KitKit

i am usually very outspoken about it too & if people don't like me after i tell them i am atheist then that's their loss. i'd rather know right away if potential friends are superficial & close minded.

HOWEVER, i have children who are in the care of adults who are religious. as much as i'd like to think that they wouldn't think anything of our non-belief who really knows right? who knows if they found out & would treat them differently or even take it upon themselves to "educate" my children on religion while i'm not there.

so i think there are times when it is necessary to let them think whatever they may think. but then there are other times when there's just no good reason not to speak up besides fear.

it is very sad to me that i live in a country where there is "supposed" to be freedom of religion & tolerance, but i have to keep my mouth shut about my non-belief for fear of being judged & treated differently because of it. especially since the religionists are the ones believing in very unvbelievable things. it just seems like it should be the other way around. i still can't wrap my brain around that fact. makes no sense at all.

Harumi

KitKit,

I feel your pain. I've been in those exact same shoes. I was a student volunteer teaching economics to a class of six year olds. That day I was explaining to them the difference between a 'need' and a 'want'. A 'need' is something you must have or you'll die. A 'want' is just something you'd like but can live without.

We wrote a list of what's a 'need' and what's a 'want', and as we were writing them down, one of the children raised his hand, and said:

"God's a need."

I seriously didn't know what to say. The teacher was pressuring us to put that down as 'need', so numbly my partner did. Given my decision, I would have put down 'belief' since we all need to believe in something, just not some nonexistent deity.

I just wish I had the courage to speak up, but I couldn't. It made me feel very crappy for the rest of the day.

Stiletto One

Among my friends, and people who I think are 'safe': "I'm atheistic agnostic."

Among people who could be problems, I dodge the questions in as many ways as possible:

"What religion are you?"
"I'm unaffiliated"

"Do you go to church regularly?"
"No, I'm not actively religious"

"How often do you go to church, then?"
"I go when I feel it's appropriate"

:banghead:

So on, and so forth.

Anyway, if I ever went religious, I would be a Deist...assuming it wasn't under crazy circumstances and I simply went fundamentalist whatever.

anakata

If someone has a problem with my lack of religion and I don't depend on them somehow, my response is simply among the lines of GFY.

Defiant Heretic

I guess we really do influence the real world occasionally. That's heartening.