Do you remember the first time you heard the word 'atheist'? If so, how did you feel about it?
> If so, how did you feel about it?
I asked my father what the word meant, and when he told me it was someone who didn't believe in God, I thought to myself that she couldn't have been all bad, since I had decided for myself (privately, since I knew it would shock my parents) that I didn't believe silly stuff like that either. (raven1 #1096)
Seriously, I do remember hearing it from my parents. They acted like it was a bad word. They were self-described agnostics. They followed stories on big foot, the Kennedy assassination and UFOs because anything was possible to them.
In the effort to be as little like my drugged out parents as possible, I began to look into religions when I was about 7 or 8. I heard atheists in that context as well. It was never a good thing. Being an atheist was akin to being a cockroach in every instance I heard it.
I soon found that I didn't believe in any religion I looked into. None rang true to me. I never called myself an atheist. Not out loud, not in my head. It was still a bad word in my head. Not consciously, but it was. I never would have used it to describe myself. I eventually came to know that I wasn't even agnostic, but I still did not call myself atheist.
There came a time when I was pregnant and on bed rest. This was literally flat on your back, bedrest. Even propping myself up made it hard to breath and sitting up was not considered "rest." I had toximia and everyone around me was freaking out.
I was bored beyond tears and started checking out the internet. (My son will be five this April, so this was almost 6 years ago.) I could only go on when no one was around to see me sitting up. I started checking out religion newsgroups, I was still interested and not ready to say the "a" word. I found alt.atheism and listened in for awhile. It began to make me wonder why I was so against the label "atheist." These people seemed fairly normal. They seemed to be the only other people in the world who were voicing my thoughts on religion.
I started posting, as Carnivl1 I believe, and learned that it was the only place I had yet to find people who were like myself. It was within the first year here that I began using the word to describe myself, to myself. It took longer to feel ready to say it to other people, the reaction isn't always good. It was within that first year that I started to wonder why all of the other religions and all of the agnostics that I knew personally had tried so hard to make atheism seem so bad. Why put so much venom into their denouncing of atheism? Even more than they put into other religions. For some reason that made me more sure that I was an atheist. I had always had the feeling that others would think that there was something wrong with me for not believing in God. It's like a weapon they use to keep us from going that direction. I may never have truly faced it if I hadn't met other atheists. Now I say that I am an atheist, I refer to myself as a heathen and I don't feel alone in telling people that I don't believe in God. I couldn't do that before I found other atheists. That is why this place exists to me, for all of those people who come here and ask. I needed it because the place was not filled by other people in my life. (ClayeSkye #4)
I think that because of this, atheism carried another bad connotation which lingers on even today. Not only does it offend some people's theist sensibilities, but it is also somehow 'foreign'. Remember Papa Bush's comments that atheists can't be considered citizens or patriots?
I recall that when I first started discussing atheism, I was told that I sounded like a Commie, or to: "Shut up, someone might think that you're a Communist". Of course, that didn't stop me from reading and learning more, and speaking more about the subject. Those were strange times, and I hope that we never go back there.
(John Hachmann #1782)
As far as I can recall, I had already decided that I didn't believe what I was taught as a young child. The only label I knew to put on my position was 'unbeliever', but as soon as I heard about the terms 'agnostic' and 'atheist', I knew that I was definitely an atheist. Obviously it didn't mean that much to me, just a warm little feeling that I had found a more precise term for my position.
(Carl Funk #1229)
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