So a question comes up, what are things Christians should not say to atheists?
First one, “where do you get your morality from?”
Don’t assume that because we’re atheists, we don’t have morals.
We all have morals, we all have ethics, ours don’t derive from a holy book,
and I would hope that your Bible isn’t the only reason you’re not out there killing everybody in sight.
“Do you not believe in anything? Your life must be so empty!”
It’s like, no! I don’t believe in God,
I believe in plenty of other things, and there’s a lot of other things that give my life meaning.
Whether it’s friends, family, teaching the kids I work with on a regular basis...
Talking about atheism and writing about it, which means a lot to me, and I hope it means a lot to the people
watching this, or reading the website too, but
all the atheists I know have plenty in their life that gives them meaning.
“Why are you mad at God?”
Because apparently if I don’t believe in God, I must have this deep hatred,
and I wake up every morning and I curse the sky.
Atheists don’t hate God. Atheists don’t believe in God.
We also don’t hate unicorns.
“You can’t prove God doesn’t exist!”
That’s always a fun one. Like,
“Yeah, well, when you can prove to me that flying unicorns don’t exist, we’ll play the game.“
I always wanna know why Christians have no problem disbelieving in, you know,
Hindu gods, other religions’ gods,
and they just dismiss it! They never think about it, it’s not like they’re sitting around thinking,
“Maybe Zeus does exist!”
No! They’re just like, of course Zeus doesn’t exist, it’s silly for anybody to think that,
or have thought about that in the past!
And then when I do the same thing, like yeah, well I dismiss your god the same way,
they’re like, “but you can’t prove that!“
Look, you go through the other millions of gods, and you disprove them,
then I’ll get around to yours, alright? We’ll call that a deal.
Next one. “What if you’re wrong?“
What if I’m wrong? Nothing’s gonna happen if I’m wrong!
If I’m wrong, then basically what you’re assuming is that God is gonna punish me for asking honest questions,
and trying to, you know, search this stuff for myself,
and ending up at the conclusion that He didn’t like.
Why would God be mad at me for actually doing some research instead of just sitting around
and going to church a couple times a week, and acting like I really care?
Believe me, every atheist I know thinks about this stuff.
We talk about this stuff, we are genuinely interested in this question,
so, it’s not like we don’t think about it or talk about it.
And what if we’re wrong? Nothing’s gonna happ—what if YOU’RE wrong?
What if you’ve been praying to the wrong god this whole time? I think Homer Simpson said something like,
“What if you’re praying to the wrong god, and you’re making the real one madder and madder every time you do it?”
“You just have to have faith!”
God’s given me this mind to use, but you’re asking me to close it when it comes to religion.
Like, no. I don’t have to have faith. I have to understand what I’m thinking.
You ought to be able to think critically. That’s not a bad thing.
And usually, they say you just have to have faith when I’ve stumped them.
Ha! When atheism’s given them something that they can’t answer, their response is...
“Well, I can’t explain why God did that! You just have to have faith!”
...Which is a cop-out way of saying, “there’s no answer for that! I just believe it ’cause I want to, and it makes me feel good.”
Which is the dumbest reason to believe in anything, so just don’t say that...
Oh, this is a fun one. “Just open your heart to God!”
No. There’s nothing wrong with my heart, it’s not like I’m actively shielding myself from God,
I’m not wearing an aluminum tinfoil hat or something on my head.
So my heart’s fine. I’m open to the possibility, go ahead and explain your proof to me.
Go ahead! Leave that comment down below and explain why we should believe in your god,
and believe me, if you offer us something worthwhile, that’ll be great! I don’t think you’re going to.
“You were never really religious to begin with.”
That’s interesting, because a lot of atheists I know come from religious families, especially Christian ones.
And they’re atheists, and people always say, “well you must not have really been a Christian to begin with.”
It’s like, well what do you want from us? Like, do you want us to speak in tongues? Because I know atheists who can put themselves in that mode and do that,
what was it that was wrong with them, these atheists? ’Cause I guarantee you those atheists who used to be Christians,
they believed in all the Bible stuff, they believed in the Resurrection, they “accepted” Christ in their lives,
and then later in life they realized it was all BS, and they dropped it.
They were Christians! And now they’re not. So, this idea that if you’re an atheist now but you were religious before,
you weren’t really religious to begin with, that’s such a lie. Don’t act like you know me. You don’t.
I was religious to begin with, a lot of Christians I know, ex-Christians, were Christians.
And now they’re not, ’cause they know better. So, don’t say that.
“What happened in your childhood? Like, do you have a good relationship with your father,
did something horrible happen in your childhood? Is that why you’re an atheist?”
’Cause they assume we all went through some traumatic event that led us to hate God, I guess. And that’s why we’re atheists.
It’s like, no! My childhood was fine. And there’s nothing wrong with the way I grew up,
and nope! It really just was, I thought about my religious beliefs, and I realized,
there was no evidence to back it up, and the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became with that.
Nothing bad happened in my childhood.
“Have you read the Bible?”
I guarantee you that if you know an atheist, an outspoken atheist,
they know more about the Bible than most random Christians that you know.
