The story behind, “Why do Atheists care about Religion?”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4fQA9mt-Mg[/youtube]
I wasn’t always an atheist. I was loosely raised Catholic. My family would go to church when we were visiting our much more devout extended family, during Easter and Christmas, but otherwise, religion just wasn’t a major factor in my life.
This changed when I reached 7th grade. Poor public schools, pressure from the extended family, and also a renewed sense of faith moved my mother to enroll me in a private catholic junior high and high school. Attending mandatory religion classes, I learned about catholicism. I read the bible, with interpretation guided by nuns and teachers.
Now, when I was younger, I had read Greek, Roman, and Norse mythologies. I later added Babylonian myths. They fascinated me much like how dinosaurs had fascinated me as a small child. Here were looming belief structures that had all but vanished from the face of the earth. Stories of heroes, monsters, great deeds, and quests. Definitely great stuff.
Reading the bible, I was heavily reminded of those earlier myths. It was fascinating stuff, but each chapter also generated more and more questions in me. Teachers would give replies that just didn’t really fully answer the questions… or that I “would have to take it on faith”.
Even with questions still mulling in my brain, I was still interested in christianity. I read the entire bible, ahead of my class. At one point, I even thought about becoming a priest.
It was after learning more and more science that I gradually moved to a Deistic view of god, the god of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. A clockmaker that created, wound up, and walked away from the clock, letting it run as designed.
In my junior year of high school, my religion class dealt with religions around the world. I think the purpose was to teach us why those other religions were false and why christianity was the one true religion. However, it had the opposite effect on me. It solidified my belief that christianity was as false as the rest. Still, eastern religions like Buddhism fascinated me and continue to do so.
My deistic beliefs seriously affected my life. Not believing in an after-life, I strived to make the most of my short life. My simple view of life was to experience and learn as much as I could, as long as I didn’t harm myself or others. Looking back, I could have done far more… but I’m generally happy with all the little adventures I’ve had.
A couple of years after graduating from college, I got a job in the deep south. The Bible Belt. Growing up in the midwest, most people didn’t really discuss religion much. It was always there, in every aspect of my life, but there was no pressure. In the Bible Belt, it was different.
Upon arriving in the South, the first three questions people asked were 1. What’s your name?, 2. Are you married?, and 3. What church do you belong to? Not necessarily in that order.
When I admitted that I did not belong to a church and that I was agnostic, people would typically have one of three responses. They’d either back away from me like I was diseased; they’d say “I’m sorry” and have tears well up; or they’d do a double-take as if they hadn’t heard correctly.
I learned that in the deep south, agnostic equaled atheist, and atheists were “evil”. I explained that I wasn’t “atheist”. I was an agnostic Deist and that I just didn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus. This was usually met with horror or anger.
I had co-workers attempt an “intervention” with me to try and save me from Satan. Another time, they took me to a revival to see if a motivated preacher could bring me to Jesus. I had a girl dump me after a concerned friend told her that I was an “evil atheist”. She broke up with me because she didn’t want her children exposed to me and my “beliefs”.
I was told that the Roman Empire fell because they crucified Jesus and worshipped pagan gods. When I brought up the fact that Constantine had converted the empire to christianity and it had become the “Holy Roman Empire”, they scoffed at me… wondering where I had learned history.
I got in trouble for mentioning the “e-word” (evolution) in a public school while doing a natural science program on dinosaurs.
In fact, of all the people I met, all but one believed in Creationism. This included teachers, professors, the head of the planetarium for the school district, nurses, doctors, etc. When surveys started showing 43% of Americans believe in Creationism, I thought it was probably not high enough.
A Hindu gentleman moved to town, but left shortly thereafter. He took his family and angrily stomped out of town when, after experiencing an enormous amount of intolerance, someone had the gumption to actually cross the street to spit on him, calling him a pagan.
By city ordinance, only one catholic church was allowed… supposedly, this wasn’t enforced, but there was only one catholic in town, and over 150 other churches.
