Now Drew over at Genetically Modified Skeptic put up a video about how he’s managed to cope with the loss of his religion over the period of five years since he regained some semblance of sanity and while I think some of the points he made are good, I had a lot of things that I wanted to comment on and some of the things that I’ve learned in the 35+ years since I walked away from Christianity. So here I go and I hope that it  can help people who are struggling with the change.

First, of course, here’s Drew’s video if you want to take a look. Go watch, it isn’t long and I’ll still be here when you get back.

Now this isn’t a deconstruction of his video, otherwise this would end up over on YouTube, this is just my thoughts on some of the points he raised. Therefore, it’s going to be sort of disjointed from the order he talked about.

He makes a not-at-all veiled attack on The Atheist Experience and Matt Dillahunty in particular, calling him some sort of mean monster for telling the religious that their beliefs are wrong. You can take from it what you will. Now I’ve had plenty of disagreements with Matt over the years, the blog is full of them, but I don’t know that his methodology is actually bad. I think we’ve spent way too much time coddling the feelings of the religious in the false hope that if we can just point out all of the failures in their theology, they’ll come to their senses and leave it all behind.

They won’t because they just don’t care.  That’s a theme I’ve started to recognize in just the last  couple of years. You can’t talk reason to the unreasonable. I think there are a lot of people who think if we just talk softly to the religious and pat them on the head for long enough, eventually they’ll see reality and that’s simply not true. We can’t talk them into intelligent thought. They have to want it themselves. True change can only come from within, never from the outside. We can point out their failures but we can’t force them care if they fail. You can lead a theist to water but you can’t make them think.

Therefore, I’m done with pussyfooting around their  feelings. In fact, I’m done doing that with anyone. I’m not here to prove to anyone that they’re wrong in the futile hopes that they’ll somehow change their mind. I’m just here to lay out the facts and whatever they choose to do with that information, that’s entirely up to them. Their  fee-fees will not get in the way.

That’s not really the point of this post though, I just thought it was important to point it out. He did say some things about how important atheist community and all of that are and I’m going to strenuously disagree. Then, I’m going to point out why I do so.

Religion is really good at making itself central to adherent’s lives. You aren’t just a person who is a Christian, you are a Christian first and foremost. That’s not the only category of which that is true, I see people taking race and sexual identity and other similar things and making it the focus of their entire being. I’ve been in many hiring situations where, I’ve asked the prospective employee to tell me about themselves and the first words out of their mouths were “I’m black” or “I’m gay” or, as is most applicable here, “I’m a Christian.” Those people don’t  get the job. If you are going to make one insignificant aspect to  your life the overriding factor upon which all else is based, you’ve got some problems.

We are all a myriad collection of disparate interests and aspects that come together to make up a cohesive whole. I’m not an atheist, full stop. I’m an atheist and a husband and a father and an author, I like to make things, I like science fiction, the list  goes on and on and on. I’m not “an atheist who…” Atheism is but one of many, many interests that I have and it is no more important to me than any of the others.

Religion, however, it’s good at making you think you’re religious first and everything else is a distant second. It’s not the only thing, as I already said, but it’s really good at making you rely on the church and the religious community so you keep hanging around and giving them your money. When people leave religion, even for a long time thereafter, a lot of them maintain that view, that now they are atheist first and foremost and everything else is a subset thereof.

That’s just not true. The first part of breaking free of the religious mind poison is getting rid of all of the emotional baggage that you’ve dragged away with you. It’s not easy but it’s absolutely necessary. You are not an atheist first. You are a human first. Atheism is just one of the many ideas that you carry along. It’s why I tell people that there’s no need for an “atheist community”. It’s just a non-religious substitute for a church.

The first thing I tell people when they say they need a community, I tell them to go make friends. You don’t need the Atheist  Community of Fill-in-the-Blank, you need people that you share common interests with and who give a damn about you. That doesn’t come ready made. You have to actually put some effort into it.

I have never, ever made a friend with anyone based on a single common element. Back in the 70s, and this is one of those things that pisses a lot of people off, there was a commercial when a grandfather was asking his grandson about some person and the kid says “that’s my Jewish friend!” Now I don’t want to derail things here, but in reality, that label is only to differentiate one friend from someone who isn’t Jewish, it’s not some kind of racist epithet, but that’s really beside the point. I don’t have Jewish friends. I have friends that just so happen to be Jewish, but I’m not friends with them because they are Jewish or because they are atheist or because they are black or because they are white. I’m friends because we have multiple things in common and have a good time hanging out together. That seems to be a skill that has become lost today. Go meet people! It’s not that hard!

Religion discourages that because they want to be in control of every aspect of your socializing. Don’t allow it! Don’t allow it when it’s atheism either. The ACA used to advertise an “atheist movie night” as a function, years and years ago and I always thought that was stupid. I don’t want to watch movies with atheists, I want to watch movies with other people who love movies! I don’t have the slightest interest in talking about books with people who don’t believe in gods. I want to do it with people who love books! The atheist part is entirely irrelevant!

People need to start seeing others as individuals and not some part of a pre-defined group. I don’t want to hang out with an atheist community, any more than I wanted to hang out with a Christian community back in the day. That’s a way to have your mind controlled. If you go for that, you’ve got some problems. You need to find individuals that you have things in common with, that you enjoy spending time with and that care about you as a human being. Anything less is a poor substitute and we’re got an entire world of poor substitutes these days. It’s about time we figured out why it isn’t working.

And that’s about all I have to say about that.