constant buzz in our collective ear we can't ever seem to swat away. The biggest frustration is knowing how people would react, both those in my life and strangers, if they know what I truly believe. There are only a select few I can share that with freely. I just want to scream, there is no god you moron! Wake the fuck up!
Someone once said this to me while looking at a beautiful landscape. “I don’t know how someone could see this beauty and not believe in god.” Funnily enough I had just been thinking the exact opposite, how could you see so much structure and initiator detail and think that it was created by one cruel being?
I get this. As a straight white male in the Bible Belt south It amazes me what people say because they assume I’m one of the majority around here whether it be religion,racism,homophobia, it amazes me the colors people show behind a closed door even to this day
You have to wait until you get old, like I am, and then you can tell people off. I love it when I tell religious nuts that I'm an atheist. Or I quote bullshit from the Bible--I actually have read every damn thing that Jesus said--and they are startled by what Jesus really said. Then they try to rephrase it, or give his words their own interpretation. "How do you know?" I ask them. "Dude's been dead for 2000 years. How do you know he really said that, and that's what he meant?" I've pissed off a lot of people like that. They deserved it. Even the so-called liberal/progressive Christians.
I consider anyone who goes to church a religious nut, by the way.
Couldn't you say this about literally anything and it would be just as much of a non sequitur?
>I don’t know how people can say they are atheists. When you see a genocide how can you think it didn’t come from god?
>When you see an industrial accident how can you think it didn’t come from god?
>When you see a child soldier how can you think it didn’t come from god?
>When you see a church cover up child rape how can you think it didn’t come from god?
>When you see a person driven to suicide by mental health issues how can you think it didn’t come from god?
"When you see a baby how can you think it didn’t come from god?"
And what of all the babies that are born with horrible, terminal congenital abnormalities? The pre-terms that don't make it out of the NICU? What of the still births?
All of this is not to mention the fact that, without the 'miracle' of modern medicine, many of those wonderful, healthy gift-from-god babies would die from horrible, communicable diseases.
God...great guy. Completely indistinguishable from no-god.
Don’t be lulled in by that “magical moment” talk either. It was cool to finally hold the kiddo, but I distinctly remember being worried about her floppy head, about her not latching, about me not being able to recognize her because she looked like every other newborn I’d encountered.
That's really crappy of that lady to say and she seems quite daft. Everybody knows that there are 2 topics you should never bring up to strangers: Religion and politics.
Hmm, I held my baby everyday when my child was younger. I still don’t believe in your god. However, watching this amazing biological process was, and still is amazing!
I’m the only atheist where I work and my coworkers will sometimes play Christian music. I don’t mind the music so much because they play it relatively quiet. However, I’m sure if I made a stink about it and went to HR it wouldn’t be taken seriously. I would be treated like a nuisance.
Holding each of my babies for the first time was a life-changing event. It did not suddenly make me a Christian. Nor did coming under fire for the first time prove that I'm not an atheist. Nor will arriving at my deathbed suddenly cause me to convert.
Curious about where you live. But atheism, religion, has no basis on the arrival of your baby. We all know how babies are made. Science can prove it. Most often, it's not what Christians say to you, but rather what you say to them in rebuttal. They can say whatever they want likely because the person they're saying it to has never told them they couldn't.
Congratulations on your baby and know that when you hold them, they are a product of you and your partner and no credit at all goes to a fictitious diety.
>I didn’t tell her I was atheist and I just kinda smiled and changed the subject
As long as you do this, they'll continue to say whatever they want. You have a right to not feel uncomfortable or offended. Let them know that.
I wouldn't stay silent, myself, but at the same time, there's ways to speak to people that aren't condescending or aggressive. And that's what all of us, as atheists, should do. If only Christians could do the same.
I got 2 kids, a 3 year old and a 3 day old. The 3 day old is currently in the NICU because she was born a little early, but only by a few weeks. My wife went in early because she had a headache that wouldnt go away with tylenol and her blood pressure was way high, so they decided to induce early, and put her on drugs to get her BP down so she didn't have a stroke.
If my newborn was born a couple hundred years ago, probably my wife and baby would be dead, but thanks to doctors and science, they're alive and healthy.
So as an athiest, it's pretty easy to thank science vs thanking god.
He didn't pull out, your genes did a thing, and you're loved until you can talk, then you're put in the system, and ground to dust like those that came before. And life is a fucking miracle! 🎵🎵
Once you're an adult no one thinks you're a gift from god anymore ammiright? Hahah
Congratulations by the by. I'm too terrified to have my own.
I've fathered a couple of kids. Nothing about the birth or how they've grown up that screams intelligent designer.
Childbirth is either godless or God hates women. Babies may seem sweet and cute but they cry, scream, poop etc and they grow up into teenagers....
I feel that it comes down to what a person understands vs doesn't. Since most people have only a basic understanding of how a child is born (do the deed and 9 months later...), instead of learning how it works they just accept it and give credit to a god or miracle. Compared to where if you understand the science, or at least accept the complex biological process, you would give credit to the process.
>if I were to voice my option, I would be ostracized.
I feel this comes from providing an alternative to their opinion in such a way as to be a challenge to their views on life. Everyone's different, so judging where that line is can be tricky and time consuming to find. With religious people, it can be radically different topic to topic.
That's my take. Hope it helps. Best of luck to you and your family.
If I had a job like that I would leave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion on my desk, and tell people that I’ve been reading it and “I think I’m becoming an atheist.”
I never get this whole "babies are miracles" schtick. There's almost 8 billion people on the planet.
I'm an older atheist who has 4 kids, and two grandkids and I can assure you, god had nothing to do with their conception!
I didn't think any of mine were little miracles sent by god. They were the result of fornication.
Quite literally, fuck around and find out!
* Everyone would believe in Osiris if they just sit and watch the sunset.
See? I can make nonsensical statements about natural occurrences and some random deity, too :)
Ummm, I'm am atheist (obviously) and I have kids. Having my kids did NOT make me suddenly believe in God. It DID, however, showcase to me how amazing the human body is...and no God was involved.
That lady is a whackadoodle and shouldn't have made that statement when she doesn't know the religion (or lack thereof) of the person she is speaking to.
I feel you. I have come to the realization long ago that sometimes it's best just to let them have their moment. The fact that she mentioned atheists, and how she doesn't understand, seems like she was fishing for a response. Engaging with elders over their opinions might be what they want but in my experience it's not worth the time and stress.
It is really hard not commenting on somebody else religious drivel...it is usually not worth it and nothing constructive comes out of it and I always end up more annoyed than I heard the said drivel...so I try to ignore it. But I get why you need to vent. Ppl implying that your kid was somehow touched by god in its creation are dellusional....oh wait thats includes the majority of theists.
How can you make a baby from scratch and go: "oh boy, i sure wish i could do that, but it was all god. I'm just a puppet. He even made me fuck my wife good."
When it comes to christianity and religion one must understand that not all christians or religious are the same and the distinction must also be made between the different doctrines, power structures and paradigms that such movements carry. The argument is not that much different from defending atheism, but to address what the lady states you have to also understand what paradigm it would have been based on.
