No really, I don't believe in him either.

[Loss Leader]

Uh-oh! Without wanting to pry or anything, why did things not work out?

You know, the interesting thing is that she was as kind and hardworking and socially moral as anyone could be. The huge disparity in our beliefs didn't translate into a huge disparity in how we lived our lives. She wasn't a better or worse person than any given atheist/secularist/humanist or what-have-you. In fact, she was a much better person than most.

And yet the relationship ultimately failed because (when we hit our 30s) she wanted a long-term partner who was culturally more like her and I wanted someone culturally more like me (Jewish but not Too Jewish). And she now lives in the South and is married to a Methodist and I live in New York and am married to a Jew (but not Too Much of a Jew).

 

[notheist]

I am a POLYATHEIST: There are hundreds of Gods I don't believe in.

 

[notheist]

Satan. Or Santa never seen the two together.

Makes you think.

 

[Dr. Keith]

I live in one of the most Jewish areas of the US. Jews don't really have a concept of hell or the devil. So, I've not run into anything like the OP describes. However, I get a lot of people who tell me that, while they don't necessarily believe in God, they believe organized religion itself is a moral and pro-social institution. I just nod my head.

I know several Jews who are jewish-atheist. One justified sending his son through religious education because that's where he learned to ask the tough questions that convinced him there was no god. He thought the same process would be good for his kids. I thought his wife had won that battle, but not the war.

He was overly fond of the thread worn joke: No, I'm not a Jew, I'm just jew-ish.

 

[Quinn]

Had an ex-girlfriend from Union, South Carolina who believed that Satan was as real as you or I. She believed people could be born without souls. She believed in just about every crazy medieval pagan concept that got imported into Christianity.

I can top that one. In college I dated a girl who not only believed in Satan, and not only believed that she had personally conversed with him during a seance, but also believed that she had had sex with her previous boyfriend while he was possessed by Satan. Or maybe she was the one who was possessed, I don't remember.

That information pretty much signaled the end of our dating relationship, since I could no longer take her seriously as a human being. However, being a college-age guy, I was still up for the occasional booty call when she requested it, which she did. That lasted up until the time when, in the middle of the act, she started growling and snarling in what was clearly meant to be a Satanically-possessed manner. There's not a lot of behavior that would be off-putting enough to overpower my 21-year-old self's desire for effortless, commitment-free sex, but that did the trick.

 

[Minarvia]

These persons need some serious spoofing.

Hah! That's pretty much what I thought!

"There's a cloud of evil about to descend upon Mankind and it's all our own fault for being so evil and sinful and negative!"

 

[smartcooky]

It's certainly true of Church of England people. That said, I grew up as a Catholic, and Catholics are supposed to believe in Satan even though many of them publically tell their congregations that nobody believes in that kind of thing any more.

Be careful there because the RCC's official line differs from that

"It is a departure from the picture provided by biblical and Church teaching to refuse to acknowledge the devil's existence; to regard him as a conceptual and fanciful personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes. Exegetes and theologians should not be deaf to this warning."
- Pope Paul VI on teachings about the devil, 1975

The teachings of the RCC are clear;

► At baptism, receivers are asked to reject Satan and everything he stands for.

► There is an official rite of exorcism; what would they be exorcising if not Satan?

RC's (as well as most other devout Christians) believe that God created Satan, not as some kind of "anti-God" but as His most perfect angel. That position has been held to be an axiom ever since The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, when they decreed "the devil and the other evil spirits were created good in nature, but they became evil by their own actions."

 

[kedo1981]

I would assert, that one of the best aspects of being an atheist is the rejection and therefore the elimination of the fear inflected by these infantile beliefs.
Beliefs that have been nothing but a cancer on the human race.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Been thinking about the OP, and something jumps out at me:

There is something I've tried to understand for a long time, but I've not been able to.

Time and time again I've run across people who, while they object to me being an atheist, understand the idea that I don't believe in God.

It's when they come to the realization that I also don't believe in the existence of Satan than they get confused looks and cannot cope with with the concept. I've rendered a believer speechless on at least one occasion because of this.

Am I the only one who has run across this seeming logical disconnect? From my viewpoint it would be impossible to believe in one and not the other. They are two sides of a coin, and you cannot have a one sided coin.

{hilite mine} That's the same as their viewpoint, so you agree.

Perhaps what you mean is that the disconnect is that they can't comprehend not believing in either.

New age or progressive Christians (who disregard the bits about Satan and Hell in the Bible) notwithstanding. We all know how all Christians like to pick and choose their myths from the Bible.

 

[Minarvia]

Well, I don't know if this is a good analogy, but as to coins, you CAN have a one-sided coin, depending upon if you require an image on it or not. You can have the same image on both sides, or have one side blank.

And yes, Christians pick and choose so much that if their god listens to them at all he/she must be very confused and/or very frustrated.

 

[Pup]

{hilite mine} That's the same as their viewpoint, so you agree.

Perhaps what you mean is that the disconnect is that they can't comprehend not believing in either.

