"To err is human. To really screw things up, you need religion." -?

I see a lot of arguments for religion on the internet that really just make me want to bash my head against the wall. There appears to be a certain type of theist that can be seen all around the web. Over time, I have mentally accumulated the majority of these arguments inside of my head. (Pascal’s wager, first cause, design, etcetera.)

I had figured that, should I ever be in an argument in the real world, I would be pretty well-versed because I’d come across all of these things. However, this wasn’t quite the case. It seemed more like debaters were segregated by whether or not they appeared online. On the internet, I saw the things italicized above. In person, I heard more personal things, pertaining to feelings and experience.

If you’ve read older posts, you’d know that I am brought — against my will — to church every Sunday morning. As a minor, sixteen years old, there is nothing I can do about it if I want to see the light of day. Yesterday, the pastor at my mother’s church said something I recognized from the web (was it Ray Comfort?).  The sermon was titled “Adversity Leads to Apostasy” and was part of the series on our horrible, human mindsets. In this sermon that I tried to read a science-themed book through, I discovered that the pastor doesn’t believe in atheists.

From the best I can remember:

These so-called atheists… which I don’t actually believe exist… have this mindset. They couldn’t see God, something was taken away, and they cursed God to his face. I don’t believe atheists exist, though, and the reason for that is because everyone knows. As (I missed the name) said, there are no atheists in foxholes. We’d all be shouting, ‘oh god! Please!’ If you were to take someone to the edge of the Grand Canyon, they’d gasp and say, ‘god, how beautiful.’

So-called atheists know there’s a god. Why else would they spend so much time arguing it?! When they sneeze and are told, ‘god bless you’, they don’t bat an eyelash. If someone were to say, ‘tooth fairy bless you’, that person would be crazy.

I honestly don’t know what to say to people who claim atheists do not exist. I simply feel like I should disappear or something, and let them know I’m leaving so as not to rupture their asinine fantasies.

I don’t speak for other atheists, but I try to avoid this type of thing in general. I say “gesundheit” when somebody sneezes — a wish of good health in German. (If I recall correctly, the phrase “god bless you” originated from the superstition that the devil jumped into your mouth when you sneezed.) When I am in a bad situation that elicits a verbal reaction from me, it is usually a certain thing in gibberish, which is my replacement for curse words. (Like “frigamash”, haha.)

I, personally, find a value in having correct beliefs, and would rather all of my beliefs be true. It saddens me that people don’t care, and that I can’t even get them to so much as question a single thing. I criticize religion because I feel it is wrong to let it slide. Religion can and has caused people to do the wrong thing.

I assume that the pastor does not even know there is an atheist (or, there are atheists, perhaps) mixed into his audience. That, however, does not change that this is rather bigoted. It makes me want to pull my hair out, in all honesty. The ‘desire for god’ is not ‘written on my heart’.