Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
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Once again, more “proof” that atheists and religious people aren’t as different in how they conduct their lives as atheists would like us to believe.
I can just imagine a religious person saying “Why do many religious people care what other people believe? Because people act on their beliefs. If atheist beliefs only affected the people who held them, most religious people wouldn’t care very much about them. But when atheist beliefs lead to people believing they can get away with anything and not be held accountable, then it does affect the rest of us…”
(of course, there are many good atheists with good morals, but that is not the point. If atheists can use the bad actions done in the name of religion to condemn religion, surely religious people can use the bad actions done because of someone’s belief in atheism to condemn atheism).
One of those again… *headdesks*
Ahmed, atheism means a lack of belief in gods. There is no such thing as a ‘belief in atheism’, (unless you refer to a person who believes atheists exists) it’s a lack of belief. There are no things to be done in the ‘name of atheism’. Your whole argument falls apart on the account on you not understanding what atheism is.
But when atheist beliefs lead to people believing they can get away with anything and not be held accountable, then it does affect the rest of us…
Good then that there are no “atheist beliefs” and that it doesn’t lead to this. Why on earth would we think we would not be held accountable for the bad things we do? To believe that as an atheist you would have to believe that there are no laws, no police… heck, no other human beings at all. We don’t believe that an invisible skyfairy arbitrarily condemns people to everlasting hell for their sins, no, and you seriously think that that would mean that we then think we can do whatever we want? Is that what you would do if you stopped believing in a god? You would suddenly go on a rampage and steal and kill? You would never once consider that other people would stop you?
Yeah, well argued…
The whole comment from Ahmed is false. The hypocrisy is mind numbing.
“I can just imagine a religious person saying “Why do many religious people care what other people believe? Because people act on their beliefs. If atheist beliefs only affected the people who held them, most religious people wouldn’t care very much about them.”
I can’t. I cannot imagine any religion where people do not care what others believe. What are missionaries? Religious people are all about converting everyone else – from no faith to other faiths. It is their job to save my imaginary soul. Shut up and get off my door stop and stop putting fake $20 bills in public restrooms and putting up religious billboards, voting for national prayers, trying to make kindergartners pray in school…
If you do not care about my behavior then why try so hard to outlaw sins and put religious behaviors into law?