It’s Okay Not To Believe

I have been liv­ing in North Amer­ica long enough by now to real­ize that reli­gion — any reli­gion — and faith in gen­eral is quite impor­tant here.

Reli­gion has never been a part of my life. I grew up in an athe­ist fam­ily. My grand-mother’s father was proudly dis­play­ing his lack of faith in the small vil­lage he grew up in, at a time where it was not that com­mon to not believe in the big bearded guy above. A famous story goes that one day, the priest climb on the parish’s roof because he wanted to fix a miss­ing tile. His lad­der fell and, stuck on the roof, he called for help. My great-grand-father was nearby and taunted him:

– This is as close to Heaven that you are ever going to get!

This still makes my grand-mother laugh. Well, I assume he even­tu­ally helped the poor guy, but you get my point. We are a fam­ily of sin­ners. Proud sin­ners on top of that.

So, when I came to North Amer­i­can, I first had to over­come a few prej­u­dices. In France, there is a strong anti-cult law. As a result, French are extremely for­eign to any reli­gion that is not plain Roman Chris­t­ian, Judaism, Bud­dhism or Islam. Try it: next time you go to France, men­tion to your waiter, taxi dri­ver or fel­low train pas­sen­ger that you are an Angli­can, a LDS or what­ever, and see their eyes widen as they mut­ter some­thing like “poor you”.

How to define a cult and reli­gion — don’t ask me. The fact is that in North Amer­ica, there seem to be more reli­gions than soda brands and I’m okay with that. After all, why not? Believe in what makes you feel good.

What I have a really big prob­lem with is proselytism.

The other day, once again, I opened the door to see a woman and man stand­ing in front of me. The con­ver­sa­tion we had was quite surreal:

– Hi! (star­ing at me from head to toes) You are not Chinese.

Indeed, I’m not. Glad we could agree on some­thing — this is so rare these days.

– Do you have a Chi­nese per­son at home?

I wish I had replied some­thing witty, such as “no, it’s my Indian day”, but I was too sur­prised for that. Taken aback, I said that yes, a had a Chinese-Canadian Feng. Did these guys had superpowers?

– Is he here? We would like to talk to him about Jesus.

When I assured them that 1) he wasn’t there 2) he really wasn’t into Jesus (he likes the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers and U2 bet­ter), they didn’t believe me and told me they would be back. Can’t wait.

They never both­ered intro­duc­ing them­selves (I couldn’t see their name tags) and I didn’t have a chance to see their flyer’s title. Guess I wasn’t Jesus worthy.

Since I live in Canada, at least 30 peo­ple tried to con­vert me. But to me, going door to door try­ing to explain peo­ple they are going to hell is about as use­less as a tele­mar­keter who is call­ing at 11:00 pm to sell AIG stocks. How does shov­ing your beliefs in my face is going to make the world a bet­ter place?

And why this need to con­vince peo­ple your reli­gion is best?

Note that I have noth­ing against reli­gion. I’m indif­fer­ent, the same way I’m indif­fer­ent to golf, darts, curl­ing and the Twi­light movie. I don’t even care whether God exist or not. We are talk­ing about pros­e­lytism and free­dom of choice here.

I have never been a mil­i­tant athe­ist. I respect var­i­ous reli­gious beliefs: to each his own. But I do feel I belong to a minor­ity in North Amer­ica and my posi­tion as an athe­ist puz­zled quite a few. “Isn’t your life point­less?” “Is there such a thing as athe­ist moral­ity?” “You just haven’t found God yet!”.

Give. Me. A. Break.

Trust me, it’s hard being an athe­ist in North Amer­ica. Reli­gion isn’t part of pri­vate life: it’s every­where. It both­ered me for a while that pub­lic buses in Ottawa have religious-supported anti-abortion ads. Abor­tion is legal in Canada and although it can be your choice not to go that way if you ever find your­self fac­ing this issue, let oth­ers make up their mind. I don’t like when peo­ple come to my door and try to con­vert me. I’m busy and you are invad­ing my pri­vate space, no mat­ter how nice you are. I don’t like when politi­cians make a big deal of invok­ing God. Of course, they can believe, but their job is to serve cit­i­zens who are bound to believe in many Gods, or no God at all. It both­ers me that moral val­ues are so often asso­ciate with reli­gion: seri­ously, athe­ists have val­ues too!

Recently, an ad was dis­played on buses in Canada and all over the world: “there is prob­a­bly no God, so stop wor­ry­ing and enjoy your life”. It was a humorist and pos­i­tive way to bring aware­ness about athe­ism, human­ism, and sec­u­lar­ism. It was meant in a respect­ful way, with also the idea that churches and var­i­ous reli­gions do adver­tise in the bus, so why not athe­ist? Yet, reli­gious groups claim the state­ment was offen­sive. Come on, guys!

I just wish I didn’t feel like I was walk­ing on eggshells when­ever some­one men­tions reli­gion. Please, let me think freely. And stop try­ing to con­vert me. Or the Chi­nese guy at home.

Related arti­cles:

1. Los­ing My Religion
2. Cig­a­rettes And Creationism
3. Chicken Buses and Jesús
4. Chal­lenge Your Beliefs
5. The Woman in Black