As an atheist…no, wait, I don’t prefer that word.  It leads to nowhere.  As a freethinker, better.  My colleague took those words back almost as quickly as she’d said them.

“I’ll pray for you…oh, I’m sorry, I know you don’t believe in that sort of thing.”

Maybe it’s because I’ve been raised in the south and I’m just polite (don’t let that stereotype deceive you, we’re just sneakier).  She’s from New York for Christ’s sake (I recognize the irony…of both of those apparent contradictions).  Honestly, she could have said “Praise be Allah and the panty fairy and you will go to hell and lollipop-village but I’ll pray for you” and I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. 

Part of that is my nature, I don’t have reactions to things in the way that most people (i.e. oft weepy/wild southerners) do.  Break a window in my classroom and I’ll sit quietly at my desk for a moment in reflection, smirk, and say, “Well, there that goes.”  True story.

Why are some nonbelievers reluctant to say “thanks” or “well, I’m an atheist but I can appreciate the sentiment behind the words that I happen to find superstitious”?  I can’t say I’ve ever been.  As a freethinker living in the suburban and teaching in the rural south I am surrounded, yes, floating up to my almost-cleft in religious fervor.  So what?  I live with it, I tolerate it.  My parents are nice, so I’m nice.  Spit in my face and I feel sorry for you. 

So no, dear colleague, I’m not one of those “militant atheists” (whatever that means) that you see on television.  Yes, maybe my intellectual atheism is “militant”, which is another way of saying highly upset by wild, unfounded superstition, but I do not run around pointing/breaking fingers of pontiffs/A.M.E. Zion ministers. 

“No, it’s ok, I know, but I appreciate your thoughts.”

Tell them that their prayers qualify as thoughts, yes, thoughts, even though they may have been told otherwise with a derision that is unfortunate, unkind and tragic.

I married a Christian woman I met in college.  We’re still married.  She’s serious about her belief, so I give her the room to be so.  No, I don’t give it to her – that presumes that I can take it away.  She understands and knows she has the right to express her belief freely and happily – she expects it, and should demand it if she feels I’m being obstinate or obnoxious.

If she wants to tithe her own personal income, great.  If she wants to walk to church on Sunday while I fuzz-out to old Weezer (think Mall Rats era and Pinkerton) and lose myself in the bureaucratic nightmare that is SimCity 3000, no problem. 

If her mother is a devout minister and wants to pray before dinner and doesn’t mind that I don’t share her beliefs or close my eyes, well, that’s one hell of a mother-in-law.