10. Sam's the weird uncle. The one no one talks about.

As human nature would have it, this isn’t the easiest of ideas to relay. Were I to swear the benefits of godlessness were guiltless self-indulgence and candy corn, well that could be poo-poohed away. But honesty? Reason? Pshaw. Absurdity in its finest clothes.

So unless I’m willing to delve into the nitty-gritty of a large-scale debate (which I.... generally am) – it comes as no surprise that caring individuals amass by the dozens to harry my unsaved patootie; firm in the impression that my wayward decision had a sadly-confused goal. Part of me can’t help but feel touched by the sentiment. Friends and family are meant to have your best interests at heart, after all. And religious immersion has somehow become an ever-extending limb of “things that are good for you”.

The problem comes when these concerned efforts are not only offered up on an individual basis, but as a decree from our nation as a whole. Much as Jefferson would be astonished, ashamed, and downright pissed to read the phrase “In God We Trust” on the paper lining Congressional pockets; it’s there all the same, as if to lend Federal credence to the idea that those who don’t believe in god are under some civil or monetary obligation to behave as though they did. “No, this isn’t what you believe, but shush and let the slogans sink in. Your country says so.” Fake it ‘til you make it, I suppose.

Ick, says I. And, should I dare to do so aloud, the response invariably comes in the form of annoyance. “Silly atheists, whining over harmless daily customs...” But imagine for a moment, being religious and having no choice – by virtue of your nationality – but to send your child to a school where every morning he was expected to recite a decree stating that god was a most-certain farce; or being asked in a courtroom to swear your oath upon the Koran or the Iliad; or (Apollo forbid) knowing your tax dollars were tallied to fund Mithras-for-addicts. The merging of faith and politics doesn’t seem so wonderfully benign when the faith you’re forced to suffer isn’t your own.

But still, the implication that we ought to “suck it up” is much easier to follow than the alternative of… well, not sucking it up.

Take for instance Jeremy Hall, a U.S. Army Specialist stationed in Iraq, who has received countless threats of death and violence from Americans (shedding a whole new, sarcastic light on their “Support the Troops” car magnets) and from members of his own Unit for attempting to organize an atheist social meeting under the approval of their chaplain. Or Nicole Smalkowski, an openly-atheistic high school student who was ridiculed not only by students but by teachers with phrases like, “This is a Christian country. And if you don’t like it, get out.” First booted from the girl’s basketball team under the grounds that she was “bad for morale”, the girl was later expelled when she refused to join in on the Lord’s Prayer. Examples are unfortunately easy to come by. And somehow, as a nation, we’re okay with this. At least, our lack of a response would seem to say as much.

The heavy hand, the reality, the wooden paddle (the big one, with the holes in it) with which many are punished for daring to open their mouths is a definite deterrent to the whole idea of stepping through the closet door. One that seems strangely difficult to see from the other side of the river.

Somehow, its notice is viewed as promoting a culture of victimization. When, really, that’s akin to throwing accusations of self-pity at anyone who points out that horse dookie has an ucky odor.



The fact that we should even feel required to observe the tenets of a religion we have no stake in ought to be unacceptable. Why? Because, much as others may argue that it’s to our benefit, the truth of the matter is that it stinks. And I, for one, am tired of the smell.

So… what to do…?

Oh, don’t give me that look – I’m not talking about a revolution here. But surely there’s some effort that can be exerted to alter public policy or, at the very least, public opinion.

9. Note to self: stick out your chin. And grin.

So, yeah… The typical transition from closeted to open atheist is something like being the subject of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” – where I wake up, transformed into some hideous creepy-crawly thing that no one can bear to look at. People behaving as though they are “…in the presence of a serious invalid or a total stranger…”; mother in tears over my chosen state; dad throwing apples at me from beyond the grave; and I, in response, snapping my jaws at the coffee on the table and wishing those around me could understand my words.

But also, very occasionally, a person will express curiosity rather than exasperation, and a silly little glimmer of hope perks up like Katie Couric’s hair – all sun-shiney and cute – in the base of my gut.

