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I never went through an agnostic phase. I just went straight to hell and figured out I was atheist. The idea of being agnostic depends on the idea that a "higher power" is definable, and with all the crazy ideas and differences of what god "might be like" I decided that even a definition of god was all over the spectrum and to reserve the idea that I "might believe in one of those ideas at some time" ... I just decided to be honest and say I'm atheist.
I was just so conditioned that atheism was too much to accept at once. It's as if I had become everything I once despised. And there was the social stigma. Fortunately the stars were aligned in my extended family. My parents and eldest brother had died, and I was geographically and relationally not that close to my other devout brother, and I was living in Arizona at the time, which isn't wound very tight about religion. By the time I returned to the midwest with all its helmet-haired church going ladies I didn't really give a fig what anyone thought, although in practice the topic never came up. Now I live on the east coast in a very progressive community, and am with a lady who is one of those "free range" atheists that Aeroquipa speaks of. The few Christians I bump elbows with all seem to be liberal Christians. The sky hasn't fallen and my life has improved a lot. The life of a godless hellspawn is something I wish I had lived from the beginning.
Honestly, in hindsight, it was a combination of indoctrination, social pressure, and the unconscious mind constructing a consistent narrative.
I just "knew" in the same way I also "knew" that communism was bad, capitalism was good, and being gay was unnatural. Really just unquestioning acceptance of what my parents, my church, Dr Dobson, and a host of other taught me. It was just so obvious that it was right, that to question it was unthinkable.
-NoCapo
I'm curious, were you an oldest child? I was, and I think that oldest children tend to accept things their parents tell them on a deeper level than younger children, since for a few years their parents pretty much make up their entire world. My younger sister and brother were a lot more skeptical at a younger age than I was.
I know in "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins talks about the evolutionary necessity of accepting your parents' teachings. When parents tell you not to run into the street, or not to play with snakes, the child SHOULD obey them without question, and there are obvious evolutionary reasons for this.
It still surprises me that my parents (very intelligent people) could be wrong about something so fundamental and easy to refute, as belief in Catholicism. But also, there's the fact that the whole world talks about God - for instance, when someone dies you hear "he's in a better place," and God shows up in so many song lyrics and common expressions, that it just felt more natural for him to exist than to not exist. So I definitely relate to what you say about "the unconscious mind."
It may indeed be hard to eradicate human mythological instincts, though the old one that some god or other is causing us to Lurve someone is seen for what it is - a human biological instinct and cupid is no more real than Santa.
I see no reason why we shouldn't aim at the religious characters becoming no more believable and believed (and no less) than Arthur, astrology and Atlantis. That still leaves 'God' which may be a harder human delusionary instinct to eradicate.
If so, that doesn't matter. That a lot of people still believe in astrology or Atlantis is a nuisance but not a problem. We can live with it, if, as you suggest, man - made religions are seen for the man - made institutions they are, without any authority derived from their beliefs whatsoever.
It may be that there is a role for them to play in social mentoring and they might even wear funny hats (like our judges) while doing it. However, they would have make better arguments than 'God told me' in doing so and would have to have better grounding in social problem - solving than passing exams on the theology of predestination or Lightfoot's argument on the Genealogy.
I'm curious, were you an oldest child? I was, and I think that oldest children tend to accept things their parents tell them on a deeper level than younger children, since for a few years their parents pretty much make up their entire world. My younger sister and brother were a lot more skeptical at a younger age than I was.
Ha! I am the eldest, actually. I don't think that in my case my belief was stronger or deeper than that of my siblings. My whole family is still highly religious, although they have shifted a bit over the years. I think my mom and the youngest of us kids are more content just to roll with it. My dad and I were often the questioners, and the middle 2 were and probably still are the most dogmatic and intense with their faith, although personal and medical issues have forced them to moderate their beliefs a bit. Overall, though my family is highly religiously educated, and while in some ways a bit unorthodox (mostly Dad) they are still decidedly Christian.
As far as I know, I am the only one in my immediate family to have "left the fold", and it is not something that is brought up in my family. We have not discussed it, although I am sure they have figured it out, since I have not been to church in over 5 years (down from a normal attendance of 3 services a week).
I was an agnostic for most of my adult life before "coming out" several years ago as an atheist. But I think I've ALWAYS kind of been an atheist. Even as a small child, I viewed all things religious with a great deal of skepticism
You were either more intelligent than I as a kid or more brave to question things at an early age.... or both. I was a committed Christian until leaving seminary at age 23.
To tell the truth I don't think I can put down my lifetime atheism to any extra intelligence. It may have been a refusal to think any further than the nose on my faith....sorry face. If it didn't make sense to me, it probably wasn't true, so I thought.
