What's an atheist?

This time I’m just going to share a little anecdote with you from earlier in the week.  And I’m going to make it relatively short.  Let me know what you think.

My wife and I were watching Bill Maher the other night and somehow the subject of intelligence and liberalism came up.  I mentioned to her that I had bookmarked an article which says that the more intelligent a person is, the more likely they are to be liberal AND atheist.  My wife had not heard this and expressed an interest in reading that article, which I promised to send her a link to when I got back to work (which I have done).

Meanwhile my 11 year old daughter was sitting in the next room eating.  It was hot so everyone just tore themselves away from their computers and game consoles to eat when they felt like it.  She overheard the conversation and asked, “What’s an atheist?”  I was a little shocked that she didn’t know.  I don’t make my feelings about religion any secret in my house.  But I realized that, though the wife and I talked about religion all the time and I always answered any questions the kids had with hard-line atheist answers, we really didn’t use the “A” word that much.  Not that it was that big of a deal.  I was just surprised that she didn’t know.

Anyway, I explained to her what an atheist was and what a liberal was (she had also asked that) and she responded, “Oh.  I’m an atheist, then.”  Daddy was proud.  This is the daughter that was being secretly brainwashed by the neighbors a couple of years ago, so it was good to hear her state a position that will not have her someday subservient to some man, doing as she’s told, or avoiding us and not taking our calls because we’re “of the devil” and might “lead her away from God”.

And there are churches out there which do try to separate people from their family members who don’t attend their church, especially atheists.  It serves three purposes.  First, it prevents them from coming into contact with someone of an opposing view and possibly being persuaded that the church is wrong.  Second, it increased their dependence on the church and church members, separating them from the outside world so that leaving the church means a terrifying loss of all of your friends.  Third, it gently persuades the family members to join the church if they ever want to have a relationship with their beloved family member again.  A disgusting and slimy tactic all around, and one employed with great success in the Jehovah’s Witness church and other such fundamentalist weirdo churches, one of which some of my family members attend.  It used to be just “the Pentecostal church”.  Now it’s some 5 mile long name with “Tabernacle” in the middle of it somewhere.  It always amuses me when religious people believe that using the strange 17^th century language from the Bible is somehow “Godly”.  It’s just the stupid way they talked back then.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with religion.  But try telling them that.

That’s it for this week.  Short and sweet, as promised.  Have a great weekend!