(I’ll give you a minute for those oh-so-congruent images to marinate. Feel free to vomit, if you must.)

Sometimes it seems to stem more from an intrigue of oddities than anything else: “Look, dear! It’s the Unflappable Clone of Gregor, in the flesh! Whooooo-doggie! C’mon, Stinky, lets have us a convo!” It still pegs me as something of a mutant. But, by non-existent god, I’ll take it. Even in the poorest of terms, it’s an excuse to speak up, speak out, and lay bare the bones of nasty-ole-Moi.

Other times, the interest comes from someone who seems to be staring through the door themselves, wondering if maybe it isn’t quite so dark as it seems – there, on the other side. The number one question on their FAQ (not the most-asked, but the one to which they most desire an answer) is this: how can you be content without the promise of forever? The answer of course, is simple. Though often unexpected by the one bearing the burden of curiosity.

It’s never quite spot-on to say that I live knowing death is the end, and that is that; get up and get on with the getting of your life, else you’ll be gotten, and such – though that is the most-anticipated response. Yes, I once had the promise of forever. I had belief in an immortal eternity, the likes of which would make Connor MacLeod green with envy. (If you got that reference, you’re a damn geek, and I love you for it.) I had faith in more tomorrows than can be counted. And silly that is me; I threw it away, didn’t I? So what do I have now?

Well, as I said, the answer is simple: I have today. An honest day of reason and responsibility. A day free from hindrance and imposed-thoughts and waking up with the blinders on, screaming over the monsters in the dark that I could not see, but feared nonetheless – as though my very soul depended on it. A day of self-evolution, where I refused to sell myself short by hanging my life on a parable. I have today; and I have myself therein. In short, I have far more now than ever before.

8. “She turned me into a NEWT!”

For the record, I’ve never done any such thing.

Not that I haven’t been accused of similar atrocities here and there. You’d probably be surprised by the litany of claims people are prepared to offer against you once they’ve learned your dirty little secret.

[Immorality], as I’ve mentioned before, is often among the first: throw the Bible out the window, and your ethics are sure to follow, they say. Generally speaking, this one’s easy to shrug off. For one, the statement itself seems to say the one making it has no faith in their own morals; that absent god, they’d murder, pillage, and plunder without discrimination. (Have we really such poor opinions of ourselves, folks?) For another, I’m fairly confident an objective view of my life and the actions therein would argue that, since my rejection of the god hypothesis, my sense of morality has strengthened significantly. There are many reasons behind this, some scientific, some personal. Studies have shown that the existence of punitive institutions has a detrimental impact on our observations of right and wrong. The ability to “hand-over” the decisions and responsibilities – where serious moral issues are concerned – weakens our ability to see and deal with those issues in a concrete fashion. Along those lines, when my religion fell to its utter demise in that cataclysmic mental breakthrough (melodrama, meant to be taken humorously… so laugh, dammit), the option of praying my sins away fell right along with it. I was forced to recognize that real blunders require real action to correct, and so began to hold myself more accountable. So too with the notions that the seemingly-infinite ills of the world are all part of a plan; god’s will, or gifts under guise. There was no supernatural might in the forces of nature, no higher power to step in and make everything hunky-dorry in time. That responsibility, I realized, is ours – and has been all along. So in the end, this accusation all hangs on one thing. The book.