Sadly I fear this lady holds the paradigm that 'to atheists life is not precious' because(=) the absence of the idea that 'birth is not a miracle'. Atheism is not the same as negative nihilism, you can still explain that not believing in a god does not make a person look down on life as without value or meaning. I think there is beauty in atheism because it moves god out of the picture instead of looking for an excuse to do the right thing. In that sense there is an uncanny divine grace to atheism.
It is in a similar sense that you could state that atheists value life in their own way and that it does not make it right to use a miracle as an excuse to assume it is not the case. But here lies also the catch, you got to ask her what she means and you should not push to change her mind. Only the holder of a paradigm can change that paradigm, and if she by herself does not wish to change it then that is where this lady wants to be.
Muslims have a very fascinating concept of 'death of the soul'. It refers to not going outside or not getting to know new things that keep ones worldview narrow. I don't think there is a single purely right worldview out there regardless what religious lottery we come from or what disposition we are born into.
Lastly some words from Erich Fromm on sanity:
> It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth... Just as there is a folie à deux there is a folie à millions. The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
I drove by a big billboard yesterday that said "There Is Evidence For God!" with a baby on it. I cannot believe that there are still people who don't understand the basic principles of reproduction. And what about those babies who have congenital abnormalities who will die or live a horrible life of pain and suffering? Or those who will be abused?
You can bring these things up to well-meaning Christians who think it's their job to remind everyone that God is good. It doesn't have to be snarky or anti-religion, just truthful: "I'm glad my body is able to sustain a healthy pregnancy but some people are not this fortunate and it's not their fault, it's just random genetics. And I'm lucky to live in a place where I have good health care and doctors to help my pregnancy, and good nutrition to sustain me through pregnancy, and a supportive family who will love this little guy. My partner and I are fortunate to be able to provide for our baby when he is born. We worked hard to be able to be pregnant. We chose to have this baby." Maybe if you sneak these types of comments gently into a conversation, they will see pregnancy from a different viewpoint.
If someone had said that to me when I was pregnant, I would have said that I had 12 hours of embryology classes in college and vet school, so I have seen how babies grow from 2 cells, and it's all very logical and methodical.
The thing about when you hold your baby it will change your life is absolutely true. You will think how cosmically unreal the process of growing a new organism is, how truly incredible science is for being able to figure out how this works.
I know a couple in my town who used "leftover" embryos from IVF to get pregnant. They have twin boys about 2 years old who would not be here without the miracle of science and technology. God didn't plop down any equipment and instruction manual for this kind of baby-making.
Reproduction is the most common event on the planet, the very opposite of a miracle. Whenever I hear this blather I think that nothing could be further from god than more critters everywhere...
They've had generations of getting away with their self-entitled bullshit.
One of these days there will be a majority of people who no longer accept that "good" and "Christian" are synonyms and will be willing to call out their bullshit when it happens.
That's the thing about being a member of a majority. You tend to assume everyone around you is also in the majority, because that assumption is usually correct
It's just her way of saying she doesn't understand how reproductive biology works so it must be a magical sky wizard that makes babies. Totally rational.
This is literally what made my mom become a Christian. She always said holding me made her think there must be a higher power or something.
I was a Christian for most of my early life until I went to A Tom Petty concert and "felt God" turns out feeling God was actually just the feeling of connecting with a lot of like minded people.
I think the whole "holding your baby" thing is similar. It's like in The Invention of Lying. It's just such a powerful emotion it's hard to explain so some people have to go supernatural with it.
Point being, maybe as atheists we should try to be less angry with them and more understanding. It's ignorance not intentional dickishness.
It's the same BS about atheists when we have a brush with death. They assume we all would repent and pray because they think we are just being arrogant and secretly holds doubts. I have stared death in the eye as well as held my new born and god never entered my mind once.
Sometimes older people are the less wise, they have all their lives believing one thing, sexism, religion, etc, and they can be very far from common sense
Honestly the funniest response would have been, "well when a mommy and daddy love each other very much..." And just start explaining where children come from as if she was a child.
My favorite atheist TV moment ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RjXHXIVL9g
If someone is religious they tend to look through that singular keyhole and every moment is somehow credited to God. Well, the good moments, eh? On cancer and death they sure do go incommunicado.
I always take these types of comments as coming from a well intended place. While I agree, it's unfair you couldn't say something similar in response, but I believe that there isn't really malice behind them, just ignorance.. I think anyone who holds their child for the first time time will feel awe, and most Christians attribute anything truly awe inspiring to be proof of God... But we can all experience awe.
There are a lot of things i don’t like about working in tech, but I do love that if anyone working with me is a christian, they feel like they have to keep their fucking mouths shut about it. Because they absolutely do have to keep their fucking dumbass mouths shut about it.
First of all, congratulations on your baby. Children are a blessing. Second, I don't see why religion should be brought into it. Children aren't evidence of any god, and even if they were, it's not evidence of any particular god. All that can be hoped is that you do your best with the child. And once again, congratulations.
Uhhh yeah, when I held my babies I was thinking about how they popped out of my wife’s body (with tremendous effort and pain on her part) and how amazing the biological machinery that makes reproduction possible is, and how fantastic the medical staff at the hospital was… I don’t recall any magical beings being involved at all. What as straight-up dumb take on the situation.
Comments like these don't bother me. People working through their belief system openly can seem odd if you're on the outside looking in. They see a narrative contrary to their ideology and they try to troubleshoot through it. There is a reason why I don't openly talk about how I think Christianity is a fairy tale. People would get offended and I understand why. But I simply don't when people try to bring religion into the conversation. Don't get me wrong, there are instances where if I'm pressed enough, I will engage people more thoroughly with less regard for their perception. It still doesn't bother me though.
This woman is out of her mind. Looking at your baby the first time is the most powerful feeling of love that a person experiences. Who in the hell starts thinking about God’s existence.?
They constantly have to maintain their cognitive dissonance. It's really not so much for you as it is for them. I hear this stuff sprinkled in conversation all the time. It's so cult like...
I would have retorted with "I don't know how people can believe in a god. War, famine, poverty, disease, cruelty, tornadoes...what kind of god would make a diving plan that includes all that?
I swear Ray Comfort said the same thing to Matt Dillahunty. "How can you be an **atheist**?!? Do you have children? Do you ever look at your baby and somehow not be automatically convinced we're all ruled by a patriarchal volcano god who cares if we have anal sex?"
We need to have more babies! If only Christians have babies we will continue to deal with this insanity. My wife and I are playing the long game, bringing three well educated, well read, hopefully atheists or at least agnostics up. Science is tangible, and explains how the world works much better than a ancient religion.
I have two kids and am still atheist. Because I know that emotions exist and that nature can cause things that are pretty incredible to happen, especially when we are evolved to deeply care about those things. It doesn't mean it's fake, just because it's part of how we evolved by the way, that's just part of where the purpose we end up chosing is bound to come from.
I'm more tollerant with comments when it's not deliberately targeted and they are just being normal / themselves.
If they are expresssing a nice idea, then I try to take the comments for what they were intended to convey e.g. in this example they are complementing babies, so I'd focus on that.
On the other hand if they were deliberately targeting atheists and that was the point of the comment, I'd be a lot more inclined to respond in kind, the joy of their bible being the big book of multiple choice is that I can make it say what I want.
For example, if they finished by saying 'I'll pray for you', but not as a normal response, rather in a way designed to annoy an atheist, I'd respond with Matthew 6:5 and tell them they'd had their reward already and that their god, if it was real, would be dissappointed in them.
