When religion and hobbies collide

I’m an avid cyclist, logging over 200 miles a week and attending numerous group rides and races. Most of my friends are cyclists too, and we have a well-connected network over Facebook and other social media. So naturally, I’ve “friended” lots of my riding friends, and I get to see many non-riding aspects of their lives — their kids, other friends, and so on.

Of course this means I’m also exposed to their religion. I’d say about half of my cyclist friends are highly religious. They don’t just go to church on Sundays, they “pray” for each other in FB posts and text messages. If they had a good race result, it’s because they were “blessed” with the strength to complete it. If a friend’s child or dog gets sick, they pray for its speedy recovery.

For the most part this stuff is easy to ignore. But sometimes it’s not. For example, suppose Ted has injured his knee. Someone makes a post on his FB page saying something like “Prayers for Ted’s speedy recovery from knee surgery.” Should I “like” the post? I certainly don’t believe the prayers will do any good, but I’d like to let Ted know my thoughts are with him. Often in cases like this I’ll just write my own separate post on his FB page letting him know I hope he gets well soon and asking if there’s anything I can do to help.

But what if the connection is more explicit? For example, a friend of mine recently entered an exceptionally challenging and prestigious endurance ride. I offered to help him with logistical support. Then it turned out he was riding for a religious charity, and he wanted his entire crew to wear t-shirts with the charity’s (obviously religious) name on it. Naturally there would be photos of the crew plastered all over Facebook. If I wear the shirt in the photos, am I endorsing the charity? I just wanted to help my friend complete a difficult ride.

I believe this charity is doing good work, but it would be even better if the charity could be separated from the baseless and wasteful religious element. I’m glad that it is helping people, but I’d be even happier if it could fully devote its resources to helping people instead of splitting them between the truly helpful and what is, at best, wishful thinking.

On the other hand, even secular charities can be wasteful. Consider the situation at many  colleges and universities, where vast “charitable” donations go to sports teams that are little more than farm teams for professional, for-profit sports leagues.

But there’s a difference between college sports teams and religious charities. If I choose not to support a team I’m not seen as selfish or unfaithful. If I make a stand against a charity, then it can easily be misconstrued by others as not wanting to support the ostensible beneficiaries of the charity: I must hate kids, or love disease, or whatever. Even worse, my rationale for not supporting the charity hits at the core beliefs of its supporters: I’m telling them their god doesn’t exist, and they don’t like to hear that!

In my friend’s case, I decided to wear the shirt for the photos. I didn’t say anything bad about his charity. But I won’t be wearing the shirt again. He ended up raising over $15,000 for his charity, which really is impressive. Some of that money really will help some people. But it makes me sad to realize how ingrained religion is in every aspect of people’s daily lives. Hobby and recreation aren’t separate from religion; they are an integral part of it.

Ultimately I think the world would be a better place if there were no religion at all. But separating religious activities from everything else is going to be a sticky business. If it’s this hard to take religion out of bike riding, just think how hard it will be in cases where the connection between religion and life is much stronger.

That “A” Symbol

You have probably seen it before: That “A,” proudly displayed on many blogs, kind of like a cross or a star worn by religious folks to proclaim their faith:

The idea, clearly, is to increase visibility of atheists, perhaps with the ultimate goal of swaying some folks’ opinions. As you might guess, I have a couple other blogs besides this one, and I don’t display the “A” symbol there, or on my personal facebook page, or anywhere else for that matter. But why not? It’s not overtly offensive, and it certainly shouldn’t be any more so than a cross or a crescent or whatever.

I guess I don’t do it because I feel rather unwelcome when I see those other symbols. When I see a person prominently wearing a cross as jewelry, I see the cross as implicitly saying “I’m a Christian, aren’t you?” Or maybe even “I’m a Christian; why aren’t you?” I suspect if a Christian saw the symbol on my blog, he or she might feel the same way.

But of course, maybe I should want them to feel that way — if ultimately I believe they are wrong in their beliefs, shouldn’t I let them know about it? Maybe, but maybe I shouldn’t do that when my primary purpose is, say, to share a recipe. Maybe it’s better to be a little subtler than that. Then maybe later, someone might find out I was an atheist and think to themselves, “you know I never knew CA was an atheist — he doesn’t shove his atheism down your throat.” And, just maybe, that’s a better way of “getting” them.

Obviously this blog is a much more overt space — it’s got “Atheist” plastered all over it. But for now I’m not planning on sharing this identity with my RW friends. I haven’t even decided whether to share it with my wife. The plan, for now, is for there to be no intersection between my RW identity and my CA identity. As I’ve said before, I don’t keep my atheism a secret, but for now I don’t want to it to be the primary means by which others identify me. Maybe someday that will change, but it’s not going to change today.

I’m not sure I’ll even bother putting the “A” symbol here on this blog. After all, there’s no doubt what he blog is about, and as I’ve said above, I’m not convinced that this sort of copying what amounts to a marketing strategy of other religions is the best way to win converts. It may be implying “atheism is just another religion” more than anything else — and that’s something I most definitely don’t believe.

It’s a great, big, bloggy world out there

I’ve spent most of my adult life on the margins of the atheist movement. As an atheist myself, I haven’t felt the need to spend a lot of time validating my beliefs. And as an atheist married to a Christian, it’s generally just easier to avoid issues of faith and belief.

But now that I’ve taken the step of starting this blog, I’ve decided to venture out a bit and explore the online world of atheists, and frankly, it’s rather overwhelming. There are feminist atheists, and scientist atheists, and friendly atheists, and angry atheists, and they often seem to be just as angry at each other as they are at the religious wackos.

This is not to say they don’t have good reason to be angry, just that it can be hard to find a way in to this morass. So I figure the best way to handle this is just to gradually start reading the the posts I like, and see where they lead to. For now I’ll just add blogs I’ve found interesting to my blogroll and take a look at what they are offering from time to time. As of this moment there are exactly three blogs there — and I’m not even sure the blogroll is currently visible on my home page. I’ll get to that eventually, but for now I just wanted to share a few more thoughts about how this place is going to get moving.

Ultimately the plan is to start linking to some of those posts in my own posts and beginning to start a conversation. But that can wait too! In the meantime I’ll just start collecting my own thoughts and see where they lead. Now I’m off to figure out how to make the blogroll visible. See you next time!

A place to discuss issues of belief / skepticism in the South

I’ve lived in the South for 19 years now, longer than I’ve lived in any other part of the country. Like it or not, I’m a part of this region, even though many aspects of it still seem foreign to me. The most foreign aspect is, to put it bluntly, the in-your-face religion espoused by most people around here.

I still have trouble comprehending why people expect others to pray for them when their pets die or their kids get in trouble at school. But I do realize that it’s something I’m going to have to live with — probably at least until I retire. This blog is going to be a place where I can discuss these issues frankly, and, hopefully, without my [religious] friends figuring out that I am doing it.

It’s not that I keep my atheism a secret — I don’t — it’s more that, given how much I dislike the in-your-faceness of religion around here, I want to see if I can discuss these issues in a different way. For now, I think that means it’s best to keep my extended discussions about religion and atheism anonymous (or technically, pseudonymous, as I’ve adopted the pseudonym “Carolina Atheist”).

So…here goes. I’m looking forward to seeing where this discussion leads!