What shaped your attitude(s) to Religion

[Manthor]

I've generally remained silent but I am truly curious.Why are so many people on SDN hostile to religion?Is it a matter of many having some level of knowledge in the empirical method and critical thinking or is it a matter of personal interest?Is it the way in which you experienced the practices of the religion or the practitioner itself?

My hypothesis is that the way in which Christian culture in the US is both highly confrontational and evangelical in nature has resulted in this hostility and that the institution itself as well as the practices and theories of the adherents have resulted in this hostility. Would this be true in your case? As it is,SDN provides a forum in which people sharing similar agnostic/atheistic paradigms engage one another and thus attracts people of the same orientation.

[bobalot]

I've generally remained silent but I am truly curious.Why are so many people on SDN hostile to religion?Is it a matter of many having some level of knowledge in the empirical method and critical thinking or is it a matter of personal interest?Is it the way in which you experienced the practices of the religion or the practitioner itself?

Seriously, I'm sure this has been covered before but here goes.

Why do I dislike religion? Because people use it to justify all sorts of stupid shit and their excuses generally boils down to "Well, that's what my religion says and it's right because it says so!". Any sort of evil, stupidity or discrimination can and has been justified by it. It impedes human progress with it's proudly unprovable claims.

Quite frankly, there is nothing that is unique (in a positive sense) that religion adds to humanity.

My hypothesis is that the way in which Christian culture in the US is both highly confrontational and evangelical in nature has resulted in this hostility and that the institution itself as well as the practices and theories of the adherents have resulted in this hostility. Would this be true in your case? As it is,SDN provides a forum in which people sharing similar agnostic/atheistic paradigms engage one another and thus attracts people of the same orientation.

That would not be the case. I live in Australia, a country that is almost proudly indifferent to religion and I still dislike religion.

[Spoonist]

Why are so many people on SDN hostile to religion?

Board culture. Go to some religious site and ask why they are so friendly to religion. Its a moot question.

My hypothesis is...

false.
Lots of SDN residents are "foreigners".
Here you have a more international hypothesis. (still false though) Regardless of which religion were the cultural norm of where you were brought up, it is usually tought to mistrust/dislike all other religions. Now if you move from 1 religion to 0 religions you just include that last one as well.
Actually if you took my advice from above and went to a religious site and started advocating atheism I think you will get much more hate than a religious person get here.
So a more subjective thing is that if you verbally express atheism all the shite you get from the religious will tend to get you more and more angry/frustrated so you tend to flick some of the shite back.

[adam_grif]

Why are so many people on SDN hostile to religion?

The extremely hostile and aggressive board culture on SD.net drives many people with dissenting views either away entirely, or indirectly gets them banned (i.e. they get dogpiled and very angry, break a rule). If everybody on the board was religious but the culture was otherwise the same, the exact inverse would have happened.

Is it a matter of many having some level of knowledge in the empirical method and critical thinking

People in highly religious societies that become Atheists later in life tend to have those things, but it's by no means a 1 : 1 correlation. There's certainly a lot of people who are very intelligent, have a good grasp on logic, critical thinking etc who are theistic and/or religious.

In any belief system, there are two kinds of people - converts and freeloaders. Converts tend to have the strongest convictions of all, because they've evaluated the beliefs and decided to be one way. They're convinced of their rightfulness for that reason. Freeloaders are the ones who were raised that way, it's the status quo, from their perspective it's the default worldview.

Now, in a religiously dominated society, the supermajority of freeloaders are going to be religious, and most of the irreligious will be converts. Given that there was, until very recently, no real major Atheist movement in most of the world, most of the converts made the change because they critically evaluated their worldview (or were forced to by someone) and eliminated religion from it.

As Atheism becomes more prominent, expect more and more Atheists by percentage to be freeloaders who lack the critical thinking skills.

[Thanas]

My attitude to religion (which I am not sure I would categorize as hostile) is largely the result of having studied several major religions during the course of my study. It is kinda hard to take the absolute claim to truth espoused by a monotheistic religion seriously if you have learned how it came into existence and changed over the centuries.

[Formless]

The extremely hostile and aggressive board culture on SD.net drives many people with dissenting views either away entirely, or indirectly gets them banned (i.e. they get dogpiled and very angry, break a rule). If everybody on the board was religious but the culture was otherwise the same, the exact inverse would have happened.

