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rynneI'd always been meaning to talk about this sometime, if only to ramble and get my own views clear to myself (as much as they can be clear), but then I read ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
terredancer talk about her experience with it, inspired by wayfairer's post, and so I will finally come out and say...
My family--my immediate family--is not religious. My father grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist, and my mother a Catholic, because both their parents were/are (my paternal grandparents are alive, and maternal dead) very religious. My mother baptized my sisters and me Catholic, but that was partly to make her mother happy, and because she basically wanted to cover her bases in case baptizement actually did something. I have been to church (Sunday School actually, though it was Saturday to be precise, as it was always with my paternal grandparents, who are Seventh-Day Adventists and therefore go to church on Saturday) perhaps a grand total of four times in my life, all before I was ten years old, and all I can remember from those are singing hymns, stories, and feeling uncomfortable because I didn't know what anyone was talking about.
When I was just entering adolescence, and entering the throes of teenage angst, I wanted to believe in God and Jesus, and that they loved me. Alone in my room at night, I would pray for belief. I'm not surprised that I didn't get it, as I don't think a prayer without belief goes anywhere, if there's anywhere to go. I just wanted a sign somewhere that God really did exist, because, like many at that age, I felt alone in the world, like no one understood me, and I wanted someone to love me. And my mother, who's a teacher and who works at a community college/high school, told me that her nicest students are the believing Christians, which is something I've observed from my own experience--Christians have always been very nice to me.
But I never managed to really believe. I'm not sure if I'm glad of that, or sad. I do miss the feeling, or what I imagine the feeling to be, that a higher power loves me no matter what, but I like being the way I am. I'm comfortable being an atheist, and I don't know that I'll ever find my faith, or that I want to. Because quite frankly, religion scares me.
Last week, my school put on the play Beau Jest. In case you don't know, it's about a Jewish woman in love with a non-Jew, but her parents can't imagine her marrying someone who's not Jewish, and so the woman hires someone to pretend to be her Jewish boyfriend. It was a very funny play, and I enjoyed it. But that religion would be so important to people that they can't imagine, and don't want, their daughter marrying someone not of their religion...it makes me uncomfortable.
The idea that there's a higher power I know is comforting to some people. It frightens me. That I am who I am because God made me that way, rather than because I made me...that everything that happens is part of God's will and I don't have a choice in the matter, I'm just playing out a plan even when I'm not aware of it...that when I die, it's because God called me to join him rather than because of something real, tangible, an accident or an illness or whatever.... All of that scares me.
I have a Bible--a gift from my grandparents when I was very young. I've had to read parts of it for English this year, and I'd been curious about it, because before I was fifteen I didn't know what the difference was between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and because I just didn't understand what it was that made Christianity so popular. In the back of my Bible, it says that we know it's God's Word because of things like the words "God said, '...'", and because like forty different people wrote it at different times and they all agreed. And the first thing that popped into my mind as I was reading the part of 1984 where Winston and O'Brien about the Party controlling everyone's mind and memory and that if people didn't remember it happening it hadn't happened...the very first thing I thought of was that page in the Bible, where it said that because forty different men at different times agreed on something, it was true. And even before I read 1984, I couldn't imagine how the Bible was God's word just because of that. I can think of how it could easily not--Moses wrote down something that could convince people to follow him, and, throughout the ages, people continued it because obviously there was something in this account of the world that made people declare the ones who wrote it leaders. I don't know. I still haven't managed to read the whole Bible, because when it's not boring me, it's infuriating me. I can't read Genesis without wincing at how it was all right for daughters to have sex with their father so his bloodline went on. I can't read Leviticus 18:22 without snarling. I can't read Matthew without forgetting half the Apostles and mixing up the rest. I can't read any of it without being so angry that women were pretty much property back then.
But most of all, what scares me about religion is what people do in the name of it.wayfairer wrote, in her post:
When you blame the voters who chose Bush, you are completely mistaking what is happening in our country today. Bush did not win the election based on ignorance and stupidity. He won the election based on a belief system that has been determinedly advancing across the country because Christians believe it is their spiritual duty to bring people to Christ. And you cannot be successfully brought to Christ until you also commit to serving Christ. You cannot successfully serve Christ unless you do his will. And it is Christ's will that Bush win re-election. Do you see the pattern at work here???