If you gave them a quiz, the atheist would do better. I think some survey has done that particular thing.
They asked different people, “what do you know about various religions?”, and the atheists scored highest.
Because we think about this stuff all the time. So we generally know more, and we know where all the holes are in these religions too.
So yes, I’ve read large parts of the Bible, other people I know have read the Bible in full, and a lot of other holy books too.
Here’s a question for Christians, though! One, have you read your own Bible? Two, have you read, you know, religious holy books from other religions?
’Cause apparently you think those can be dismissed. So how come I can’t dismiss yours even if I wanted to?
Three, you know, what atheist books have you read? ’Cause if you wanna have that discussion,
you might as well see what some atheists are saying.
Oh, I love this one! “I’ll pray for you.”
...Thanks? I mean, I appreciate that your heart’s in the right place, but it’s not gonna do anything.
You know, if I’m going through a rough time, don’t tell me you’ll pray for me.
If you really wanna make a difference, tell me how you’re actually gonna help me, like,
for example, if I’m really sick and you wanted to bring me soup or something, that’s a really sweet thing for you to do.
Don’t pray for me to get better, but like hey, if you wanna drop some food off, that would be awesome.
If you wanna send me a pizza right now, I would totally appreciate it.
That would make much more of a difference than anything God could do.
So don’t tell atheists you’re gonna pray for them, especially when they just lost a loved one,
you’re in their thoughts, you could tell the atheist they’re in your thoughts. That’s nice. That’s it.
God’s not gonna make anything better, so, you know, and I’ve heard the rhetoric,
“Oh, you’ll pray for me? Great. I’ll think for you.”
That’s kind of dickish though, so don’t say that very often. Another one,
“do you worship the Devil?” A lady said this to me, like, a couple weeks ago!
I don’t believe in the Devil, I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in miracles, I don’t believe in a lot of supernatural things.
But Satan is as silly as God is. So, look, I’m sure there are some Satanists out there, I don’t know who they are ’cause I’ve never met one,
but, it’s not the atheists. The atheists think Satan is as silly as God is. So, we don’t worship Satan.
“Are—you’re not really an atheist. You must really be an agnostic.”
And they say that because if I say I’m not 100% sure God doesn’t exist, I’m pretty clearly on that side of the spectrum.
But yeah, I’m reasonably certain God doesn’t exist. “Oh! Well if you’re not 100% definitive, you must be an agnostic.”
Which kind of bastardizes that whole word “agnostic”, which, I don’t know, I know some people had issue when we made a video on this but,
you know, to me an agnostic is someone who doesn’t feel there’s enough information one way or the other, so they’re not gonna take a position on it.
I said in the video that that was a cop-out, because I think even if you don’t have all the information, you can lean toward the idea that God doesn’t exist.
No one’s, you know, drawing a hard middle line on whether the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists.
But this idea that if we’re not 100% sure God doesn’t exist, we’re an agnostic, like no. You don’t know me,
don’t label me by your weird warped definitions. I’ll decide the label for myself.
“Isn’t atheism a religion?” Like, no. Atheism is a religion like “off” is a TV channel, and “bald” is a hair color.
Like, it just doesn’t make any sense. It’s a rejection of religion. It’s not religion.
To me, religion means believing in this higher power. And somehow, when people ask this question, they’re changing it to say,
“I guess people who all believe in the same thing”, which makes, you know, going to a Cubs game, I guess,
everyone at Wrigley Field is now religious, ’cause we all believe in the Cubs.
It’s silly. Atheism is not a religion, so don’t say that it is, ’cause we’ll just laugh at you.
The last one I wrote down, “why are you so angry?”
because atheists get this all the time, like, here’s why we’re angry.
It’s not ’cause we hate God. It’s not ’cause, you know, we have some beef with the higher power,
it’s because religious people do a lot of crazy things in the name of God. And I’m not even talking about like terrorism,
or like those extremes. I’m just saying, you know, whether they are passing laws in America,
whether they’re passing laws that restrict LBGT rights and women’s rights,
whether they make bad science curriculum decisions, or passing revisionist history curriculums,
they do things that make me really upset ’cause I value the truth, and I value people’s rights.
And it’s very clear that the Christians in power often don’t. That’s why I’m angry.
Look, if you’re religious, talk to an atheist, please talk to atheists, ’cause that’s a good conversation to have.
But you should try to get rid of the stereotypes from your mind before you have that conversation.
Or if you ask these questions, I hope you’re asking them in good faith, and not because you’re reading some apologetics book
that tells you what atheists think. Don’t...don’t buy those. Just ask atheists what we think and we’ll be happy to tell you,
but honestly, if you’ve made your way through this video, that says a lot about you, and that’s a good thing.
If you’re an atheist and you can think of other things that I missed on this list, please leave them in the comments, so we can maybe do a follow-up to this.
And I hope if you’re religious you can learn something from this and don’t say those things to atheists.
It’s offensive, it’s disrespectful in a lot of cases, and it shows that you assume a lot of things about us before you’ve actually had a conversation with us.