Overcoming Religion

[ray245]

Ah yes, the Christian denial of Dinosaurs ensure I do not believe in the bible at a young age.

I remember my grandfather was extremely pissed with my aunt for forcing christian exorcism down on him.

[Dakarne II]

I'm not sure when I first switched off from religion. Like most Brits, I had mandatory CofE crap shoved down my throat in primary education, up to and including them introducing a whole section of Friday wherein we had to sing a whole lot of crappy hymns, but I never really took any of it in because my mother and father more or less discouraged religious beliefs because they saw them as mere superstitions. I think I stopped believing in the Judeo-Christian God about the same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy; I think I merely said I believed to keep with the pretend little storyline we had going on.

After that, I more or less bounced from Agnosticism to Pantheistic Wicca to a brief flirtation with Atheistic Satanism for a while because I felt I needed to have some sort of group to fit into. I ultimately just gave up on religion and superstition entirely and accepted that the world was in fact mundane, and there's nothing more magical out there in the universe than what we project onto it. Which is sort of the same method how Fundamentalist Christians can see the face of Jesus Christ in a half-eaten bowl of porridge every other Tuesday and then declare their porridge blessed by the LORD or something like that.

All in all, however, it was very... undramatic.

I think Darth Wong's infamous website and the Sceptic's Annotated Bible gave me a few nudges in the right direction (and I offer thanks ), but what really tipped it wasn't an evolutionist or atheist argument but instead the argument from the other side. I think it was an essay on how three of society's greatest ills (racism, abortion and the Holocaust, according to said essay) were caused by the theory of evolution, actually. I can't find it right now, unfortunately, as it was years back that I encountered it and I don't think it even exists any more, but it fuels my belief that sufficient blatant stupidity ought to act as a very decent method of making sure people with half a clue don't touch it with a ten-foot pole.

I seriously believe that dinosaurs are the greatest weapon that science has over religion when it comes to small children.

I don't know whether to be proud or dismayed towards my species over the fact that the best argument for rationality against religion comes from the jaws of a forty-three foot long predatory reptile.

[Coyote]

Huh, my tale is obviously going to be quite different. My family was not religious, really, despite living in Christian-Fundy Idaho. Christian funadmentalism around here was primarily thr Mormon Church, most other Christian denominations were pretty laid back, and a lot of it was 'force-of-habit Christianity', at least it seemed that way. So when I had a couple friends that went to the Methodist Church, and I started hanging out with them and slowly started to go there, my folks didn't really care and in fact thought it'd be a good place to meet "nice kids" (if they only knew; I felt up my first set of boobs at a church overnight retreat). Public School taught about dinosaurs and all the scientific stuff, and I found the occassional bumbling attempts by teachers (who said they were obliged to give us these occassional disclaimers) to admit that they weren't trying to make us believe one thing or another to be oddly out of place and a waste of time.

But, my friends were at the Methodist Church, and I thought I was obligated to "get into" the church because I was hanging out there (no one told me to do this, I just assumed) and I actually went into a Evangelical phase for awhile. The thing was, I knew that deep down inside, in a part of me I rarely accessed, I knew a lot of it was silly. I was going through the motions so as... to seek acceptance, perhaps, from friends, or it was my way to be a teen rebel against my non-religious parents. About the time I turned 18 it was like I flipped a switch-- I was going to leave High School, I was joining the Army, and within the space of a few weeks I pretty much deflated all the nonsense and admitted to myself that "all the Jesus stuff" was just something I absolutely could not believe. It was odd; I felt like "okay, time to grow up and be serious now" and actually walked away from all organized religion entirely.

It helped that during my brief Christian religious phase (which I now look back on with slightly embarassed curiosity) I was with a church group that willingly admitted that much of the Bible was probably some sort of metaphor, and heavily influenced by human interpretation to suit political desires Back In The Day. They also confronted the idea that there was "very little" proof that any of it happened, and that really, faith wasn't about proof or evidence but about what you believed.

