Unlucky Atheists

Atheists don’t actually believe in luck, but it’s possible that they can, in fact, be unlucky. Today being Friday the 13^th, I thought I’d perform a service and list an appropriate number of ways that atheists could find themselves to be the victims of misfortune.

1. Not voting for George W. Bush but having him be your president anyway and then the party you did vote for doesn’t have enough balls and/or scruples to impeach him.


2. Living next-door to a hard-of-hearing family that enjoys Contemporary Christian music.


3. Having a crush on an attractive coworker and taking months to summon up the courage to ask her out on a date and then the day you finally do feel confident enough to approach her she shows you her new “Jesus Saves” tattoo.


4. Being so dimwitted that even though you can speak intelligently about the dangers to the food supply brought about by a combination of climate change, pollution, and corporate greed you still need Charlton Heston to clue you in that Soylent Green is people.


5. Taking a home-study cartooning course in Holland and having as your first assignment: Draw a picture of Mohammed with a bomb on his head.


6. Hearing your atheist wife telling an old friend of hers that she thinks your marriage has been successful because the two of you are both Capricorns.


7. Tuning into a TV program announced in your local newspaper as “Richard Dawkins hosts a discussion on the evolutionary development of family morality,” but actually the editors didn’t catch a minor typo in a blurb that really should have said, “Richard Dawson hosts Family Feud.”


8. Being awakened early on a Sunday morning by a knock on your door and gearing up for a fun confrontation but it’s just a Jehovah’s Witness who wants to let you know that your car is on fire.


9. Inventing a great atheist game in which the object is to acquire as many areas of knowledge — science, history, math, philosophy, literature, etc — as possible and then build on your knowledge to make it even more effective but somebody points out that the rules are almost exactly the same as Monopoly.


10. Having a priest ask you how atheists can claim to have any morals and then after you get all smug in preparation for a devastating answer it turns out that he’s the only Roman Catholic clergyman in the entire world who goes for grown-up women.


11. Smiling sheepishly when asked to say grace at a family dinner, you finally reveal that you’re an atheist and everybody says, “Really? I’m an atheist, also!” but it’s still tuna casserole.


12. Wearing your A T-shirt to an atheist convention at a big hotel and accidentally wandering into a suite where there’s a meeting of the Assholes Club.


13. Getting into a blog argument with a Christian about the Problem of Evil and scoring dozens of “killer” points that leave him or her totally whipped and then you notice that you’ve been typing “evli” in all your comments.

Anyway, good luck, folks.