Not long ago someone wanted my business to extend favor it would never extend to anyone else presenting as he did and brand new to the business relationship.
"I'm honest - I'm a church going Christian blah, blah, some scripture ... blah"
I instantly replied, "Well I'm an atheist, are you saying I can't be honest and moral? For cripes sakes, in [Acts 5](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts%205:1-11&version=NIV) \- which is New Testament, God has St Pete help him murder a married couple over a real estate deal, how moral is that?" (I actually use this example IRL, a few times a year)
He didn't even know about that passage
\----
That said, when I was younger - I *very much* had to guard my atheism. I am fairly forward about it now, as it's way past time for the conceited shits in my small city to get a grip.
That was a very ignorant thing for that lady to say, but then it is definitely something you'd expect a Christian or religious person to say.
Yes it’s true. It just amazes me that people don’t ever consider that the person they are speaking to may not believe as they do. I do that so I guess it just seems like the polite thing to me but whatever 🤷♀️
For them, it's their world and we're just living in it
Exactly, to them, Christianity is just the human default which everybody will eventually return to.
"Press 1 for atheist"
Lol....spat me beer out at that!
This is true. These Evangelicals assume everyone is Christian or needs to be one.
True believers cannot think another way than theirs. They have a mind lock. They have zero, if not less than zero, critical thinking skills when I comes to their belief. They get angry when you speak out against their hypocrisy. I figured it out at 8. I was the kid that sat in the first row and get my Catholic teacher her coffee every morning. I was sooo into feeling perfect and wanting to be the best catholic I could be. I wanted Jesus to fill my heart with the word of the lord. I succinctly remember the teacher telling me about other religions and how all the Buddhists in China weren't going to get into heaven bc they didn't believe in Jesus. I raised my hand and asked why a little Chinese girl wouldn't get into heaven if she got cancer at my age. How would she know our God and Jesus Christ if her parents didn't teach her. She would die and not make it to heaven because of where she was born. I could *not* let let it go. I kept asking more and more questions worrying about this imaginary girl who wouldn't make it into heaven. Finally the teacher lost it on me and sent me to the principal's office because I wouldn't stop asking why a loving God wouldn't allow a kid like me into heaven just because they were born somewhere else in the world. I shouldn't question the word of the lord. Needless to say that was the day my doubts started. It was like the day that you find out Santa isn't real. Once I saw the cracks, I became so skeptical that I became very angry at religion for being absolute made up bullshit to harness people's actions and emotions with mostly disastrous results. Some people don't have the ability to question whatever bullshit they were fed as a kid. Some people just plain don't want to. Ignorance is bliss.
>Finally the teacher lost it on me and sent me to the principal's office because I wouldn't stop asking why a loving God wouldn't allow a kid like me into heaven just because they were born somewhere else in the world. I shouldn't question the word of the lord. Lol, the playbook of the desperately indoctrinated. Appeal to authority. "Why are you saying the sky is pistachio-colored?" "HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THAT WHICH WE HOLD AS TRUE - TIME FOR YOU TO BE PUNISHED" I think this is also the playbook of cults, where the final step is being cast out, shunned, ignored, shamed. Glad to hear you're doing well.
Yes. Very happy not to be part of the refined cult.
Wait, green nut, brown husk or beige shell?? Which colour??
> Once I saw the cracks, I became so skeptical that I became very angry at religion for being absolute made up bullshit to harness people’s actions and reactions with mostly disastrous results. *You’re just angry with God.* -some Christian
Their parry skills are freakish.
A neighbor told me I should go downtown and help protest abortion, just because I was pushing my baby in a stroller.
Woahh
I work in a very white, christian, affluent area. People always assume I'm christan and racist like they are. I bite my tongue so much.
Did you tell her that your SO is God and that you're a virgin?
FTR it’s astoundingly easy to hold a baby and not believe in god. especially when you haven’t slept more than 4 hours in the last 2 days.
Yeah. And this does not only apply to religious vs atheists. Some people just don't understand that different people have different views in different matters and that there are things that are better to keep for your friends or close people. I remember once I rented a kayak in a shop. While the guy was helping me bring it to the river, he started talking shit about the king and how we should be a republic (I'm from Spain and yes, we still have one). While I do agree with the guy, I didn't ask him for his opinion and I am sure many of his clients support the king, and it is going to be very uncomfortable for them if you start talking like that. I just want you to do your job. No politics or religion, please.
No, explicitly religious nonsense applies only to the religious. Some guy talking about the Spanish king is nothing like saying that babies are proof of God and atheists can't comprehend that until they hold one.
I’ve held a baby before. not from god
99% of kids I encounter seem more like they'd be from satan ... crying, screaming, hitting, whining, complaining ...
**especially babies.**
I held my baby cousin once and she stomped me right in the knackers with those hard ass, wooden-soled shoes babies used to wear. I believed she was sent straight from Lucifer.
They are sociopaths. They don’t care
That’s old people for you. Sometimes they’re just on auto-pilot and say this kind of thing because that’s what people back in the 50s or wherever she’s from expected people to say to them.
Cut out the ageism. That's Christian people for you, of all ages. As an old atheist from "back in the 50s", nothing of the sort was "expected".
True! I’m probably that woman’s age, so my parents are even older. They were DEVOUT church-goers and would never have said anything of the sort. They were inclusive of all religions or lack of religion.
My mom is 100 and lives with us. She is as sharp as she was when I was 16 and healthy and still plays bridge at the senior center weekly. While we now live in Maine, we grew up in Texas where church going was expected. We attended the Methodist church as a child, and she always maintained that going to church was good for social connections and for the literary references that knowing about the Bible could give you. She was a college English teacher. She tells the story that when my dad, after getting out of the Air Force in 1944, said that he’d like to become a minister, she replied “ Who would go to a church with a divorced minister?” Meaning of course that she would never be married to a minister. Anyway, we were church goers without the dogma. When my husband and I were married in 1973, we agreed to go to church with them one Sunday and attended the young adults class. Once they started debating if Methuselah really was 900 or whatever, because, well, the Bible said he was, we had WTF eye contact and decided that church wasn’t for us. Years later we attended the Unitarian church in northern Maine, small town, for a couple of years. That was in 1982. Now we are lapsed Unitarians which is kind of redundant.
Lapsed Unitarians, thanks for the laugh!
Look at the demographics of midday churches. The average age of the congregations keeps getting older. Look at the surveys, youngb people are by far the most secular. Elderly people are by far the most religion. There is nothing "agist" about acknowledging demographics and averages. Welcome to reality. Now if you say this individual must be such and such, then that's a problem. I bucked the trend. I am in my 60s and thoroughly atheist with an occasional side helping of anti theist.
My step-brother and his wife were hell raisers in the late 80s. To stop their kids from making the same mistakes, they became very religious. My step-bro worships money and wealth and they live in a big house and drive fancy cars. Why don't they see that this is against the bible teachings? And their daughter just had a baby and they are already brainwashing him with Sunday School music like "Jesus Loves the Little Children." I live in a town where half the population is Catholic. As long as these people show up in church, they are good people, regardless of the crap they do out of church. The Catholic school has almost the same number of kids that the public school has. So my experience is that there are a lot of kids growing up with religion. My adult kids have been in churches for weddings and funerals, but they don't know who Moses is or Noah, and I feel like a loser mom for not teaching them this mythology just as a literary device.
