We went to the carnival today. Actually, it was quite good. Quite colourful and with amazing music, and I even saw a few of my friends playing amongst the marching bands.
But one thing that really annoyed us was the whole religious float that came along, and its followers; random women walking around handing out flyers saying ‘JESUS IS OUR LORD!’ etcetc.
Now I may be an atheist, but I’m not religious-ist. People can believe what they want, and hell, I ain’t gonna critisise or offend anyone reading this who believes in some kind of faith. It’s perfectly fine, but obviously I won’t say that I completely understand why some people choose to believe in such.. nonsense. =P Again, no offence.
Seriously though, this woman would not leave us alone. Two of them came over to us trying to give us leaflets. The first walked away quite happily when we told her that we weren’t religious, but the second just.. argh.
First she called my mother ignorant for being an atheist. Then she started saying that ‘the whole world is God’s creation’ and ‘you are God’s creation’ and ‘ignoring God’s existence is like ignoring your father’s existence’. We were like, ‘yes, thank you’ very polite, I must add, but still she waffled on. ‘You should be ashamed of insulting God’, ‘we are all God’s children and were brought up to believe in him’ and the very famous ‘Jesus is our Lord and the son of our almighty God’. Yeah. It wasn’t until my mother bent down and said very loudly in her face ‘thank you, but we-are-not-religious!’ that she walked away, still muttering things under her breath. She then went off and started screaming at other people who refused her crap.
So I still ask to this day why some religious people think it’s wrong for others to not believe the same things as them. We still have a faith - it just ain’t the same as theirs. It’s practically an insult trying to force religion onto us when we quite clearly state that we are atheists. I don’t think having a religion is wrong, but i do think that advertising any religion in public - especially in a city were there are many, many different races and religious groups - is just wrong and uncalled for. The church or whatever place of gathering should be the only place where religion is spread amongst people. People who do not wish to get involved should be left alone to make their own minds up, not have crazy women come up to them insulting them just because they refuse to believe in something which they think is a total lie!
I also hate religious education in schools. Okay, it’s good to learn about all the different religions around us, but the fact that all we’ve been doing since the start of 4th year is Christianity just makes me mad. I like to learn about other religions and their festivals etc, but not ‘what would Jesus do’ and all that pointless-to-atheists stuff. I’m glad I’m failing in maths because I have the option to drop RE and do extra maths lessons in a decent class. I would usually turn down extra maths lessons, but if all they’re going to do otherwise is teach us silly stuff about one single religion when clearly there are other religious groups in our class, then I’d run a mile to do it. Seriously.
Opinions?