I saw book burnings. A book that I recommended to a devout friend, “Asimov’s Guide to the Bible” ended up being in one of the bonfires.
The amount of intolerance astounded me.
I was told that I was a sinner, yet I witnessed countless “devout” individuals lie, cheat on their spouses, and steal. It seemed to me that the idea that everyone is a sinner, to be forgiven by Christ, only seemed to give people permission to act unethically… because they were supposedly destined to, then cry for forgiveness to their sky-parent.
I think my time living in the bible belt was the greatest influence I had in making WDACAR. After witnessing the ignorance and the intolerance, I was happy to leave. I didn’t think about religion after I left though. It wasn’t until 9/11 and the actions of religious zealots as well as creationists pushing the agenda outside of the bible belt that I felt that I needed to speak out.
I think that religion represents a clear and present danger to the long-term survival of our species. Granted, I could be wrong. That’s why I do not wish to ban religion. Instead, I want to encourage rational thought among others. I want to educate others and increase diversity. I think that in the free exchange of ideas, we will see science and agnostic-atheism rise to the majority.
Your description of the Bible Belt is fairly accurate. I always thought that the Texas town I lived in was too Christian, but some of the things you’ve experienced greatly out weigh most of my experiences. On behalf of the Bible Belt atheists, I apologize for our bigoted majority.
“I want to encourage rational thought among others.” I applaud your goal! Only problem is people who are deeply religiouse would never ever a) admit there wrong b) think rational enough that they should admit they are wrong. Glad i live in Europe. On average in western European country’s 40% (44% in the Netherlands where i live) is non religiouse. Tho we have our “bible belts” as well. Good luck with the rest of your life, may your path be illuminated by your own reason!
Sweet Jebus,
I disagree, as a former “Born-again” Christian and ex-minister. Sometimes, knowledge IS stronger than faith. No matter what, the seed is planted and, in some, eventually takes root.
Lets hope so! I must say out of experiance, when they lose the argument they either get personal, or go away angry/cry. Perhaps is should not see every argument as a battle. They still dont stop believing. I think it has some thing to do with the brainwashing sites they call “church”. There is lots of peer pressure there. Like kids in high school they push each other to force away such doubts and revel in there believe. They would not dare say they doubt, that would be a social suicide. Just look at those large festivals where christian rock-bands play. They whip each other into a frenzie. Thats why i say most of them wont admit there wrong… ever.
I go to a Catholic high school and when I say that I’m an atheist I’m greeted with awe and disgust.
One of my biggest regrets is not having read “The Selfish Gene” after my freshman year biology course in high school. I was a Deist from then up until a few years ago. I think if I had been exposed to that book earlier, I would have become an atheist much sooner.
I live in the heart of Mississippi and I have to say that what you have described is basically everday life for me. I used to attend a little theologically reformed christian school and most of my family here is highly conservative. If anyone believes that what imrational said is an exaggeration then believe me when I say it’s not. It’s a different world down here….
Life is short! Enjoy it and let the religious masses waste their time chasing their own tails..
Their loss..
lol
Live n let live…
If these people would just spend the time they normally waste on religious practice helping other people wouldn’t it be great though…
** It’s the Ideology, stupid!**
The almighty lords of dualism: Ahura Mazda, Yahweh, God, and Allah are moral equivalents of comic book super-villains. And this pulp fiction enjoys fanatical cult followings.
Don’t however mistake political ideology for religious belief.
Wherever ideology reduces to theology, as in the Southern U.S. or its sister region Saudi Arabia, secular politics does not exist. The delusional and the deluded project their fears onto the hated others — Secularism corrupts. Tolerance capitulates to evil. Only puritanism saves.
The holy text is merely pretext. Ideology masquerading as religion bamboozles the masses, the media. Telemullahs there, televangelists here.
Real terrorist threats in the U.S.: undermining the Constitution, trashing biological science, and perverting education to suit a disgusting totalitarian ideology of social control and cultural domination, underwritten by the MI complex. [The Bush2 administration represents only a prototype.]