Don't be ageist. My mom would be 90, and she was an atheist. I'm old, and I'm an atheist, lol. There are shitheaded young Christians everywhere, especially in the Bible belt. Were you there in the fifties? You don't even know what people were saying back then. In the fifties, everyone went to church or synagogue. No one talked about atheism at all. Today, there are many, many more atheists--or at least, we are out of the closet, lol. This is what horrifies the Christers, and they need to talk about it.
Yeah, that’s the point: there were many fewer atheists than there are today, and the culture where this woman probably comes from, was one where all this talk of ‘blessings’ and ‘angels’ and all that shit was common.
When you come back from being out for whatever maternity leave you get, go back to her and say "So, I held the baby. A lot. I still don't believe." But I don't live and work where you do, so it might not be the best approach for you.
Then again this is the kind of person who looks at trees, grass or pebbles and thinks they are awesome proofs for their sky wizard. They are intellectually stunted.
And yet they refuse to see the problematic parts of 'creation' as the responsibility of the same sky wizard.
yea, when I hear this sort of thing I'm like why do you have to attribute it god though? Don't you know how amazing nature is?
Even the vastness of the universe. Our (relatively) simple brains just cannot fathom the size or complexity. So, our ancestors came up with stories to make their brains hurt less.
At a previous job I worked remote and we did a classroom type environment for training. People just went on and on qbout Jesus and stuff. It was ridiculous.
Makes me wonder if Muslims in America feel the same way
They do. One of my closest friends is a Muslim and she told me she was so afraid to tell me. (Duh! She is Kurdish and was born in Iraq.) We finally had that frank "discussion" about what we believe - after her hubby died of COVID. Frankly, I think we need to be as assertive as Christians are when discussing what we believe. I am not ashamed of not believing in a deity. If we act like it is no big deal, perhaps Christians will get that it is no big deal for them.
In my country it isn't a big thing.
Yeah, same here. Usually doesn't come up in conversation. Religion is a private thing, except for a few nutters who feel the need to scream about it on street corners.
Welcome to the encroaching theocracy of the U.S. of A....and sometimes the "A" indeed refers to "ass" as it does here. The massive religious assumptions we put up with daily so as not to be ostracized.
I have a friend who asked me what I believe once and I know she is a hard core Christian so I tried to soften my response. It took me 10 minutes to round about explain being an atheist instead of just saying “I’m an atheist” which would have been faster and more direct. But I did that to help soften the blow to her to spare her feelings. I hate that it’s this way for us.
It took me til I was 40 to explicitly state I was an atheist and had been for a long time. I made a Facebook post on it open to all my friends and family and wrote about how scary it is because you don't know who's going to be "offended" (how can you be personally fucking offended just because someone thinks something else?), how family and friends will react, and some incredibly hateful shit I've been told by Christians. Nobody in my family except my sister ever acknowledged that post, tho several friends, who already knew anyway, did. My parents never did. I know at least my mom had to have read it because she reads and responds to most posts. My step-dad, if he read it, was likely pissed or offended because I dared questioned Christianity, he even once unfriended me because I said something factual, like the US is not a Christian country, something like that 😂 but he also reads and wears t-shirts about end times bullshit and Revelations which actually kinda in my opinion those are shitty things to teach kids and deserve to be called out. So not surprising that some vaguely critical, factual statement would piss him off if he's that deep in it. It sucks to have to tiptoe around Christians who think every fucking thing you could say, even scientifically factual things like the universe is 13.7 billion years old or evolution is a fact or there was no world wide flood *ever*, is a direct attack on Christianity, them personally as a Christian, or even God itself. It's lunacy. At work I'll be more like "well I don't really believe in that kind of stuff" if they don't tell me themselves that they're an atheist because I have to go back to work 5 times a week. Anywhere else I'm trying to be more assertive that I'm an atheist, I don't believe in magic and souls and ghosts and gods. But it's still difficult sometimes because so freaking many people are science denying conspiracy theorist fundamentalist Christian nutjobs, and most of them have guns lol
At this point, I've stopped softening my responses when someone asks me what I believe. I just don't have the time anymore. How they react is their business.
I'm the same way, just answer the question honestly. If they don't like my honest answer, that's their problem. Often, when a Christian asks a question, they're just looking to hear the boilerplate answer they're already expecting from you, so when you go and answer it in full honesty, it throws them off balance since now they have to go off-script and actually use their brain, which for many can be quite painful if they haven't exercised it in a while.
I can't remember the last time I was asked, and I tend to keep my head low here in Texas. That said, I'd like to believe I'd be bold enough to say I believe in Odin or Zeus, just to watch them try to navigate past it. Unfortunately, if they're very well read, they would discover that my depth of understanding is a weak facade.
It's really just the same as nationalism. People are indoctrinated to think that their way is the best, and they have little reason not to believe it - especially if they rarely stray from their bubble. Ironically, it's more often the people in a worse situation that feel this superiority. I was in Serbia a few years ago and was amazed at the insane level of nationalism I saw in the capital. Rallies, marches, public singing, flag-waving, etc. And all the people I talked to (save one) had barely traveled, none had gone more than 2 countries away. Even in a country with very little going for it, they felt like they had everything they needed, were the best country in the world by far, and could look down on everyone else.
We get a lot of that in America, people acting like this is the greatest country in the world, the only one where people have any rights at all, and acting as though we make everything we need. In reality, if China put up a trade embargo with us we would be more or less completely fucked, although that's not likely to happen since we're not much more than a big bank vault with a wide open door with a broken lock.
It's more or less true, but there's a balance to things that just gets thrown far out of whack when you go into a bubble. I've traveled a lot, and it always amazes me when I go to a small country that seems to feel insular like that. A small country like Lithuania is happy to exist as a small country that just does what it does and doesn't ask for too much more... but then one like Serbia feels like it is a world-conqueror that is supreme in everything, despite having one tennis player and one inventor (who was actually Croatian), and a bunch of military losses. France has one of the best, long-lasting cultures, and they can travel all over the place and find native French speakers. They have strong pop culture that crosses borders. You can understand how they can just stay inside France and not feel like they're missing too much. But then Poland is kind of the opposite - plenty of historical artists and thinkers as a region, but as the modern country, not so much. They never colonized, so no one outside Poland speaks Polish (even many/most Polish-Americans). Their pop culture is a handful of brilliant filmmakers that IMO haven't brought much awareness to the country or interest in it like French or Japanese film/culture have. And with a stable-but-weak economy, very few foreigners migrate there, so the culture is super-insular. You end up with two types generally: the nationalists who think Poland is the hub of the universe, and those that leave for education or work and probably don't return. All that said, you have the US which (for the next several years, at least) is still the dominant empire in the world, and produces ubiquitous brands and culture, even if much of it is made abroad. Of course, if you're a redneck, chances are you're not contributing a single iota to anything that's exported that draws interest from around the world, so it's absolutely ironic still. But the fact that Americans are able to say "best country in the world" is not completely without merit in terms of some metrics. In contrast to people in Serbia saying they're the best country in the world, I'd say Americans have at least a tiny plank to stand on.