This was reinforced when I finally got off my ass and went to Israel. I did archaeology on Neolithic sites and the Orthodox Jewish group I fell in with openly said that a six-day creation was impossible and obviously represented some kind of metaphor for Bronze Age tribals. I felt much more comfortable finally talking to the Orthodox Jews and admitting what I went through earlier, and their reaction was a shrug and the statement that Judaism is not the only way and, in fact, the intent was that Jews would share the afterlife with 'the righteous of all nations', which would even include non-believers. It was also interesting to note that they told me that after all the commentary, all the analysis, all the readings, interpretations and philosophy that Rabbis and scholars had poured into it, religion in itself was, fundamentally, a human social creation and everything we think we know could be completely wrong. I saw how Christianity tried to base its legitimacy on things said in the Torah, and utterly failed to make a convincing argument connecting their legitimacy to the old prophesies and intents.

I also went on an organized tour in Jerusalem the first time I went there and saw several hordes of Christian Pilgrims going through the street sof the Old City, many carrying huge crosses, either as a group or trading off one-by-one. I saw a few obvious local-types, people who had very worn crosses with little wheels at the bottom (which I found hilarious and completely against the intent) wandering as well, and even people wearing crowns of thorns.

Our guide told us about the "Via De La Rosa" (something Catholic), where supposedly Jesus wandered the streets of the city and stopped at certain places, and pilgrims came there to re-enact it, completely oblivious to the fact that people around them were walking their dogs, buying things like groceries and toilet cleaner, etc. In the Old City, through the Muslim Quarter, there were thousands of little shops selling gaudy Christian kitsch souvenirs-- amazingly tasteless crap of obvious cheap construction being snatched up by the pilgrims like kids in a candy store, and I couldn't help but think two things: one was (ironically), "There but for the grace of God go I", for I had experimented with that life and might have ended up like that; and two; "You claim to live this life and principles and you just don't get it, do you, suckers?" --the whole thing about "money changers and the steps of Jerusalem" came to mind.

But my tale in this is not abandoning religion, but rather finding reconciliation with where I was. The tales I read here in this thread indicate a lot of confrontation with things that are patently rediculous (Biblical Literalism) and things that basically assault people for being who they are (discovering sexuality that is "officially condemned" and wrangling with it). I am fortunate in that my family was completely uninvolved and happy to let me find my own way, so I got no pressure there; that nearly all the religious groups I found saw the Bible as metaphor and didn't push literalism; and that I had no issues such as sexuality to confront.

But having tested the waters and seen how insane the results can be, and seen the torture other people go through to force themselves to conform to something their rational minds cannot accept, or a belief that attacks them on a personal level, I am very sympathetic and understanding why they would reject such a thing so violently or thoroughly.

[Posner]

Mine was very gradual. I went to Mass every week until High School, and then went to a Catholic high school. it was Jesuit, so we got the soft sell, pretty refreshing. And then when I went to college, out of habit more than anything else, I kept going to Mass on Sunday nights. In fact the only time I skipped was to lose my viriginity (I have to tell you, that was an interesting confession.) I was fairly religious, but since becoming atheist I realized that I really lucked out; religion really didn't hurt my life that much because I was pretty good at the hypocrite game. I wasn't the judgemental type, but I could rationalize everything with confession. In fact, one of the only times I remember ever having denied myself anything based solely on my religion was that I, in a drunken haze, did not have sex with a girl because I was afraid it would be a sin. Luckily the next day I realized how frighteningly ugly she was and all my friends called her Sideshow Bob because that's exactly what her hair looked like. Looks like I would owe Jesus a beer if he ever actually existed. I have found that most of my feelings on morality haven't changed since I became atheist; I was always kinda a humanist and Jesuit school reinforced that. So as much contempt as I have for religion, I mostly look at how ridiculous it is as opposed to how evil it is, which I guess is a good thing because it is more fun to laugh at something that to hate it.

[Zac Naloen]

In the UK, the school system very forcefully pushes Christianity on students (or at least used to; the EU might have forced them to tone it down) and quite often has daily prayer. The final year students even got subjected to an evangelism week at the school I went to, and there were disproportionately severe punishments for either not taking part or being overly "disrespectful" to the visiting Christians.

Did you go to a church of england school, we never had this at my school?


I never had religion thrown at me in any way and for that reason the whole thing is totally alien to me.

I just can't understand how anyone can believe the nonsense they proclaim to.