Home-grown christo-fascists frighten me much more than all so-called Islamo-fascists combined.
bipolar2
copyright asserted 2007
I would not expect this letter to be accepted at a fundamentalist Christian site. The application of intellect that I see in some of the contributors here leads me to believe that this might get a hearing.
Think about the hatred between the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. For most of us at this distance, it looks foolish; both sides keep fighting, enraging each other and feeding the conflict. It is obvious that both sides are throwing gas on the fire. This is most clear to us when the causes of neither of the combatants mean much to us.
The same is true of fundamentalist deists and fundamentalist atheists, the people on both sides who cannot imagine any way of thinking but their own. Each feeds the other and makes them stronger. Each is sure of their absolute correctness to a degree that illuminates their insecurity and fear of the other. Each makes the conflict worse and the “enemy” more intractable. If one can step back and take a broader view, it is easy to see.
Neither side seems to be willing to tolerate situations like mine. I work at a church school that serves Christians, Hindus, Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, Secular Humanists and Muslims. I am sure I left some out. In Theology classes, students discuss ethics and morality, for the most part, and are encouraged to critically examine their beliefs. The rule of the class is that all are truly respected. There is no evangelism. I am a Science teacher who has not been asked to teach creationism or “intelligent design” in the 14 years I have been there. I started teaching there as an atheist, and have since begun to practice Buddhism because it makes so damned much sense without the need for a god. The Christians running the school have accepted all of this. And they are not nearly as rare as you might think.
The Christians I work with share many of the views I see here about stem cells, teaching religion in public schools, fundamentalism, rip-off preachers, intolerance and religious self-righteousness (though they lack the self-righteousness of a number of the writers here).
People like them and me are natural allies to atheists, secular humanists, Ethical Society people, and other thinkers.
Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Extremism and intolerance helps no one, particularly the instigator.
Peace,
Rick
** Atheism is not a religion . . . **
>> ‘Atheism’ like ‘Theism’ is not a religion.
‘Theism’ is a 2nd order set which refers to a set (class, category) which contains religions espousing the existence of at least one god, having a personality, having interactions with human beings.
The set of theistic religions would include: Xianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, ancient Greco-Roman polytheisms. It would not include: Theravada Buddhism or Chinese ancestor worship. These are non-theistic religions.
The theist and atheist can agree about which religions are theistic. Religions are “objects” which can be discriminated and counted. The gods, however, are another matter. Atheism is essentially a viewpoint which denies that any theistic god exists.
Let’s be clear. Theism is not a religion. Atheism is not a religion either.
>> A religion is a praxis.
One defining characteristic of a ‘religion’ is that it form a recognizable social unit sharing common practices, identifiable from within and without.
Atheism embodies no common praxis — it has no affirmations, no rituals, it has no common symbols, no outward means of identification.
Having an opinion that gods do not exist can not mean that one has an opinion about gods. There being nothing about which to have an opinion. One of the great clarifications within Logic is to distinguish an existence claim from a claim that some existing thing has a property. (“Existence is not a predicate.”)
>> Speaking clearly about non-existent, but well-known fictional characters.
I can have opinions about a fictitious character “Hamlet” as presented by Shakespeare in his play, ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet.’ I can also have opinions about a mythological being “God” as presented in the synoptic gospels of ‘The New Testament.’
All I can know about these characters is what I read in pages devoted to them. I can no more find “God” by doing astronomical research than I can find “Hamlet’s bones” by excavating in a chapel at Elsinore.
No interpretation of Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet” makes someone called ‘Hamlet’ more likely to exist. No interpretation of the “New Testament” makes some being called ‘God’ more likely to exist.
Bipolar2
copyright asserted 2007
Bipolar2
Is your post a response to mine? If so, I think you have missed my point or are just breathtakingly oblique. I’m just curious, because you seem to need to say something pretty badly,
Seeker
free from need for copyright, 2007
Hello all:
No, I do not ever reply to any single person. It serves no purpose. I learn nothing from engaging in polemic.