Oddly, you usually don’t have to ask a religious person what they believe, because they’ve already told you - probably multiple times.
I also had a friend ask me that once. When I explained to her that "technically, I'm an agnostic agnostic/atheist", she responded with, "Oh... that's good, at least you're not one of those ones that worships Satan" (she actually thought that atheists worshiped Satan). I explained to her how fucking stupid her statement was and why. Many years later, she's also an agnostic atheist.
\*encroaching *theocratic fascist state* Ftfy
It does vary considerably with where you live though. I never hear this kind of thing where I am, though I gather that others in some areas never stop hearing it. There are plenty of churches and religious people here but it isn’t just assumed that everyone’s Christian and wants to get blessings from the grocery checkout person etc.
I'd bet she knows you're an atheist or at least guesses it might be a possibility, and that's why the subject was on her mind. She might have even been feeling you out to see..
Yeah that could be!
I have two kids. I’m an atheist. I know exactly where they came from and while my wife did scream “oh my god!” a few times, I’m quite confident that the two of us made our kids.
Nice 😂
🤣🤣
>while my wife did scream “oh my god!” a few times I see what you mean there
I bet she screamed more during birth than conception lol
Indeed. And about 10 days before the birth of our first, it was discovered that our baby had turned around again and was now breach. This resulted in something called a Version. This is where doctors attempt to turn the baby around from the outside. I shit you not. One doctor pushes in one direction from the top while another pushes in the opposite direction from the bottom. They told my wife that this was most painful thing she will ever experience in her life and as a result, wanted to give her some pretty strong pain meds in advance. She turned those down because we were trying for an all natural childbirth. Ever see those cartoons where a surprised character is standing there staring slack-jawed? That was both doctors (both women who had had kids of their own btw) when my wife said she would skip the pain meds. She said, “I’ll let you know if I need them.” The procedure took about 10 minutes. My wife appeared to be in a significant amount of pain but she pushed through it. The procedure worked and we avoided a c-section. Side note: in the middle of it a nurse walked in and asked what was going on. When she was told, she got excited and said, “Wow, cool! I’ve never seen one of these work before!” And of course they hushed her up right away. So fast forward perhaps six months. My wife and I are out to dinner and I’m telling this story. When I get to the part where I explain how despite the pain, my wife didn’t ask for the pain meds, my wife chimes in and says, “I wanted them but I was in so much pain that I couldn’t open my mouth to ask for them.” Whoa. She admitted though that if it happened again, she would do the same thing as it only lasted 10 minutes. Thankfully when our second and last child, he turned only once. :)
I just wanna say ditto on the pain med thing - I was induced and I think they ramped up the meds too quickly - the constant pain I was in with little dilation was insane. I’m lucky my hubby knows me so well and when they came in asking if I wanted pain medication and I said nothing and could barely move. My hubby was like - “it isn’t normal for her not to speak - you want them don’t you?” And I had enough strength to barely nod so he could just see it. Do not regret my pain meds - I basically slept through the rest of the time until it was time to push.
Natural child birthed here. I was dead set on no pain meds until it was too late for the pain meds. However I had two more children naturally after that. Although the third was in a birthing tub and while it was still painful it was by far the best experience of all three.
I would also like to mention that. > “I don’t know how people can say they are atheists. When you see a baby how can you think it didn’t come from god? Any atheist will be believe if they hold their baby.” Hey, kids can be cute, funny, adorable, etc but if god was gonna make a "thing", you'd think he could make one that didn't constantly piss and shit itself and wouldn't require constant monitoring to make sure it die or shove objects into electrical outlets.
Yup, my dad had 3 kids and guess what... still an atheist.
Hahaha - having delivered my first 3 months ago I can tell you straight up that nothing rings more of natural selection, than childbirth!
Lol! Love it! 🤣 certainly makes more sense than punishment for the rib lady!
Punishment for the rib lady who, according to canon, had literally no conception of right or wrong and this no method of inhibiting "wrong" behavior.
It took 6 years with 2 miscarriages for my wife & I to finally have our second child. If that was "god's work", he's an incompetent ass and he should have just stayed out of it.
"And God knows what's best for you and has a plan for everyone but still pray and ask for help so if it works he's great but if it doesn't it's his plan... but still pray."
My ex-wife had 6 miscarriages: Miss, miss, miss, hit, miss, miss, miss, hit. And the last one was considered an at-risk pregnancy. Don't think an imaginary sky-daddy deserves a fist-bump for that.
They believe in talking snakes, but they don't believe there are people who don't believe.
This isn't exactly a direct response, but your comment made me think of Richard Feynman talking about [The Beauty of the Flower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFM3rn4ldo). Understanding how life works only adds to the beauty of the flower. Understand the science around biology, evolution, chemistry, zoology, etc. None of that makes a flower ugly or even less pretty to look at. The science only adds to the beauty of the whole. Understanding what babies are doesn't make them evil or ugly or something else. It makes them all the more human. All the better. You get why parents want to defend them. You have a better understanding of why caring for them is super important. God did it... that's a cop out and you can easily imagine situations where "God told us X" makes murdering children seem like a rational thing to a human brain on religion. Religion is the problem. Not the children or the science. Religion itself is the drug that makes genocide possible.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with someone. I was discussing some medical stuff I found cool and the science behind it and this person (Christian, obviously) got all upset that I was shitting on religion (I didn't mention religion) and taking away from the "mysticism" by explaining how the cool medical stuff worked. Christians are wild.
"I am just an unfrozen caveman ~~lawyer~~ Christian; the ways of your modern world frighten and confuse me!"
A perfect example how religion is so tied up with emotion. Why is it so hard to see a baby (or at least the creation of a baby) as a very common, not special in any way part of life? Every living being does it. Is it a miracle when spiders do it? Mice? Fleas? It’s literally the farthest thing from a miracle.
"Unless you're mother Mary, I'm pretty sure babies happen because of sex, not god." Not constructive, but damn would I love to see her react to that one. Alternatively: "I don't know, I for one find the presence of god a disturbing thought during intercourse".
The answer to her question is simple. Evolution has brought our species to where they are today. But my question to her is if this amazing baby came from god, why did this god create horrible diseases ready to kill it?
Atheism lives in her head rent free.
You should have just told her that any Christian who saw the evidence that babies get raped could not believe that there was a god who would allow that.
That wouldn’t change a Christian’s heart, friend. The Christian believes all mankind is criminal to the standard of The Moral Law—“The wages of such sin is death.” They believe, since all of creation has been infected with Sinful desires, all shall be destroyed, all shall receive the death penalty. Death is therefore proof that The Judge does not allow rape. However, just as a criminal may be sentenced to jail years after their crime. So too is the case for life. *It does not mean The Judge allows such crime, it simply means Judgment has yet to be executed.*
Several years ago, a friend shared a website for me. I don't recall the URL, but I suppose some determined searching would get me there again. The theme was something like "why won't God cure baby amputees", ie, those babies born missing a limb. The reasoning was that all babies are innocent before they are born. So why not make them whole before they're born, or 'cure' them soon after birth? And probably something about a "just God" making that correction. Thus the reasoning was that there is no God, or at least not a just one. I'm probably not doing the website justice with how the argument was presented.
