It’s so hard to see how Christians react to Atheism. Hard to see, hard to watch, and very hard for me as a person to experience and feel. I have noticed an overwhelming hateful trend in people who claim to be Christian treating those who have denounced Christianity; even benign Atheists (i.e. non-militant types). I have seen Christians befriend other people and once they find out a friend is not a Christian they drop them or talk bad about them to others. It’s a members-only club that fails to note the importance of the actual teachings of Christ. Many Christians are, indeed, not very Christian-like.
The problem inherent in the system is not the religion itself; the problem is with the followers of the religion certainly, but mainly the leaders. In order to keep a mob mentality open with the followers, the leaders must constantly reinforce the “better than thou” ideologies to the followers. Obviously, the people who are blindly following anything are already a vulnerable group. The leaders of any group know this and will exploit vulnerable people for anything (everything) they are able. The frustrating part is that no one can stop the leaders from manipulating vulnerable people into believing nonsense, nor can the leaders be stopped passing opinion off as fact. The leaders do the same thing that conmen do to their marks: they rope them in with fanciful dreams and ideas that can only be possible with a little bit of faith; they promise them things that cannot possibly be given; they never deliver and then passive-aggressively state that it was the fault of the follower or the fault of an almighty figure. These followers then experience negative feelings such as hopelessness, guilt, sadness, helplessness, and anger. And here is the kicker, the followers run back to where they first went in order to feel better. Why? Because the followers felt good for a moment when they ran to the leaders and they are frantically searching for that good feeling again.
These people were searching for a higher power to begin with because they lacked coping skills to deal, adapt, or avoid their day-to-day stressors. For instance, some people gamble, have premarital sex, do drugs, drink alcohol in excess, or otherwise “sin.” The only reason these people have the feelings that any of this is bad is because of our cultural expectations. When there is a gap between expected behavior and actual behavior, there is a cognitive dissonance which results in anxiety and guilt. If left unchecked, it can and will develop into depression. Those who cannot cope with the cognitive dissonance often seek divine intervention. They fail to realize their strengths and that is a tragedy of the human condition. I feel it is a tragedy because if people would cope, seek inner-strength, and if they would self-reflect then they would realize how to deal with an issue before it becomes a bigger issue such as the “I am better than you, and the only love I have for you is because God said I have to love everyone” disease. This of course is a generalized view of first-time followers and even though this does not speak for all Christians, it does speak for a vast majority of them.
But what about any of their children who are indoctrinated from birth? Indoctrinating children to believe in something that can control an entire life is child abuse. It is child abuse because from an early age, these parents are teaching their children how belonging to a particular group is more important than being a part of the human race. It is lying to children in order to control them – it is negative manipulation. Raising a child to understand right from wrong without the threat of eternal damnation is a hard thing to do, but parenting is hard work. Relying on a church to raise your children and instill beliefs into them is lazy parenting. When I have asked questions regarding the above ideas to a believer, the response I received was, “I do not think I am better than you, I just really wish you could see the way.” Insinuating that I cannot “see the way” is a put-down. Telling me that they are enlightened to a truth and I am not is also a put-down. No one, and I mean no one, has special powers or a separate magical part of the brain that tells them all the truths of the universe. Another response I got was, “I am a wonderful mother, thank you very much. At least I take my children to church every week and teach them morals.” Assuming I do not teach my children morals is also insulting because my children are doing good things for others in the world without a reward system in place. To me, that is more moral than telling children if they do not eat all of their food, then they will go to Hell. Both of these responses had me thinking, “Where is the Christian attitude here? Aren’t they supposed to love me unconditionally and try to show me the light, not just bark at me and hatefully defend their lazy, lack of thought, handed-down belief systems?”
Here in the Bible-Belt, if one thing is said that is remotely different than “I believe in God” or “I am a Christian” then you are on the shit list. By shit list I mean the out-group which is basically the group of people that are not welcome at or even invited to community events. I do not mind not belonging to a stuck-up group of people who feel they are enlightened and smarter than me, even though over 95% of Christians barely have a high-school education. I get upset because this is our majority and it is hindering the progress of the human race.
I have done a few social experiments wherein I claimed to be Atheist to one person, claimed to be Christian to another person, and then noted the changes in behavior. Generally, with just one interaction, there could be no pattern, however after 113 of these small experiments a generalized pattern emerged that showed from n=113 that 94% of the people no longer wanted to hang out with me, talk to me, or even acknowledge me in most cases when I told them I was Atheist; 2% of the people did not care and went on as usual, and the remainder asked me why I was sad/depressed/lonely/lost. When I told people I was Christian the results were interesting: 86% of the people tried to get me to go to their church - suggesting that I was accepted to their social group, but would be accepted more if I believed exactly as they did. I was invited to go on outings with 91% of them, total, (church-related picnic, sales, and other community events), 3% of them wanted to have talks about religion, and 6% of the total discussed their negative feelings regarding members of different denominations of Christianity (including mine when I claimed Baptist).
One, in particular, would claim to love Jesus and make it very well known to me and other people in my small group that she was a God-fearing woman. She is very funny, and likes to joke around, but a second later she will try to take everything very seriously. Average intelligence, tries to overachieve but falls short - must work harder than most people in order to just feel adequate – you know the type. So where does she go to get that feeling of superiority? Jesus, of course. But in between rants about Jesus, she likes to gossip, make up stories, hate on other people, make up drama, and otherwise just be a nasty person - jealousy is abundantly clear with this one. A huge issue with this type is not being happy with the good things they are given because of how they feel they must behave or believe in public. This type also has the young mental capacity that would allow her to chase after negative people in her life, whilst ignoring positive people simply due to the members-only club. She is still miserable - so if Jesus was her answer, why is it not working? Jesus is not her answer. She is simply going through the motions of her tradition and she feels dissonance when her belief system is different than who she really is.
It amazes me at how many people in the world there are who are just like this example woman. I know we all have our own issues, but when one thing is not working, why not try something else? It makes sense, after all, that every problem has a many solutions and if one solution proves to fail over and over then the person would logically go onto the next solution option. There is not a lack of solutions, only a lack of intelligence that disallows a person to further investigate.
So, when I said that many Christians are not Christian-like, well, perhaps they actually are. It would seem that the majority of Christians feel they have answers that non-members do not have, they use religion to feel better (often just to feel superior), and they firmly believe in opinion as fact. Maybe Christians are just who they are and the kind ones, the tolerant ones, the ones who really have some love in their heart are the exception.
