I am sorry that atheists have told you those things. Not all of us do that.
Like I said in my original post, not every religious person does this, and most don't. At least in my experience (and I spent most of my life as a devout Christian) with both religious people and atheists, religious people moreso than atheists.
That's fantastic! It unfortunately doesn't happen often enough. I've had SOs whose parents were absolutely fine with my atheism - we didn't discuss it at length, but they knew. None of them were very religious, though. My parents, on the other hand, are bothered by my atheism.
If you read the Bible, it's full of those things, too. Especially the multiple partners part (
http://www.religiondispatches.org/a..._one_man,_many_women,_some_girls,_some_slaves) and violence part (how many genocides - ordered by god - were there? And rapes, child beatings, slave beatings/rapes?). It also has a lot of misogyny.
But yes, I see what you're saying. If you discount the Old Testament and look only at Jesus, then yes (even though Jesus does permit divorce, with some consequences and stipulations). In entertainment, yes, there is a lot of that stuff. Everywhere else, religion is rampant. I've even had a
biology professor at a state-supported university answer questions she didn't know the answer to as, "That's just the way god made it."
Again, I never said most are. I, like you, said that most are not.
Those are all great! But why does it have to be tied with religion? In my atheist group, we're always looking for more charity events. We hold blood drives periodically, we're about to run a food drive, we have a constant "Send an Atheist to Church" drive where if you donate $10 to the Red Cross, one of us will go to your church. We've adopted a street and clean it up 4x/year. My atheist group has become my best friends. They've been a fantastic support system for me, from coming out of the closet as an atheist to my parents to bad break ups to my mother getting cancer. I've never met a greater group of people.
Obviously, churches can be a great support system. Since my mom has had cancer, both of my parents' churches have stepped up and really taken care of them. They've been an invaluable help, and not just in this case, but in the past. You also gave a great example.
But what about those churches (again, not all) who cast out teens and children when they come out as gay? Or the case of the church in CO (I think?) when an elder of the church raped a 14 year old (not sure on the age, but
young), and when she became pregnant they made her stand in front of the church and confess her sin, then banned her from the church and ran her out of town, while the rapist barely got a slap on the wrist? What about the times when a teen has come out to his or her parents as an atheist and they disowned him/her, and the church didn't do anything? Again, no, it doesn't happen all the time. Many churches - and even more Christians - are very welcoming of all creeds, orientations, and belief systems, and aren't so misogynistic when it comes to rape. But to say it's not a problem is putting your head in the sand, just like with the molestation. What's worse is a lot of these problems are stemmed from theological beliefs,
not just one person being awful.
It may be contrary to
your faith, but not theirs. The thing with religion and Christianity is it's not set in stone. There's a reason there are hundreds of denominations. Not everyone is going to agree on the same interpretation of the Bible. It was written many generations after these things happened and were passed on orally then was edited and re-edited and translated and re-translated and re-edited and cut and pasted and re-translated and... well, you get the picture. Nobody agrees what it means, and you have to cherry pick what you believe from it.
I wish more people would look at good in the Bible and follow the good, but in reality that's just not going to happen. The Bible is too flexible.
But violence and hate is a human problem
and a god problem. God is a very violent and hateful being. Like I told my dad when he brought it up, if god is real (which I don't think he is), then I think he's a jerk who doesn't deserve to be worshiped. In the OT he demanded blood sacrifices to let us save ourselves from him. Then he killed
his own son, who was himself, to save us... from himself. My dad and I discussed it recently, and I think it (and a quote from a man who calls himself The Thinker [pretentious, I know]) sum up my feelings the best. My dad told me that he thought the devil drags us to hell rather than god sending us there. He asked me, "If I'm your father and I'm supporting you financially 100% then you completely disown me as your father, is it reasonable for me to continue supporting you?" "No, it's not, but god isn't constantly supporting my way of living. He's leaving me alone. Take the exact same scenario, then imagine that you see an obvious serial killer, completely with a scythe and hatchet, grab me and drag me into the basement of a building, obviously intent to carve me and torture me slowly. Would you just stand there and watch him do it because I said you weren't my dad, or would you step in and at least try to do something because you love me and I'm your daughter?"
The Thinker's quote: "Let's say, you had a father who wrote a book and left before you were born. And in this book, he instructs you on how he wants you to behave. Also, in this book, he tells you he wants to have a relationship with you, and mandates you write letters to him daily, which he doesn't reply to. Also if you read the book, he tells you he wants you to sing songs about how great he is, gives you an unreasonable, unattainable standard he wants you to live up to, says you are unworthy of his love, tries to convince you are evil just because you were born,had another one of his children tortured to death, and claimed the reason he did it was how bad you were. He also in the book tries to convince you that you deserve to be tortured to death in the way he had his other child killed. In addition to this, the child he had tortured to death, he conceived with a woman who had no say in the matter, while she was engaged to another man. At some point, you would probably stop writing letters to this father, conclude he is a lunatic and highly obsessed with himself, and if a case study was done of your father by a license psychologist, to be conservative about the situation, he would conclude your father is highly irrational, possibly a sociopath, and the relationships he has with everyone involved are abusive and highly dysfunctional."
I know I'm probably going to ruffle more than a few feathers with saying all of this, but this is what I truly believe. I have religious friends, and my boyfriend is largely Christian (with Buddhist and Taoist influences). My parents are very Christian, and I periodically go play violin at my mom's church. I love everyone at her church. I have no problem with religious people, but I do get my feathers ruffled when bad things start to happen with a base in religion. It's all in how it's approached and used.
