Do atheists drink more alcohol, curse more, or do immoral things more?
So this all depends on your definition of what "bad" means. Ya, some atheists are going to drink. I know some atheists who don't drink at all.
But some atheists drink. In moderation. I hope that's what everyone does.
Do atheists swear?
Uh ya, I've heard atheists swear, and I probably wouldn't hear that at church. But in the atheists' world anyway, and not everyone agrees with this, but in the atheist world I mean for the most part it's more of a free speech thing you know.
Say how you feel. It's not like any word is good or bad, it's all about the intention of the word. Don't call someone a bad name. Because that doesn't add to your argument.
But if you say a swear, hopefully, you mean it, you know. And this is something stand-up comedians like George Carlin have been saying for a long time.
The words are not bad, don't censor the words. It's about how you use them and what the intentions are. And the same thing applies when we talk about sex.
Ya, atheists are probably more likely to talk about sex. To talk about what safe sex is, and what their own interests are. Those are not conversations you ever see in a lot of church environments because they just think the whole topic is taboo and they don't talk about it at all.
So I think that I appreciate that atheists have this open mind and open spirit when it comes to these sorts of topics because we can debate whether something is good or bad or right or wrong and there's not one clear-cut answer to this.
But I promise you for every single thing that we get stereotyped as doing, drinking cursing, sleeping around, whatever, there are plenty of atheists who don't do any of those things.
And the people who do it probably have very good reasons for why they do it. It's not because they're sinners, it's not because they're immoral.
They could justify to you why they're doing the things that they do. I think what it tells me is if you think someone is being bad because they're doing those things, why don't you have a conversation with them and talk to them about it.
And what I hear from Christians a lot is that not that they want to do any of those things necessarily, but that they don't even have a safe space to talk about those sorts of things.
So I definitely appreciate that about the 'atheist culture' which is that these things are not taboo topics. We can discuss them, we can debate them, and it's not a problem.
Originally published by Hemant Mehta on the Atheist Voice. Published on Fadewblogs by Dave Martin.
Disclaimer: This article is published on Fadewblogs with the permission of the author.