You must have a gentle discussion. The beauty of wishes is a powerful element of faith. You have to sit down and intelligently dissect these things and then get her to open her mind to the vastness and wonder of the cosmos and how lucky she is to even be alive.

...because faith essentially is the acceptance that something is factual without any evidence or even thought on the topic you have to show her the logistical fallacies of such a notion.

You have to calm her despair about the way things are. You cannot berade someone into intellectual awareness. 

Good luck.

have you checked in on her?

My friend hasn't taken the initiative to approach me since I expressed my sincere hatred of religion.  In an e-mail, I told her I'd try not to bring it up again and if I did, we could agree on a "safety" word to make me shut up.  I've sent a number of e-mails, but only got one response.  I called her landline via Skype.  

She says she has pain issues, but I wonder if it could be something more.  We had a falling out a few years ago and one of her pet peeves was that I refuse to capitalize the word "god."  If it's so important, why won't god come down and make me?  Or at least explain why it's important?

Sigh.

It's hard out here for an atheist...especially one who can't keep her mouth shut. 

If you agree to disagree and just not discuss it in the future and your friend still will not communicate with you, I suspect she wasn't that good of a friend in the first place.

Getting upset about an upper case letter is pretty petty in my opinion.

There are other things in life you have in common and enjoy together like movies, theater, coffee, books, etc. If this person cannot be friends with you due to a subject that is now off-limits, sadly it might be time to walk away. It is her loss, not yours.

You've gone the extra mile and extended a hand of friendship.  She has chosen not to reciprocate. 

Remember junior high and how catty kids are? "If you are going to be friends with her, I don't like you any more." Sounds like the same thing.

I lost a friend once from criticizing their religion. He was a seventh day adventist and I told him how it started as a cult and the leader said that jesus would return like three times and then finally he said that jesus did return but he was invisible.

I think the important thing is you have to be true to yourself and your own feelings about it. If you can't say what you really think to the person then you can't have a real friendship.

You don't have to be really blunt, but you should be able to give your honest opinion in a tactful way. 

It's very possible this really is mostly about pain.  She has a cadre of physical ailments that grind her down.  I'm not going to quit on her just yet. 

It's also possible she never read my suggestion (agree to disagree) because she was afraid of being whacked over the head again with my rationality stick.  Reality can be a bitch.  It's tough to deal with the cold, hard facts.  Sometimes I want to just crawl under a rock, you know?

I know she hasn't read some of my e-mails because I asked for a read receipt for the last several I've sent.  I also sent her an e-card she never picked up. 

Yes, I know.  And we didn't speak for well over a year once because I just couldn't take any more.  We never did talk about what caused the falling out, which probably isn't healthy, either.  I never read her last tirade against me.  I only caught a few comments out of the corner of my eye before I erased it from my hard drive and threw the hard copy in the trash.  I saw the comment about the capitalization of "god" and her suggestion that I look in the mirror (I do that a lot already).  I asked my therapist at the time to read it and he suggested a borderline personality disorder.  I sometimes run pretty close to that myself, but I want to get better. *shrug*  As for the note, I didn't see what good reading it would do, so I threw it away. 

I'm not exactly well-endowed with friends, so I'm not ready to cut her off again.  I'm going to send that first e-mail again--the one about my shutting the fuck up--this time requesting a "read receipt."  If she doesn't read it, there's nothing I can do about it.  If she doesn't respond to that, I guess I won't worry about it anymore.

Yeah, I fucked up when I vented in her direction.  She wasn't going to understand what it's like to be an atheist after a lifetime of brainwashing, what it's like to pretty much stand alone against a tide of fundies.  She was the wrong person at the wrong time and she will always be the wrong person at the wrong time. Mistake made.  Mistake acknowledged.  But I can only try not to do it again. If she can't accept my apology and my attempt to shut my fucking trap, that's just the way it goes, I guess.

At this point it's looking like I lost yet another friend because of my atheism. Yeah, I shouldn't have shot off my mouth, but I did try to make amends.  Looks like a no-go.

Gee, thanks irrational god belief.

I have also lost friends because my non belief clashed with their beliefs. There was one in particular...funny really...

I was talking with a friend, old enough to be my father, and I got a firm hold of his bible, and held it up like a "fire and brimstone" preacher would, and said "THIS (emphasizing the bible with all caps) is the source for the most wide spread and deeply embedded BRAINWASHING to have EVER happened on this planet!"

