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I had quite the throwback culture war experience this past weekend. While at a family gathering, my dad was cornered by an in-law and quizzed about my “agnosticism”.
He was asked if he had led me to this lack of faith, and was then informed that it’s the patriarch’s responsibility to “get his family into heaven” – a neat little double-duty insult of both himself and me.
I tend to be a very laid-back guy in meatspace, but found myself livid. I’ve been in this family for close to a decade, and the sheer cowardice and arrogance of this exchange was breathtaking. To circle around to one of my direct family members instead of having the cajones to challenge me directly was ridiculous (and in hindsight, what I should have really expected from these people).
We’ve been existing in what I thought was a reasonable detente. As a victorious participant in the Atheism culture war, I’ve been kinda-sorta prepared to have these skirmishes with my wife’s catholic family for a long time. The unspoken agreement was that I go to church for holidays, let you splash water on my children, and don’t bring up anyone’s hypocrisy/the church’s corruption, rampant pedophilia/the inherent idiocy in believing in god.
In exchange, I get to stay balls deep in my excellent wife and should be left alone.
I’ll be the first to admit the excesses of Atheism’s victory laps and see how “live and let live” can slide down the slope into a children’s drag show. But this indirect exchange reminded me that when the culture war pendulum swings back, I should be prepared for the petty tyrants and fools on the religious right to reassert themselves. We’re already starting to see the tendrils of this, even if some of their forces have been replaced with rainbow-skinsuit churches across the US.
For Christian motteziens - No disrespect intended. I'm aware of the hypocrisy of my arrogance in this post, and it's intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek
This post is an interesting little mirror to this sub's CW leanings. Imagine if the positions were reversed with a left-leaning interlocutor instead of a right-leaning one. Say you told a story where they were making snide passive-aggressive remarks implying you were racist. The response you would have gotten would almost certainly be cheering alongside you. I highly doubt they would be as unanimous in their scorn, claiming this post breaks rules, that your previous compromises means you somehow deserve this, or that snide remark essentially saying "we're not your therapist, bro".
The fact that Christianity's cultural side is inextricably linked to the superstitious side is clearly causing some amount of cognitive dissonance. But instead of resolving it (either by severing the two sides, or by rejecting Christianity entirely if doing so is infeasible), this sub... tries to ignore it as much as possible. This sub pretends it doesn't exist, and then gets really conspicuously oversensitive whenever someone reminds them of it.
Except in this case, OP really is a racist. OP is not religious, thinks it's all nonsense, and only goes along with it for his wife and thinks his kids will junk it as soon as they're old enough. The in-law asking about the agnosticism may be an asshole, but they're not making a false claim. He is agnostic and indeed atheist.
In your example, we would indeed be racists and be going "why are these dumb progressives trying to get me to accept N-words are just as good as me? I'm willing to pretend I go along with their horseshit because I like fucking my wife*, why are they really trying to persuade me to stop being racist?"
*His own wording, not mine.
Is an extremely uncharitable reframing. My throwaway and silly line seems to be what many people, and you in particular, are centered on, so let's address the elephant in the room.
Did I, in fact, steal a high-quality Christian woman from her probable marriage to another Catholic? Sure - and my response to angst over that is Deal With It. The godly dating pool should have provided more men who actually help with kids, can hold a conversation / make a joke, and cook every once in a while instead of laying around in front of the TV.
The analogs to interracial marriage are plentiful. Your daughter can marry an
blackatheist, but only if he agrees tonever bring up racesubmit completely to your belief system. You're not a bigot, honest, but you've seen too many horror stories of women beingleft as single mothersrealizing that they've been lied to by hypocrites.It was a silly line and you probably shouldn't have included it if you wanted to be taken seriously.
If you just wanted to complain about your dumb in-laws, as a humorous piece, okay but you sounded too serious for that.
You wanted to marry this particular woman, and these were the conditions. Would you be doing strikeouts if it read:
The choice, ultimately, was up to you and her. If agreeing to the Catholic conditions was too much, you could have decided not to marry her. If she wanted to marry you but you didn't want to agree, then she could have agreed not to have the church wedding and not baptise the kids.
Both of you made compromises, and while I can't speak for her, you seem to have indeed gone into it with your fingers crossed behind your back; yeah I'm gonna say I agree but I really don't. I'm happy to lie to people in order to get what I want.
I think we're all getting caught up on that, as distinct from your larger point that you're an atheist and not going to change on that. On that point, your in-law is out of order. The rest of it, which you introduced, is about you wanting to eat your cake and have it.
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The gender gap is very interesting. Seems like religious women will very often need to settle for a man either much less religious, or somewhat less religious and also much less impressive than they are.
That has been my experience. Men can also be in the same position too but it's far less common. They end up becoming more religious, or at least saying they are, much later in life.
~3% of the women in my dating pool were agnostic. It was never practical for me to require that in partners.
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So in my initial reading of your post, I missed that an in-law confronted your father. I though it was a member of your own family. That is pretty wild to say the least, and an unhelpful approach to any conversation of weight. You have all my sympathies there.
At the same time, if you're response to the others who disagree with your behavior is Deal With It, expect to be returned the same when seeking sympathy that others are behaving ways you don't agree with.
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