I'm sure the fact that the board is associated with a website dedicated to debunking creationism and other fundamentalist lies couldn't possibly have anything to do with it.

Though this doesn't apply to me, as my views changed from "very liberal christian with non-literal views on the bible" to "screw religion" after joining SDN, I highly suspect that it has more to do with atheists and other non-religious types joining here because they want to be with other atheists and non-religious types. They might not speak up very often, but there are religious people on this board. Tirol, Broomstick (though she's a pagan, not a christian), SirNitram, and LadyTevar all come to mind (and the last two are both current or former supermods!). The thing is, the only kind of religious type this board actually likes to chase away are crazy science hating fundamentalist imbeciles and that's because they tend to say things that are objectively stupid or immoral. The rest don't feel they have anything to prove and they aren't into chest beating, so they don't make a big fuss about their religion. Some of them have even said as much in the past.

Now, as to the OP, I grew up catholic but one of my parents was a free thinker (not an atheist exactly, more of a deist with Asian/existentialist influences) and the religious one is a chemist. It wasn't that big a deal growing up, and I never really thought of the Bible as a science textbook, so the difference of opinion between my parents never bothered me much.

However, then we got a new priest who hailed from the "small town hick" mindset who was an annoyingly preachy crypto-right winger who couldn't go two sermons without bringing up "Abortion is EVIL RAR!" Even when he didn't he liked to lay it on thick with all kind of sentimental, self aggrandizing, emotional bullshit (think of an eagle shedding a single tear. Did I mention he was a crypto-right winger?). That pissed me off to no end, especially coming from a liberal, anti-war background; as a result my faith in christian morality eroded over time despite the fact I never gave up the christian label.

Eventually, I hit college, took a class in philosophy, had a very interesting conversation with an ignostic where I found myself trying to defend the "god of the gaps" interpretation, and finally decided to leave religion behind me and never look back.

SDN played no role in this besides being a testing ground for critical thinking concepts in general outside of school.

[Liberty]

I've generally remained silent but I am truly curious.Why are so many people on SDN hostile to religion?Is it a matter of many having some level of knowledge in the empirical method and critical thinking or is it a matter of personal interest?Is it the way in which you experienced the practices of the religion or the practitioner itself?

I was raised fundamentalist and I've seen first hand the harm religion can do. I am still in the closet about my atheism around relatives, because if my parents knew, I literally wouldn't be allowed to see the nine younger siblings I have who are still living at home (my parents think I'm a liberal Catholic). The amount of pain that religion has caused me - and will cause me in the future, when my parents find out the extent of my nonbelief someday - is enormous.

That said, I am a scholar of history, working on my Ph.D. My antipathy toward religion has very rational underpinnings. Religion is superstition, and as such, it subverts rational decision making.

I was introduced to this forum by my husband, who became an atheist long before I did. However, I only became active on the forum when my world went to hell because of issues with my parents, and I wanted to be able to connect with other freethinkers (which are a rarity in small town Indiana).

[Manthor]

The extremely hostile and aggressive board culture on SD.net drives many people with dissenting views either away entirely, or indirectly gets them banned (i.e. they get dogpiled and very angry, break a rule). If everybody on the board was religious but the culture was otherwise the same, the exact inverse would have happened.

I'm sure the fact that the board is associated with a website dedicated to debunking creationism and other fundamentalist lies couldn't possibly have anything to do with it.

Though this doesn't apply to me, as my views changed from "very liberal christian with non-literal views on the bible" to "screw religion" after joining SDN, I highly suspect that it has more to do with atheists and other non-religious types joining here because they want to be with other atheists and non-religious types. They might not speak up very often, but there are religious people on this board. Tirol, Broomstick (though she's a pagan, not a christian), SirNitram, and LadyTevar all come to mind (and the last two are both current or former supermods!). The thing is, the only kind of religious type this board actually likes to chase away are crazy science hating fundamentalist imbeciles and that's because they tend to say things that are objectively stupid or immoral. The rest don't feel they have anything to prove and they aren't into chest beating, so they don't make a big fuss about their religion. Some of them have even said as much in the past.

Now, as to the OP, I grew up catholic but one of my parents was a free thinker (not an atheist exactly, more of a deist with Asian/existentialist influences) and the religious one is a chemist. It wasn't that big a deal growing up, and I never really thought of the Bible as a science textbook, so the difference of opinion between my parents never bothered me much.

