i made a choice deep inside

aeroposter:

contemporary white man atheism is all about religion being “illogical”, they’re always going on about how ludicrous it is that god created the universe in 7 days or that heaven could exist or whatever. their “flying spaghetti monster”-style jokes about the silliness of religious imagery and myth. which i find to be the least offensive parts of religion, maybe even the ones i like–i am the kind of person who likes the idea of teaching kids fairy tales, believing in magic, in faeries, in miracles and things larger than us, the coming together of family, of holding certain days sacred for celebration or introspection. of the seasonality of life, the comfort of ritual, sacred foods and places, the symbolic standing in for that which is hard to articulate. 

white man atheists don’t talk much about the parts of religion that deeply offend me–the institutionalized misogyny, the glorification of killing and death, the tolerance and even encouragement of rape and sexual slavery, the preservation of patriarchy as a core value of civilization–except maybe when they talk about how religion encourages war, which is bad because it kills men, of course. white man atheists are perfectly fine with western patriarchy–they always like to make jokes about burkinis– “free” women, of course, love to put their bodies on display for men–they treat the sexualization of women as their birthright. they’re perfectly fine with legal fatherhood and marriage and other misogynist institutions that religion plays a profound role in legitimizing. i really hate how they’ve made it so i don’t want to call myself an atheist, or even a secular humanist, even if that’s what i am. so i just tell people i’m “not religious”, even if that makes it sound like i haven’t put that much thought into it. as if i haven’t thought about it deeply, as if breaking away from the church wasn’t a fundamental experience of my adolescence and young adulthood.