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Can’t Hide from Religion

Posted on October 4th, 2010 by Staks

Christians often accuse me of being too vocal about my atheism. Some have even claimed that I wear my atheism on my sleeve. While I do have a few atheist t-shirts (maybe three), I rarely wear them except to atheist meetings and meet-ups. Sure I have a bumper sticker, but that really is about it. If people don’t talk religion with me, they might not know I am an atheist. On the other hand, there is no hiding from religion.

Religion is everywhere and you can’t escape it even if you go out of your way to try. How any atheists wear atheist jewelry? Not many. How many Christians wear crucifixes or other religious symbolism? Even those people who aren’t all that devout in their beliefs seem to wear religious jewelry.

There are Church vans and cars with Jesus fish driving around all the time. For every one car with an atheist bumper sticker, there are about 1000 or more Christian bumper stickers. But my bumper sticker is being too vocal about atheism?

How many atheist meeting halls does one pass on a daily basis? Oh none, because most atheist groups don’t have meeting halls and have to meet in libraries, coffee shops, and restaurants. On the other hand, there are churches on almost every other street corner in America.

Atheists have started to put up some billboards in the last few years, but our billboards (despite the controversy surrounding them in the media) are tame compared to the Christian billboards all over the country.

My challenge to people both theist and atheist is to see if you can go one day without religion being in your face in some capacity (without deliberately seeking it out). This challenge will be difficult because you won’t be able to spend any “In God We Trust” money. If theists are interested, they can even try this with atheism and see how much atheism is really in their face. Let us know what you find.