That view would be torn to bits by the smart theists here and of course I did start to question and search and look through all the various religions and ended up agnostic and..well, here I am.
Always 'sort of' been an atheist though more accurately really agnostic until recently.
Growing up, church was deeply puzzling and mystifying to me. Some of the bible stories were nice but mostly it felt like attending a club where everyone else understood what was going on and I didn't:
That's a good way of summing up how I felt through my latter childhood.
I was always an inquisitive kid, and at some point or another, I asked if the magical things that happened in kid's books, or on TV or in movies or comic books really happened. Of course, I was told "no," that these were fantasies that people created with their imaginations. And so naturally,I surmised that tales of talking burning bushes, people turning into pillars of salt, people rising from the dead, etc. were also fantasies, because I'd been told that plants don't talk, people can't turn into stuff, and the dead are dead. However, when I asked my parents if the bible was make believe, I was told very sternly that NO, it absolutely was NOT; in fact it was the most important thing on the face of the earth and that I should never speak so ill of it in the future.
At varying points in my childhood, I'd either put the issue out of my mind and instead think of cars and Transformers and how fun it was to ride your bike around with your friends, or I'd try to make myself think like my parents or take heed from the long, mind-numbingly boring sermons I had to sit through every Saturday and Sunday.
"Thank God for the water that made up this puddle I'm pretending is a lake and rolling my Matchbox cars through!"
"Look at how majestic God's hand is, creating this mountain we're driving up and down! Now we're in a desert! Only God could have imagined something so breathtaking and amazing!"
"It sure was nice of God to give us animals like pigs that can be turned into sausage for pizza!"
"I sure am glad that God made girls so pretty!"
etc.
But, there was always that feeling I got in the back of my mind that it was all a bunch of desperately-hopeful crap. I remember watching live coverage of the first Gulf War when I was about seven, and they accidentally cut, for about two seconds, to an image of a bunch of dead American soldiers by a blown-up Bradley fighting vehicle. My dad was in the Army, and I was terrified that he'd get called up to fight. A couple days earlier, I'd made the mistake of letting my parents hear me say "butt" and had been soundly admonished for having such a foul mouth, and warned that I should never talk that way, because God was always listening. Of course, that day in school, my friends and I had said "butt" and made armpit farts, and one of us probably said "damn" or dropped the F-bomb in a deliberate and awkward fashion, just 'cause.
I immediately wondered to myself why God cared so much about my silly behavior when there were people getting blown up on the other side of the globe. I wondered if God was so busy shaking his head at us shameful little boys on the playground that he couldn't be bothered to pay attention to all those soldiers, who had moms and dads and wives and kids, and that was why they were all dead. It made me ask myself whether we'd all been suckered into believing that God was a good guy when he was actually a real jerk, or whether he just didn't exist. I'd been raised with the intention of someday going to seminary, like my grandfather, and becoming a scholar of the bible, possibly a minister, and in keeping with this, my parents had tried to instill in me a sense of meek deference that included not striving to be the center of attention, because this was something that was arrogant. I drew the correlation that assuming that God was always paying attention to everything we did when there was so much horrible crap going on in the world was actually quite arrogant.
My whole later childhood leading up to my early teens was basically a continual whittling away in the belief of anything I'd been taught about the bible and god, with me going through stretches where I'd either try to push the doubt out of my mind and try to act like a true believer, or I'd admit to my friends that I just couldn't believe no matter how hard I tried. My family went through so much hardship despite the fact that my parents were so devout, people at our church died of illnesses and disease despite their devotion, people all over the world who believed in god were suffering and dying for no good reason no matter how much they believed, and it all just seemed increasingly implausible that there was anything "up there" or "out there" paying any attention at all.
As I got older, my parents pushed harder and harder for me to get deeper into the church. When I was ten, my dad came home beaming about how I was going to start training to be an acolyte (altar boy). I waited for him to stop explaining how excited he was and sheepishly told him that I wasn't sure I wanted to do it - I'd been raised to be honest, and the honest truth was that I didn't feel right about being an acolyte when I wasn't sure I believed any of it. My dad's response was to yell the hell out of me and order me to my room. When I apologized later, he wouldn't answer me, and my mom told me that my dad was very ashamed because he had done it when he was a boy and loved it, and he thought that I would too. I told him I was willing to do it because I loved him, but his response was a terse, "Well, I already told Father Stan that my son didn't want to be an acolyte, so forget it."
The shame was crushing.
