Belief vs Behaviour

I’m an atheist… Although I sometimes find myself somewhere between agnostic and atheist…And one thing I’ve genuinely wondered about is why atheists are so often portrayed as intolerant or lacking morality.

Honestly I’ve often found atheists to be some of the most accommodating people when it comes to belief. I can disagree with your faith, question your beliefs, put my POV across and still respect your right to believe whatever you want. I don’t need you to believe what I believe for me to coexist with you.

But then I open the comments section of almost any woman’s reel and see people quoting religious scriptures, invoking God, preaching about faith  while simultaneously throwing around rape threats, death threats and the most vile abuse imaginable. And so often, the very people doing it are the ones loudly proclaiming their religiousness.

How do you invoke a supposedly moral, all-powerful being while using their name to justify hatred, misogyny and cruelty towards another human being?

That contradiction just baffles me.

And yes, I’ll say this very explicitly: 

“As a personal choice, I find it difficult to trust someone who is excessively religious.”

Not because I think every religious person is bad and certainly not because I think atheists are automatically good. But when someone’s entire identity and worldview revolves around religion, I instinctively keep my guard up.

Maybe that’s my bias. I’m comfortable calling it that.

Because I’ve seen far too many people treat religion as proof of their goodness while their behaviour tells a completely different story.

You can pray five times a day, quote every scripture, talk endlessly about God and still be an unpleasant human being.

Faith, by itself, tells me very little about someone’s character. 

How you treat people when you have nothing to gain from them tells me far more.

And perhaps that’s what I’ve stopped trusting not religion itself, but the assumption that being overtly religious automatically makes someone a good person.

Maybe that’s why I’m less interested these days in what people believe in, and far more interested in what their beliefs make them capable of doing.

Because if your faith makes you kinder, I respect it.

If it makes you cruel, hateful and entitled to someone else’s suffering, 

I don’t care how many times you invoke God. I’ll judge you by what you do.