An Atheistic Perspective

Hi,

I'm a liberal Christian so can't and won't try to speak for atheists. What I would say is that I hang out on the Philosophy Forum a bit,and there's a very strong atheist crowd out there. I'd recommend doing a bit of lurking around the philosophy of religion sections, which should give you some idea of how wide the differences are between different flavours of atheists and agnostics etc.

For the most part though, I suspect people are people, and except for those who are extremely staunch on one side of the belief or the other, people don't worry too much about the issue unless its raised by someone else.

Cheers.

 

Hi Anonym,

I'm deeply shocked by your gastronomic foolishness. Everyone knows that babies are light meat and so go better with a fruit sauce like apple, or mint jelly!

Cheers.

 

I'd recommend reading some Sam Harris--or watching clips of him speaking publicly about atheism on YouTube. He's articulate and level-headed.

 

When I was in high school, I used to be an atheist. Lately I realized it's not that I didn't believe in God so much as I didn't care about it.

Today, I consider myself a pragmatic atheist. Basically, what that means is that I simply don't get too hung up over God's existence or lack of thereof.

The wikipedia article on it is called Apatheism if I remember correctly.

I understand that to some people the existence of God or not is a big deal, but to me, personally...it isn't. If there is a God, cool. If there isn't, eh I'll survive. No point in asking.

I have met many people who share a less extreme version of my viewpoint, and tend to classify themselves as agnostic.

It is hard to put on words, but I'll do my best to answer your questions.

An atheist thinks "this feels great!" but does not thank God for it. For example, when I won a fencing tournament some time ago, my first thought was "YESSSSSSSSSSSS" followed by thanking my friends, who helped me practice, and my coach.

Don't worry too much about it. Atheists are just like you, only they don't believe in God. In fact, atheists sometimes act like they love life more than religious people do, because they believe once you die, that's it. No afterlife. There are stoic people, of course, but not every atheist is stoic.

Atheists generally don't bring emotion into a religious argument. The general motivator behind an atheist's atheism is a loud, unyielding, never stopping roaring of "eh" in his heart. If they are writing a book, then they do appear to be heated(or truly are heated) as those are the books that usually get published. But generally what you need to know about atheists is that they live their life thanking and blaming humans. While a religious person thanks God when things go right, an atheist would thank a friend, or just be proud of doing it all by himself.

Hope I helped and that I wasn't insensitive while answering any questions.

 

Thank you ALL for your input. I've found it revealing and informative. As a person whose life has been enveloped by religion, there are still some concepts I find it difficult to wrap my head around, just as some of you may find it hard to wrap your head around how someone can thank God for certain things.

The character I have in mind for the atheist is turning out to be somewhat of an arrogant prick, unfortunately. My main character tends to be a laid back kind of guy, though, so it takes an arrogant prick to ruffle his feathers. Otherwise he'd just brush it off. Perhaps the atheist will mellow out after some time, since I don't want to portray the Christians in my book as victimized and level-headed, and the atheists as bullies and emotional powder kegs.

My process is often to start writing a character and get all of the presumptions out of the way. For the atheist, that may mean writing some material that won't make it into the book, simply to get him to a point where he can mellow out. Once I've got a grasp on his mellow personality, I can rewrite the confrontation from a more accurate and even perspective.

 

I don't really have anything to offer from the atheist perspective (I'm a practicing Christian, too, or at least one that needs a lot of practice), but a suggestion would be to write a few chapters, a profile, or even a character interview with this atheist character, something that really shows him/her off. Then have one or two atheists look over how he/she is shown. Maybe they can offer advice and help you fine-tune the character before you go through the hard work of writing an entire book featuring him/her.

 

What if you instead made both of them utterly reasonable, but gave them strongly opposed opinions on some issue, and let that produce the conflict?

For example, I have zero problem with people practicing their religion, but I do have a problem with them imposing that religion on others. And when government engages in specific religious-linked practices, I tend to see that as an imposition of religion.

If you made your atheistic character feel even more strongly about this, maybe you could create some religious situation - a Christmas tree in City Hall, to find a really simplistic one - that both characters feel very strongly about, one for and one against. They could both be very reasonable, rational, mellow, laid-back guys, guys who would even be friends otherwise, but both with deeply held opposing opinions on this issue.

I'm suggesting this because if you have trouble identifying with an atheist, then creating one that is also an obnoxious jerk produces, IMO, a huge risk of creating a nasty stereotype. I think that you'd be stacking the deck in favor of a realistic depiction of this problematic-to-you character if you made him perfectly rational and reasonable.

ChickenFreak

 

ChickenFreak,

That's essentially what I'll be doing. Part of my writing process is to simply begin writing, which often leads to a great deal of bad writing. It's unfortunate, but often times I simply have to get the bad writing "out of my system" before I can get to useful material. Consequently, I'm searching for that point where the atheist mellows out to a level comparable to my main character, at which point I can begin writing him in a more realistic manner.

I have crafted one such scenario about which both men feel very strongly, and it has to do with their feelings on the death penalty (the main character is very strongly for it, while the other is very strongly against it). The atheist, knowing my main character's religion, asks him how he can justify killing a man for a crime. That discussion rabbit trails into an argument about God, thus setting the stage for the two to not get along, as things are said on both sides that could be considered ad hominem attacks.

Tentatively, I'm also playing with the idea of cementing their very fragile relationship by showing that even though the men disagree and dislike one another, they are willing to save one another from death. Of course, I'm also keeping in mind that the atheist is not the primary antagonist, and thus the book is not a religious debate. I simply need the atheist to provide conflict for my main character.

 

To the OP: It seems to me that you/your character believe in God, but don't like organized religion. I know lots of people like this. It's one thing to believe in a higher power who holds us accountable, guides us, watches out for us and provides an afterlife, but a different thing to go by doctrines and rulebooks and religious leaders telling people how to live, etc. Many people have both, and many have the former without the latter. Also, I know many people who believe in a higher power, but don't like any of the established religions because of certain views of theirs (i.e. hell, the rules/viewpoints they don't agree with etc).

I agree with the people who've said that it probably won't come up all the time. No one who I know who's an atheist goes around making a huge deal of it. People tend to keep religious beliefs to themselves unless someone else asks.