As I got older and the more faults I found with the bible and religion, the more that shame turned to hurt, and then to anger - my dad cared more about the bible and religion and church than he did about me or my wellbeing. This realization stung. We had a royal blow-up when I was twelve when they made me go to church even though I was sick, so I felt like crap the whole time and eventually went downstairs because I kept sneezing. The whole ride home was my dad telling me how awful I was and how much I'd embarrassed our family when I walked out on God, and I finally confronted him on the fact that he cared more about the physical act of going to church than my health, and that if anything I'd embarrassed our family by sneezing through the first half hour of mass, which was his fault. The result was being yelled at like I'd never been yelled at that up to that point in my life - literally screamed at for forty five minutes.
At thirteen, under a similar circumstance (having been too sick to go to school or see friends but having no choice but to go to Easter Mass), I finally told them that I didn't believe in any of it; literally, I told him that I'd get infinitely more happiness from riding my bike to Circle K and getting a bag of Flamin' Hot Doritos than going to church, ever.
He didn't talk to me for the next five years.
I tried a couple more times to make faith work, even though I didn't believe it, just so that I had a relationship with my dad and other family members who turned their backs on me. My mom was horrified but still gave me emotional support; however, I was excluded from any family trips, not welcome at the dinner table, my parents gradually stopped buying me clothing and food, and by the time I was fifteen, I was spending most of my time crashing on friends' couches and occasionally "taking naps" overnight in the park. By the time I was sixteen, I had dropped out of school, was working full-time and paying rent to live with friends and bandmates in flats around Boston. Occasionally, between flats, I'd find somewhere safe to park my '86 Saab hatchback, fold down the back seats, and sleep there.
Through it all, I just couldn't imagine how people could let something so fantastically dumb and nonsensical dominate their lives to the point that they'd excommunicate friends and family, how they'd totally reroute their lives to dance and suffer for the behest and amusement of a god that would have been a serious A-hole had he been real. This train of thought has not left me.
I was always an inquisitive kid, and at some point or another ...
WOW, your parents "threw you away". I think in a way it's good that you put a stop to the BS and suffering earlier rather than later. My parents never treated me like that, even though they're deeply religious.
You were either more intelligent than I as a kid or more brave to question things at an early age.... or both. I was a committed Christian until leaving seminary at age 23.
I think I was made uncomfortable by the lack of reason attached to the faith demonstrated within my family. There was always this tinge of hysteria to it that made me uneasy. My grandmother was convinced she had had visions - I know now she was simply demonstrating symptoms of dehydration :P
It wasn't like I rebelled or asked a lot of questions. I went through all the proper motions, but inside I was mainly like "REALLY? Do these people REALLY believe this?" I found their devotion mystifying. My father always admitted he was agnostic, but he still donates to his childhood church to "hedge his bets." Cracks me up. But I think his willingness to admit his lack of sincere belief opened the door for me to look at things logically.
For a long time, I think I really wanted to believe, but it just didn't stick. I would pray, but it just seemed like I was talking to myself. In moments of great desperation, like when my best friend was dying, I really really wanted to believe, but I could never make the leap to full faith.
It just seemed logical to me to accept that there was no god, and when I finally made my peace with that, it just felt so damn good.
That's a good way of summing up how I felt through my latter childhood.
I was always an inquisitive kid, and at some point or another, I asked if the magical things that happened in kid's books, or on TV or in movies or comic books really happened. Of course, I was told "no," that these were fantasies that people created with their imaginations. And so naturally,I surmised that tales of talking burning bushes, people turning into pillars of salt, people rising from the dead, etc. were also fantasies, because I'd been told that plants don't talk, people can't turn into stuff, and the dead are dead. However, when I asked my parents if the bible was make believe, I was told very sternly that NO, it absolutely was NOT; in fact it was the most important thing on the face of the earth and that I should never speak so ill of it in the future.
At varying points in my childhood, I'd either put the issue out of my mind and instead think of cars and Transformers and how fun it was to ride your bike around with your friends, or I'd try to make myself think like my parents or take heed from the long, mind-numbingly boring sermons I had to sit through every Saturday and Sunday.
"Thank God for the water that made up this puddle I'm pretending is a lake and rolling my Matchbox cars through!"
"Look at how majestic God's hand is, creating this mountain we're driving up and down! Now we're in a desert! Only God could have imagined something so breathtaking and amazing!"
"It sure was nice of God to give us animals like pigs that can be turned into sausage for pizza!"
"I sure am glad that God made girls so pretty!"
etc.
