Atheism in the Workplace
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!
September 18th, 2009 at 7:42 PM
I had a similar experience a while back but it was with a client. I drive seniors around to wherever they want to go within the county I live in (I work for a large non-profit in which transportation is only one of many services we provide).
The incident occurred in which I had a book on the floor of my van “Atheism: A Reader” and she asked “What are you reading?”
After revealing the title of the book and that I was an atheist she said: “But you’re such a nice person!”
Surprise. Atheists can be nice people too.
September 18th, 2009 at 8:21 PM
It’s a tragedy that religion is conflated with niceness and atheism with not-niceness. I’m probably contributing to this stereotype by my opinionated remarks about religion in my evolutionary psychology course and I’ve probably offended at least half the class by now. Oh well. At least I won’t be rotting in atheist hell with Richard Dawkins – wait a minute come to think of it an eternity with Dawkins might not be that bad after all.
But yeah, since I’m surrounded on all sides by Christians, my usual response is to just smile and nod… smile and nod… ugghhhh. Your blog’s probably the only reason I’m still sane and not serving time somewhere for genocide.
September 18th, 2009 at 9:06 PM
Why not just say, “I would rather not have a theological discussion at work?”
…”How about over breakfast?”
September 18th, 2009 at 9:35 PM
What I want to know is, why on earth would anyone ask such a question out of the blue? It’s akin to asking “Do you masturbate?” or “Do you think Kanye was right?” She obviously had an agenda and I think it’s perfectly ok to give her “the hand” (either literally or figuratively) in response.
September 18th, 2009 at 9:38 PM
Flavin, I’m sorry—I’m just not as smooth as you!
Jen—I didn’t want to do that because she’s actually not a bad person and I think she’s cool other than the whole making me feel awkward for being an atheist thing!
September 18th, 2009 at 9:39 PM
Liew! So was that YOU causing all those genocides when I took a long break from blogging?!
September 19th, 2009 at 1:11 AM
And here I am, feeling like a total shit because after years of prodding “Why don’t you go to church? What do you believe?” I calmly and rationally explained to my parents why I am an atheist. And now my mother has told my sister “I don’t think I believe in god anymore.” And my father is dying. And I feel like I have stripped from them this hope of meeting again in some afterlife, and I wish more than anything that I had simply continued to hedge. Should I have been more compassionate, if less honest? Can we ever hope for rational thought to overcome our need to believe, if not for our sakes, then for the sake of our loved ones?
September 19th, 2009 at 2:06 AM
i feel that this closeting of atheists in america is something that simply has to stop. the only reason theists have this power is because atheists have given it to them… on a silver platter.
i teach and i work. i don’t discuss religious matters in classroom, but i often have open philosophical discussions with my colleagues… theists and atheists. it’s natural, it’s interesting and it’s pleasant.
if it is illegal in a location, say a school classroom, then i would respond as flavin suggests — ‘i prefer not to discuss this here… so how about elsewhere?’ otherwise, i find that discussing religion ultimately lessens its grip on the local workplace.
so why did your coworker feel it was fine to ask you about your beliefs and you felt it was not? because you allowed this imbalance instead of finding a polite and assertive way to make your thoughts clear.
September 19th, 2009 at 7:09 AM
I’m with Flavin on this one – I always try to have sex with someone before discussing my unbelief system. Softens the blow.
September 19th, 2009 at 8:54 AM
JB:
For some people, this isn’t much consolation, but this helped me come to grips with death after becoming a materialist. It’s from Douglas Hofstadter’s book “I Am A Strange Loop”, which is sort of a follow up to “Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” (yeah, I’m too lazy to add the umlaut).
http://faceaside.com/2009/02/12/quoted-offering-for-es-and-friends.aspx
September 19th, 2009 at 9:14 AM
JB, I actually think that family situations are better for talking about your religious beliefs or lack thereof. I don’t want to talk about atheism at work, simply because it will provoke arguments with people I do not wish to argue with, but family is a different story. Generally family members are more likely to listen to you. When my dad was dying, he asked me whether I believe in God, and I honestly told him that I don’t.
September 19th, 2009 at 9:21 AM
Toomanytribbles, I most certainly am not a closeted atheist. She asked if I believed in God and I told her that I don’t believe in God. So while I am willing to make it known that I disbelieve in the workplace, I’m not about to engage in a theological discussion at work. No one at work tries to preach to me about converting, so I’m not going to preach at them. Now, if the person who asked me why I didn’t believe in God started haranguing me with apologetics and directly initiated such a discussion, I’d certainly feeled compelled to address her. But she didn’t, so I didn’t.
So it’s not really a matter of being a closeted atheist; I just don’t want to get into a vehement discussion about a subject like that at work.
September 19th, 2009 at 4:01 PM
saint gasoline, i realized from your text that you’re not closeted… but too many are.
which is why theists react as they do when they discover an atheist.
September 27th, 2009 at 7:47 PM
I’m feeling terribly guilty right now because someone gave me an advertisement for a bible study meeting and I just smiled and accepted it. What the fuck. I’m not a Christian. I’ve never even BEEN a Christian. I was part of an obscure monotheistic religion for most of my childhood and I’ve never ever been inside of a church at all.
I HATE MYSELF. I HATE AMERICA FOR DOING THIS TO ME. I FEEL LIKE I’M BEING SUFFOCATED BY CHRISTIANS ON ALL SIDES. AAAAHHHH.
I find it sort of insulting that Americans assume that everyone’s a Christian. For Dawkin’s sakes stop thinking that every single person shares your beliefs. I could have been a Buddhist or Taoist or whatever for all they know. GAHH.
October 10th, 2009 at 6:41 PM
Great blog, discovered it via your clever okcupid personality test (I’m a haughty intellectual, 100% rational, and atheist, yes). It’s really funny to witness the battle between USA’s believers and non believers from a europen perspectve. It really is a non issue here where almost nobody anyway will admit to believing in God. It’s like being sent back, say, 400 years back to the outburst at the first claims that Earth wasn’t the center of the universe. To sum up: there’s still some pretty crazy religious shit going on in too many people’s heads in 2009.