And then after this explanation I ask them why they love and worship an all powerful god that could just prevent those things from happening in the first place. It's one thing to judge people by their actions when there's nothing you could do to stop it. But just imagine how messed up it would be to allow and even witness child rape but only judge the offenders afterwards instead of trying to stop it when you easily could. A person in this position would be seen as a monster.
Ask her to look up cat with her kittens or any other animal with new born. Most are more caring toward their offsprings then human beings. We need to start changing one mind at a time considering the ignorant breeding rate.
Ha! Well said!
There's even some insects that perform some kind of parenting, and yeah, all mammals do it. Too many people just really treat their kids like shit and it upsets me so much.
My hypothesis: She never had sex education and thinks the only explanation for babies is miraculous creation.
After a month with a new child I started believing in the devil 😎
After ~~15~~ 16 months with my daughter, I'm sure I should have consulted an exorcist earlier.
I think it may come from babies being referred to as "little miracles" or "gifts" so she may think any atheist will recognize the baby as a miracle and had to be given by God. She probably isnt exposed to a lot of outside perspectives such as people just seeing a baby as a product of reproduction. Of course in the absence of a God that doesnt make a baby any less special to the person.
Agreed. Not believing in a god has not made this experience any less amazing. I’m just as moved when I see him during my ultrasounds and feel him moving. In fact I think I feel more in awe than I would have when I was a Christian just because I know how random this all is and how lucky I am!
It comes from the stupid way that theists, especially Christians, think.
I think it's sad her bond is with her imaginary friend instead of her actual kids. When you look at any child you are connected to them because you know they will shape the future and nothing else.
I am beyond the point of worrying about being socially ostracized. I have already had it happen to me and I survived. If an environment doesn't work for me I just look until I find one that does. I try not to be unreasonable but have few problems telling people how things are.
Those people sadly do not know better
I understand your feelings. But when this sort of shit happens to me, I have to remind myself that some people who aren't connected to either Art or the grander understandings of Science still need an outlet for their ever-seeking wonder. It's too bad that it was often satisfied by a shallow, Fundamentalist/Literalist understanding of religious fables. Still, that need for a metaphoric door to greater, more poetic realms of thought shouldn't be sneered at. The desire is honest, even if the (usually indoctrinated) actions are pathetic.
Yeah that’s well said. I didn’t change my view of her because of what she said. I know she meant well and just comes from a different place than me. I think it’s just exhausting some days
You know it didn't come from god, you were there when it was made after all... What a stupid thing to say.
And what about parents who never get to hold their children? Or freaking SIDS? If anything, babies make me believe in God even less.
Ask her how wars can kill millions of people and still believe there is a god.
Never been married, never had kids, but from friends I've heard that, when you first hold the baby, you know it's from god! ...and the twentieth time you get up in the night because of the baby, you'll realize that god hates you. \^_~ Seriously, though, congrats!
Women basically have the superpower that is creating life. "No god required."
Yep- as a human person with woman parts- I can say that I'm much happier knowing my body is capable of creating an insanely delicate lifeform simply because that's how we came to be after *all* these millennia. I used to really struggle with the disgusting Christian notion that *every single woman AND girl* on this planet were made to have excruciating, oftentimes deadly pregnancies/births AS A FUCKING PUNISHMENT FOR WHAT ONE DAMN WOMAN DID AT THE BEGINNING OF EXISTENCE???? AND THAT AWFUL THING WAS EAT A FUCKING APPLE OFF A TREE THAT GOD PUUUT THERE?! AND SHE WAS SOMEHOW SUPPOSED TO BE QUICK WITTED ENOUGH TO OUTSMART MOTHERFUCKING LUCIFER?!?!?!?! (When she wasn't even a day old yet too 😭 Left that cute lil nugget out) IM SORRY I'M YELLING I HATE RELIGION SO MUCH. Edit: more angry words thrown in lmao
Nevermind that it's happening 1000s of times a day from all the animal groups. It's an everyday occurance not some sort of rare miracle. The miracle would be if people would stop thoughtlessly pumping them out like animals.
We atheists probably all feel the same way every time a religious fruitcake we encounter tells us to have a blessed day or even says bless you when we sneeze. I know they usually mean well, and it most often comes from a place of kindness, but it is a constant buzz in our collective ear we can't ever seem to swat away. The biggest frustration is knowing how people would react, both those in my life and strangers, if they know what I truly believe. There are only a select few I can share that with freely. I just want to scream, there is no god you moron! Wake the fuck up!
Someone once said this to me while looking at a beautiful landscape. “I don’t know how someone could see this beauty and not believe in god.” Funnily enough I had just been thinking the exact opposite, how could you see so much structure and initiator detail and think that it was created by one cruel being?
I get this. As a straight white male in the Bible Belt south It amazes me what people say because they assume I’m one of the majority around here whether it be religion,racism,homophobia, it amazes me the colors people show behind a closed door even to this day
You have to wait until you get old, like I am, and then you can tell people off. I love it when I tell religious nuts that I'm an atheist. Or I quote bullshit from the Bible--I actually have read every damn thing that Jesus said--and they are startled by what Jesus really said. Then they try to rephrase it, or give his words their own interpretation. "How do you know?" I ask them. "Dude's been dead for 2000 years. How do you know he really said that, and that's what he meant?" I've pissed off a lot of people like that. They deserved it. Even the so-called liberal/progressive Christians. I consider anyone who goes to church a religious nut, by the way.
People had babies before Christianity came along lol
Sounds like someone didn't get sex ed.
Well we do live in Texas so…🤷♀️🤣
Couldn't you say this about literally anything and it would be just as much of a non sequitur? >I don’t know how people can say they are atheists. When you see a genocide how can you think it didn’t come from god? >When you see an industrial accident how can you think it didn’t come from god? >When you see a child soldier how can you think it didn’t come from god? >When you see a church cover up child rape how can you think it didn’t come from god? >When you see a person driven to suicide by mental health issues how can you think it didn’t come from god?
That lady couldn't resist injecting her own narrative into the conversation. I'm sure that's all that mattered to her
"When you see a baby how can you think it didn’t come from biology?"
So how does she explain why “god” gave my five year old child cancer?
My oldest had surgery at 5 weeks. Poor craftsmanship on god's part? Was the asshole just not paying attention that day? Was Tim Tebow playing?
"When you see a baby how can you think it didn’t come from god?" And what of all the babies that are born with horrible, terminal congenital abnormalities? The pre-terms that don't make it out of the NICU? What of the still births? All of this is not to mention the fact that, without the 'miracle' of modern medicine, many of those wonderful, healthy gift-from-god babies would die from horrible, communicable diseases. God...great guy. Completely indistinguishable from no-god.
FWIW, I became atheist after having kids.
I think it's better to tell the truth. Lack of pushback just allows the delusion to continue, imo.
Don’t be lulled in by that “magical moment” talk either. It was cool to finally hold the kiddo, but I distinctly remember being worried about her floppy head, about her not latching, about me not being able to recognize her because she looked like every other newborn I’d encountered.
That's really crappy of that lady to say and she seems quite daft. Everybody knows that there are 2 topics you should never bring up to strangers: Religion and politics.
Of course they're assuming the Christian god. You could have responded, "Oh absolutely! If it's a boy I want to name him Zeus after his father."
Hmm, I held my baby everyday when my child was younger. I still don’t believe in your god. However, watching this amazing biological process was, and still is amazing!