And that scares the shit out of me. Spiritual duty to bring people to Christ? That scares me. I don't want to go to Christ. Millions of non-Christian people don't want to go to Christ. We're happy the way we are. Why is it your spiritual duty to bring me to Christ if I don't want to go? The God that all these people want me to believe in is supposedly kind, just, forgiving, etc. He loves me the way I am, apparently, because he made me that way. If he made me this way, didn't he make me to disbelieve in him too? Or have I been seduced by the Devil just by living the way I do, which I try to make as moral as I can? I don't believe in Heaven, and I don't believe in Hell. If I believe that there's anything after death, it's oblivion. I don't know. I just know that I don't like the idea of people thinking they have a mission to convert me to Christianity. Can't we be good people without being Christians?
And how fervent some people can get about their religions...that scares me too. Last year in English, we wrote persuasive essays, trying to get people to agree with us on one position or another. I wrote mine on gay marriage. Someone in my class wrote hers on why everyone should believe in God. How important religion is to people...I don't understand it. I understand that it's true, because that's very obvious, and I can intellectually understand why, but it's like conservatism. I understand without understanding how people can be conservative, and I understand without understanding how religion can be the be-all and end-all of a person's life. If that makes any sense.
I think I'm rambling now, and I'm not sure if I have anything else to say, so I'll stop. I'm an atheist, and I'm happy that way.
I hope this doesn't offend any of you. I've tried to phrase it so it isn't, but if it does offend you, know that no offense is meant. And I know that some of you are religious, and I respect that and you very much, and how you may be different from what I've talked about. But none of you scare me, so that's all right.
And in any case, it is a relief to have finally written this stuff down...
terredancer talk about her experience with it, inspired by wayfairer's post, and so I will finally come out and say...My family--my immediate family--is not religious. My father grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist, and my mother a Catholic, because both their parents were/are (my paternal grandparents are alive, and maternal dead) very religious. My mother baptized my sisters and me Catholic, but that was partly to make her mother happy, and because she basically wanted to cover her bases in case baptizement actually did something. I have been to church (Sunday School actually, though it was Saturday to be precise, as it was always with my paternal grandparents, who are Seventh-Day Adventists and therefore go to church on Saturday) perhaps a grand total of four times in my life, all before I was ten years old, and all I can remember from those are singing hymns, stories, and feeling uncomfortable because I didn't know what anyone was talking about.
When I was just entering adolescence, and entering the throes of teenage angst, I wanted to believe in God and Jesus, and that they loved me. Alone in my room at night, I would pray for belief. I'm not surprised that I didn't get it, as I don't think a prayer without belief goes anywhere, if there's anywhere to go. I just wanted a sign somewhere that God really did exist, because, like many at that age, I felt alone in the world, like no one understood me, and I wanted someone to love me. And my mother, who's a teacher and who works at a community college/high school, told me that her nicest students are the believing Christians, which is something I've observed from my own experience--Christians have always been very nice to me.
But I never managed to really believe. I'm not sure if I'm glad of that, or sad. I do miss the feeling, or what I imagine the feeling to be, that a higher power loves me no matter what, but I like being the way I am. I'm comfortable being an atheist, and I don't know that I'll ever find my faith, or that I want to. Because quite frankly, religion scares me.
Last week, my school put on the play Beau Jest. In case you don't know, it's about a Jewish woman in love with a non-Jew, but her parents can't imagine her marrying someone who's not Jewish, and so the woman hires someone to pretend to be her Jewish boyfriend. It was a very funny play, and I enjoyed it. But that religion would be so important to people that they can't imagine, and don't want, their daughter marrying someone not of their religion...it makes me uncomfortable.
