Thursday, May 28, 2009

Job Search Hits an Atheistic Block

I am having a tough time finding a job. I have excellent references, and a college education. It seems like 4 years of college, and plenty of knowledge have earned me this useless degree (Avenue Q). I know we are in the middle of a recession and times are hard, but I am two seconds away from sending my overqualified resume to McDonalds. Imagine me, having done research at Harvard, asking, would you like Fries with that mam?

But jobs are the least of my problems. Every day I am at home my mom seems to like me less and less. She asked me when I was going to have kids the day before yesterday. I told her I didn't know. The real answer is: not for a LONG time. If she needs to hold her breath, she would have to hold it for at least 10 years. She then asked if I would teach my children spanish. I honestly answered no. I have no intention on teaching my unborn kids a language I can hardly speak myself. She quickly accused me of denying my own culture. In this I could not argue. Although my mother considers herself Puerto Rican, I consider myself American. I was raised on hamburgers and hot dogs. A diet high in high fructose corn syrup, and low in spanish culture. And it has nothing to do with her, but each generation is expected to evolve culturally, and in reality I am not my mother.

The worst part is yet to come. She looked at me and asked - under what religion would you be raising your kids? This is referring to the fact that I was raised Christian but Donna is not. However, as I have clearly stated in my blog, I am no longer Christian, I am now and atheist. I answered her by saying I did not know (in reality there is no answer to the question she posed because atheism is not a religion). From the look on her face you would have thought I told her to go fuck herself. She asked - What? Don't you believe in God anymore?

This time I had to lie. To prevent her from further upsetting herself (because we were just talking), I told her I didn't know. I must apologize to all those agnostics for pretending to be one of you to get myself out of trouble. It seems like my mother is taking this more to heart than my interracial relationship, which has also come under attack recently. My mom told me that I was disgracing her, and that this was not the way I was raised. I could not answer with a rebuttal because the disgracing part was her personal opinion, and she is absolutely correct in the sense that I was raised by a Puerto Rican single mother who happened to be Christian.

My mother tends to win arguments based on the fact that she purposely tries to make me feel bad for who I am. Arguments based on pathos tend to do this. It is difficult to speak to her because I prefer arguments based on logos (which is how I derived my atheistic views). How am I supposed to teach a child how to speak spanish when I can hardly speak the language myself? She replied that I could learn, however at the current moment there is way too much food on my plate. As for the whole atheist thing, I told her to pray about it, and she replied " No, YOU pray about it!". I could not help to chuckle at this one. I believed that whether God was real or not, my mother letting out her emotions on "him" may be a lot less taxing than my mother letting out her pathos on ME.

The worst part of the conversation was the end when I tried to reason with her. I told her that no matter how I was raised, I was still her child. She told me she didn't know who I was anymore, and I wasn't the same person who left to college 4 years ago. This was true. I am very different now. I am more educated, and I do not need other people to tell me what to think, but I have the ability to look at evidence and come up with my own conclusions. I know I can speak English well, and so the primary, and only language I am fit to speak to, and teach my children, who are unborn, is English. I do not believe in a deist or a theist God, and so I cannot possibly lie to my children and have them believe in it either. To do so would be to bankrupt them of the ideas I have learned in my lifetime.

I am taking a stand. Since I have been an atheist I have been discriminated against! Not only in my own family, but amongst my friends, who believe the burden lies on my shoulders for not believing in God, rather than in theirs for their belief in God. One person I spoke to actually told me I didn't have a choice as to whether I believed or not. I only had a choice as to what God I believed in. Stating that in this country we have freedom of religion but not freedom FROM religion. This is purposterous. George Bush Senior once said atheists cannot be patriots. And in the same way my mother does not support gay rights, she will never support me. Why? Because her religion tells her to be divisive. She sees herself as right, and me as other because I do not believe in God. Me as other because I believe that woman should have the right to choose, and other because I believe gay people should have the right to marry whomever they choose. And for those who are not gay, and oppose gay marriage I say this: Do not get married to any gay people!

