Are you there atheists? It’s me, Margaret

Hi Harry and fellow atheists, I’m new to Prose (today makes it a week!). So far I’ve found the site fun, engaging, motivating, it’s nice to have community and a place to ground and workshop writing. This challenge touches on the one reservation I have so far.

After only a week I’m starting to suspect that I’m in a slightly less diverse crowd than I had originally believed. For awhile I was thinking that maybe I had accidently slipped into a corner of the website occupied mainly by Liberty University students or something. But I’m starting to think that what I’m seeing is more or less the norm.

At the risk of sounding intolerant I just want to say that I spend a ton of time researching and educating myself on history and socioeconomic systems of oppression and how I’ve benefited from those systems, consciously and unconsciously, in the past and even today. And even how perceptions can be grounded in those cultural superiority complexes. Deconstructing those systems and decolonizing my mind.

I’m still learning.

But I do find it difficult to be in places where belief systems are touted as fact. And so in this week I feel I’ve seen an uneven percentage of belief-based-fact supplemented as assumed truth/reality.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is, as a new person in this community, how do you all feel about the way faith is presented here. Because I’ve read a few things so far that have made me feel like I was in the upside-down. Is it exhausting? Do you just look passed it? Have I actually been lost in the Prose evangelical neighborhood?

I should note that I’m also coming here from living in Austin, TX for ten years. I’m not really used to being around religion at all. And there’s a real chance I’m just overly sensitive to dogmatism of any kind. Austin is also in the center of Texas, so I’m also pretty aware of what’s out there as far as real religious intolerance goes.

Thanks for the opportunity to sort of connect with like-minded people. Just the fact that this thread exists makes me feel a little more like maybe there’s more of a balance here than my paranoia has allowed me to realize.

For the record, my name is not Margaret.