Dear Prudie,
I have been an atheist for the last several years, ever since losing my (Christian) faith following a close friend's untimely death. Recently, my boss's mother told me about a serious and risky surgery that her other child would soon have. After I said to her, "I'll keep him in my thoughts," she responded, "Oh, would you please pray for him?" I said yes, and she began talking about her belief in the power of prayer, a belief I once would have shared. At the time, I wanted to comfort her in any way that I could, so I agreed with what she said. Also, it hardly would have been appropriate to launch into a "Why I'm an Atheist" speech. Later, though, I felt very uncomfortable with the fact that I'd lied and acted as if I shared her beliefs. Is this kind of thing a no-win situation?

—Not a Believer

Relax! You're an athiest! The cock only crows three times when you renounce Jesus, not when you renounce your non-belief. Remember, a Christian has to answer to God at the end of the day. You don't have to answer to anyone! Isn't that why most of you folks rationalize yourselves into being nonbelievers in the first place?

See, that's funny, because I actually "rationalized" my nonbelief in God when I realized that I don't believe God exists.

And now, lucky me!! I can just prance about the earth, responsible to no one! Who cares about all these living, breathing people in my life?? If I don't believe in God, I suppose I'm just all alone, right?

Dude, if you're going to make stereotyped slurs against people you know nothing about, you could at least ATTEMPT to hide you ignorance by spelling the name of the target of your vitriol right. That would be atheist, btw :D

He's right, though.

It's not as if you're going to Hell for lying or anything....

Pogue, that was priceless. I said something about her not having to answer to a higher being in my parody column. As an agnostic / turned Christian, I must say that was really funny!

SweetieDarlings:

Dude, if you're going to make stereotyped slurs against people you know nothing about, you could at least ATTEMPT to hide you ignorance by spelling the name of the target of your vitriol right. That would be atheist, btw :D

Hey, at least I didn't spell "you're" as "your"!

emily.jayne:

See, that's funny, because I actually "rationalized" my nonbelief in God when I realized that I don't believe God exists. And now, lucky me!! I can just prance about the earth, responsible to no one! Who cares about all these living, breathing people in my life?? If I don't believe in God, I suppose I'm just all alone, right?

And let me guess, you realized you dodn't believe God exists one Friday evening when you weren't in the mood for fish? Or was it in the back seat of some lucky fella's car one Saturday night, ironically right before you started calling out His name really loudly over and over? ;)

Should the threat of hell be the only thing that keeps you from lying to people then? She doesn't like to lie because that does not fit with her own ethical code, and she has to answer to herself for her behavior. If lying makes her uncomfortable, it makes her uncomfortable. Everyone acts like she's being a uncompassionate bitch, when all she has done was attempt to comfort someone in distress, and earned herself a attack on her views for doing so. Put the shoe on the other foot. Would you pretend you don't believe in god to comfort an atheist?

Ah well, that makes being a bigot okay then :D

SweetieDarlings:

Should the threat of hell be the only thing that keeps you from lying to people then? She doesn't like to lie because that does not fit with her own ethical code, and she has to answer to herself for her behavior. If lying makes her uncomfortable, it makes her uncomfortable. Everyone acts like she's being a uncompassionate bitch, when all she has done was attempt to comfort someone in distress, and earned herself a attack on her views for doing so. Put the shoe on the other foot. Would you pretend you don't believe in god to comfort an atheist?

Threat of hell nothing. I try to listen to what I believe God is telling me for the same reason I try to listen to what my father used to tell me......the belt! Oh that and respect for wisdom.

Was it your father or your God that taught you to be a bigot?

SweetieDarlings:

Was it your father or your God that taught you to be a bigot?

No, that was grampa, God bless his soul.

Well, at least you don't try to pretend you are anything but what you are. That's the first step to recovery.

Pogue Mahone:

Remember, a Christian has to answer to God at the end of the day. You don't have to answer to anyone! Isn't that why most of you folks rationalize yourselves into being nonbelievers in the first place?

An atheist has to answer to herself, her family, her friends, her neighbors and so on at the end of the day. As for why people become non-believers, why don't you believe in Zeus? Do you not believe in Zeus simply because you don't want to answer to him? Most people become nonbelievers in a particular god because they see no reason to believe in that god.

That being said, I think that the LW acted in the proper manner. There was no reason for her to start a theological debate with an old woman who was worried over her child. The woman wasn't trying to proslytize, she was merely looking for reassurance. The LW would gain nothing at all by confronting her for her Christian-centric view of the world. After all, in this country ~80% of the people are Christian and so it makes sense from a statistical standpoint to believe that a specific individual is a Christian. (Unless of course you already know that they are a biologist or a physicist. Then the statistics are quite a bit different.)

Pogue Mahone:

And let me guess, you realized you dodn't believe God exists one Friday evening when you weren't in the mood for fish?

For me it was Noah's ark. It was obvious to me at the age of 8 that the whole flood thing didn't happen. Noah didn't cram all those animals into that little box for 100+ days. Then I realized that most of the Bible wasn't exactly true. So if it wasn't true about some things, why should it be true about anything? Around this time a family of Buddhists moved next door. The son was around my age, so we spent time playing video games and the like. He was very sure that his religion was right, just like my friends at CCD. I realized that they couldn't all be right, and all the stories were pretty silly. So I stopped believing.

See if I stopped "believing" because I didn't like God's rules, then I'd really still be believing in God. After all, you have to believe a being exists for Her rules to have any application to life. Why do so many Christians feel that people who are not Christian have chosent to be that way simply because they don't like the rules? It's not like the so called rules have stopped many Christians from behaving in exactly the manner that they wish to.