So I work at a drugstore, which, among other things, is also a Christian book store. This hasn't been a problem for me before but today I felt uncomfortable.
A little background: since I'm only just leaving religion recently, I haven't fully decided how I feel about religion. When I first decided that I didn't believe in God anymore, I didn't have a problem if others wanted to be religious. I wouldn't join them but I wouldn't protest either, as long as they kept it to themselves. However, the more I've read from other Atheists, the more I'm leaning toward the side that religion should eventually become non existent. There's a great article by Richard Dawkins that explores some of the reasons Atheists feel like I first felt about religion and why they should feel like I feel now. http://richarddawkins.net/articles/318
Anyway, I was uncomfortable today because normally, people look at the books themselves, pick something out and buy it. Sometimes, they need help finding a specific book and I help them. I have less of an issue with these two situations. However, today, someone was asking my opinion: they were going through a really rough time and wanted something encouraging and inspirational and I basically had to look through the "devotionals" trying to find something to suit them. I was uncomfortable with this because I felt like I was leading them astray. They didn't say whether they were religious or not but either way, all I had was Christian devotionals to work with and I felt that if I suggested one of those, I was personally telling them that God could comfort them and help them with their issues when I don't really think he's there. I really felt like I was telling a 5 year old child, who's parents are divorcing, to write a letter to Santa because he will make them love each other again and stay together. No one would think of guaranteeing that to a child because that would be untrue and therefore cruel. Granted, being the newbie that I am, I don't know of any secular resources of inspiration and encouragement to suggest instead but I still didn't want to "sell" the religious ones. I ended up picking out the cheapest ones for women (she was on a budget) and let her decide which she liked best so she ended up being in one of the first two scenarios.
I was thinking a lot today about how it will go when I let my friends and family know that I'm a non-believer. I feel prepared for people to be shocked and disgusted and that doesn't really bother me too much because I think eventually, they'll realize that I'm still me, even without God. I am also prepared for people to argue with me and that is something I'm actually looking forward to, not because I want to argue but because I want to get people talking about it, not just online with a faceless atheist that they can villainize but with me, one of their loved ones. Since I used to be one of them and coming from the same religious devoutness that they are in now, I understand how they think and can hopefully really make them look at their faith that way. I think, even with those two negatives, I am looking forward to outing myself for at least these two reasons: one, to not have to hide and censor anymore and two, to have the chance to try my best to have people seriously consider their faith. My motives are not so much (at this point at least) at getting rid of religion because of all the bad that comes from it (wars, killing, no rights for women, using and controlling children, etc) but getting rid of it because it literally wastes lives. It honestly makes me so sad to think of the time and energy people spend on religion when it does nothing for them. I think of the people I used to go to church with, spending weeknights praying for hours. It's the equivalent of spending hours writing letters to Santa. What a waste of time and if you found a group of people doing that, wouldn't you try to help them see that it's pointless because he doesn't actually exist? Like it said in the article, "I'm an atheist but people need religion." I agree with Dawkins (although I'm saying it differently than him) that people, when they are exposed to the truth, are strong enough to handle the fact that there's no Big Guy in the Sky looking out for them and no Afterlife to accept them and their loved ones. Those two points are a loss in the bargain when becoming an Atheist but a) they don't exist and once you realize that, it's not really a loss because you never had those in the first place and b) the trade off for the positives of not believing in anything far outweigh the perceived losses:
1. Freedom to do good because it's good for you and for humankind rather than in fear of punishment or hope of reward.
2. Freedom to spend time and money and energy on things that can actually better this world.
3. The realization that there is nothing beyond this life and therefore how precious this life really is.
4. The relief of not having to try to conjure up feelings of a close relationship with a non-existent being, of not having to try to fight homosexuality and other "moral" issues based on one or two scriptures without which you would otherwise have no qualms about.
5. Getting to feel good about yourself when you are kind, generous, or when you do something well and being able to forgive yourself when you don't quite measure up to your own reasonable expectations instead of "giving all the glory to God" when you do something good or well and getting down on yourself and the devil when you screw up. (what a way to screw up your self-esteem --> anything good I do is not me and anything bad I do is me, either by myself or even worse, me giving in to Satan)
6. Being able to accept that the earth is actually really, really old and that evolution is much more likely how things went rather than the Bible's idea of our past. Also, being able to change your mind if the theory of evolution (or any other scientific theory) ever turned out to be wrong and accept that we are learning new things about our reality all the time and we don't always get it right.
There are many more benefits but even these six show the scale tipped to this side, where this life, the only life we all have, can be more productive and meaningful than a life that is devoted to - nothing, really.
Some people may end up living a very good life and accomplish great things for humanity while being religious however, a) that is possible outside of religion and b) they may have children that are taught to be religious and therefore religion will continue throughout generations. The problem there is that we don't need religion to be good and to accomplish great things for the world and humanity so there go the good points of religion. What we are left with are all the negatives of religion and a bunch of people still wasting their time praying when they could be actually doing something about whatever they're praying about.
In summary, I think my point here is that I think that religion should go the way of the dinosaurs - pick your reason - and I think I'm inspired to do what I can about that.
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