Cipher Girl

Wow, what timing for a thread. I just got back from a buisness trip to Atlanta and was thinking on starting a thread on this very topic due to something that someone said at lunch on the trip.

During one day we went to lunch with one of our co-workers who worked in the Atlanta office. He brought along his wife. During the course of lunch the conversation turned to the topic of the Georgia state flag. Apparently, since the current flag has the confederate battle flag on it, there is a move to update the flag to a more tolerent statement (read something tolerable to Christians). Unfortunately this means someone has removed the confederate flag and replaced it with "In God We Trust". Thus alienating other groups of people.

Her remarks were along the lines of "Well only those atheists are unhappy about this." and "Those people are out to destroy our morals." What was really funny was that she could see that the confederate flag would be excluding and offending a group of people, but could not see how a religious sentiment specific to a small group of religions would be exclusive.

My reply was very mild as this was a buisness meeting and I did not want things to get ugly. I said, why not use a flag that made no statements exclusive to any group of people. I wanted to say more but left it as it was. But I was somewhat pissed the rest of the afternoon.

I'm an atheist and one of my co-workers who came to Atlanta with me is very agnostic. He just looked at me when she went off about atheists. She did not know anything about us but I guess she assumed professional people could not possibly be "one of those people."

It's a good thing that I'm not really one to hold grudges. I could have really made a stink about the remark. And since her husband was interested in us using his software, it would have really made her look bad in front of him. I could also have told him later in the afternoon with a remark like "Well, your wife should really make sure that she understands people's religions or lack thereof before starting to slam a particulare group. I don't like being called 'those people or immoral.'"