Sharing this blog with my friends.
I sent an email to about 12 of my friends today to share this new blog. The first response was a good one. My friend Rob (a pastor), asked “Why I waited so long to come out of the closet?” Excellent question.
First of all let me explain that when I was a believer I kept it to myself. So when I became a non-believer I kept it to myself. Fortunately I began writing everything down. Even when I thought I might share this new part of me there was an obvious concern. How will friends treat me, will they suddenly become afraid of me somehow?
In “The God Delusion” Richard Dawkins says, “The status of atheists in America today is on par with that of homosexuals fifty years ago.” Thats’ a scary thought, are people going to fight me because of this? It’s reason enough to be concerned or take precautions. In my previous post, I thanked several individuals for their help. They helped by indicating what it’s like to be a known atheist in America today. They all said hate mail is virtually non-existant. So if christians only occasionally get animated then should I worry about Muslims? Then I realized, they view christians and atheists as infidels, so we are no different to them.
Now that I’ve ruled out threats and harm, who am I afraid might know that I’m an atheist? No one.
Christians openly show what they believe with their Jesus fish on their cars, and their crosses hanging from the rear view mirror. If they can openly share their personal beliefs without fear of harm then so can I.
To answer your question Rob, “Why did I wait so long to come out the closet?” Fear of the unknown, I really didn’t know what would happen when people found out. I wanted to wait and get some answers from seasoned atheists about whether or not I was endangering my family (because my family come first). It was only 5 months ago yesterday that I decided I was an atheist, so it really hasn’t been that long.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm and is filed under My Own Thoughts, Quotes, Telling Them I'm An Atheist, Their Response. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 2nd, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Rob what changed you from a believer to a non-believer? It is probably explained through the many entries in your journal which frankly will take some time. I guess your open to questions so, I have some: Did you consider yourself a believer in Christ in your silence or did you just go with the spoon fed dogma and theology that was given to you? For the most part many Christians live there I believe. How can one be silent about what they believe if they really believe? To believe in something means, it is our center, core values, world view, etc… It sounds like you have come to believe that you don’t believe and now you have spoken to prove you exist? Is the voice you have found to prove your existence to us or to yourself? Also, in my email I mentioned a line from your journal that said something to the effect that neither you or anyone you knew has encountered the supernatural…is this correct? I have many more thoughts and questions, like I said earlier I have similar conversations all the time as a Hospice Chaplain except they are not about starving children they are about why am I dying .
so many thoughts so little time – Rob
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I’m glad you sent me an email. Glad to know what’s going on in your life. I don’t think you have anything to worry about as far as putting your family at risk. I can only imagine how hard it must have been to wonder what friends or family would say or do. Sara and I are grateful to be friends of the Jones family and this certainly doesn’t change anything. I’ve subscribed to your feed so I can keep up with your posts and maybe comment from time to time. When I have a few extra hours I’ll finish reading the “book” you’ve already written! :)
May 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
You said that Moslems see Christians and atheists as the same, that is incorrect. Both Christians and Jews are officially protected groups in Islam, seen as having part of the truth. Islam discriminates against, but officially tolerates, both religions.
Sam Harris is an intelligent fellow, but he’s got a whopping anti-Islamic bias. Use your salt shaker liberally. Remember that anti-Islam is good war propaganda, and the powerful wanted the war, so understand that the arguments pro-and-con are not exactly operating on a level playing field, even in the sampling bias of your own mind, subjected for years to data selected by a press to support the appropriate anti-Islamic theory. Even the “good” press like the NYTimes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m against extremist Islam, but I’d like to see equal coverage of the dangerous extremism in Christianity, Judaism(check out Baruch Goldstein, for example), Hinduism, *atheist totalitarianism* etc. Only a few years ago, there were hundreds of Moslems burned to death in what seemed to be gov’t coordinated purges in India. How much do you hear about that? How about the widespread terrorism of the atheist Chinese government against its citizens who practice Tibetan Buddhism or Falun Gong? Harris likes to play up Islam as uniquely pathological, but he’s selectively ignores all the evidence that doesn’t support his case. Also, as you are an atheist now, you might want to read the philosopher and early popularizer of Zen Huston Smith’s Why Religion Matters in order to see some of the value to it, even if theism is not true.
Noam Chomsky has literally written volumes showing line by line the NYTimes subservience to US foreign policy interests, and to any well-informed NY’er such as myself, its obvious. (The Washington Connection with Third World Fascism focussed on press analysis) NYT didn’t publish a single pro-peace letter, and there were many, from 9-11 families, right after the incident, when they were devoting pages to letters! Truly war-mongering journalism.
In terms of their credulous presentation of the administrations lies in their pre-Iraq pro-war coverage, NYTs actually publically apologized for it, though I regard that rather as “crocodile tears”.