I see some comments about being lied to here that I see in every internet gathering place where either skeptics or just plain ole atheists gather. It seems to be a common theme especially among those who were intensely attending church and church activities, then saw the light of skepticism and walked away from it. Richard Dawkins (himself raised in a religious private school) calls the teaching of religion to kids child abuse. A common theme here seems to be that people feel lied to about religion.
My experience has been different. While I was intensely involved in church activities as a youth, this was definitely a positive experience in my life. I had many different Sunday School volunteers and Bible Quiz coaches who genuinely cared about how I was doing in life. Many of these people still check in and I know some pray for me even today. I certainly never felt lied to. These people genuinely believe in a powerful and loving God and this compels them to share a gospel that I cannot reconcile with the reality that I understand through scientific and historical knowledge. The point here is that caring people enveloped me with their love and attention, and this made me stronger. The shift in perspective on reality from Bible based to a broader base can never negate that.
On a larger and modern scale, we see a lot of misinformation on the internet, spread by hardcore believers and sometimes just by people who think it is funny. There is an instance of a liberal leaning person who created content to mock those on the right, only to see their content fall under Poe’s Law and be spread by conservatives as information. It was so popular that the person continued the site and made a living off of it until it was exposed as fake news and became less popular. This was satire that became news. It was a lie that was never meant to be taken seriously, but became the reality of many people.
Not all of misinformation is accidental though. There are campaigns that have been identified as Russian based operations meant to divide people in their own nation’s politics. Finland, France and the US have identified such operations. Once a divisive story goes viral, legions of true believers spread the news, coming together in warm and comforting bubbles of their own truth and reality.
The point is that the vast majority of people try and tell their truth, as they see it. Just because your new view of reality clearly shows that clinging to one book as a source of truth is invalid, does not mean that others knew this and simply tried to use the Bible to control your behavior.
Richard Dawkins has funny ideas about what does or does not constitute child abuse–
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If your goal in life is that everybody think and feel the same as you–because you are the ideal evolution has been aspiring to since the Cambrian explosion, or else why would you have gotten to hook up with the second Romana from Doctor Who?–you tend to see things through a rather narrow lens. “This makes me feel bad, so it’s bad. This doesn’t, so who cares? Oh wait, my approval rating has fallen, maybe I should care….?”
Atheists, sad to say, are made of the same shabby stuff as everyone else, are in a decidedly poor position to pass judgment, but do they let that stop them? Moliere’s Tartuffe lives on, and would do fine in a world absolutely free of religion. Possibly even better.
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Great post. Which I know you didn’t make to prop up religion. Just to prop up reality. Which we all need to deal with. Before it deals with us. Summarily, even.
I can understand why there is a feeling of resentment and betrayal among many folks who come out of religion. I was raised in a hardcore rural fundamentalist sect and I consider many of the things I was taught to be dangerous and destructive. To teach a child there is something wrong with you just for being born, that you are inherently guilty and worthy of eternal torture is a form of child abuse, I agree. To try to divide you against your own nature, to teach you to believe there is something wrong with your natural impulses causes much evil. Look at fundamentalist culture in the USA, certainly a form of sadomasochistic death worship.
But I don’t blame my parents. They were just passing on the “wisdom” they were taught, the highest values they could conceive. And they had it much worse than I did. After all, I escaped. They didn’t. What there is to miss about it all is not the silly, foolish doctrines but the reality of a close knit supportive group. To feel surrounded by love. And there was much love. This is what makes is all a tragedy rather than a crime.
It’s easy to celebrate the foibles of public atheists but nobody expects atheists to be anything other than human. It’s Christians who claim to be in touch with a higher wisdom. So when they act like normal fallible humans (and worse) it’s not surprising that their whole project is undermined.
Okay, but what do you say to people raised by demented atheist cult leaders like Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and went the other way, like her fundamentalist preacher son? (How about “Hello, brother”?)
Is reacting against a crappy childhood really a good way of deciding what’s true or not? You just end up with a different set of lies.
It’s good you don’t blame your parents, but everybody gets some degree of social programming–you’re still responsible for your choices. Lots of people with the same background as your folks made very different choices. And lots of people from atheist backgrounds make horrific choices. (Also, there are many kinds of theism and atheism–not all created equal–you tend to forget that).
Most happy childhoods have been religious childhoods, and that doesn’t prove atheist childhood are any less happy–but it does prove your experience isn’t the norm. As Madalyn Murray O’Hair (and many others) proves atheism isn’t the answer to the underlying problem. Which as Bart pointed out recently, is human beings. And the choices we make.
I’m going entirely by what you’ve said. Which nobody asked you to say. You played the parent card. Your choice. I countered with the obvious fact that people from atheist backgrounds can grow up angry about that. Because religion isn’t the problem, and neither is the lack of it. The problem is us. We find different solutions, because we’re all different.
