Question167

Do you remember the first time you heard the word 'atheist'? If so, how did you feel about it?

• I remember it well. I was 11 years old and had never before come across the concept of atheism. I was totally horrified. But, the idea stayed at the back of my mind percolating away. I started looking for the answers to questions that weren't being answered. Within one year, I was an atheist. I wish I could remember the name of the book where I first learned about it. (Michelle MAlkin #1)

• I remember the first time was in middle school, during religion class. the teacher gave a lesson on the subject. Basically she said that if we let the atheists do what they want society would be ruined and everyone would go to hell, and to prevent that each student had to go out and get people to sign a petition to send to some court case to stop the atheists from taking over the world!!! (Ernest Domenig #1613)

• Not the word atheist no, but the words "Secular Humanist" yes. In church, spoken in tones normally reserved for discussing something disgusting the dog did on the carpet. (Liquid Grace #1752)

• In a Roman Catholic Church as a kid, during a Homily in which the priest lambasted the wickedness of Madalyn Murray O'Hair in getting prayer out of public schools.

  > If so, how did you feel about it?

  I asked my father what the word meant, and when he told me it was someone who didn't believe in God, I thought to myself that she couldn't have been all bad, since I had decided for myself (privately, since I knew it would shock my parents) that I didn't believe silly stuff like that either. (raven1 #1096)

• No, I don't. But I do remember when I first realized that some people (I mean real, flesh-and-blood people, not just some storybook characters) actually *did* believe in god. It happened in second grade and, boy, was it a rude shock. Until then, I thought everyone could think straight, especially when something as trivial as the nonexistence of magic creatures is concerned. So, in a sense, I can say that was when I came to realize the full import of the word atheist-- since that was the first time in my life I became aware of the contrast between "theist" and "atheist" (remember your Structuralism: all meaning is in the contrasts). (Orhan Organ #1867)

• What a great question!

  Seriously, I do remember hearing it from my parents. They acted like it was a bad word. They were self-described agnostics. They followed stories on big foot, the Kennedy assassination and UFOs because anything was possible to them.

  In the effort to be as little like my drugged out parents as possible, I began to look into religions when I was about 7 or 8. I heard atheists in that context as well. It was never a good thing. Being an atheist was akin to being a cockroach in every instance I heard it.

  I soon found that I didn't believe in any religion I looked into. None rang true to me. I never called myself an atheist. Not out loud, not in my head. It was still a bad word in my head. Not consciously, but it was. I never would have used it to describe myself. I eventually came to know that I wasn't even agnostic, but I still did not call myself atheist.

  There came a time when I was pregnant and on bed rest. This was literally flat on your back, bedrest. Even propping myself up made it hard to breath and sitting up was not considered "rest." I had toximia and everyone around me was freaking out.

  I was bored beyond tears and started checking out the internet. (My son will be five this April, so this was almost 6 years ago.) I could only go on when no one was around to see me sitting up. I started checking out religion newsgroups, I was still interested and not ready to say the "a" word. I found alt.atheism and listened in for awhile. It began to make me wonder why I was so against the label "atheist." These people seemed fairly normal. They seemed to be the only other people in the world who were voicing my thoughts on religion.

  I started posting, as Carnivl1 I believe, and learned that it was the only place I had yet to find people who were like myself. It was within the first year here that I began using the word to describe myself, to myself. It took longer to feel ready to say it to other people, the reaction isn't always good. It was within that first year that I started to wonder why all of the other religions and all of the agnostics that I knew personally had tried so hard to make atheism seem so bad. Why put so much venom into their denouncing of atheism? Even more than they put into other religions. For some reason that made me more sure that I was an atheist. I had always had the feeling that others would think that there was something wrong with me for not believing in God. It's like a weapon they use to keep us from going that direction. I may never have truly faced it if I hadn't met other atheists. Now I say that I am an atheist, I refer to myself as a heathen and I don't feel alone in telling people that I don't believe in God. I couldn't do that before I found other atheists. That is why this place exists to me, for all of those people who come here and ask. I needed it because the place was not filled by other people in my life. (ClayeSkye #4)

• I can't remember exactly when I first heard it, but I recall the term being used a lot in conjunction with Communism when I was growing up in the '50s. This was at the start of the Cold War and during the paranoia surrounding the McCarthy hearings. The Russians were often referred to as: "atheistic Communists" or "godless Reds". This I suppose was to differentiate them from us good guys, the "godfearing Americans". At the time, I was attending Catholic school, and to hear the nuns tell it, one would think that atheism was an invention of Karl Marx or Joe Stalin.

  I think that because of this, atheism carried another bad connotation which lingers on even today. Not only does it offend some people's theist sensibilities, but it is also somehow 'foreign'. Remember Papa Bush's comments that atheists can't be considered citizens or patriots?

  I recall that when I first started discussing atheism, I was told that I sounded like a Commie, or to: "Shut up, someone might think that you're a Communist". Of course, that didn't stop me from reading and learning more, and speaking more about the subject. Those were strange times, and I hope that we never go back there. (John Hachmann #1782)

• I honestly can't remember when I first heard the term 'atheist.' IIRC, back when I was trying to be a Christian, there was some talk about 'heathens' and 'godlessness', so I figure if I heard 'atheist' I might've associated it with 'heathen.'

  As far as I can recall, I had already decided that I didn't believe what I was taught as a young child. The only label I knew to put on my position was 'unbeliever', but as soon as I heard about the terms 'agnostic' and 'atheist', I knew that I was definitely an atheist. Obviously it didn't mean that much to me, just a warm little feeling that I had found a more precise term for my position. (Carl Funk #1229)