I’m only interested in widely held viewpoints. One such is that “Atheism is a religion.” It’s a commonplace presupposition — held by theist and atheist alike. Such assumptions, shared by supposedly antithetical camps, are for me “the salt which never loses its savour.”
It’s quite likely that I’ve posted arguments against that thesis — which I see as a crude category mistake — in one form or another on many other sites.
Moreover, I reach TJM only when StumbleUpon brings me here — as it did just now.
The last thing I wish is to disturb the exceptional individual from creating an anomalous, perhaps fruitful opinion. From such people, I may learn something.
bipolar2
copyright asserted 2007
Bipolar2
Thank you for the kind reply; you showed me more courtesy than I showed you. You illuminated my knee-jerk reaction to thinking that I might be getting criticized and, heaven forbid, not understanding the criticism. Maybe I am more attached to my opinion of my own intelligence than I like to admit.
As awareness is the first step toward freedom, I am in your debt.
Seeker
Why does religion matter? Because how you lead your life matters. Who defines the person you are always becoming?
Now if you could just identify some pre-existing meaning or purpose . . . . And along comes someone to take over . . . your time, your money, your lifestyle, your life.
** We godless, immoralists . . . deny cosmic purpose and cosmic meaning **
Don’t let xians beg the question — Cosmic Meaning? That’s one of the Big Lies, bebé!
Once Western religious myths, like xianity, are rejected — moralized pairs of opposites, like purpose/accident, meaningful/meaningless, being/nothingness — no longer apply to the cosmos.
>> Mental distress in U.S. xian sub-cultures. (Freedom scares millions.)
Those of us lucky enough to have become god-free see a bit better what is unclear. Removing “gods” from legitimate explanations of natural phenomena can cause intense mental distress. As Epicurus surely experienced in Athens 300 years before xianity existed.
To what extent a post-modern culture can create incomprehensible shock can be gauged by the fierce resistance by xian fundies to every secular threat, real or imagined. The U.S. suffers greatly from being among the last Western nations to make a difficult transition to a truly secular state.
>> America lags in mental flexibility (Britain is at least 100 years ahead.)
Many people in the U.S. are stuck somewhere between 1850 acceptance of deep time and 1925 Scopes monkey trial in their cultural backwardness.
In 1858 Darwin knew exactly how harshly he would be treated by Society — he was after all a bona fide “gentleman” quite aware of the perks of his class and his freedom from laboring for any man save himself. T. H. Huxley, who had no fortune to inherit, felt himself socially inferior. It’s no surprise that Huxley coined the word ‘agnostic’ in 1895. He must have hated the ignoramuses of both class and cloth. His coinage slyly renders both unto Caesar and God. (Steve Gould’s “Rocks of Ages” [1999] updates Huxley’s efforts.)
Someone like Matthew Arnold who seems to have been sincerely attracted to God’s good moralized natural universe, gives us “Dover Beach” (1851, publ 1867) as testimony to a completely irrational, but widely felt depression. Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” (1850) tries to find solace in a world where deep time and deep space now belong to human knowledge. Science though true, negates meaning.
Reactionary believers, however, would have none of this. If science negates meaning, then science is either mistaken, false, or lying.
>> Don’t be afraid to be free (Your life to lead, not follow.)
Today’s troglodytes, people like the late (unlamented) Falwell, have continued to abandon rationality while exalting increasingly shrill versions of God’s purpose and the ego-massaging “cosmic” meaning of your life, as defined by these tax-dodging political demagogues.
We “godless ones” as Nietzsche calls us realize that “the moral world order” does not exist. It never existed. There is not and never was any “meaning” in this cosmic sense. The universe is neither welcoming nor hostile. The universe is not “absurd.” It just is.
Stop trying to get “more” out of the universe than was ever actually there. The Greeks considered ‘hope’ the worst of evils in Pandora’s Box.
No one can give you either a meaning or a purpose. They are your greatest gifts to yourself.
bipolar2
copyright asserted 2007
(sorry, bipolar. Your comment got caught up in the spam filter.)
Family Christian Bookstore…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…