{"id":3376,"date":"2012-07-03T21:15:56","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T02:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3376"},"modified":"2012-07-03T21:16:40","modified_gmt":"2012-07-04T02:16:40","slug":"kiss-me-im-godless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3376","title":{"rendered":"Kiss Me, I’m Godless"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone recently said to me, “You’re pretty normal, except for being an atheist.” And so I was reminded yet again that most Americans still believe that atheists are kind of icky<\/a>. While I can appreciate that the lack of belief in God is deeply foreign to many people, I’m still struck \u00a0how much emphasis people place on it as a defining characteristic. Nurses have introduced me to their friends as “my boss, the atheist I told you about.” A girlfriend once pleaded with me to not mention my lack of belief to her parents. If asked to list my most interesting qualities, I don’t think my metaphysical views would crack the top twenty. But others seem to regard it with a weird mix of fascination, fear, and pity. It’s eerily similar to how many respond to my disability.<\/p>\n

I certainly don’t try to inhabit the margins of Americans’ comfort zones, but it seems to be something I do with ease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone recently said to me, “You’re pretty normal, except for being an atheist.” And so I was reminded yet again that most Americans still believe that atheists are kind of icky. While I can appreciate that the lack of belief in God is deeply foreign to many people, I’m still struck \u00a0how much emphasis people […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-12-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-Ss","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3376"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3378,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3376\/revisions\/3378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}