“Atheism is like the black mark. Nobody wants to say they’re atheist.”

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Transcript for Oh, But You’re So Nice

Both of my parents work as pastors. I don’t know, I feel like my parents still see me as the good Christian daughter, they still… like, I feel that they know that I’m not as Christian as they would hope, but they still see me as more innocent as I truly am.

I started feeling at home when I came here and I realized that, you know, this wasn’t home, this wasn’t my family, I could be more open with myself here, and that was a really good feeling to be able to actually tell people that I’m atheist without my parents overhearing or somebody going around me and telling them themselves and ‘cause around here nobody knows my parents.

It’s never really a comfortable feeling to tell people that you’re atheist because it’s always… you never know how they’re going to react ‘cause sometimes they get the reaction … you get the reaction, “Oh, but you’re so nice.”  Like, really? Those two can’t go together? I can’t be nice and be atheist? I have to be either one or the other? I didn’t know that.  So every once in awhile you get that hypocrite who, like, they didn’t know that about you and they liked you, and then suddenly you drop this bomb, and it’s just like, “Oh, well I don’t want to hang out with you anymore.”

I was talking to this girl in my French class, who’s actually a roommate of my sister, and she put this clothespin on my bag, and it said, “God loves you.” Like, it was a decorative thing. I just sort of looked at it, and I asked her, “What if I don’t pick him or what if I don’t love him?” And she said, “Well, you should, your parents are pastors.” And it’s always like that reaction that gets me. It’s kind of like I walk up to a person who is, like, their parents are doctors. I don’t automatically assume that they know everything about being a doctor because, you know, that’s not them, that’s what their parents do, so I don’t understand why that double standard is portrayed onto me–because my parents are pastors, I therefore must believe in God.

Atheism is like the black mark. Nobody wants to say they’re atheist because automatically you are judged because you don’t believe in one specific God. Well, that’s not true. I don’t believe in just your God. I don’t believe in all of them. I’m not picky in that regard.