But, there was always that feeling I got in the back of my mind that it was all a bunch of desperately-hopeful crap. I remember watching live coverage of the first Gulf War when I was about seven, and they accidentally cut, for about two seconds, to an image of a bunch of dead American soldiers by a blown-up Bradley fighting vehicle. My dad was in the Army, and I was terrified that he'd get called up to fight. A couple days earlier, I'd made the mistake of letting my parents hear me say "butt" and had been soundly admonished for having such a foul mouth, and warned that I should never talk that way, because God was always listening. Of course, that day in school, my friends and I had said "butt" and made armpit farts, and one of us probably said "damn" or dropped the F-bomb in a deliberate and awkward fashion, just 'cause.
I immediately wondered to myself why God cared so much about my silly behavior when there were people getting blown up on the other side of the globe. I wondered if God was so busy shaking his head at us shameful little boys on the playground that he couldn't be bothered to pay attention to all those soldiers, who had moms and dads and wives and kids, and that was why they were all dead. It made me ask myself whether we'd all been suckered into believing that God was a good guy when he was actually a real jerk, or whether he just didn't exist. I'd been raised with the intention of someday going to seminary, like my grandfather, and becoming a scholar of the bible, possibly a minister, and in keeping with this, my parents had tried to instill in me a sense of meek deference that included not striving to be the center of attention, because this was something that was arrogant. I drew the correlation that assuming that God was always paying attention to everything we did when there was so much horrible crap going on in the world was actually quite arrogant.
My whole later childhood leading up to my early teens was basically a continual whittling away in the belief of anything I'd been taught about the bible and god, with me going through stretches where I'd either try to push the doubt out of my mind and try to act like a true believer, or I'd admit to my friends that I just couldn't believe no matter how hard I tried. My family went through so much hardship despite the fact that my parents were so devout, people at our church died of illnesses and disease despite their devotion, people all over the world who believed in god were suffering and dying for no good reason no matter how much they believed, and it all just seemed increasingly implausible that there was anything "up there" or "out there" paying any attention at all.
As I got older, my parents pushed harder and harder for me to get deeper into the church. When I was ten, my dad came home beaming about how I was going to start training to be an acolyte (altar boy). I waited for him to stop explaining how excited he was and sheepishly told him that I wasn't sure I wanted to do it - I'd been raised to be honest, and the honest truth was that I didn't feel right about being an acolyte when I wasn't sure I believed any of it. My dad's response was to yell the hell out of me and order me to my room. When I apologized later, he wouldn't answer me, and my mom told me that my dad was very ashamed because he had done it when he was a boy and loved it, and he thought that I would too. I told him I was willing to do it because I loved him, but his response was a terse, "Well, I already told Father Stan that my son didn't want to be an acolyte, so forget it."
The shame was crushing.
As I got older and the more faults I found with the bible and religion, the more that shame turned to hurt, and then to anger - my dad cared more about the bible and religion and church than he did about me or my wellbeing. This realization stung. We had a royal blow-up when I was twelve when they made me go to church even though I was sick, so I felt like crap the whole time and eventually went downstairs because I kept sneezing. The whole ride home was my dad telling me how awful I was and how much I'd embarrassed our family when I walked out on God, and I finally confronted him on the fact that he cared more about the physical act of going to church than my health, and that if anything I'd embarrassed our family by sneezing through the first half hour of mass, which was his fault. The result was being yelled at like I'd never been yelled at that up to that point in my life - literally screamed at for forty five minutes.
At thirteen, under a similar circumstance (having been too sick to go to school or see friends but having no choice but to go to Easter Mass), I finally told them that I didn't believe in any of it; literally, I told him that I'd get infinitely more happiness from riding my bike to Circle K and getting a bag of Flamin' Hot Doritos than going to church, ever.
He didn't talk to me for the next five years.
I tried a couple more times to make faith work, even though I didn't believe it, just so that I had a relationship with my dad and other family members who turned their backs on me. My mom was horrified but still gave me emotional support; however, I was excluded from any family trips, not welcome at the dinner table, my parents gradually stopped buying me clothing and food, and by the time I was fifteen, I was spending most of my time crashing on friends' couches and occasionally "taking naps" overnight in the park. By the time I was sixteen, I had dropped out of school, was working full-time and paying rent to live with friends and bandmates in flats around Boston. Occasionally, between flats, I'd find somewhere safe to park my '86 Saab hatchback, fold down the back seats, and sleep there.
Through it all, I just couldn't imagine how people could let something so fantastically dumb and nonsensical dominate their lives to the point that they'd excommunicate friends and family, how they'd totally reroute their lives to dance and suffer for the behest and amusement of a god that would have been a serious A-hole had he been real. This train of thought has not left me.
I'm sorry. That's beyond terrible. Do you have a relationship with your parents at all? (I don't think I"d want to if I were you, but I'm kind of scorched earth in how I respond to being wronged.)
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