Any Atheist/Agnostic persecution stories

Note to mods:

Please let us have Frank back!

Note to mods:
(sigh) . . .

Re: Any Atheist/Agnostic persecution stories


If a person only needs to be treated badly or unfairly...shunned or hurt in anyway because of one's views in order to be 'persecuted' then who has'nt?

What does Frank have to do with this?

Do you feel he persecutes you for your religious beliefs?

Re: Any Atheist/Agnostic persecution stories


Got any specifics?

I have no complaints, but then I don't put myself - except sometimes on a2k - into groups that find me troubling. But, I'm lucky in that by circumstance. I've been a mediator before between groups on issues besides religion, and I find it harrowing, I ain't no heroine. (I guess I'm the opposite of Dagmaraka, but then she is trained in it.)

Looking back, I amend that to that I have one complaint - years ago, a fellow I loved left me because I was Catholic. His mother kept telling him it would never work. I know this because he showed up again and told me about it, when it was much too late.

When he had left, I was on my way out of religion re belief, but was mid process. He and his family were atheists, which I am now.
Much would be different if we'd married, as far as the path of my life and work.

For example, I'd have probably learned to ski... kidding. He's a respected naturalist/writer; we were young, he might have been right about our not working out. Still, that was a big whappo at the time, I was desolate.

But never been persecuted as an atheist?

I've never been persecuted for the good and sufficient reason that religion forms almost no part of my real life. I don't discuss religion with anyone (except for one friend who brings it up, ranting against religion--and he's a conservative supporter of Bush [I also don't discuss politics in real life, which is why i have a friend who also happens to be a Bush supporter]). If religious types come to the door, i politely give them the brush off within secons--literally; if someone comes to the door and asks you for your time, tell them: "Sure, as long as you don't bring up religion or politics." They won't last long.

When i was in the Army, i listed my religious preference as "Druid," because i could then tell them that my sabbath was Friday night, and my place of worshikp was a grove of trees--and they were not in a position to argue that. I never made a big deal of it, but if the First Sergeant were jerking me around, i'd jerk back.

Well, when i came back from overseas, i still had about a year to go on my enlistment, and i was sent to Virginia. I arrived at my new duty station and took my personnel folder to the personnel office, for the customary review and "up-date" for my DOD Form 201. Here, unlike the case in overseas duty stations, the place was staffed by civilian employees. So i sit down with this grim-looking clown, who is reading my 201, and then he suddenly freezes, gives me this squinty-eyed look, whips out the whiteout, and then when it dries, puts the 201 in a typewriter and typses something in. I asked him what he had done, and he basically told me to mind my own business. My 201 was my business, so i reached over, and pulled it out of the typewriter. In the block for religious preference, he had whited-out the previous entry, and typed: "Non-christian." I told him to change it back to "Druid." He refused, and literally crossed his arms, putting his hands under his arms. So, i took the 201 (he tried to grab it back from me), and wandered around making myself obnoxious till someone called the Major who ran the section.

He listened to my story, heaved a big sigh, and went directly to the desk of the clown i had been dealing with, even though i had not said who i'd dealt with nor given any description. All together, from the time he whited out the orginial entry, until he finally whited-out his new entry, and typed "Druid" in again, after a direct order from the Major and a threat of disciplinary action--he wasted about 20 minutes.

That's the closest i've ever come--but i was being "persecuted" because i was percieved as a pagan, not an atheist. Many times, after i'd been in a duty station for a while, one of the sergeants would ask me if i were an atheist, and i'd tell 'em yeah. They would then get excited and ask if i were willing to take duty on one of the holidays--easter or christmas, something like that--and i had no objection. They didn't always have Jews or Muslims around to do the duty, so they were glad to find someone who'd take the duty and not bitch about it. For my part, taking company duty on a holiday was no big deal--i'd sit around and listen to the radio or watch tv all day, or read, and the guys on duty at the mess hall would bring around far more food than i could possibly eat, because that gave them an excuse to get out of the kitchen for a while. They guys on guard mount would wander in to chew the fat--it was always a slow and easy day. Then, due to their gratitude, the NCOs would give you two or three days off in exchange for doing 24 hours on company duty (about half of which found me asleep in a cot). So, it was actually, in those circumstances, an advantage.