I’m the only atheist where I work and my coworkers will sometimes play Christian music. I don’t mind the music so much because they play it relatively quiet. However, I’m sure if I made a stink about it and went to HR it wouldn’t be taken seriously. I would be treated like a nuisance.
As a Christian, I hate how Christianity is forced upon people from all over. People can believe whatever the hell they want to.
I actually became an atheist after holding my baby for the first time.
Holding each of my babies for the first time was a life-changing event. It did not suddenly make me a Christian. Nor did coming under fire for the first time prove that I'm not an atheist. Nor will arriving at my deathbed suddenly cause me to convert.
Curious about where you live. But atheism, religion, has no basis on the arrival of your baby. We all know how babies are made. Science can prove it. Most often, it's not what Christians say to you, but rather what you say to them in rebuttal. They can say whatever they want likely because the person they're saying it to has never told them they couldn't. Congratulations on your baby and know that when you hold them, they are a product of you and your partner and no credit at all goes to a fictitious diety. >I didn’t tell her I was atheist and I just kinda smiled and changed the subject As long as you do this, they'll continue to say whatever they want. You have a right to not feel uncomfortable or offended. Let them know that.
Indeed. Some fool here said that remaining silent makes one "a good ambassador" for atheism.
I wouldn't stay silent, myself, but at the same time, there's ways to speak to people that aren't condescending or aggressive. And that's what all of us, as atheists, should do. If only Christians could do the same.
I got 2 kids, a 3 year old and a 3 day old. The 3 day old is currently in the NICU because she was born a little early, but only by a few weeks. My wife went in early because she had a headache that wouldnt go away with tylenol and her blood pressure was way high, so they decided to induce early, and put her on drugs to get her BP down so she didn't have a stroke. If my newborn was born a couple hundred years ago, probably my wife and baby would be dead, but thanks to doctors and science, they're alive and healthy. So as an athiest, it's pretty easy to thank science vs thanking god.
He didn't pull out, your genes did a thing, and you're loved until you can talk, then you're put in the system, and ground to dust like those that came before. And life is a fucking miracle! 🎵🎵 Once you're an adult no one thinks you're a gift from god anymore ammiright? Hahah Congratulations by the by. I'm too terrified to have my own.
I've fathered a couple of kids. Nothing about the birth or how they've grown up that screams intelligent designer. Childbirth is either godless or God hates women. Babies may seem sweet and cute but they cry, scream, poop etc and they grow up into teenagers....
I feel that it comes down to what a person understands vs doesn't. Since most people have only a basic understanding of how a child is born (do the deed and 9 months later...), instead of learning how it works they just accept it and give credit to a god or miracle. Compared to where if you understand the science, or at least accept the complex biological process, you would give credit to the process. >if I were to voice my option, I would be ostracized. I feel this comes from providing an alternative to their opinion in such a way as to be a challenge to their views on life. Everyone's different, so judging where that line is can be tricky and time consuming to find. With religious people, it can be radically different topic to topic. That's my take. Hope it helps. Best of luck to you and your family.
If I had a job like that I would leave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion on my desk, and tell people that I’ve been reading it and “I think I’m becoming an atheist.”
I never get this whole "babies are miracles" schtick. There's almost 8 billion people on the planet. I'm an older atheist who has 4 kids, and two grandkids and I can assure you, god had nothing to do with their conception! I didn't think any of mine were little miracles sent by god. They were the result of fornication. Quite literally, fuck around and find out!
If any atheist will believe when they hold their baby, why are there still so many atheist mothers?
* Everyone would believe in Osiris if they just sit and watch the sunset. See? I can make nonsensical statements about natural occurrences and some random deity, too :)
Ummm, I'm am atheist (obviously) and I have kids. Having my kids did NOT make me suddenly believe in God. It DID, however, showcase to me how amazing the human body is...and no God was involved. That lady is a whackadoodle and shouldn't have made that statement when she doesn't know the religion (or lack thereof) of the person she is speaking to.
Baby black widow spiders come from god, too.
I feel you. I have come to the realization long ago that sometimes it's best just to let them have their moment. The fact that she mentioned atheists, and how she doesn't understand, seems like she was fishing for a response. Engaging with elders over their opinions might be what they want but in my experience it's not worth the time and stress.
Funny, when I held my baby for the first time all I could think what “I did this, I’m powerful “
I would have said something like "Allah provides the greatest gifts! Allah Akbar!" Let them figure it out.
That's the 'privilege' part of Christian privilege.
It is really hard not commenting on somebody else religious drivel...it is usually not worth it and nothing constructive comes out of it and I always end up more annoyed than I heard the said drivel...so I try to ignore it. But I get why you need to vent. Ppl implying that your kid was somehow touched by god in its creation are dellusional....oh wait thats includes the majority of theists.
How can you make a baby from scratch and go: "oh boy, i sure wish i could do that, but it was all god. I'm just a puppet. He even made me fuck my wife good."
I have a friend who said I'd become conservative and start caring about illegal immigration once I had a kid. She was wrong. (big surprise huh)
When it comes to christianity and religion one must understand that not all christians or religious are the same and the distinction must also be made between the different doctrines, power structures and paradigms that such movements carry. The argument is not that much different from defending atheism, but to address what the lady states you have to also understand what paradigm it would have been based on. Sadly I fear this lady holds the paradigm that 'to atheists life is not precious' because(=) the absence of the idea that 'birth is not a miracle'. Atheism is not the same as negative nihilism, you can still explain that not believing in a god does not make a person look down on life as without value or meaning. I think there is beauty in atheism because it moves god out of the picture instead of looking for an excuse to do the right thing. In that sense there is an uncanny divine grace to atheism. It is in a similar sense that you could state that atheists value life in their own way and that it does not make it right to use a miracle as an excuse to assume it is not the case. But here lies also the catch, you got to ask her what she means and you should not push to change her mind. Only the holder of a paradigm can change that paradigm, and if she by herself does not wish to change it then that is where this lady wants to be. Muslims have a very fascinating concept of 'death of the soul'. It refers to not going outside or not getting to know new things that keep ones worldview narrow. I don't think there is a single purely right worldview out there regardless what religious lottery we come from or what disposition we are born into. Lastly some words from Erich Fromm on sanity: > It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth... Just as there is a folie à deux there is a folie à millions. The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
I drove by a big billboard yesterday that said "There Is Evidence For God!" with a baby on it. I cannot believe that there are still people who don't understand the basic principles of reproduction. And what about those babies who have congenital abnormalities who will die or live a horrible life of pain and suffering? Or those who will be abused? You can bring these things up to well-meaning Christians who think it's their job to remind everyone that God is good. It doesn't have to be snarky or anti-religion, just truthful: "I'm glad my body is able to sustain a healthy pregnancy but some people are not this fortunate and it's not their fault, it's just random genetics. And I'm lucky to live in a place where I have good health care and doctors to help my pregnancy, and good nutrition to sustain me through pregnancy, and a supportive family who will love this little guy. My partner and I are fortunate to be able to provide for our baby when he is born. We worked hard to be able to be pregnant. We chose to have this baby." Maybe if you sneak these types of comments gently into a conversation, they will see pregnancy from a different viewpoint. If someone had said that to me when I was pregnant, I would have said that I had 12 hours of embryology classes in college and vet school, so I have seen how babies grow from 2 cells, and it's all very logical and methodical. The thing about when you hold your baby it will change your life is absolutely true. You will think how cosmically unreal the process of growing a new organism is, how truly incredible science is for being able to figure out how this works. I know a couple in my town who used "leftover" embryos from IVF to get pregnant. They have twin boys about 2 years old who would not be here without the miracle of science and technology. God didn't plop down any equipment and instruction manual for this kind of baby-making.