Well that was the end of that friendship....for a while. Then we were friends again but this time I took to talking to his preacher friends when they came into the store, and we were on the outs again....lol Then I call the old man up (about a year later/this Dec) for good service people for my washer and car tires (got awesome deals on those btw), and now we're talking again, but I just don’t want to hang out with him anymore. Maybe sometimes I might swing by his store for a few minutes, but nothing like the hour or more it used to be.

oye 

Vastet, this is my problem, too, only I have brought it up on my own a few times. Instead of getting more laid back, I'm getting more pissed.

A couple of years ago I was attending a protest of the war in Iraq and a fat red-headed lady missionary from Australia came up and told us that the war was okay because so many Iraqis were coming to Je-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ezus.

Everyone else held their tongue, but not me. I was livid. I told her that religion caused problems and didn't solve them, that the families of the dead weren't happy we had invaded, that I had been a Christian for twenty-one years and was very, very glad I was now an atheist. She actually came up and laid hands on me!

If I hadn't been representing a peace group, I think I might have decked her. I later learned that she had technically assaulted me. I oh-so-wanted to take her to court. She was a visible part of the community because she was making the rounds at churches. But I was representing the peace group and I didn't want them to get the bad press that was sure to result.

My therapist at the time told me I had done the wrong thing by speaking up, that everyone else was smart to just ignore the lady. For awhile I tried to shut the fuck up, but I just got more pissed.

Also, I am NOT a pacifist. I think most wars are completely stupid, but my morals don't exactly line up with those of the peace group. For example, I play violent video games. Once that little piece of info was out, I didn't feel terribly welcome in the peace group, either. (Most of those having a fit about violent movies and violent video games were also Christians.) I just want the fucking war in Iraq to stop. In the meantime, no pixels are harmed when I play my first-person shooters.

I really don't "fit in" anywhere it seems. *shrug* I'm not religious and I can't swallow the dogma of the peace group, either. I just want the war to end. At the same time, I'm more of a liberal than a libertarian because of my experiences as a disabled person. (I notice there are a lot of libertarians on this board.) There is no real safety net for people like me. I'm forced to rely on fundy family for my life. It's getting VERY old...I don't know what to do.

I consider myself very lucky to have ONE friend that is an outspoken atheist like myself.  It gives me just enough fuel to speak out.  Plus, coming here has helped immensely.  (My husband is not outspoken but does consider himself an atheist).

I haven't even had this friend for a long time, only about a year.  I'm sorry that your friendship maybe lost, Iruka, but I don't think you need to give up on her either. The majority of my friends are xtain, agnostic theist, or irrational in other ways such as using crystals to answer questions.  I just don't say anything to them unless I feel like hearing all their bullshit that supports their beliefs.  

I guess I just think that this forum is different than real life in that we can really get our voice heard.  Face to face with friends, I just don't bring it up unless it is brought up around me and even then I tend to keep it unconfrontational.  We only live this life once and I think we should not waste any moments on lying to our friends but if they are so reliant on their irrationality then we could just write them off or try to live with it.

I came to the same conclusion on my own and fired him.  He called himself an optimist and me a pessimist.  I privately thought of him as delusional.  He was a theist, after all. 

Yeah, I actually don't think I would have hit her.  Pushing sounds good.  If it ever happens to me again, I might do that.  (And believe me, it isn't out of the question considering the shenanigans that go on around here.)

Something worse happened several years ago and I still didn't strike out.  The short story is I caught a woman beating the crap out of her baby and got in her face.  There were other witnesses to the abuse and to my confrontation.  I was much younger, much thinner and not as physically ill so I found myself wanting her to hit me so I could smack her a good one.  All she did was call me names until the police arrived.  Bummer.

Yeah, it's one of the reasons I don't want Hillary as the Dem candidate.  There were real people getting blown away and she wasted the Senate's time over Grand Theft Auto, the video game.  *eyes roll*

Hell yeah.  I'm playing an older game right now: Aliens vs. Predator 2.  I'm getting a pretty cheap thrill out of playing as the predator and collecting "trophies."  I'm taking out my aggression on the pixels so I won't take it out on real people.   Judging by my reaction to the mother beating her kid, I think my control is--was?--pretty good.  I might be getting shorter-tempered, however, so I'll watch it.

I know, but people have a hard time accepting who I am.  Being an out-of-the-closet atheist in America means having two strikes against you.  Add in a fundy / bushbot family on whom you're reliant and a mostly fundy / bushbot community and it gets really hard to find anyone who accepts you.

Yeah, me too.  I've thought about it a lot.  The only suggestion I've received recently I'd already thought of and rejected: Move to a country with a better safety net.

Now, what country in its right mind would accept a dreg of the USA?  Plus, moving to another country is out of the question when you have to get someone to drive you to an appointment that's only two hours away because you know you'll be too fatigued to drive home.

