I’m sorry, I just had to do it.

A few weeks ago, one of my coworkers randomly asked me whether I prayed as I passed by her desk.

Now, I’m a raging atheist, but I had to consider her feelings in my response.  After all, you only ask people to pray if someone is dying or sick.  How could I tell her that prayer is what lazy fools do in place of action in a polite way?

I paused for a moment, and then I said, “Erm, no.”

“Oh?  Why not?” she said, her curiosity piqued.

Normally this is where I would say, “Oh, because I don’t waste my time on foolish things,” but I had to restrain myself.  Afterall, I can’t alienate my coworkers with my seething rage at religious claptrap.  I already alienate them enough with my unruly facial hair and exotic body odors.

“Well, I don’t really believe in God,” I said.  As soon as I said this, I almost felt psychic, because I could suddenly predict exactly how she would respond.  This is, after all, how every religious person responds to someone who has just admitted he does not believe in God.

“What? Why not?!”

Why this is the universal response to expressed disbelief in God confuses me.  I mean, when I meet random people who tell me they believe in God, I don’t stare at them, jaw agape, saying, “WHAT?! WHY?!”

At this point, I really wanted out of the conversation.  Having a theological debate in the workplace is almost never a good idea.  So I did what anyone else would do in my position.  I lied.

“Oh, I don’t know why.  I just don’t think about it that much.”

I then promptly walked away really fast to the furthest point in the building from her desk, huddled into a corner in the fetal position, and cried.  I write a fucking skeptical blog where I routinely mock religion and proclaim my atheism loudly, and I told her that I “don’t think about it that much”.  Wow.  If I had been hooked up to a lie detector (and if accurate lie detectors actually existed), it would have exploded from the strain after I said that.

The good news is, however, that I avoided any conflict!  But maybe I should have just went on one of my atheistic rants.  I can’t imagine that endearing me to anyone in my workplace, though.  No, I’ll just have to settle for expressing myself with skeptical bumper stickers on my cubicle wall and occasionally expressing disdain for herbal medicine.  Still, though, I feel guilty, almost like I’m going to some sort of atheist hell, where I’d be tormented by Richard Dawkins poking me with a pitchfork, for so baldly lying about the extent of my atheism.

Of course, if this had happened outside of work, I would have felt much more free to rant at length about it.  I can’t wait until the day it is no longer considered inappropriate to criticize religion!  In this future utopia of rainbows and puppies, you can express disbelief and no one bats an eye, much less feel offended that you have a mind of your own and have different ideas and beliefs!  But alas, this is pure fantasy!