I've
never
considered myself religious ever since I can consider myself to have
started developing my own opinion. My parents were loosely Christian,
but we only ever went to church when we were visiting the grandparents
or when they were visiting us. Still, I was raised to at least in
theory believe in God, and specifically the Christian God.
The
first
recollection I have of realizing something was wrong was when I first
legitimately considered the question "where did God come from?" I was
probably 13 years old and assumed somebody would have an answer to this
fairly basic question. I posed it to my Mom and she had nothing to give
me. I asked other people with a fair amount of shame, assuming that I
was either not supposed to be asking these things, or at the least, I
was stupid for not knowing the answer. It didn't take long to realize
that this was, in fact, a GOOD question to ask, and that began the
unraveling of the tall tales I'd been fed. Unlike Santa Claus, for
which I have no recollection of the time the news was broken to me,
this one seemed a bit more important, even in my barely adolescent
mind, since the stakes were quite a bit higher. I mean I would still
get presents under the tree, so no big loss there, but on the other
hand, there was the vague understanding that I was going to die and NOT
come back to life.
Well,
I sat on
that one and developed it as more exotic modes of thought were
gradually introduced as they usually are through circles of friends who
are also discovering that the world's a bit more complex than it first
seemed. Since Al Gore was still in the process of inventing the
Internet at this point, I didn't have it as an advantage, and likely
gave religion the benefit of the doubt for a much longer time than I
otherwise would have, had information been this readily available and
in such volumes. I stayed agnostic with a fair leaning towards there
not being any sort of divine being at all to worry about.
More
recently,
and as a result of my participation on these types of forums, I can say
I side with the atheists. I can even call myself an atheist more
readily than anything else, but save that label for special occasions.
I think this mindset is fairly typical of non-believers, and
unfortunately might contribute heavily to our inability to mobilize.
The mob mentality of religion is quite possibly the thing I dislike the
most about religion, and it definitely contributes to my reluctance to
operate under a label-
1)
Because it
implies to outsiders that I have a pre-defined set of beliefs that they
can assume above and beyond my lack of belief in God (i.e. they think I
can prove this, a common misconception),
2)
Because it
inhibits the fluctuation of beliefs as they change through time- in
other words, if I change my stance to anti-theist or what have you, I
would almost feel the need to make an announcement, which doesn't
appeal to me, and
3)
It feels silly to HAVE to identify myself as not believing in a
thoroughly ridiculous set of ideas.
It
could just be
the mindset common in non-believers that we dislike conformity and
strive to avoid it even when we agree. We may feel that even labeling
ourselves as atheists at all gives far more credibility to religion
than it deserves (which is none). But there is a strong sense that
non-believers are not easy to unite in any meaningful way. That seems
to have overtaken my other motives in participating in these forums as
my main interest- i.e. how to participate in this issue and come to
grips with the fact I must acknowledge religion's influence, and in so
doing, give it some air of validation.
This
is roughly
where I currently stand and I expect I'll have to change this stance in
some part as the years go on. One thing I don't expect, however, is
that my distaste for religion will diminish.
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this testimonial