I recently read this article on Mashable about women and their Facebook friends. While I can only really relate to two or three of the categories of Facebook friends defined, I do believe an important one was left out: Holier-Than-Thou. The Drama Queen and One-Upper are indeed annoying, but the type of Facebook friends I find most irritating are the ones who constantly post religious garble into my feed.* Unfortunately, I actually genuinely like most of these people, and often they have interesting things to say – so I don’t want to de-friend them or filter out their updates. I just patiently glance over their posts and carry on with my day.
Generally, I think I’m a fairly patient atheist. I will gladly (and politely) listen to anything anyone remotely rational has to say about religion – and all I ask in return is that its not sold to me. Not so shockingly, I’m not awarded the same respect or patience if I attempt talk to a religious person about my very comfortable lack of religion. Somehow atheism makes religious people uncomfortable – yet they don’t seem to care that their verbose online religious exultations make others (religious or not) uncomfortable.
In the spirit of discomfort (and spring cleaning), I have decided that throughout the month of April, I will post at least one quote by an atheist – or about atheism – each day. It is an experiment. How will these quotes be received? Will people comment on them to spark interesting conversation or debate? Will they “like” them? But mostly, I want to see how/if my friend count is affected by my joyful lack of faith. Currently, my friend count is 682. I’ll post again at the end of April with my new friend count and any interesting threads or stories that may come of this. Let the blasphemy begin.
*For the record, my rant is not gender-specific.
