Feel free to ask any questions you’ve always been too shy/afraid/embarrassed to ask. So long as a question is asked in good faith I won’t take offence. :)
Hi @anna-de-belle, no worries. I know that there are some questions that there’s just no way to phrase in a way that doesn’t sound confrontational. ;P
On why I tag Christianity
In this specific case
I tagged Christianity because I wanted Christians to come upon my invitation to talk, and if I just tagged the post as atheism most of the people who would come across it is fellow atheists, which would kinda defeat the purpose. :P
In general
Usually, the reason I tag Christianity has nothing to do with Christians. I try to remember to tag my posts with tags related to the topic discussed in the post for posterity so that I, my followers, or anyone searching through my blog in the future is more easily able to locate posts based on topic.
The fact that this means Christians get exposed to atheists and atheist points of view is just a nice bonus side-effect.
On atheists and rudeness
That’s a coooomplicated question. To simplify, I’m breaking it down into topics that, when put together, I think explains your question.
1. Difference in perspective of what constitutes as rude
While there are plenty of instances when it is rudeness (we’ll get to that), a lot of the time what Christians perceive as rudeness is really just neutral irreverence for a religion, a religious character, or a religious aspect.
To me, for example, the Bible is legitimately no different from the Iliad or the Epic of Gilgamesh. From my point of view I really is just an old storybook. It has its merits from an archaeological perspective to be sure (which I’ve talked about before), but I don’t view it as something to be respected or revered any more than the Eddas or the Book of the Dead.
If you’re emotionally invested in the Bible and have been taught that it is taboo to mock, criticize, and/or treat it without reverence, my merely saying that I think the Bible is a storybook can seem antagonistic and rude even though it’s actually a neutral statement of belief.
For example, I’ve literally had people get defensive over a post that just quoted an excerpt of the lyrics of a song:
“I don’t believe in Jesus I don’t believe in Zeus I don’t believe in Allah I think they have no use I don’t believe in Adam I don’t believe in Eve I don’t believe in talking snakes I think it’s make believe.”
All the song did was list off things the singer doesn’t believe in, but because the lyrics mentioned things from the Bible, I had Christians accusing me of being disrespectful and of going after Christians.
They felt personally attacked simply because someone said “I don’t believe the same thing as you”.
When the bar for what constitutes as disrespect is so low, anything other than agreement becomes rudeness at best.
Here’s a rule of thumb test to rule out this kind of miscommunication:
When you come across an atheist saying something you think is rude, take a moment to think if it would be a rude thing to say if it were being said about something pertaining to a secular equivalent or the equivalent from a religion you think is false.
E.g. “I think the Bible is a poorly written book” --> “I think Harry Potter is a poorly written book”
“God as depicted in the Bible is a monster” --> “Zeus as depicted in Greek mythology is a monster”
“I don’t believe in God” --> I don’t believe in Bigfoot”
Does it still sound rude when you replace it with things you don’t hold reverence for?
If not, it's not a rude thing to say about that religion/religious aspect either.
2. Online disinhibition effect
If you’re talking about online interactions, it’s worth remembering that lots of people behave veeeery differently when talking in person versus being behind a screen. Online interactions, especially regarding sensitive topics, have a much higher likelihood of featuring negative behaviour because people think that being behind a screen gives them the ability to say anything because they’re anonymous and “it’s not real life”.
In other words, some people are jerks when given the chance.
3. The process of deconversion
It is not uncommon for people going through the deconversion process to go through a process which seasoned atheists tend to call the “Angry Atheist Phase” (the term being a reclamation of the stereotype propagated by theists).
The Angry Atheist cohort is typically made up of recently deconverted people who are, quite understandably, feeling angry at having been indoctrinated into a religion as a child. Being a lifelong atheist I can’t speak on this phase from personal experience, but from what I understand from listening to atheists’ recollections of their deconversion experience (e.g. Vi la Bianca from Talk Heathen), the most common source of anger is a feeling of “having been duped”.
It’s also worth remembering that baby atheists are having to deal, likely for the first time, with things like fearing being disowned for being atheist (it’s a common occurrence), going through being disowned, dealing with having to come to terms with no afterlife (and maybe mourning all over again the death of a loved one), and other issues they didn’t have to worry about as a theist.