As one pastor famously said: Those who base their morality on the Bible have either not read it, or not understood it. A study into the religious texts and their supposed connection to morality supports this statement, enthusiastically. Religious groups were invited to read provided stories. Questionnaires were given thereafter in which they were asked to rank the moral efficacy of the tales. Half the groups were given verbatim biblical accounts. Most of which reported the tales to have a high level of moral founding. The others were furnished with the exact same accounts, with the names altered so as to eliminate the automatic correlation between the tales and god. Overwhelmingly, the accounts were determined to be morally bankrupt and, in some cases, outright atrocious. Looking at the Bible through different lenses, one quickly realizes that there lies in it no explanation for what constitutes right and wrong, nor – perhaps more importantly – does it offer a means for determining the difference. Summing up: “Morality does not originate from the Bible, rather our moral progress informs what parts of the Bible Christians accept and what they now dismiss." (Richard Dawkins)

[Ignorance of religion as a whole] is one of my personal favorites. It always leads to the most thrilling conversations. Even though, as someone put it, one hardly needs to know the ins and outs of early-era clothing in order to determine that the emperor is…um… naked – the sad truth of the matter is that I do understand religion. Raised in a devoutly religious environment, I ate, slept and shat the tenets of my family’s faith. Even now, I’ve a bookcase filled to the frothing brim with religious manifestos and theological studies. That understanding is precisely what led to my crisis of faith, as you may recall. People are often quite shocked to discover that, along with his distaste for homosexuals, god is equally put off by men whose genitalia have been harmed in any altering way. That’s right, you cancer survivors; that missing testicle is god’s Old-Testament-way of saying: you’re not worthy.

**Impromptu Quiz, taken by request. ("Prove it!") No, I didn't study, or look up any of the answers.**

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[Being the antichrist]. In most cases, this one’s meant to be a hoot. Very few who throw this one my way are doing so with any real regards to its sincerity. But then, there are those times when the statement is one they actually believe. Not to be snide, but some part of me (a horrible, bad, bad part that I probably shouldn’t admit to having) desperately wants to pat people on the head when they’ve the misfortune to say this. In fact, recently, when the allegation was thrown at a friend of mine, she (kindly thinking perhaps he’d buggered his nouns) corrected the thrower by pointing out that she was an atheist, not the antichrist. To which he responded, “They’re the same in my book.” Hmm. Apparently, he hasn’t read the book. If he did, he would find first that the word “antichrist” appears only four times in the whole of the Bible, and never once in regards to the specific individual that we recognize today as its title-holder. That it’s but a handy phrase (with FLAIR!) that evolved over centuries in application to a rather… shall we say “metaphorically-described” bad boy from the ever-popular book of Revelation. To this day, religious leaders argue over the handful of scriptures on the subject (Which are viable? Which of the beings described is the antichrist? What is the correlation to satan? What is the true meaning of this statement? And of this?). The only thing agreed upon is the level of damage he’s evidently able to cause as one widdle piddly human. If the two are synonymous, well then… just imagine what eighty-million antichrists would look like. I think we’ve just blundered into the premise for an apocalyptic film to end all apocalyptic films. Bully for us. Now go call Bruckheimer.

[Hubris]. This one makes me cry. A little. On the inside. I’d always considered myself a fairly unassuming person – but strangely, your own considerations rarely, if ever, travel any distance toward the impressions of others. On the plus side, if you’ve reached the point in conversation where this (or the former) appellation is tossed your way, it means your debate opponent has passed the stage of Denial and has found his happy way on to Anger. Just three more capitalized labels to Acceptance! Hang in there.

[Lunacy]. Actually, with this one, they may be correct. One can never be sure…

And the mother of them all, the accusation at the heart of this entire outpouring of pouty exclamations:

[Being Un-American]. To which, I’ve nothing much to say. One would think, with the basis of our nation being what it supposedly is, this bracketed-rubbish should stand on its own as an utterly nonsensical proclamation, shouldn’t it? The sad fact of the matter is that it doesn’t. Not in today’s America; nor perhaps in yesterday’s. The difference being that: in this world, at this time… we should know better than to say it at all.

The list could continue on well beyond the time you’ve entirely lost interest and fallen asleep on your keyboard, having vowed never to return to this silly time-consuming blog ever again. And, failing the insertion of some of the crueler remarks of which I’ve been the gleeful recipient, that list would consist mostly of sub-statements and/or expansions of the snarkiness above. So, as with before (and because I’ve no interest in forcing you to wake up with “QWERTY” indentations on your forehead), you get the overall idea.