Reply To: Reeling from Christian friend's bigotry

Backing up @Strega on both points.

I don’t know why Simon persists in trying to create an Atheist “religion” or insert mysticism in it, when really, it’s a catch all word describing everyone who does *not* have a certain characteristic. It says nothing about the characteristics that they do have. Thus there are at least as many ways to “be an atheist” as there are ways to be “not a leopard.” That having been said, mysticism verges on belief in a deity and thus is unlikely to appear in any given atheist. Talking about an atheist religion is like asking about the tack and horse collars on a horseless carriage.

And yes, bigotry from assholes, justifying their orificious (hmm, that’s not a word…but let it be) attitudes with religion is a large part of being an atheist as well as a large part of being gay, so it’s entirely appropriate to discuss this sort of thing here. (Whether Mr. Tag’s response was the best one he could have made is another issue.) It so happens we live in a place where the predominant religion condemns both non-belief (which one would expect from the definition of a religion) and non-heterosexuality (which isn’t a logically necessary feature of any religion, but is a “feature” of the local one). Thus as allies, we hetero- atheists end up commiserating with the non-hetero- atheists here a lot.