Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hi,
I'm thinking of creating a new video series (Top 10...) and I wanted to get the community's perspective on being an atheist.

What are some of the top reasons why you think it sucks to be an atheist?
Im thinking along the lines of...
1) Dealing with family
2) Ignorance is bliss

etc.

People trying to convert you. That's a nuisance.

This sounds interesting!

1. People who tell you that you're wrong.
2. People constantly harassing you saying things like "YOU'RE GOANNA HELL!" and other things of that nature.
3. Feeling that (or maybe knowing) that life is short, and nothing may come after it. No afterlife. (May not apply to all atheists, maybe for those without some sort of spirituality)
4. Being accused of hate speech.
5. Getting lame arguments from creationists.

Risk of being executed in Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

To be honest I think being an atheist is fun. The most annoying part is people diffusing soft and hard atheism; believing that atheism is the belief that no god exists rather than just the lack of belief in a god.

I spend most of my free time with atheists and/or agnostics and haven't experienced downsides to being atheist in years. When I had no atheist friends, though, the top downsides were:

1) Unclear definitions (I'm ignostic as a foundation, which I think a lot of people don't appreciate. According to most definitions or explanations of a deity that I have heard, I'm agnostic atheist, but most people don't clearly define or explain what they mean by a deity, and I can't engage in discussion with them about that topic until they at least attempt to do so.)

2) Other people acting unwilling to clearly define or explain what they mean (They say that it's all a mystery, yet claim to know the answers to the mystery, which is contradictory. They say to me, "That's just semantics," when I ask what they mean by their terms. When I distinguished between "semantics" in ordinary language vs. semantics as a branch of linguistics, one person said, "You care too much about meaning." After that, I no longer wanted to talk to him, so I resorted to more directness than I normally use and told him, "If you don't care about the meaning of what you say, then you have no business speaking." The theists' unwillingness to clearly define or explain what they mean leads to a feeling of wasted time when I look back on the conversation.)

3) People saying that they can understand agnosticism but that atheism is too extreme.

4) When I found friends who were all agnostic and/or atheist, I developed a bit of a deluded understanding of the world that most people are more like me in that way than they really are. Maybe that's not a downside to being atheist as much as a downside to forming a close-knit minority group without friends from the majority group.

5) People assuming psychological more than philosophical reasons for atheism (e.g., asking if you hate God), when you have philosophical more than psychological reasons.