Being irreverent and even outright rude for the sake of being rude towards a religion can often be a cathartic thing of finally feeling free to speak and criticize without fear of retribution from a deity.
It’s a common part of the deconversion process and is usually a phase (how long it lasts will vary from person to person). Angry atheists are a real and valid part of the atheist community but not all of us qualify under the label.
4. Atheists as an oppressed minority
Being irreverent and outright rude to one’s oppressors is an age-old tactic of resistance.
You may not have ever considered atheists oppressed or Christians their oppressors, but it is a real thing.
In some places, the oppression is overtly dangerous (and in many cases outright deadly) in nature:
- In 2013 in Bangladesh Ahmed Rajib Haider, an atheist blogger, is attacked by religious people just outside of his home. His body was so badly mutilated that his friends could not recognize his corpse.
- In 2014 in Egypt the youth ministry launched an organised campaign against non-belief among the young, designed to spread awareness of the “dangers of atheism” and the “threat to society” that it supposedly poses so that young atheists in particular, who are increasingly vocal on social media, would be given “a chance to reconsider their decisions and go back to their religion.”
- In 2014 in Nigeria Mubarak Bala was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Kano by his parents when they found out he was an atheist. His father and uncles held him down for 30 minutes and forced him to take medications given by a psychiatrist, who told him “everyone needs God”.
- In 2015 in Bangladesh Faisal Arefin Dipan, a publisher of atheist literature, was stabbed and chopped to death in his office, and Oyasiqur Rahman, a secular blogger was butchered by religious people using meat cleavers.
In others, the oppression can seem like “less of a big deal” (note: this is a minuscule sample):
Atheist parents are significantly less likely to be given custody. Yes, it’s a thing. (This is nothing new either -- Percy Shelley lost custody of his kids when his wife died because he was out as an atheist and thus deemed an unfit parent.)
It’s not uncommon for atheists to get disowned if they are outed or if they come out; if memory serves it was Don Baker (a gay atheist) who once compared being an atheist to being akin to being gay in the sense that we share a lot of the same fears of oppression (disownment, loss of employment, being in the closet vs out, etc).
I’m not out in my everyday life.
I’m only out to two people in my life: my mom, and my foster sister. I can’t afford to be (metaphorically and literally).
In Canada (where I live) for example, it’s legal for me to be fired from my job for being atheist if I work at a public Catholic school (which I have worked in in the past) and get found out. It’s also legal to deny enrollment to a student at a public Catholic school if the student or their parents are atheists. (The same goes for non-Catholics in general, queer folk, and even divorced folk).
Our national anthem is also a prayer to the Abrahamic god. (If you think that’s not a big deal, imagine your country’s anthem being a prayer to Krishna or Allah and see how you feel.)
In the US, the Boy Scouts of America are allowed to ban children from joining if they are atheist, which is a rule they enforced in 1991 against two 10-year-olds. One of the witnesses for the Boy Scouts of America’s defense in court was Ricky Slavings, a sociology prof from Radford University in Virginia, who testified that allowing atheists to participate in the BSA would “reduce the power and importance (of religion) in the eyes of the other boys” and that it was “likely” that if atheists were allowed to participate in scouting that their atheism would “spread to other members of the group.”
The money references the Abrahamic god. (If you think that’s not a big deal, imagine your country’s money invoking Krishna or Allah and see how you feel.)
Politicians invoke their god in politics frequently. (If you think that’s not a big deal, imagine your country’s politicians invoking Krishna or Allah when making speeches and policies and see how you feel.)
In several US states the state’s constitution (e.g. Texas’) states that you must believe in a god in order to be eligible for office. The Supreme Court has deemed this unconstitutional but it’s still technically in the books.
5. Perception bias
It could also be that you have a bias for noticing the rude atheists more than the polite atheists. Not consciously, necessarily, but if your brain is already subconsciously primed to view atheists as rude/aggressive/etc it might engage in perception bias.
I’m not trying to gaslight you into thinking that you’re just imagining things by any means, but rather just to remind you to keep in mind that this is a thing that exists and could be playing part in your experience without you even realizing it.
