(July 27, 2012 at 4:52 pm)HappyHumanist Wrote:
You know, it all depends on what the circumstances are. There's no blanket of "if they believe I hate them/if they don't believe I love them" that I can drape across the spectrum, so I look at it situationally. Now...it depends on the type of religious person. There are plenty who are not delusional and they do not think their religion is omnipotent and omniscient in its morals. My newest room-mate is a man who professes to be a Christian but admits his views are far closer to deism than Christianity. He openly mocks a lot of the shortcomings of Christianity and is actually very well-versed in the history of Christianity and judaism...which is where his criticisms of it comes from. Our first day with him living here he mentioned having been homeless due to a marriage gone really badly and that he "knew god had been watching over him" but really that was about it. When later we were talking about religion I confessed that I was an atheist and he just laughed and said "Known more of y'all to be nicer and closer to what Jesus taught than any Christians I've ever known, man. Most Christians be dumb as fuck." It was at that moment I realized we were going to be on excellent terms. We have 30+ minute-long discussions about stuff and we've yet to find anything we disagree on, and he even told me of some stuff I had not even known about involving the history of Christianity, which he then added were the exact same reasons he didn't believe all that much in the bible.
I asked him why he believed in god at all, out of curiosity, and he shrugged and said "It's just a feeling more than an actual belief," which is far more of a sensical argument than anything I've ever heard out of the "faithful."
And I find myself agreeing highly on his assessment about how Christians are supposedly "nicer" and how they're usually bigger assholes than atheists are by an order of magnitude. So to that end, I admit when someone starts saying they're a believer and they start going on about it I start feeling a strong instinct to maintain a certain distance. After all, just yesterday I was struck in the face by a very devout Christian who was also my room-mate after I got in his face to get him to stop yelling at my best friend over something as stupid as her not parking far enough up the driveway, so...
Oh and there was also the catholic this winter who almost attacked my Chinese former room-mate all because of some misconception about being locked out when he had actually locked himself out...and he had to be led away in handcuffs by the cops, too...
My experiences with christians are never good, I'll tell you that much right now.