Did I read the OP wrong?

I thought the point was that it did make logical sense to believe in both or neither, so one would expect people to be Christians who believed in both or atheists who believed in neither.

The disconnect came when meeting people who thought that if you disbelieved in one, you would believe in the other.

 

[ConspicuousCarl]

Aren't there a fair number of self-professed Christians who don't believe in Satan or Hell? I was under the impression that that was not an uncommon stance among modern day "liberal" Christians. So I'm surprised that an atheist not believing in Satan would come as a shock to anyone

http://www.gallup.com/poll/27877/am...eve-god-than-devil-heaven-more-than-hell.aspx

86% believe in "god" (universal spirit counted separately, so that's 86% real god belief)
70% believe in satan.


Also...
http://www.gallup.com/poll/7858/Devil-Demographic-Details.aspx
(different year, so totals are different)
67% of Democrats believe in Mr. Pointytail.
79% of Republicans do.

Neither of those is very good, and I'll bet that the 33% of non-devil Democrats are mostly people who are either very weakly religious or closeted atheists.

 

[ConspicuousCarl]

I knew one fundamentalist Christian who told me that every single other Christian religion outside of his narrowly defined theology were actually devil worshipers, and that every non-Christian religion were actually atheistic. I was unsure where that left self-identifying atheists. I said "I think you're mistaken"

"MY MINISTER TOLD ME!!" was his answer. I didn't pursue the argument past that.

Too bad. That would have been a great time to ask "What do you think their ministers are telling them?"

 

[jj]

There is something I've tried to understand for a long time, but I've not been able to.

Time and time again I've run across people who, while they object to me being an atheist, understand the idea that I don't believe in God.

It's when they come to the realization that I also don't believe in the existence of Satan than they get confused looks and cannot cope with with the concept. I've rendered a believer speechless on at least one occasion because of this.

Am I the only one who has run across this seeming logical disconnect? From my viewpoint it would be impossible to believe in one and not the other. They are two sides of a coin, and you cannot have a one sided coin.

Yeah, I've heard this, as in the "oh, then you must worship SATAN" in a loud voice. Pointing out that I don't believe in that either causes total meltdown into denial, followed by "but you really do worship SATAN if you don't believe in MY GOD", and a variety of other delusional accusations.

Yeah, been there, heard that.

 

[angrysoba]

You know, the interesting thing is that she was as kind and hardworking and socially moral as anyone could be. The huge disparity in our beliefs didn't translate into a huge disparity in how we lived our lives. She wasn't a better or worse person than any given atheist/secularist/humanist or what-have-you. In fact, she was a much better person than most.

And yet the relationship ultimately failed because (when we hit our 30s) she wanted a long-term partner who was culturally more like her and I wanted someone culturally more like me (Jewish but not Too Jewish). And she now lives in the South and is married to a Methodist and I live in New York and am married to a Jew (but not Too Much of a Jew).

Thanks for that! I suppose someone believing in the literal existence of the Devil isn't a world away from someone believing in the literal existence of ghosts, which is fairly common.

 

[angrysoba]

Be careful there because the RCC's official line differs from that

"It is a departure from the picture provided by biblical and Church teaching to refuse to acknowledge the devil's existence; to regard him as a conceptual and fanciful personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes. Exegetes and theologians should not be deaf to this warning."
- Pope Paul VI on teachings about the devil, 1975

The teachings of the RCC are clear;

► At baptism, receivers are asked to reject Satan and everything he stands for.

► There is an official rite of exorcism; what would they be exorcising if not Satan?

RC's (as well as most other devout Christians) believe that God created Satan, not as some kind of "anti-God" but as His most perfect angel. That position has been held to be an axiom ever since The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, when they decreed "the devil and the other evil spirits were created good in nature, but they became evil by their own actions."

Indeed, which is why I said that officially Catholics do believe in Satan. I'm just saying that, as with other canonical Catholic beliefs, Western Catholics tend to ignore them.

 

[Multivac]

I am a POLYATHEIST: There are hundreds of Gods I don't believe in.

That's a good word, which I might borrow. There is also a good chance that it would confuse some believers into thinking it is a flavour of christianity.

 

[Multivac]

I would assert, that one of the best aspects of being an atheist is the rejection and therefore the elimination of the fear inflected by these infantile beliefs.
Beliefs that have been nothing but a cancer on the human race.

Well said.

 

[Belz...]

There is something I've tried to understand for a long time, but I've not been able to.

Time and time again I've run across people who, while they object to me being an atheist, understand the idea that I don't believe in God.

It's when they come to the realization that I also don't believe in the existence of Satan than they get confused looks and cannot cope with with the concept. I've rendered a believer speechless on at least one occasion because of this.

Am I the only one who has run across this seeming logical disconnect? From my viewpoint it would be impossible to believe in one and not the other. They are two sides of a coin, and you cannot have a one sided coin.

I haven't encountered this type. Personally, I dropped Satan from my belief system before throwing out God, too.