Are you more or less Religious now that you are older? (friends, adult)
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One reason i have been less reluctant to talk about my disbelief is that it does seem to be more accepted and less people try to push theirs on others. When people press, it's hard to defend atheism without ridiculing belief.
I don't bring up my non-belief. If others are discussing religion and I'm asked, I reply that "I'm not religious", and try to leave it at that. If pressed, I will say that I don't choose to discuss religion as my beliefs are mine, and I'm not interested in changing them. If FURTHER pressed, by some really rude individual, I will say that I don't believe in superstition, or any supernatural being. I hope at that point that they understand that includes angels, devils, demons, gods, witches, vampires, etc. My goal is to not offend them, and also not to be proselytized, or get into a point by point discussion of the rights and wrongs of belief vs. non-belief.
I normally don't bring it up either, but I now will say something if someone makes a statement that I don't want anyone to think that I agree with.
For example, not too long ago someone who learned that I'm a cancer survivor said to me that my positive outcome was "because god was looking after" me. Now as an atheist I couldn't even appear to agree with that by failing to refute it, so I replied, "With all due respect, it was entirely due to medical science plus me insisting on certain tests beyond what the doctor originally did."
"But your guardian angel must have made you insist on those extra tests."
"No, it was from me and Dr. Google spending a lot of time together plus a healthy dose of common sense."
...The matter that makes up the universe has always been here and always will be. There was not a point where something came from nothing. That doesn't necessarily negate big bang - but what blew up and where did it come from? Why do we feel like there has to have been a beginning?
Our personal experience sees beginnings and ends. Even ancient things, thousands of years old, have a beginning, even if we're unable to infer the exact dates. It is natural to extrapolate from the small to the large, from the personal to the universal.
The question is, how does that tendency to extrapolate, evolve with age? As we gain personal experience, are we led to think, that having more experience, the extrapolation is more valid? Or on the contrary, do we acquire humility, that cautions us to rely less on intuition, less on the narrowly personal?
It is commonly noted - and I happen to agree - that older age brings an intuitive reexamination of the questions first posed in childhood. As young adults, as parents or career-driven people or whatnot, we tend to focus on investments, or our jobs, on junior's soccer-practice. The "big questions" become a luxury too pricey for demands on our time. We set them aside. Later, as time becomes more available, we revisit these questions, hopefully now with greater experience, and more logical sophistication, than in our first forays as wide-eyed children.
I wonder, though, if many decades' worth of experience, results in more certainty, or less.
I gave up Catholicism for Lent in 1968, when I was 16. I'm firmly entrenched in the Agnostic/Atheist Camp at this point. Heaven or Hell for eternity sounds sooooo boring. When I die, it's all over. Don't bother me with afterlife fantasies. Once I'm dead, I'm staying that way!
Our personal experience sees beginnings and ends. Even ancient things, thousands of years old, have a beginning, even if we're unable to infer the exact dates. It is natural to extrapolate from the small to the large, from the personal to the universal.
The question is, how does that tendency to extrapolate, evolve with age? As we gain personal experience, are we led to think, that having more experience, the extrapolation is more valid? Or on the contrary, do we acquire humility, that cautions us to rely less on intuition, less on the narrowly personal?
It is commonly noted - and I happen to agree - that older age brings an intuitive reexamination of the questions first posed in childhood. As young adults, as parents or career-driven people or whatnot, we tend to focus on investments, or our jobs, on junior's soccer-practice. The "big questions" become a luxury too pricey for demands on our time. We set them aside. Later, as time becomes more available, we revisit these questions, hopefully now with greater experience, and more logical sophistication, than in our first forays as wide-eyed children.
I wonder, though, if many decades' worth of experience, results in more certainty, or less.
I think a lot of people harbor uncertainties for most of their lives that they refuse to explicitly resolve while people they don't want to disappoint are still alive. In many cases I don't think it's the time to explore the questions are much as the perceived freedom to do so. A lot of the answers were implicitly/unconsciously reached a long time ago.
When younger, I claimed I was Agnostic. Was a polite reply. Now that I am older, I have no problem saying I am an Atheist but I do not say so unless pushed.
We had a similar thread not long ago. It is popular to be non religious. There is strength and affernment and helps with underlying fears by jumping on the bandwagon.
I rejected the religious brainwashing about when I realized there was no Santa Claus.
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