Two Types of Atheist?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Tero]

I grew up, well, to age 12, in a very homogeneous country. Everyone was Lutheran except the socialists. But I never really bothered with it, it was just something you did. When I was 16, mom and relatives talked me into confirmation class during a summer I spent there. It actually seemed like a nice thing, and I addressed what people call spirituality for the first time. I now call it talking to yourself. But that was pretty much the end of religion too. It only lasted a year more. I was by then in the USA. For a "free country", religion seemed even more restrictive by then.

But I had figured out how tightly religion is woven into culture, or multiculture even. I came to resist patriotism as much as I did religion. My sense of belonging was pretty much gone. Other than I am most attached to two languages, places where I feel at home. Other cultures remain strange, mostly.

[Sælir]

I agree with this definition. I was religious (although not raised in religion, my father an atheist but doesn´t talk about it and my mother I suppose of some religion in higher power but never mentioned it). I decided myself to be religious, found religious places to go to etc.
I think I have a good understanding of most religious people here in Iceland but like I tried to explain to some people in Nottingham we have very few people that actually believe in the Bible. They have their personal version of a higher power but don´t believe that god created earth etc. and nobody here tries to shove their own personal faith in your face.
Azathoth has no understanding of religious people because religion doesn´t make sense to him and this has often caused friction in our marriage because although I agree with him in principle I still understand them and don´t want to be aggressive about my atheism but he shoves it in their faces (which can be hard when they are your friends )

[tattuchu]

I think it is easier for those who were once part of it to understand and empathise with how people still in its clutches think.

Well I was part of it in that I went to church when I was a kid. But I never believed in any of it, and it was always a mystery to me how people could believe in it. It still is a mystery to me

[Azathoth]

I used to go to church on my own a bit when I was a kid. I lived next to one and I worked out that if you sat there bored for an hour lots of nice old ladies would jam you full of sweets, biscuits and squash afterwards. Then I flirted with buddhism a bit in my teens when I was taking enormous amounts of drugs. Never really believed anything though

[floppit]

I placed myself in the neither category. I was brought up believing, as a christian, and I did believe well into my teens but it's never really felt (to me) like that 'counts'. It wasn't my thing, it didn't define my social group, my own ethics grew through it and then out of it without any real wrench, just as I don't feel any real wrench now when something shifts in my world view. Regarding 'faith', I'm not sure I really had much. I did believe but according to the way the world was presented to me there appeared evidence for that, and as the evidence dwindled so did belief. Where science clashed with religion science simply won and I don't remember any emotion over that at all, barring perhaps interest but I'm not sure that's an emotion!

Had I experienced and adult, self directed, faith I think more of my SELF would have been invested in it, more peers, more values, more identity. As it was I kind of agree with Ani's sentiments. Religion gave me a soft starting place to begin to figure out debate and my own reasoning - a single book as opposed to the endless complexity of the real world. It allowed me interaction with adults which became on a very equal footing, even offered me my first festival experience! Some stuff I genuinely liked as a kid, singing in churches, the art in churches, some - even many, of the people, a sense of wonder (usually in response to the art and the sounds) and permission to think about and express ideas about ethics in the world around me. I'm honestly not sure that atheism from the beginning would have given me all that with my useless fecking parents!

I want Munch to have some of it, we visit galleries, we go to a singing group and sing to each other lots and I'm currently trying to form a collection of Ken Loach films to begin discussions about the world into view when she's about 10, or whenever, 'pending....

[cowiz]

Up to the age of 11 I was educated at Catholic faith schools. I took communion and first confession. I can still clearly recall being taught about teh flud and thinking what a load of shite it all was. I was fortunate that my father (an engineer by trade) had lots of science books and I loved to read about dinosaurs, space travel and the earth sciences. I had a particular fascination for whales and came upon a cracker of a book that discussed their evolution in great detail. So at school, being indoctrinated into the faith with the Catechism, and the nice bits about Jesus just did not do it for me. I refused flat out to be confirmed (that nearly killed my staunch Catholic granny) as by that age, I was way past any form of belief in god, or gods. However, I was not that mature in my thinking at that time (and now) and was quite convinced that the occult was possible and I would dabble in spells and shit. I was also a huge UFO buff. But my interest in these things was almost scientific insomuch as I would "investigate" their claims and try to test whether spells worked. I did a UFO research project for my "science" project and handed out UFO spotter forms to the kids at school - which brought a number of well deserved beatings and teasing. I also wanted to be a spy when I grew up. Long talks with my dad about the universe, the big bang, what is out there, the reason for it all etc helped me formulate my thoughts and the idea of even a deistic god made no sense, never mind a specific god who knew you intimately and wanted you to not eat shellfish. So I never actually de-converted, I just never accepted religion. Even when dragged kicking and screaming into church to perform choir boy duties for the priest (mostly on my knees) I remember ringing the bell and thinking "this is magical ritualistic bullshit". At about age 18 or so I dropped the occult and UFO beliefs as I started to equate my lack of belief in a god/gods/religions with the same standards for my belief in occult and UFO phenomenon.

In sum, it's all bollocks. But I do miss my dad, he died in 93.

[DRSB]

charlou:

I Of course, if religion (and, better still, superstition and dogma in general) were not a part of human existence at all, then maybe I'd feel differently about that ... heh, actually, it wouldn't even be an issue

This is my case, having been raised by atheist parents in a country with imposed atheism, religion just has never been an issue for me. Actually, at some point I came to perceive this as a serious loophole in my education, having no idea of what the Bible was about. The Bible is a great reference book, literature, films, arts, there is so much you miss in terms of references if you don't know the Bible, so I sat down once and read Mathew's gospel like a novel just so I have an idea.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

charlou:

I Of course, if religion (and, better still, superstition and dogma in general) were not a part of human existence at all, then maybe I'd feel differently about that ... heh, actually, it wouldn't even be an issue

This is my case, having been raised by atheist parents in a country with imposed atheism, religion just has never been an issue for me. Actually, at some point I came to perceive this as a serious loophole in my education, having no idea of what the Bible was about. The Bible is a great reference book, literature, films, arts, there is so much you miss in terms of references if you don't know the Bible, so I sat down once and read Mathew's gospel like a novel just so I have an idea.

I read the bible twice. The first time I was about 12 and, accepting that god and jeebus were real but that most of the stories in the book (especially the old tentacle) were analogies and fables (my parents were never fundies), read it pretty much as a novel. The second time I was about 15 and read it desperately trying to catch onto the 'faith' and certainty that I (thought I) saw in others. I also re-read the new testicle about a year later. The babble is actually worth a read if you haven't done so. It is crammed to the gills with weirdness and interesting stories - but absolutely nothing like the coherent, complete work that many of its adherents will claim (most of whom never bother to read anything but the odd passage and rely on the interpretations of others IMO.) It also contains huge passages of drivel - lists of names and possessions, etc. which are best skimmed.

[hadespussercats]

My answer is way too long to fit here.
But I already knew I didn't believe when I was baptized (American Baptist) at 11-- at least, not in the form of religion I was being asked to say I believed. The jury was still out on God, magic, and providence, at that point.

The question that opened the door to killing organized christianity for me was," If God is all-powerful and all-loving, how could he be so cruel as to send people to hell?"
The rest unfolded from there.