The idea that there's a higher power I know is comforting to some people. It frightens me. That I am who I am because God made me that way, rather than because I made me...that everything that happens is part of God's will and I don't have a choice in the matter, I'm just playing out a plan even when I'm not aware of it...that when I die, it's because God called me to join him rather than because of something real, tangible, an accident or an illness or whatever.... All of that scares me.
I have a Bible--a gift from my grandparents when I was very young. I've had to read parts of it for English this year, and I'd been curious about it, because before I was fifteen I didn't know what the difference was between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and because I just didn't understand what it was that made Christianity so popular. In the back of my Bible, it says that we know it's God's Word because of things like the words "God said, '...'", and because like forty different people wrote it at different times and they all agreed. And the first thing that popped into my mind as I was reading the part of 1984 where Winston and O'Brien about the Party controlling everyone's mind and memory and that if people didn't remember it happening it hadn't happened...the very first thing I thought of was that page in the Bible, where it said that because forty different men at different times agreed on something, it was true. And even before I read 1984, I couldn't imagine how the Bible was God's word just because of that. I can think of how it could easily not--Moses wrote down something that could convince people to follow him, and, throughout the ages, people continued it because obviously there was something in this account of the world that made people declare the ones who wrote it leaders. I don't know. I still haven't managed to read the whole Bible, because when it's not boring me, it's infuriating me. I can't read Genesis without wincing at how it was all right for daughters to have sex with their father so his bloodline went on. I can't read Leviticus 18:22 without snarling. I can't read Matthew without forgetting half the Apostles and mixing up the rest. I can't read any of it without being so angry that women were pretty much property back then.
But most of all, what scares me about religion is what people do in the name of it.
wayfairer wrote, in her post:When you blame the voters who chose Bush, you are completely mistaking what is happening in our country today. Bush did not win the election based on ignorance and stupidity. He won the election based on a belief system that has been determinedly advancing across the country because Christians believe it is their spiritual duty to bring people to Christ. And you cannot be successfully brought to Christ until you also commit to serving Christ. You cannot successfully serve Christ unless you do his will. And it is Christ's will that Bush win re-election. Do you see the pattern at work here???
And that scares the shit out of me. Spiritual duty to bring people to Christ? That scares me. I don't want to go to Christ. Millions of non-Christian people don't want to go to Christ. We're happy the way we are. Why is it your spiritual duty to bring me to Christ if I don't want to go? The God that all these people want me to believe in is supposedly kind, just, forgiving, etc. He loves me the way I am, apparently, because he made me that way. If he made me this way, didn't he make me to disbelieve in him too? Or have I been seduced by the Devil just by living the way I do, which I try to make as moral as I can? I don't believe in Heaven, and I don't believe in Hell. If I believe that there's anything after death, it's oblivion. I don't know. I just know that I don't like the idea of people thinking they have a mission to convert me to Christianity. Can't we be good people without being Christians?
And how fervent some people can get about their religions...that scares me too. Last year in English, we wrote persuasive essays, trying to get people to agree with us on one position or another. I wrote mine on gay marriage. Someone in my class wrote hers on why everyone should believe in God. How important religion is to people...I don't understand it. I understand that it's true, because that's very obvious, and I can intellectually understand why, but it's like conservatism. I understand without understanding how people can be conservative, and I understand without understanding how religion can be the be-all and end-all of a person's life. If that makes any sense.
I think I'm rambling now, and I'm not sure if I have anything else to say, so I'll stop. I'm an atheist, and I'm happy that way.
I hope this doesn't offend any of you. I've tried to phrase it so it isn't, but if it does offend you, know that no offense is meant. And I know that some of you are religious, and I respect that and you very much, and how you may be different from what I've talked about. But none of you scare me, so that's all right.
And in any case, it is a relief to have finally written this stuff down...
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 08:59 pm (UTC)directly against my religion to do the psycho recruiting.
That is what every religion should teach.
I mean, if Some Guy doesn't want to be a Christian but you hound him into becoming one, what kind of Christian is he going to be anyway?
Exactly!!!
If God and Jesus are so loving and blahblahblah, then why exactly would they be instructing someone to start a war and be generally intolerant of humans that God created?
Amen to that.