Yeah, I'm using second person a lot.  Sue me. :P 

Wow.  It's been a month and I am still getting the cold shoulder.  I think I will probably have to suck it up and write this person off. 

I honestly tried to bridge the rift.  I admitted I shouldn't have mouthed off.  I told her I'd really try not to do it again.  I've e-mailed her numerous times and even Skyped her at home. 

The odd thing is she hasn't even said there's a problem.  She said she's been in pain.  That's probably true, but I doubt she would ignore me for a month over pain.  I think I may have precipitated an existential crisis.  She wasn't and isn't ready to listen to reason.

Then again, I could be totally wrong.  But if everything is fine, why has she answered only one of my numerous e-mails? 

That's a good point: She hasn't even mentioned the religion thing.  Considering the fact I sent the same apologetic e-mail twice, she should at least have told me whether or not she was offended.  If she blows up at me, I don't know if I'll be able to remain calm. 

Your friend sounds a lot like my cousin...my poor, gullible cousin. 

My cousin was raised fundy, like me, but she wasn't indoctrinated as completely as I was.  She says that her experiences at the xian school fucked her up the most.  She only went for a few years, but I can certainly agree with her that xian school is terrible.  I went to fundy school from grade 2 through grade 12.  Barf.   My cousin doesn't think her family was all that bad.  Mine was.  I don't know why she confides in my mother so often.  My mother is religiously insane.

Anyway, my cousin experiments with tarot cards, seances, spells--anything that will give her a sense of meaning.  A couple of days ago, I watched the first part of a movie she had recommended and promptly forgot to eat my lunch.  My jaw ended up on the floor and by the time I remembered lunch, it was cold.

The movie is called The Secret and it's all this New Age crap about the "Law of Attraction."  My bullshit-o-meter was going off the scale.  

While my lunch got cold I wrote my cousin an e-mail:

Hi XXXXX,

I believe this movie is a complete scam.  There are no gods, no ghosts, no woo-woo New Age attraction vibrations.  The natural world is all there is and science is the key to understanding it. You don’t need more of what, in my opinion, is no better than Christian fundamentalism.  The message has changed, but the shysters are still there, ready to waste your time and/or money....

I encourage you to pick up some books on logic and critical thinking. (Dawkins’ latest, The God Delusion is pretty good.  He mostly focuses on the concept of god, but also addresses other areas of fuzzy thinking.)  Come hang out with me at The Rational Response Squad.  Mostly we debate theists about the idea of god, but there’s a whole section of other crazy ideas that need to be challenged.

Check this out: http://www.skepdic.com/news/newsletter71.html

“The Law of Attraction is a New Age belief that one's mental disposition attracts similar external circumstances and events. In other words, your mental intentions and attitudes draw people and things of like intention and attitude to yourself. On one level this is trivially true. We generally hang out with people who think like us and share our values and we avoid people who disagree with us on important matters and don't share our values. But a moment's reflection should reveal that this ‘law’ lacks truthiness.

“Grieving vulnerable people don't attract vulnerable people; they attract vultures and vampires who take advantage of their grief. If you say that grief and greed are both negative so this example supports the law of attraction, then this law is impossible to test. It's too slippery to have any meaningful content if obvious contradictions to it are said to support it. When kindness begets not more kindness but resentment, a New Age defender of this ‘law’ can always claim that the kindness wasn't genuine. “

Take Care,

Laura

P.S.  It’s all about rationality.

I hope I don't have another reaction like the one that just ended a friendship.  Oy! 

Still no word and I can't help thinking about it.  Even though this is an Internet friend, I can't help but compare it to the way my life is going, in general.

My voice teacher is new to the area.  She has already been told to be careful what she says and does because things in this county have a way of getting around to everyone.  It's too late for me.  Everyone knows I'm an unapologetic atheist and it has caused problems.  Lots of problems.   My voice teacher has advised me to be careful what I say.  It's a little too late for that.

I'm being shunned.  Yeah, it hurts.  

If everything in his email is true, this gal sounds like she needs serious professional help.  (He must love her a lot to put up with all that.)

Wouldn't check her email because she was afraid there would be one from you?  All she had to do was delete it without reading it.  That's pretty odd, don't you think?

That strikes me as even more odd because if that were true, you would be in agreement.

It seems that he's asking you to call again, but never to bring up religion (or lack thereof) again because it will "set her off".  Would you be able to do that?  Is her friendship important enough to you that you would never mention the subject matter again?

If so, you might think about giving her one more chance.  Keep in mind, there's no telling what might set her off the next time.