How Christians-Turned-Atheists Change Their Morals

On Yahoo! Answers Religion & Spirituality forum, I recently asked the following question:

ATHEISTS (FORMER CHRISTIANS): How have your morals changed since your “de-conversion”?

Here is a sampling of the answers I received:

• Honestly I feel more moral. I used to be against gays and felt weird around atheists and other religious people. But now the chains of intolerance have been broken!
  I support gays, dont mind other religion, and love my fellow infidels!
• No. they are the same. I just feel less guilt now.
• We’ll, I “de-converted” around the age of 10, so I’m not sure if I even knew what my moral convictions were then. What I do know is that I see a lot more Christians with “looser” moral behavior that my own. In fact, I seem to be something of a moral compass amongst my circle of friends – most of whom are theists.
• My morals have improved greatly since I am no longer a Christian. I find I am far less judgemental and a great deal more loving than I used to be.
  I have a developed spiritual philosophy that has positively impacted my mental, physical and spiritual well-being.
• I’ve become a better person I think once I stopped worrying what the church thought of things. I now work with kids doing community service and am working on a career in nursing.
• I’m a former Christian who is now non-religious (I believe in a spiritual realm, but not in hell or heaven or any of that bs). You could say my morals “changed”, in that I no longer fault people for having different lives, and embrace differences. I’m much more at peace with the world, not troubled by who’s going to hell and what God thinks of what I’m doing. I can be myself, and know that all that matters to me is being happy and being kind to others. My personal philosophy makes much more sense without the added bigotry of religion.
• I think my “morals” have remained much the same… but my sense of integrity has become more acute…
• I have more compassion for my fellow human beings. I have begun to actively support (verbally and financially) the cause for equal rights for gay people. I have a greater appreciation for life.
• I’ve noticed that I became more honest after I deconverted (both with myself and others). Ironic, no?
• I stopped hating homosexuals and I realized that the only reason I ever thought them to be less than me was because the Bible warped my mind.
  And I’m less judgmental, more honest, and more open-minded.
• Actually I think I hold myself to a higher set of morals….. I find it harder to forgive myself than god does.
• Morality doesn’t change upon religions or lack of belief in any deity. Morality is what we learn. It’s not like we can change morality like changing a red shirt to a black shirt.
  Only difference is realization when a religion warps your mind to what is truely moral and what isn’t and realize how wrong these religious hatred and judgments are. I never hated anybody, nor did i ever judged anybody. Because there is no need to be judgmental or hateful.
• Losing my faith makes me feel more moral.
  The holy book is not a good source of morals, IMHO.
• I don’t get emotional hangups about being a “good enough” person for a god. I realize that I’m normal and not superhuman, and it’s fine to think about anything, including sex. I don’t have a fear that the devil is going to come out of the dark and send me to hell, as I did when I was a Catholic child.
  So I would call myself more stable and reasonable about human behavior. I’m not hyper focused on getting married or going to church, like my old religion encouraged. I am happy the way I am.
  I savor the increased free time most of all – I always felt that church services sucked and that I could do better things with my mornings – like sleeping.

Gaytheistic beginnings

Gaytheistic: The peculiar state of being cast as a double minority, to wit:

• Gay in a world strongly biased in favor of all things heterosexual;
• Atheistic in a nation where pandemic-yet-discordant theism (God-belief) meddles in every aspect of life.

Being “gaytheistic” requires building up callouses. On an almost daily basis, you encounter presumptions that remind you how poorly you fit in:

• “Where do you go to church?” (Nowhere. I’m afraid that rolling my eyes too often would give me a headache.)
• “Why don’t you bring your wife with you?” (I never found a wife necessary. I have a real beard.)
• “How many children do you have?” (None. Zero. On that front, I don’t even have a past to worry about.)
• “What are you going to do for Easter?” (Eating the ears off of rabbits and other rites of fecundity.)
• “Which one of you guys will get the large bedroom?” (We’re going to wrestle for it … for the duration of the lease.)
• “You know what the Good Book says …” (Do you mean the part that says, “Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks”[Psalm 137:8-9]? Or the part that suggests dashing the rocks against the homosexuals? )
• “I heard that your uncle passed away? Well, he’s gone to a better place.” (Hmm … I always considered existence far superior to nonexistence.)

Because I fail at flamboyance and excel at biblical studies, I can pass easily as a straight, middle-aged Christian. (Well, the part about being middle-aged is hardly passing. If I could pass for a straight, 30-something Christian, my complaints would fall in conjunction with a corresponding rise in my social life.) Therefore, until I relieve them of the delusion that I’m just like them, the straight Christian majority includes me in their pranks, prayers, and prejudices.

When Eddie Murphy was on Saturday Night – Live!, he produced a skit in which he became white, and so was included in the white privileges, all of which he exaggerated to great comic effect. But because I don’t stand out as a queer infidel, Murphy’s skit comes close to depicting my life. I get to look and listen in on how the straight theists live & believe. In so many ways, their shoes do not fit me, but I can still walk in them.

But all this leaves me with one question: Why do practically none of the the straight theists volunteer to walk, even briefly, in the shoes that fit me? Why would they not for a single day wear a T-shirt that left their sexual orientation ambiguous? Why won’t they pretend to take a stand against theism in a religion argument, just to for an instant feel the scorn? Do they imagine they could not tolerate the vindictiveness that I’ve grown accustomed to? Then again, perhaps my callouses are not so thick as I like to pretend.

Well, in fact, I wouldn’t wish such ridicule on even those perpetrating the prejudice. But frankly my life would be more pleasant if they replaced their prayers with more smiles of understanding.

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