I remember when believers
Showed a missionary zeal
They would meet you at your doorstep
Just to show you God was real
They would go to other countries
Cos they had to spread the word
They might learn a different language
To be certain they were heard
They attended church on Sundays
With their families in tow
They thought Jesus was the answer
And they had to let you know…
It was holy obligation
They believed they had no choice
Since your soul hung in the balance,
Why, they had to raise their voice
If you thought it was annoying
That’s a chance they’d have to take
Cos you had to hear the message
For your soul’s salvation’s sake
Though it sometimes strained relationships
And sometimes cost them friends
Their obnoxious means were justified
By God’s eternal ends
Yes, they trampled foreign cultures
And they treated them like dirt
But they spread across the planet
Finding peoples to convert
We remember them as heroes,
Brave explorers, righteous souls
And we didn’t often question,
So accepted were their goals
But these atheists are different
Cos they’ll get right in your face
With their “evidence” and “reason”
As they try to make their case
It’s a shameful situation
It’s a rude and thoughtless act
Such an arrogance, denying
What the faithful see as fact
It’s a forced indoctrination
It’s a form of pure abuse
It’s an antisocial act for which
There’s really no excuse
Could you live with such a monster?
Could you marry (God forbid!)?
We would never act so hatefully—
Except, of course… we did.
It’s the return of the Straw Atheist! This time, an abusive monster in the form of a hypothetical atheist man married to a quiet and well-mannered 51-year old hypothetical believer, in the article Can You Live with an Atheist?
She believes; he does not.
She attends religious services; he does not.
She is afraid to bring up the topic, because he literally gets in her face and screams like, well, the devil incarnate.
She is driven to tears because she cannot come home to him anymore.
She is quiet and does not try to convert him or anyone else; this is a new and private spiritual journey she is on, after many years of turmoil and stress and anxiety in her life. This new way makes her happy, calms her, gives her life renewed purpose at 51-years old.
He is getting more and more animated, growing nearly violent by throwing things about and slamming things down, all the while shouting about superstition and opium of the masses.
Hell, I couldn’t live with him, either. (Oh, but do go read the continuing story–you’ll love the punch line, and its setup.)
Fortunately, all six comments as of this writing are calling the author out for one reason or another–anecdotes of happy marriages, statistics on marriage success by belief, and perhaps most importantly, reminding the author that the problem here is abuse, not atheism.
I’ve known more families torn apart by conflicting religions than by conflicts between his generic “believer” and atheism. (She “believes”; in what? My sister-in-law believed, but had to convert to a different belief to marry her husband.) Mere anecdotes, of course, but still… Complaining about atheist proselytizing by writing a paper that is proselytizing is pretty cool.