However, then we got a new priest who hailed from the "small town hick" mindset who was an annoyingly preachy crypto-right winger who couldn't go two sermons without bringing up "Abortion is EVIL RAR!" Even when he didn't he liked to lay it on thick with all kind of sentimental, self aggrandizing, emotional bullshit (think of an eagle shedding a single tear. Did I mention he was a crypto-right winger?). That pissed me off to no end, especially coming from a liberal, anti-war background; as a result my faith in christian morality eroded over time despite the fact I never gave up the christian label.

Eventually, I hit college, took a class in philosophy, had a very interesting conversation with an ignostic where I found myself trying to defend the "god of the gaps" interpretation, and finally decided to leave religion behind me and never look back.

SDN played no role in this besides being a testing ground for critical thinking concepts in general outside of school.

Heh.I've had a similar background to you in one regard.Both parents are doctors. Mother is an anaesthesiologist and father a gynaecologist.Anyway my Mum is a practicing Roman Catholic with Buddhist leanings and my dad is a deist with Buddhist and Confucian influences.My mum is Indian and my Dad is Chinese.Used to be an altar server in my church as well and when growing up I usually hung around with the Muslim kids.My best friend is a Muslim and my girlfriend is Hindu. On a personal note by Dad did nearly become a Baptist convert but was fortunately turned away and saved from that dark path after an encounter in university with a marijuana-smoking Indian Catholic medical student - my mother.

Personally SDN turned me into more of a deist with ignostic leanings,now that I know the proper nomenclature to describe my position.I personally feel religion is a very personal matter and I don't really debate about it in public but the fact is that I got turned away from the Catholic Church and in particular the Vatican for its refusal to change its stance on abortion, birth control and the influence it had on the Philippines.And the defence of pedophile priests. I couldn't reconcile the teachings they practiced with the harm that the agents of the Church inflicted and then the act of the Vatican shielding them against justice.

I went on a mission trip to the Philippines and read up on it and basically put its overpopulated with too many people and a lack of proper birth control due to the influence of the Catholic Church which has large political influence there,not to mention the governmental corruption. And the general stance of some associates that Jesus was "The Way",which was at odds with me,as was the exclusion of people who were decent human beings but were allegedly condemned to hell for not being Christian.And looking back, in many ways Christianity was used in my eyes as a tool of colonisation by the West upon Asia which imposed an impossible moral system that denied human nature and the reality of life in favour of hiding your head in the sand and shirking personal responsibility.And also perpetuated this cycle where "White People" are somehow more special than Asians.Only grew to understand this when I was a teenager.

I was introduced to this forum by my husband, who became an atheist long before I did. However, I only became active on the forum when my world went to hell because of issues with my parents, and I wanted to be able to connect with other freethinkers (which are a rarity in small town Indiana).

I don't believe religion in itself is bad,if you refer to the personal beliefs, philosophy and spirituality of others who go about their lives. However the adherents who spread their dogma and practice it are another matter.I just have a problem with religious institutions and the way they act as well as their adherents,basing everything on dogma and perpetuating harmful ideologies that disrupt social harmony and causing familial strife. I think its more the institution of religion rather than religion itself thats the problem.If it's got a priesthood and an inflexible dogma I don't trust it.

Christianity sets a ridiculously high moral standard that denies human nature and represses people.Islam is no better in that sense but its not a point I make in public due to a large number of my social network being Muslims.I actually still go to church for major occasions like Easter and Christmas to keep the peace with my mother and elder sister.So I can understand where you're coming from. My mum is a relatively liberal Roman Catholic with Buddhist leanings but she would be pretty upset if I made my stance clear. She think's I'm a liberal Catholic as well but I'm dropping hints...

[General Zod]

Seeing a dramatic shift of attitude in my family from religiously moderate to religiously conservative (I wouldn't be surprised if most of my relatives supported the teabaggers right now) had a rather drastic shaping in my attitudes of religion. Along with seeing how people constantly used it to give credibility to any number of horrors and lies, I simply couldn't treat it with the reverence that most people expect you to. This was well before the internet was as widespread as it is now and well before SDN existed. Some of my fundy relatives being so incredibly opposed to things like masturbation, porn and roleplaying games had a rather large impact, needless to say.