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But basically, you have a gross misconception going on here. If someone actually is an atheist, and not a crypto-religious nut who goes around trying to convert everyone to a creed of "there is no god, science knows all," then you're not going to have occasion for people to even know that about you, or to find out. I don't go around telling people that i'm an atheist, and i don't discuss religion with real people, i just jerk the chains of the bible-thumpers here. I can go from one decade to the next, and the nearest that religion impinges on my life is when some joker comes to the door, or my buddy goes off on organized religion--which happens about once a year.

Religious people get persecuted, often, because they are so damned eager to tell eveyone what they believe, that they are right and everybody else is wrong, that they're goin' to heaven, and everyone else is goin' to Hell. Someone who actually is an atheist doesn't do anything remotely resembling that. People like that are annoying shits--no wonder they round a few up and burn 'em from time to time.

By the by, about 15 years back, i met a woman who turned out to be involved with the proselytizing species of "atheists"--the ones who get organized, go out to "convert" others to the "truth," and to argue religion with people. She showed me some material (oh puh-leeeeeze--Watchtower for the freethinker crowd) in which it was alleged that someone had asked Pappy Bush at a campaign rally what he thought of atheists, asked if he thought they should be allowed to vote (it all read like a set-up, as though they were layin' for him). This flyer claimed that Bush said that not only should atheists not be allowed to vote, they shouldn't be allowed to be citizens. I had no way of knowing if it were true, and frankly didn't care.

But that's not an example of atheists being persecuted for being atheists. Leaving aside the fact that i had no way of knowing if it were true, Pappy Bush as a candidate for Prez had absolutely no power to prevent anyone from voting on the basis of their religious confession, or a lack thereof; he lost the subsequent election, so his stance in the campaign was irrelevant; but most significantly, there jokers got to have an unpleasant incident because they engineered it.

It's like that clown who put the ten commandments up in the building housing the Alabama Supreme Court. Nobody was persecuting him when it was covered up, nor when it subsequently was removed by court order. His right to believe as he chooses was not infringed, and he was not forced to believe anything which were inimical to his personal faith. He just wasn't allowed to shove his beliefs down everyone else's throats.

Once again, people who get "persecuted" for religion (or allegely for a lack of it) in this society are suffering the consequences of being annoying shits, and getting in people's faces. Anyone who claims to be an atheist, but is getting in someone else's face on the issue in public, is lying about being an atheist--they just have a radically different religion--but religious they undoubtedly are.

No, not persecuted. You also added "treated badly". He left without discussion. I found out the why a year or so later. That is of course fairly routine in that people don't always know how to break up with people nicely, with or without religion involved.

I'm not trying to make it a major example of persecution.. or even AN example of persecuton.

Obviously you don't know our dear friend Frank who has been so unmercifully persecuted for his agnosticism, that he often resorts to expletive laced hissyfits and runs off in a huff.

I just saw how funny my post was. I was answering about being treated badly for perceived religious preference, instead of for atheism. I been an atheist so long I had to go back to that to think of any example of treated badly.

<blinks>

Frank is a big boy. To describe him as persecuted is to be ridiculous. He throws his belief around as heavily as anybody else on a2k. He gets tired all right, but it ain't from being persecuted.

Gosh edgar, my tongue was so far into my cheek, I nearly choked on it; then you came along and now I've bitten it.

I do miss Frank is what I was trying to say. He certainly spices up a topic.

uh, ossobuco ... please realize that I am only going on what you wrote here, but I don't think that was religious persecution (although you corrected that) -- I think that was an issue of a grown man who did as his mama told him. You probably missed a ton of grief there.

I think this is a good point.

So it doesn't really bother you if a person is a christian, muslim, agnostic, atheist, or anything else as long as they keep it to themselves?

You're right of course, Tico..

Yeah, more or less . . . i don't even suggest that they need to keep it to themselves, but they need to keep out of people's faces. Anyone not interested in someone else's superstitions ought not be obliged to have them forced on them.

In the '40's my elementary school teachers had an unseemly and didactic interest Monday Morning interest as to whether we had attended Sunday School and/or Church the day before.

Non-attendance brought disapproval.

I tried Sunday School (Methodist) and wasn't impressed. I tried fibbing about having attended Sunday School and suffered pangs of conscience. Eventually I decided that being a non believer was much more comfortable than being either a believer or a hypocrite.