My own theory of why atheist relationships scare people: personal or political

[lindysalsagal]

Reading a lot about atheism lately, (atheist all my life), and hearing about political identifications, and also reading about relationships, a common thought just came to me:

Religion and political party assignments and group identifications all offer short-cuts to pseudo-relationship. They’re easier, but shallow.

Religious and political group identifications allow the feeling of connection without the risk of a true, personal, emotional exchange. It’s a pseudo-relationship.

For instance, I was looking at a photo online of a woman with Bernie at a podium, both smiling. The tagline is: “ Voters warm to the idea of atheist political leaders.” Or something to that effect.

The assumption is that it’s easier to identify with religious candidates because the group has paved the way for the leaders to say what the followers have been programmed to hear.

And it struck me that, “of course, the easier route is to just follow your particular tribe and follow your assigned leader, rather than really understanding the issues and how each candidate would address them.” This woman in this photo had her own, true emotional feelings for this potential leader. There isn’t a political action committee telling us that if we don’t support Bernie, we’ll go to hell. She just likes him!

But the same goes for the personal relationships: Because the woman at the podium wasn’t required by her tribe to support him, she chose him for entirely personal, emotional reasons, and the look on his face reflects his understanding of this: They’re sharing true understanding and emotional bonding, that was not staged or established by the surrounding societal structure. Those smiles reflected real feelings. She feels he’s really heard her true personal concerns, and he’s ready to address them. He feels like his message has been appreciated by her and the other people at the event. But instead of it being the party line, it’s Bernie’s own personal take on things, not something a large group fed to him.

If you drop your other biases and expectations and group afilliations and just bond with another for your own true, emotional reasons, the relationship will be more personal and fulfilling and lasting. But it will require a more personal risk: Instead of each of you using the other to promote your group ideology and afilliation, each person would risk real rejection in a very personal and emotional way. The relationship requires revealing your true, inner self, because you’re not just going along with the group-think. It’s up to you to be available as you are, not as your group tells you to be. If you get dumped, it will be the real you that was rejected.

When you get involved with another religious person because he/she validates your group ideology and identity, you aren’t risking much at all, because the relationship isn’t really about the real you or the real other person: It’s about your shared ideological identifications. It’s a pseudo-relationship but it’s easier. Less risk, but I would also argue, with shallow rewards. (Insert Duggar and Palin family anecdotes here.)

So, when an atheist is presented to you, there isn’t this group institutionalized glue bringing you together: Atheists are free to think whatever they want, so there’s no predicting what an atheist will think or feel. There’s no puzzle piece that needs filling:

Instead, you’ll have to reveal your true self, and operate in a state of emotional vulnerability. It’s more difficult, because it’s real. There’s no dogma leading you down their garden path: You make your own path, and don’t know where it will lead ahead of time. It’s not MacDonald’s, it’s home-made and unknown.

Just a few different internet posts that brought me to a common understanding: I've been a free-thinking atheist all my life and I take it for granted and it seems like normal operating procedure to me: I require no crystal ball to tell me what the future will look like: I take it as it comes. Not scary to me.

But those who adhere to religious doctrine feel very insecure without the inflated tubes keeping the bowling balls out of the gutter.

In short, religous adults are playing emotional relationship gutter-ball.

[Binkie The Clown]

1. Seems to make a lot of sense to me.

Tribal identity, and the need to establish membership in the tribe may go back to basic survival instincts. If you are in good standing with the tribe you will get a share of the hunt, and have assistance building your hut, or grinding your corn, or fighting off the menacing predator. But if you don't fit in, if you make other members of the tribe uncomfortable, or are different from them, this threatens their own sense of tribal identity and the impulse is to force you to conform to tribal norms, or failing that, to banish you from the tribe. Once you are without your support network, the tribe, you face a very real risk of starving or being eaten by a predator. So our brains are hard-wired with the urge to belong and to fit it.

Free-thinking individuals are probably a very recent mutation, made possible by civilization, so in a sense, we atheists are mutant misfits who others, non-mutants, are liable to see as strange, peculiar, "other", etc. I'm glad I live in a society where I can safely be a strange, peculiar mutant misfit.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. Basing your life on facts scares a lot of people.

They like to be told what to think, as they can absolve themselves of personal responsibility and say "God did it" or "it was God's will" no matter how terrible it was, such as a person's death in a natural disaster, or how good it was, like living through a natural disaster.

Atheists tend to base their actions on science and observable facts, not wishful thinking. Wishful thinking ignores causality, or inserts causality where there is none. Like random occurrences are credited to praying for something.

That is a lot tougher than saying "it's god's will".

I KNOW the sun will come up in the morning; where and when can be calculated. It's math on the celestial sphere. No wonder Apollo was the Sun God. The Sun is certainly more reliable than a sky daddy.

I live in a very conservative area. If you don't go to one of a few Protestant churches, you have no social life. People invite you to their church to be friendly. And if I say, "We're Unitarians. We go to a church that draws from many different spiritual traditions," they don't understand that because they are so programmed to believe their church is the only true church, whether it's an established denomination with actual seminaries, or an independent church with a stupid, uneducated half-assed preacher.

I was raised Presbyterian. They are liberal and educated and don't berate people with commercials for Jesus. When I first ran into Jesus freaks in high school I was horrified. I learned a lot about religion from my mandatory religion courses at the Presbyterian college I graduated from. They were not about doctrine. They were about sociology and psychology of religion and history. I got an excellent liberal arts education there.

Right down the road at Incarnate Word College, the religion courses were about sacraments and doctrine and catechism. Very different. Indoctrination, not expanding your mind with fundamental questions like why we have religion in the first place.

[nil desperandum]

6. Facts indeed scare people, no where to hide behind as you state...

[Curmudgeoness]

3. “Voters warm to the idea of atheist political leaders.”

Putting that caption on a photo of Bernie is dishonest. From all that I have read, Bernie is not identifying as an atheist. He has stated that he does believe in a god, just not the traditional way that most people see god. That is not an atheist. But I am sure that those opposed to Bernie want to put that label on him.

But back to your OP, I do think that atheists are a "tribe". We have something to bind us together. However, we don't have enough atheists for us to bond with in the political theater. We do put that out of the equation when we are selecting who to support, although I will say that a hard core religionist would not get my vote. We do evaluate on other issues.

[AlbertCat]

4. We have something to bind us together.

But...it being a "lack" of something....a belief in a god... it is not as binding as having something...even if its imaginary. And of course there are many rituals and ceremonies to keep it all stuck together.

[Curmudgeoness]

5. I was thinking of this group

as a "binding" experience, even if it isn't a church or meeting house. This place is the rope that binds.