I'm Going to Start Pretending to Believe in God Just Like Everyone Else
There's nothing but upside
I’m going to start believing in God just like everybody else and I was an idiot not to do so in the first place.
Atheists are a growing minority, but they’re still one of the most oppressed.
How many atheists are in congress?
Only one member of the Senate, Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz, identifies as religiously unaffiliated.
Only one member of the House, Jarred Huffman, D-Cali, identifies as a humanist.
20 have unknown religious affiliations, so are free to pepper their speeches with talk of God–which they do–without having to acknowledge which particular God, which is their right. You know the one, right before the gun one.
So out of 535 people in Congress, none are explicitly atheist because that would be political suicide. Even being unaffiliated or a humanist would be political suicide in most states.
133 members of Congress identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian American, American Indian, Alaska Native or multiracial.
126 members of Congress identify as women.
There are 12 openly LGBT people in Congress.
So 24.5% of people in the US are minorities, and they are represented by about 18% of Congress. This is not a perfect representation, but not bad.
50.4% of Americans identify as women, and women comprise 29% of Congress. This is pretty lousy.
7.1% of Americans identify as LGBT, and are represented by about .02% of Congress. This is even worse.
8% of Americans are explicitly atheist or agnostic, and an additional 13% express non-religious attitudes, many of whom still go to church or remain affiliated with a religion, or do exactly what I’m planning to do.
Including those 20 who have unknown religious affiliations, approximately 21% of US non-believers are represented by about .04% of Congress.
Statistically, this is the worst ratio of representation by far.
Being non-religious makes you more unelectable than being gay, black, hispanic, or any other minority, and identifying as an atheist appears to make you unelectable, and this is just in the US.
Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Saudi Arabia punish apostasy by death, as do several other nation states.
My life in the US is difficult enough, and it was particularly difficult in elementary school, where for some reason I continued to admit to being an atheist while learning to lie about just about anything else if it would make my life easier, or help me to get what I want.
So from now on, I believe in whatever God pleases you, especially if I happen to be in the Middle East.
For a long time, I considered believing in God a dealbreaker, or at least most religious women I met considered being an atheist one, and in the US, that’s still about 80% of the population. Sure some are more flexible than others, but only up to a point, primarily because of their parents or other people in their family. So while I don’t want to get married, I wouldn’t mind a meaningful relationship, and I can lie about wanting to get married, too.
It’s actually a built-in easy out. If a religious woman is insane enough to want to marry me, I can just admit I’m an atheist and in most cases, that would be it.
Women say they don’t care about what their families think, and up to a certain age, that appears to be true, and while this evidence is largely anecdotal, if a woman’s family disapproves of you, she’ll probably end up leaving you.
Empirically, married heterosexual couples tend to live closer to the wife’s family, just as women tend to determine the largest purchases. House, car, appliances, furniture–almost all of those decisions are ultimately made by the wife or female partner, which is as easy to see as the ads on TV, which primarily target upper middle class women when it comes to these purchases.
Real estate agents–and I was one in 2009 because my timing is perfect–agree it’s easier to sell to a man than a woman. Women tend to check everything or be more thorough, and this may be a valid assumption when people can afford to choose, but from my perspective, owning is better than renting, and when I bought my apartment though a female real estate agent, we both knew the walk through was just a formality. It was either buy this place or pay $1000 a month for a room–not an apartment–in Queens, or nearly as much as the mortgage and maintenance for my co-op.
Thanks to the the insane hours I had to work while we still admitted COVID was a problem, I paid off my 30 year mortgage in about 3 years because the one thing I hate almost as much as rent is paying interest, so now I have a studio apartment, which is better than a room in an apartment shared with six other people, for about $500 a month in maintenance fees, and I’m half an hour away from Manhattan by subway or bike.
I checked the electricity and I checked the plumbing, and I could tell the cold water faucet in the shower needed a washer, but it was academic. My examination was quick and not too thorough. I didn’t notice the shades didn’t retract, but I never open them anyway. I only noticed after I moved in and taped them to the windows (I was working second shift from home at the time), and one easily repaired faucet and superficial adornments weren’t going to stop me from getting equity instead of paying rent. I saw the agent tense a bit when I checked the faucets in the shower, and while we both knew I was stuck with my parents at the time, as my move-in date had been delayed, I’d insisted on being reimbursed for the premature moving expenses I hadn’t really made and got it.
While we both knew it was a foregone conclusion, I could understand her wariness, so I made life easier for her and turned on the hot water first. Even with a loose cold water faucet, as long as you get a trickle, the hot water will pull more cold water into the mix anyway, a washer costs about a quarter, and my maintenance fee covers minor repairs, so I wouldn’t have to fix it myself anyway.
How do I know it’s a broken washer? When I push hard on the cold water faucet while turning it, it works just fine. I could be wrong, but again, I didn’t and don’t really care.
We all lie or are deceptive when it serves our purposes, so why not lie about believing in God? Preachers have made millions or even billions doing so, and tax-free to boot, so why make my life any more difficult?
I could have pressured the real estate agent into fixing the faucet and putting in real shades, but that would have meant another month in my parents’ apartment on a cot in their living room, I was shooting drugs at the time, and my dad woke up and inevitably woke me up at 4:00 am, while I worked from 3:30 pm until midnight and didn’t get home until around 1:00 am.
If my parents had a two bedroom, I might have parked there permanently. I even considered sleeping at Hunter College. I had already finished there, but my college ID still opened the door, and it was 10 minutes from where I worked. The gym had showers and I would have been fine.
I even considered pitching a tent on the roof or on my parents’ balcony, but too many people had already tried that. The fight to beat rent here is incredible because rent is the main thing killing people financially. A year in a tent is worth saving $36,000 a year or more on rent for a mediocre apartment.
Regardless, it doesn’t matter, and my only regret is that I’m stuck here and live a little too close to my mom. On the upside, I was able to get a cat, and all evidence from the past indicates I’ll be living in the city until I die or it floods or both.
Maybe my disingenuous acceptance of God had already retroactively helped me.
I may want to run for office someday, primarily because of junk mail and spam. I still get junk mail from altruistic institutions like the WWF for past tenants who had donated in the past. Most of them haven’t lived here for at least 20 years.
My chances of being elected would be lousy, but much improved by pretending to believe in God, just like I think Obama did. Once elected and competent, I would come out as an atheist. I’ve been more than competent at every job I’ve ever had, so once I stopped or at least mitigated junk mail and spam, I would want to see just how liberal this district, or at least its voters, really are.
This may seem like a lot of work just to stop what appears to be a relatively minor problem, and a lot of dirt would be uncovered, including this article.
But I’m used to making life more difficult than it has to be, and in this case, I need God’s help.
And seriously, if you want to help wildlife, isn’t churning out junk mail to dead people a bit antithetical, or at least irresponsible?
I’ve written about this before and nobody appears to care or be reading, so what choice do I have aside from becoming a corrupt politician?
I could dig into the WWF and other organizations, or be a real reporter, but that’s a full-time job, the pay is lousy, and I already have a full-time job with less lousy pay.
If anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, I’d consider it a favor.
Perhaps, even a Godsend.
Go Harry brother! I’d vote for you and try to talk all my friends and family into it too (if we lived in your district). The world could use a no nonsense atheists politician! Of course you might get assassinated by a god fearing religious gun toting zealot, the worst sort of humans to ever roam this god forsaken planet.