posted
I'm posting this just as a side-dish to Joldo's thread.
Reading and lurking at Hatrack, I've seen a fair number of conversion stories, more going toward atheism or agnosticism , but many going the other way too.
I'm not sure if my perspective has been covered (it very well may have, but I'm not sure what to search for). In any case, here goes:
I cannot remember a time in my early life when being non-religious was ever an issue. I adopted the term atheist relatively recently (rather due to semantic reasons rather than any change in belief).
This is not to say that my parents pushed atheism or agnosticism upon me, rather they didn't push *any* religious views on me. The following are probably a good summary of whatever "religious" activity I had before grade 4 or so:
A) I can recall having to bow to pictures of my ancestors, not really knowing why. I do remember observing the odd Buddhist/Taoist/ancestor ritual from a distance. However, in that Chinese tradition, people freely mixed whatever religious tidbits they wanted from the three ... so there was never an issue of choice, even if I had not been just observing B) My earliest memory of Christianity was a children's picture Bible I had somehow either purchased at a garage sale or had somehow been given by someone not my parents. The memory is vague, but I remember that it was a fun (interesting?) story, but it never really occurred to me that people really believed it with real consequences. I'm sure it was there, but it just never was an issue somehow...
Thus the result is I never had a conversion story. I never had a Richard Dawkins-style moment when Anglicanism just didn't make sense. I never had a Christopher Hitchen's moment when I realised that my grade school teacher was speaking BS.
I grew up in Canada, never really got religion pushed on me, or a lack of religion either. I was aware that many of my friends were Christian, but they were not very serious about it either. To be honest, I can remember racism from ignorance or genuine malice starting at around grade 6, but never religious discrimination.
So on one hand, I find the current atheism-religion debates very interesting, but on the other hand, I find I cannot really relate to the conversion stories. This is not to say that I resent these "born-again atheists" But I simply cannot relate to their fears on an emotional level, just an intellectual level.
The closest I can get is when I felt obliged to figure out what Deism and agnosticism were, and to call myself one of the two in order to sort of politely "compromise" in high school. Of course to shorten the story, I'm leaving out conversion attempts and intellectual learning about religion and science. I'm just giving the emotional story as it were.
On a related issue, for those that are religious, understand that sometimes when I joke about religion, I do so without any "anchor" in the universe of religion. That is, religion is almost entirely an intellectual concept for me rather than an emotional concept. So don't be offended, I rarely mean offence.
So to end: For those where religion was never an issue (and I hope there is at least one of you here), hello to you! Hope the club isn't too empty Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
My story is pretty similar. I had been subjected to a number of religious traditions, but I never embraced them - I just went along with whatever my parents were doing at the time. I also only recently took on the label of atheist, though I never went through any conversion process. I just sort of figured out where I'd been all along.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: For those where religion was never an issue (and I hope there is at least one of you here), hello to you! Hope the club isn't too empty
Greetings. I was raised without religion, but I knew my grandparents were Christian and my mother and father were both raised Christian, but they never forced it on me. They informed me about religions, and we celebrate Christian holidays (i.e. Easter, Christmas), but it was always about family, rather than religion.
So non-religion has never been an issue for me, either.
I've participated in some debates here, but I always...get bored. It's not something I think needs a lot of debate in my mind, so I don't give it debate. Some of my best friends, even my closest friend, is very religious, studying religions in Israel for a year, and somehow our completely separate lifeviews work well together.
So for these Hatrack debates / conversions on religion/atheism, I read the first few posts, and maybe some of the end ones, and then forget about them.
But I still like reading other people who can express their spiritual views well, so I can better understand how other people view existence.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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