Dolphins, Chickens, Dogs, Cats, and thousands of other animals have individuals which were found to be gay. To say it is not natural because your God has something against it is the equivalent of saying "I don't want to look at the data, so let me take an entity who has an answer, but has never spoken to me personally, and follow him blindly". Seriously, if God actually spoke to people don't you think we would be able to record it, and that it would be all over youtube? the Christian God really did not know what he was doing when he sent Jesus down. Don't you think if he would have waited 2000 years, and sent Jesus down now, the record on film and in the media, would be more permanent than Bible? And that type of evidence would be indisputable! It seems like God wants there to be serious doubts to his existence, if he is real. Which is why I am not afraid to be an atheist.

If God is real, and I die and find out, he will ask - Why did you not praise me? And I would have every right to answer, "Throughout my life you have hidden yourself from me. You never spoke to me personally, sent an angel to perform a miracle in front of me, and all the papers which tried to prove you statistically, which I have read, have failed. So why, God, did you waste my entire life, and go through such pains to hide yourself whenever I was around? I think the first 20 years of my life looking for a God who would rather not reveal himself to me was a waste of time. I do not intend on looking for him for the rest of my life.

I am answering Dawkins call to militant atheism. Which brings me to the video of the day. Please purchase and read Dawkins book, the God Delusion. I found it very insightful, and entertaining.

4 comments:

  1. I was once told by a Portuegese Catholic that "Atheists don't exist." and that I was "In denial."

    I was born without belief in any god and I never found a reason to acquire said belief. So in reality, I never became an atheist or a non-believer. I am, as I was born, without an added belief. Belief is an artificial construct within the mind. Religion is a control structure that uses that belief to control the herd and do the religions bidding. Governments don't really like non-believers as their acceptance of policies is hard to predict as they are largely free-thinkers. Religious groups however are easy to predict and thus, once again, easy to control. Governments *love* religion for that reason.

    Congratulations on being you. For having your own point of view. For shedding that belief that was "bolted on". The guilt you may feel now about family and possibly friends? It *will* pass and what they choose to do, how they choose to act? Accept that it is beyond your control. Any problem with your lack of religion is theirs.

    All the best and good luck. In America, you may need it. Come and live in the old world ;o) We ain't free of religion but hell, we're making a stand.

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  2. its Dawkins, not Dawkings, mate, but that is trivial.

    your account with your mother reminds me of something my father told me many years ago about atheists. he basically told me that they are people who believe in absolutely nothing and should be reviled and avoided. this was around 25 years ago, so i would have been between 5 and 6 years old. what kind of an impact does that have on a small child? much like dawkins discussed in the god delusion, you can teach a child anything and they are genetically programmed to be forced to accept that as fact. you can't have a child learn through trial and error not to go by the river or the crocodiles are going to eat them. because of this stigma against atheists that my father placed on me, it took a long time for me to actually call myself one. i can say, with utmost honesty, that i have never believed in god, despite being raised in numerous different types of christian churches. i even spent a week a church camp when i was 7 or 8 and found the entire concept of morning alone time prayer to be quite farcical. i never heard some fanciful being speaking in my thoughts, and never experienced any sort of a religious experience that would make me believe. i have always, and will always continue to, taken a very scientific stand on completely spiritual matters. despite the road blocks placed in front of me when i was a child, i was finally able to accept that there is no god, to understand that being an atheist merely means without religion, but i still have not been able to actually come out to my father about it. he did see the flying spaghetti monster on my truck once and made a comment, i explained to him where the concept came from, but did not tell him it is a symbol commonly used by both atheists and agnostics. i suppose he knows, but until i say something i will not know for sure.

    also, just so everyone knows, my Yo God! God Detector sitting on my desk at work still points to no.

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  3. That was a great lecture he gave. Thanks for sharing it.

    I already bought The God Delusion, and I've read it twice. Brilliant stuff. I may just go read it again.

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  4. Hi Jonatahan

    It was with sadness I read your article. Becoming an atheist means committing social suicide; you are now being judged more than a crininal is judged.

    Religion poisons the mind and causes intellectual rot to set in, people cannot think straight or be reasonable any more.

    Good luck!~

    Lu

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