It depends on if they're 'out' about it or not. Do a search on 'atheist student harassed' or 'atheist student protests' and you'll find plenty of articles about entire communities (as in adults as well as fellow students) bullying atheists. Like a school in NC in 2014 that harassed the students who tried to form an atheist school club into giving up. Or the teen who protested the ten commandments being displayed on an Oklahoma campus in 2013. Or the teen who protested a prayer mural on a campus in Rhode Island in 2012. In the 2012 case, even one of the state representatives--a Democrat--got in on it, calling her an 'evil little thing'.
So: If you're quietly atheist and don't call attention to it, and don't mind the occasionally clueless Christian comment about how atheists should shut up and go away (usually dropped into the conversation as if they expect everyone to agree) then you don't get bullied. But if you dare to be proud of it, talk about it, or--most horrifyingly--demand your first amendment rights, then yeah, you'll get bullied. Even in supposed blue states.
For years, I couldn’t walk inside a church. (I was an “out” atheist since third grade). When I finally did, as an accommodation to my significant other, I literally shook. I agree with you 100%.
I have made no friends by pointing out that inside the Kremlin (which is not a building, but a sort of fortified compound) there are no fewer than three cathedrals and two churches. Apparently the atheistic, godless commies forgot to destroy them and so every day they walked out of Commie HQ into Red Square and saw this....https://www.worldatlas.com/...
Is there anyone in your benighted nation that DOESN'T run a ministry? I know it is a tax-dodge, but when everyone is doing it, even the govt must catch on.
I wasn't bullied or alienated at all, I was just slightly "set apart." Joan wasn't bullied or alienated either, but she was also "set apart." We were neither of us friendless at all, we both had good friends in every class and were liked and respected by the teachers and children. There was just an aura of "apart-ness" that is impossible to describe unless you have experienced it. It was the adults who generated this aura - and sometimes they infected the children with it.
Since you have never met me or Joan, you really can't understand what our relationship was. We were probably the two brightest girls in the class, we hung out on the playground together, we acted in school plays together, and we were both in Girl Scouts. We talked all the time. We talked about the apart-ness. I think we both found a certain challenge in making friends OUTSIDE the apart-ness. That is probably another experience that is impossible to describe unless you have experienced it yourself. When you are different, you know you can make friends with the other outsiders because you have things in common and they will accept you, but what challenge is there in that? That is not the battle you want to win. You have to go out into the world and conquer it EVEN THOUGH you are set apart in some way, and the sooner you learn to do that, the better.
You can believe what you like, but you are seeing something in my words that isn't there at all. The idea that I saw Joan as lower than me or she saw me as lower than her ... that is ridiculous, and not what I said at all. And you are wrong about kids not being good at nuance - if they are gifted and articulate, they can be quite good at it.
I live in Denial.
I live in Albaquercus.
I've been washed in the Sap of the Tree.
I miss cherry Fizzies.
True but only the lemon flavored Alka Selzer. Original is kinda bland and chalky tasting.
Depends on who you ask. I'm down with it.
It depends on if they're 'out' about it or not. Do a search on 'atheist student harassed' or 'atheist student protests' and you'll find plenty of articles about entire communities (as in adults as well as fellow students) bullying atheists. Like a school in NC in 2014 that harassed the students who tried to form an atheist school club into giving up. Or the teen who protested the ten commandments being displayed on an Oklahoma campus in 2013. Or the teen who protested a prayer mural on a campus in Rhode Island in 2012. In the 2012 case, even one of the state representatives--a Democrat--got in on it, calling her an 'evil little thing'.
So: If you're quietly atheist and don't call attention to it, and don't mind the occasionally clueless Christian comment about how atheists should shut up and go away (usually dropped into the conversation as if they expect everyone to agree) then you don't get bullied. But if you dare to be proud of it, talk about it, or--most horrifyingly--demand your first amendment rights, then yeah, you'll get bullied. Even in supposed blue states.
For that "Him" I wonder...under 10 perhaps?
Robyn,
For years, I couldn’t walk inside a church. (I was an “out” atheist since third grade). When I finally did, as an accommodation to my significant other, I literally shook. I agree with you 100%.
Millions of his CHOSEN people, according to the first half of that book they follow.
If there was a God-why wouldn't he help me on my Geometry tests? Just asking for a pagan friend.
I have made no friends by pointing out that inside the Kremlin (which is not a building, but a sort of fortified compound) there are no fewer than three cathedrals and two churches. Apparently the atheistic, godless commies forgot to destroy them and so every day they walked out of Commie HQ into Red Square and saw this....https://www.worldatlas.com/...
Is there anyone in your benighted nation that DOESN'T run a ministry? I know it is a tax-dodge, but when everyone is doing it, even the govt must catch on.
Never Odin! He took such a one-eyed view of everything.
Yeah, they're gorgeous. I think they're also the Illinois state tree. I'd have one, but I don't have room for it in the yard, front or back.
I wasn't bullied or alienated at all, I was just slightly "set apart." Joan wasn't bullied or alienated either, but she was also "set apart." We were neither of us friendless at all, we both had good friends in every class and were liked and respected by the teachers and children. There was just an aura of "apart-ness" that is impossible to describe unless you have experienced it. It was the adults who generated this aura - and sometimes they infected the children with it.
Since you have never met me or Joan, you really can't understand what our relationship was. We were probably the two brightest girls in the class, we hung out on the playground together, we acted in school plays together, and we were both in Girl Scouts. We talked all the time. We talked about the apart-ness. I think we both found a certain challenge in making friends OUTSIDE the apart-ness. That is probably another experience that is impossible to describe unless you have experienced it yourself. When you are different, you know you can make friends with the other outsiders because you have things in common and they will accept you, but what challenge is there in that? That is not the battle you want to win. You have to go out into the world and conquer it EVEN THOUGH you are set apart in some way, and the sooner you learn to do that, the better.
You can believe what you like, but you are seeing something in my words that isn't there at all. The idea that I saw Joan as lower than me or she saw me as lower than her ... that is ridiculous, and not what I said at all. And you are wrong about kids not being good at nuance - if they are gifted and articulate, they can be quite good at it.