[open_sketchbook]

I went from that wierd hippy "spiritual, not religious" to atheist in late 2006, when I was 16. I would probably have been an athiest far sooner but I wasn't exposed to proper rational thinking patterns until shortly after that (which is a pretty sad commentary on education in general; I went through several gifted programs, a debate club, and tons of science classes and yet I was never really made aware of many of the basic tenants of rational thinking until I went looking for them.) I had that whole "nobody is wrong we just need to learn to live with each other", all that tolerance and acceptance bullshit you get out of people too stupid to take a side. My transformation to atheism actually occured due to a podcast, of all things.

Geeknights, a four day a week podcast, did a show on atheism on September 14, 2006, and they more or less began it with "If you believe in God, we basically have no reason to listen to a single word you say, because you have basically failed the rational thinking test." This outraged my hippy spiritual self; I stopped listening to the show for almost six months. It seemed too much like organized religion's dismissal of other religions that offended my hyper-PC hippy brain. However, as I started looking into this whole "rational thinking" business that they brought up, the idea of scientific thinking really appealed to me. I love to ask questions; before I knew that religion was wrong and evil, I asked questions about religion, forming my own beliefs out of what I thought seemed right. The idea that there was a whole structure for asking and answering questions to maximize the probability of accurate results blew me away, and it reactivated a love of science from when I was younger (unfortuately it didn't make up for the years I spent not paying attention in math class, but what can you do...)

Afterward I didn't really realize that I was an atheist... probably until I joined this site, but I know in retrospect I became one on September 14, 2006. I immediately starting using what I had learned to annoy my teachers by correcting not only their facts but how they came to those conclusions, and the rest is history. Of course, it wasn't until VERY recently that I've been clear headed enough to really apply what I'd learned; I suffered from serious depression that really fucked with my worldview (it's hard to come to a mostly unbiased conclusion when your brain only retains the most negative facts; I was basically a male seperation profeminist when I first arrived here because it seemed totally "in character" for the world for all men to be horrible uncurable rape monsters) Fortunately I've gotten help and treatment since and, well, it countinuously amazing me over these last few months how much clearer I see the world, through a lense of rationality and clear-headedness.

[lord Martiya]

I was once a praticant Catholic, even borderline bigot. Then I studied at an high school with priests as teachers and funded by the local bishop, and well before graduating I gained a very sarcastic attitude regarding organized religion in general, ways of thinking quite distant from what they tried to indoctrinate me into (just one example: before high school, I was homophobic. They showed me there's nothing bad in homosexuality while trying to convince me it was absolute evil), and a credit for a pizza.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I classify my self as a Christian, but I disagree and oppose all denominations. For me, religion is a personal thing which should not, nay cannot be directed by another person. All this nonsense of how to pray and how to act is bullshit.

I believe in my God, and I try to live a good life. I don't follow the Commandments exactly, hell no, but I try and live life peacefully

Sadly, thanks to religion, I rarely succeed

[Mayabird]

I grew up in rural georgia, USA.

I think I can pretty much stop there.

[Eternal_Freedom]

You have my sympathy Mayabird

[Spekio]

I was raised into an Italian Catholic family. My parents never went to church, but none the less I was forced by grandma (she was a good person,just religious) to take the classes for the First Communion(Is that the term in english? I'm not certain). At 9-10 years of age, I disliked it. A lot. Could never understand why people "felt god", or even good, inside the church.

Cut to 2002, I was fifteen. I went to catholic school(no,the girls didn't dress sexy ),and one day, I realised how utter bullshit that nun was spewing during religion class. She tried to be ecumenic, but in realitty she bashed other religions while praising THCC. Oh,I got into fights with her and sent to the principals office.

Then in 2007 I came out to my parents and the people arround me. Theres still some conflict, but oh well.

[Temujin]

I wasn't raised to be specifically anything, as my mother dabbled and my father was essentially a functional agnostic. However, I was of course inundated with generic Judeo-Christianity as is common in American culture. But from early on my inquisitive nature and interest in science led me to learn about other religions and commit the cardinal sin of questioning. Eventually I developed a generic view of god/gods which later transitioned into a form of deism. First reading Mike's site in the late 90s along with other material pushed me not only into atheism, but antitheism.

That said, I'm more tolerant and accepting of religions like Buddhism, Taoism, various Pagan beliefs, etc. However, I have little tolerance for the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions (including their various offshoots like Mormonism), Hinduism, etc. In general I'm against religion because it generally promotes ignorance over knowledge, close mindedness over being inquisitive, and tribalism over egalitarianism.