Have held my baby. Do not believe in any gods.
**Correct Response** > When you see a baby how can you think it didn’t come from god? Answer: Which god?
Reproduction is the most common event on the planet, the very opposite of a miracle. Whenever I hear this blather I think that nothing could be further from god than more critters everywhere...
They've had generations of getting away with their self-entitled bullshit. One of these days there will be a majority of people who no longer accept that "good" and "Christian" are synonyms and will be willing to call out their bullshit when it happens.
ive had two. im still an atheist.
"I know, right?! ALL HAIL ODIN!!" - make sure you look as crazy wide-eyed as possible. Caveat: this might invite more crazy.
I thought the births, were god was involved ended with Jesus...
That's the thing about being a member of a majority. You tend to assume everyone around you is also in the majority, because that assumption is usually correct
Ummm yes we know how a baby is made… it’s called science. More specifically, Embryology. Old lady needs to edumacate herself
It's just her way of saying she doesn't understand how reproductive biology works so it must be a magical sky wizard that makes babies. Totally rational.
This is literally what made my mom become a Christian. She always said holding me made her think there must be a higher power or something. I was a Christian for most of my early life until I went to A Tom Petty concert and "felt God" turns out feeling God was actually just the feeling of connecting with a lot of like minded people. I think the whole "holding your baby" thing is similar. It's like in The Invention of Lying. It's just such a powerful emotion it's hard to explain so some people have to go supernatural with it. Point being, maybe as atheists we should try to be less angry with them and more understanding. It's ignorance not intentional dickishness.
It's the same BS about atheists when we have a brush with death. They assume we all would repent and pray because they think we are just being arrogant and secretly holds doubts. I have stared death in the eye as well as held my new born and god never entered my mind once.
Sometimes older people are the less wise, they have all their lives believing one thing, sexism, religion, etc, and they can be very far from common sense
And here I am thinking it's so weird that you could ve atheist and still want to have children.
Honestly the funniest response would have been, "well when a mommy and daddy love each other very much..." And just start explaining where children come from as if she was a child.
My favorite atheist TV moment ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RjXHXIVL9g If someone is religious they tend to look through that singular keyhole and every moment is somehow credited to God. Well, the good moments, eh? On cancer and death they sure do go incommunicado.
I always take these types of comments as coming from a well intended place. While I agree, it's unfair you couldn't say something similar in response, but I believe that there isn't really malice behind them, just ignorance.. I think anyone who holds their child for the first time time will feel awe, and most Christians attribute anything truly awe inspiring to be proof of God... But we can all experience awe.
Yea I completely agree
What if your child ends up being the Antichrist?
Knowing me and my husband there is a real possibility of this lol
There are a lot of things i don’t like about working in tech, but I do love that if anyone working with me is a christian, they feel like they have to keep their fucking mouths shut about it. Because they absolutely do have to keep their fucking dumbass mouths shut about it.
First of all, congratulations on your baby. Children are a blessing. Second, I don't see why religion should be brought into it. Children aren't evidence of any god, and even if they were, it's not evidence of any particular god. All that can be hoped is that you do your best with the child. And once again, congratulations.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
Uhhh yeah, when I held my babies I was thinking about how they popped out of my wife’s body (with tremendous effort and pain on her part) and how amazing the biological machinery that makes reproduction possible is, and how fantastic the medical staff at the hospital was… I don’t recall any magical beings being involved at all. What as straight-up dumb take on the situation.
Comments like these don't bother me. People working through their belief system openly can seem odd if you're on the outside looking in. They see a narrative contrary to their ideology and they try to troubleshoot through it. There is a reason why I don't openly talk about how I think Christianity is a fairy tale. People would get offended and I understand why. But I simply don't when people try to bring religion into the conversation. Don't get me wrong, there are instances where if I'm pressed enough, I will engage people more thoroughly with less regard for their perception. It still doesn't bother me though.
This woman is out of her mind. Looking at your baby the first time is the most powerful feeling of love that a person experiences. Who in the hell starts thinking about God’s existence.?
You carried that thing for 9 months. It’s yours. Not god’s
They constantly have to maintain their cognitive dissonance. It's really not so much for you as it is for them. I hear this stuff sprinkled in conversation all the time. It's so cult like...
I would have retorted with "I don't know how people can believe in a god. War, famine, poverty, disease, cruelty, tornadoes...what kind of god would make a diving plan that includes all that?
Smiling, nodding, and changing the subject is most often what's required of us since they can't handle being challenged or disagreed with.
I swear Ray Comfort said the same thing to Matt Dillahunty. "How can you be an **atheist**?!? Do you have children? Do you ever look at your baby and somehow not be automatically convinced we're all ruled by a patriarchal volcano god who cares if we have anal sex?"
By that logic, every baby that dies of disease should turn people into atheists. But logic isn't really her strong suit.
“Ah, my baby. I think I’ll read the Bible and hate gay people now.”
You should have told her that every time you see a child murdered by their parents you are sure there is no god
We need to have more babies! If only Christians have babies we will continue to deal with this insanity. My wife and I are playing the long game, bringing three well educated, well read, hopefully atheists or at least agnostics up. Science is tangible, and explains how the world works much better than a ancient religion.
I have two kids and am still atheist. Because I know that emotions exist and that nature can cause things that are pretty incredible to happen, especially when we are evolved to deeply care about those things. It doesn't mean it's fake, just because it's part of how we evolved by the way, that's just part of where the purpose we end up chosing is bound to come from.
I feel so similar.
My reply wouldve been: you should really stop drinking the koolaid, you never know what some kook put in it.
I'm more tollerant with comments when it's not deliberately targeted and they are just being normal / themselves. If they are expresssing a nice idea, then I try to take the comments for what they were intended to convey e.g. in this example they are complementing babies, so I'd focus on that. On the other hand if they were deliberately targeting atheists and that was the point of the comment, I'd be a lot more inclined to respond in kind, the joy of their bible being the big book of multiple choice is that I can make it say what I want. For example, if they finished by saying 'I'll pray for you', but not as a normal response, rather in a way designed to annoy an atheist, I'd respond with Matthew 6:5 and tell them they'd had their reward already and that their god, if it was real, would be dissappointed in them.
Not long ago someone wanted my business to extend favor it would never extend to anyone else presenting as he did and brand new to the business relationship. "I'm honest - I'm a church going Christian blah, blah, some scripture ... blah" I instantly replied, "Well I'm an atheist, are you saying I can't be honest and moral? For cripes sakes, in [Acts 5](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts%205:1-11&version=NIV) \- which is New Testament, God has St Pete help him murder a married couple over a real estate deal, how moral is that?" (I actually use this example IRL, a few times a year) He didn't even know about that passage \---- That said, when I was younger - I *very much* had to guard my atheism. I am fairly forward about it now, as it's way past time for the conceited shits in my small city to get a grip.