Quote of the Day, Department of Religious Affairs

[bloodyrosemccoy]

“When I say I realized I was an atheist when I was a teenager, I’m simplifying things a bit, because I was always an atheist. My big revelation wasn’t so much a realization that I was an atheist as it was a realization that other people weren’t.”

This quote was brought to you by our discussions of churchgoing at work. My coworker was totally cool with my being an atheist, because he’s one too, but he was also puzzled by the idea that I had been raised that way. Who knew atheism could be the default setting?

Comments

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I keep having to remind myself that people seriously believe their religions.

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

Me too! And then to not ask 'but WHY?' They tend to get hurt by comments like that.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hell, people hear "I'm an atheist" as a judgment on them.

As a kid I thought it was more like some large overblown book club--you'd go to church every week to discuss Bible stories the way we discussed Aesop's Fables or Greek myths or other stories at school, and what the author meant, and, y'know, the LITERARY stuff. It was years before I realized that they believed it.

And don't even ask about my poor little siblings. My sister was informed at age three that she was going to hell, and my brother came home from daycare at one point wondering who Jesus was and why he died for my brother.

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

I had to go to compulsory Christianity classes every Friday morning during the latter years of primary school. My parents decided it would probably be best for me to realise that religion existed.

Bible studies teachers vs eight year old!Trojie was a no-score draw, thanks to me not knowing how to get across that it just didn't make SENSE and them not knowing how to shut me up.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I call that move the Mindy, because it's basically the same strategy: asking "Why?" nonstop until the unfortunate grownup wants to murder everyone.

[beccastareyes]

Yes! My mother was Generic Christian (lapsed-Catholic and now is in the 'do good and you'll go to Heaven' school, and was the only theist of her siblings, despite Gramma's efforts to bring up her kids in the church) and Dad was atheist-agnostic, but she wasn't interested in teaching us religion -- she figured we'd come to our own conclusions*. It took me a while to figure out where I fell on the deist-atheist scale**, but a lot of religion feels like an elaborate game of pretend to me, even though I know that people (friends & family) believe this.

(So did my mother, for that matter. Jenn and I had to explain that Young Earth Creationists still existed and that they weren't all old people who never got biology in school. She believed in angels and God and that her parents are happy in Heaven together, but thought the Bible was entirely allegory.)

* I'm an atheist, my sister went back to Catholicism, but is the most anti-authoritarian Catholic I've met. It seems to have worked.

** It was easy to believe in things like luck or karma that rely on seeing patterns in chance. Harder to believe that the Resurrection was different than, say, Achilles being invulnerable from a bath in the underworld, or even finding a door to Narnia in your closet.