Religious Preference?

I was at the hospital today and was asked if I had a religious preference in the admissions interview. I have never been asked if I had a religious preference -- except by facebook and places where I could make it public if I chose -- so I was thrown into a loop of unexpected questioning.

I am an atheist, and it is an incredibly important part of my self identity. Its been increasingly important throughout college as I was exposed to people with strong religious beliefs and found myself challenged to think about other forms and ways of life. There was L, who was adamantly Christian and thought that evolution was fine, but God had set it up to run, and K who was Catholic and intense about her conservative norms (despite being a lesbian, her one aberration). There is B who feels that God has to exist as a power in the universe, and M who was brought up Christian but has atheistic leanings. There is C who is a Methodist, and B who is born-again, and lets not even start in on C who will pray to God to clean his food when it falls on the ground. Anyways, there is so much religion out there that seems to predominate everything about the world, and I didn't realize it until I got to college.

Before college I hadn't really thought too much about it. Atheism seemed to come naturally to me as a result of thinking hard about what the universe was like. I spent my younger years thinking that God was some sort of big guy in the sky, and being confused about the father son and holy ghost bit, but really caring about Santa and the Tooth Fairy more. When I was in Catholic School for two years, I thought for a while I was Christian, but the more I went to mass, the more I felt like it was all empty gestures, done to impress someone who didn't exist. I wasn't sure what it meant when I said I didn't believe in god, and until high school, I didn't really admit to being an atheist, still trying to figure out what the word meant.

I did eventually proclaim to the world I was an atheist. Science bases my world, and according to science, there really isn't a need for a big guy in the sky, a force in the universe, God, to do anything. Molecules will form, evolution will occur, without magic, or a watchmaker or whatever. The world spins, the universe expands and science explains it all. Even if there were a big guy out there orchestrating everything, he wouldn't be needed, so why have him at all?

I was brought up in a world where science is expanding its knowledge at every turn, and explaining the things we used to not be able to explain, but also in a world where religion still holds on to the minds of everyone around me and it makes me sad. What also makes me sad, is the fact that because I don't conform to a religious ideology, people will make assumptions -- mean and jagged assumptions.

Only once have I been attacked for my stance on God personally, but I often feel attacked. Every sign that proclaims that God has something to do with so-called morality, every time someone (even myself, for I will confess to using 'God' in a habitual manner) uses God as a noun, as a person who can hear what is being said, or explicative, tells me that I am strange, that I should believe because non-belief is tantamount to admitting I am an alien from another planet.

To me there is an important distinction between non-religious, and atheism. Julia Sweeney says in 'Letting Go of God' that she just considers herself to be a naturalist, and religious people are therefore a-naturalist, and while I sincerely believe what she says for her reasons why, the common person won't without the background that explains what a naturalist is.

This morning I was moved into a waiting area and when the nurse came to register me, she looked at me and said "Ms. Waters, do you have a religious preference?" and I froze. I thought about whether or not atheism counted as a religion, or if there was a label for it in her system. I sometimes have this paralysis over the question "race". If there is an option for "other" I write in human. Race is not a true distinction, merely a formal construct, like god, that humans created. But atheism is not a religion, its a lack of religion.

So I sat there feeling like I was betraying myself, worrying over I was counted now as "non-religious" or atheist.

I said atheist in the end. It is, and remains, who I am.