Cringy Atheists

Previously published in Free Inquiry Magazine

*Editor in Chief Paul Fidalgo

As I stood in line at the bank holding an obnoxious number of one-dollar bills, the lady behind me attempted to strike up a conversation. “Are you a waitress?” she asked politely.

“No, I’m a dancer,” I replied, knowing what would come next.

“Oh, how nice. Ballet?”

“Exotic,” I said curtly but with a gleam in my eye. I waited to see the disapproving look on her face before turning around to move up in the line. I was slightly disappointed that the conversation would end without the opportunity to shock her further.

I was nineteen and had been an exotic dancer for just under a year, what some in the industry may refer to as a “baby stripper.” I had stopped hiding it at that point from friends, family, and everyone else. I had even started to enjoy the pearl-clutching when I told people what I did. I was doing what I wanted and bucking the system. To hell with everyone. Look at me: I’m a stripper and loving it, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I’ve never been much for fitting in. Not for lack of trying, but I just seem to have a bit of a problem conforming. Being part of a group, or even just a polite society, has always been a struggle. So for me, exotic dancing gave me the freedom to be independent, but it also gave me a reason to let everyone know that I wasn’t one of them, that I wasn’t buying into the traditional employment trap that might try to force me into a box I wasn’t built for and didn’t want to be in. I reveled in my rebellion and made sure that everyone around me knew it.

Again, I was nineteen, immature, and admittedly a bit of an ass. Or cringey, as my eighteen-year-old son might say.

The irony was not lost on me that, as much as I rebelled from being part of a group, I still found myself in one. A group of outcasts, maybe. People whom the mainstream didn’t understand and looked down upon. I didn’t really fit in all that well with the other dancers either, but that didn’t matter all that much. Whether I wanted to be or not, I was part of that community of misfits. And it felt like when I put it out there for all to see, pun very much intended, I was finding validation, for myself and my community. I was letting the world know that I was not ashamed to be who I was.

My in-your-face, unapologetic attitude grew old. I did too, but that isn’t quite the point. I got tired of looking for a metaphorical fight. I became more comfortable with myself and my weird job, and it became less important for me to make it a point to tell everyone. Of course, it came up in conversation, but my tone became less confrontational. It was more like, this is what I do, and that’s it. I was open to talking about it and definitely open to answering questions to dispel misconceptions. I never gave in to any attempt to shame me. But I stopped using my profession as a hammer with which to batter the people whom I considered prudes. I still identified with my exotic dancer community, but I came to realize that I had other labels and even other communities that I identified with. Stripper was only one of the labels I used.

Another was atheist.

I didn’t wake up one day and decide I was an atheist. It was more like a slow descent down a long staircase. Each step led me from the loftiness of magical thinking toward the ground floor of reason. I had simply grown up with the idea of a god watching me and my every move, actively judging whether I was worthy of Heaven or deserved Hell. Totally normal and cool. Not.

Like many others, I delved into why I believed that in the first place. As I picked apart my reasoning and examined my beliefs, I went further down that staircase until I got to the floor. I started with science books that explored the evidence for an afterlife and a soul, and eventually I got to the four horsemen, or new atheist books. And despite losing my faith, or maybe realizing that I hadn’t had much faith in the first place, I found the solid ground at the bottom of that staircase much more comforting than I had expected.

I had expected despair and emptiness, but I found wonder and amazement at the natural world. It was a world that didn’t pose magic or a god as an answer to the things we don’t know, something I had always found annoying and suspicious about religion. The ground floor was awesome because it was honest. I could say “I don’t know” unselfconsciously without having to make stuff up.

The ground floor brought a measure of anger too though. I was kind of pissed. No, I was really pissed that I had been led to believe such silliness. My Catholic upbringing didn’t come with a real threat of Hell. My family taught me that you had to be really bad to go to Hell, and I was never going to be that bad. But still, I felt duped by being led to believe in a deity that was looking out for me. That would make everything all right if I only believed hard enough. I felt stupid for blindly believing for as long as I did despite harboring so many doubts. I also felt that to believe that a supernatural deity was looking out for me and my interests while so many others suffered was ultimately self-absorbed. So, my atheism came with a bit of a feeling of superiority in that I understood that I was no more special than other humans, while believers held that they were saved by the god I no longer had faith in. Ironic, I know.

When I found the atheist community online, I found another camp of outliers: The evil baby-eating atheists. The people who had the confidence to come right out and say they didn’t believe in any gods. I was a “baby atheist,” and I couldn’t wait to shout it to the world. And despite being a bit older, I’m afraid I may have, on occasion, acted once again like an ass.

As with the lady at the bank, I started to enjoy the shock of telling people I was an atheist, especially online. I loved to make fun of not only religions but—here comes the ass part—believers too. My favorite and one of my most popular posts came on one Valentine’s Day:

“Roses are red, violets are blue, my boobs are fake, your god is too.” I liked to point out that just as I was too smart to get trapped in a regular job, I was also too smart to believe in silly made-up stuff. It was cathartic, and it didn’t matter much at the time that it came at other people’s expense.

But as I matured both as a dancer and an atheist, and learned more about humanist ideas and principles, I started to understand that I wasn’t smarter than anyone else at all. Just more of an ass. Lashing out as I did felt good, for a little while, but it ultimately wasn’t who I wanted to be.

Having an unconventional job didn’t make me smarter, just different. Not believing in gods also didn’t make me smarter than anyone else. Take a quick trip online, and you’ll find plenty of stupid atheists and ones who believe in silly things. All it meant was that I had deconstructed many of the ideas I had grown up with, that I had taken that trip down the staircase. That is terrifying to some people, but it doesn’t make them stupid or me any smarter. Just different.

For secular humanists who have found their way to reason, supernatural beliefs can seem unreasonable and silly. I certainly think they are. But I have come to a place where I can separate people from their beliefs—so long as they aren’t using them as a hammer like I did.

Supernatural beliefs are always going to be a thing. Human beings are always going to look for answers to the unknown. That’s just part of our charm, as well as a big part of our faults. And for most, their practice doesn’t go beyond their personal lives. The few who are using those beliefs and ideologies as a weapon to spread misinformation for profit, infiltrate our government, or indoctrinate our kids are gaining ground. And we can’t afford to be asses to believers of all types who could be allies in our fight to maintain our constitutional right to the separation between church and state. Whether we think they are silly or not, we are guaranteed the right to believe or not believe as long as it doesn’t encroach on the rights of others.

If, as secular humanists, we strive to make decisions based on compassion and empathy for the living beings with whom we share the planet, we should embrace those who look beyond reason and logic to make sense of their world. Especially when it comes to our younger generations, most of whom have grown up with softer versions of religiosity. Those who haven’t felt betrayed by religion or magical thinking don’t understand much of the vitriol spewed by those who have. To them, we just look like cringey asses.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t support those in the throes of the search for a secular community. As long as religions exist, there will always be that need. I hope that once any anger is vented, we can move cohesively with compassion and empathy toward each other. Whether we are secular or not.