[General Zod]

I wasn't raised to be specifically anything, as my mother dabbled and my father was essentially a functional agnostic. However, I was of course inundated with generic Judeo-Christianity as is common in American culture. But from early on my inquisitive nature and interest in science led me to learn about other religions and commit the cardinal sin of questioning. Eventually I developed a generic view of god/gods which later transitioned into a form of deism. First reading Mike's site in the late 90s along with other material pushed me not only into atheism, but antitheism.

That said, I'm more tolerant and accepting of religions like Buddhism, Taoism, various Pagan beliefs, etc. However, I have little tolerance for the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions (including their various offshoots like Mormonism), Hinduism, etc. In general I'm against religion because it generally promotes ignorance over knowledge, close mindedness over being inquisitive, and tribalism over egalitarianism.

I have a bit more tolerance for Judaism out of all the Abrahamic religions. Their beliefs aren't any less backwards but unlike most others they don't actively seek converts.

[Thanas]

...anymore.



I am willing to bet that any religion put through the same thing as Judaism will grow a lot less active in seeking converts.

[General Zod]

...anymore.



I am willing to bet that any religion put through the same thing as Judaism will grow a lot less active in seeking converts.

When were they actively seeking converts? From what I understand of it having to prove your sincerity is a huge part of their religion if you want to join.

[Crossroads Inc.]

My mother was raised a very good Irish Catholic in Ohio and raised me and my two brothers as Catholics.
For the longest time I considered myself a very good catholic and was very religious and took a "God and Science together" view of things for a long while.
Ironically the single biggest thing that shaped my view was watching PBS as a kid. I spent a lot of my childhood not just watching "Sesame Street", but "NOVA", "Scientific American Frontiers" and "NATURE".

Where I especially where I started to question everything I was told, was in grade school, around grade 5 or 6, I asked one of the priests "If no one can goto Heaven with out Jesus, where did the souls of all the Cavemen go?" At the time, the priest wiggled out by saying that cavemen weren't real "people" and didn't have "real" souls. Looking back I could tell he was more then likely a creationist and inside saying "Cavemen? what a bunch of hooey!" And simply told me a quick fib to tide me over.

Of corse by saying that I began to question more. If cavemen didn't have souls, when did we get them? At what point did we "evolve" souls? Why would God make so many people that couldn't goto Heaven?

[Liberty]

Of corse by saying that I began to question more. If cavemen didn't have souls, when did we get them? At what point did we "evolve" souls? Why would God make so many people that couldn't goto Heaven?

Why do some people ask these questions as children and other people don't? I didn't ask questions like this until college, and I look at them now and they're so blindingly obvious. Why did I not think of these questions before then?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Not sure, most I could say is again growing up at 10 to 12 watching lots of science shows on PBS all day.

What happened to me seems the logical collision of what happens when you grow up learning "real" science, history and logical thinking and being a religious person. The older I got the less and less I took the bible seriously; the more I read things and went from "Word of God" to "something written by people who may have been "influenced" by God, to "people just writing down whatever they want."

I still consider myself to be "Religious" but it is along the lines of if, IF there really is some sort of "god" he wouldn't care one bit about HOW you worship him, her, it, whatever.

[open_sketchbook]

Of corse by saying that I began to question more. If cavemen didn't have souls, when did we get them? At what point did we "evolve" souls? Why would God make so many people that couldn't goto Heaven?

Why do some people ask these questions as children and other people don't? I didn't ask questions like this until college, and I look at them now and they're so blindingly obvious. Why did I not think of these questions before then?

Things that are obvious in hindsight are often missed because we lacked the thought patterns to come to the conclusions on our own. Certain kinds of questions that seem "obvious" require a way of thinking to arrive to in the first place. For example, most people aren't trained to ask questions that challenge what they are being told; people are instead inclined to ask questions for clarification. So a child might ask what a soul looks like, or how it gets to heaven, or if cats have souls, but they won't ask how somebody knows something, for example. If people naturally asked those kinds of questions, there would be a lot less religion, no?

[Temujin]

I have a bit more tolerance for Judaism out of all the Abrahamic religions. Their beliefs aren't any less backwards but unlike most others they don't actively seek converts.

I should clarify that my tolerance of course depends on how liberal/conservative the individual or church is. Progressives get a lot more tolerance than Fundies, who get absolutely none.

[Thanas]

When were they actively seeking converts?

They were huge on forced conversions of defeated enemies, for example during the expansion of the Hasmonean dynasty, before the Romans made them their subjects.