Hello all, I have recently started my 1st student placement at an NHS South East London hospital caring for the elderly with mental health issues. The staff on the ward are generally friendly to me but I have felt increasingly uncomfortable and alienated as many of them are openly Christian / 7th Day including my mentor (who has recently returned from a missionary trip abroad) and a co-student who has undermined me (with a 'caring' smile) on more than one occasion – during one particular chat he stated "That's a shame" when I explained that my [long-term] girlfriend and I do not have children (we don't see it that way!). Comments on being tired during my shifts including "You won't be able to get to Church on Sunday" have further increased this feeling. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but can any contributors out there give me any advice. I'm a mature student who comes from a professional background in publishing, and I have a passion for improvement in mental health services.
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Welcome to the world of the minorities. All I can say is you'll have to deal with it. Also, understand that people are quite at home attacking from a position of strength regardless of their walk of life or claim on altruism, which man cannot naturally lay claim to, and it's especially true when their sensibilities are not aligned with a targeted logic, which is you.
People do not like solid logic wedging itself between them and their belief systems. You, who should know this already as a mature professional, let it be known that you are an atheist. That was your first mistake. Now you have to suffer the childishness of the Christians using you as a dig and butt of their jokes. Good move!
Now you have to play the logic out to the fullest.
Start naming archeological scholars, their forensic (good word considering your context) studies of past civilizations and the recorded history attesting to the dates, names and places relative to proving the bible's recording of such events. State clearly you were trying to prove to yourself that the bible's accounting of the people, places and events were in line with the archeological record. In the end, you had to admit to yourself that the contrasts were just too great to ascribe belief in the bible. Account for yourself in this manner, divulging tidbits over time, and state that despite your desires to prove the bible a factual piece of work you couldn't. It simply disagreed with the archeological record most of the times and clearly revealed plagiarizing from known myths. Do not attempt sermons, dissertations or lectures. Stay casual, unmoved, maybe a bit disappointed and brief. Cover as much as you know. Read more about it and give sources.
When you start naming academic sources you take the focus off of you and redirect it to them. Your Christians may ask you for references and sources in challenge to your stance so be ready with them. Most have never researched a single word of the bible's archeological relationship and won't. They are all blind faith loyalists to their religion. I have had one guy in particular decide he was going to go into a dissertation to counter what I'd read and mentioned to him. I simply told him that I had to go with the facts and gave him the sources to read for himself. He never did. He's afraid to. He knew I used to be a Christian like him but the facts I'd collected and read on the topic dissuaded me from my belief in Christianity. He did not want to have that happen to him. Now he never, ever speaks of Christianity, religion of any kind, god or anything remotely related. Moreover, he walks on eggs around me. I feel like I'm holding a gun to his head. It's unreal. He's now the uncomfortable one in my presence. The tables have turned. The difference between you and me is I'd have come to this forum to announce this problem of yours as a fun experiment for myself. I'm too practiced in it now to be bullied anymore.