You can volunteer any information you like, but it’s not for me to ask and I doubt it’s anything I haven’t encountered elsewhere. I read a lot, and I talk to all kinds of people, online and off. I am certainly familiar with many nightmarish stories about religious upbringings, many of them far worse than anything you experienced. (The fact you’re alive and relatively lucid proves that.)
My father trained for the priesthood as a young man, and we have photos of him with his fellow candidates, some of them black, since it was a Josephite seminary. He decided being a priest wasnt for him, but he remained religious throughout his life. He was anything but perfect, but he didn’t indoctrinate us, or reject us when we went different ways. His faith was about different things.
He ended his life in South Carolina, working with Mexican immigrants, and organizing for the Democrats. He was definitely swimming against the current there, but he’d go around wearing an Obama cap, drawing negative comments from many a redneck, but appreciative ones from African Americans. (He was, at all times, a stubborn cuss). The last time I talked to him, he was in a daze, asking me if Donald Trump (a man he loathed) was our next President. Sometimes, death really is a mercy, you know.
My experiences are different than yours. Most people’s experiences are different than yours. So most people don’t feel the same way you do. I have known many incredible people for whom religion is not an affliction, but a source of strength and perspective. I don’t count myself as one of them, but I don’t have the gall to consider myself better than them. My way is my way. Nobody else’s. I never cared much for handing out tracts. I don’t think that’s what Jesus was about either, since as Bart points out, he thought many Jews would not be in the Kingdom, whereas many Non-Jews would. But there’s a part of humanity that is obsessed with making the rest of humanity agree with it, and I don’t see how that changes if we stop believing in gods. Modern history strongly argues it might get worse.
Your turn. If you like.
I’m going entirely by what you’ve said.
Yes of course you think you are, so let’s examine your unwarranted assumptions.
What makes you think I had a crappy childhood? To the degree I even discussed it was to hint that it was not. (My last post. Second paragraph. Penultimate sentence.)
Even if I had a crappy childhood (actually anything but), what makes you think that is my metric for deciding what is true or not?
What all this does is reveal your foundational assumption, that atheists must be damaged in some way. I mean why would anyone self-identify as an atheist unless they had endured some trauma, right? It can’t just be that a person becomes an atheist by spending years thinking about the issue and weighing the evidence and coming to an informed decision on the matter. Nah, can’t be that! But in most cases by far it IS that. Polls consistently show that self-identifying atheists know more about religion than most believers do. Why? Because it was precisely that period of study and learning that made them atheists in the first place! (It’s not that atheists don’t know much about religion. It’s that they know just a little bit too much. Read your Bible folks!)
Another unwarranted assumption on your part. That Christianity as a body of thought is essentially benign. Oh sure there might be a few wackos, and now and then some zany will go off the deep end, but as a systematic body of thought it is essentially benign, even beneficial. But the evidence does not bear this out. First, it’s foundational truth claims are false. Now that in and of itself should be the showstopper but I would also say that it’s core foundational doctrines are inimical to human well being and flourishing. I will not claim that Jesus’ and Paul’s admonitions are intrinsically evil but they have resulted in much evil when put into practice. (I would be happy to expand on this point if anybody cares.)
Finally there is one another point. I’ve noticed your go-to response when the subject of atheism comes up is to immediately highlight all the bad atheist actors on your list. So I’ll give you a chance to clarify. Surely you understand that the personal actions of atheists have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the question as to whether or not a god or gods exist, right? You get that, don’t you? You often come close to the consequentialism fallacy on this. Joseph Stalin was an atheist. Boo Hoo. That’s not evidence that god exists.
And where do you stand anyway? Believer of some sort? Agnostic? Never thought about it?
Stephen,
I would like you to expand on that point, even though I sense that I might be in agreement with you.
I was raised in a non-religious household by non-religious parents. When I was around 10 years old, I invited my friend who lived across the street from me to have dinner at our house. My friend, a year younger than me, was from a tight-knit Mormon family. After dinner my friend asked me, “Why doesn’t your family pray before you eat your meal? Aren’t you grateful for your food?” I was so clueless about religion, Christianity, Mormonism. I had no idea how to respond.
Most of my classmates seemed to be affiliated with one church or another, although some were Jewish and spoke about the bar-mitzvah they recently attended. So, I sort of felt like the school kid who shows up to class not having read his homework assignment and asked to comment about it. Whenever the subject of God came up, I would just look at my shoes (metaphorically, of course).
Later, as a college student, I became more curious about Christianity, partially because most of my friends were Christian and they would invite me to attend church with them sometimes. I thought some of it was pretty crazy, but I also could see how it had some appeal. Eventually I adopted the view that maybe Christianity wasn’t true, but it was benign, perhaps even helpful to society and to individuals. But later my former Christian now atheist aunt told me how rotten Christianity really is. She told me about what is actually in the Old Testament, all the killing commanded by God.
More recently I have become addicted to watching YouTube videos of former Mormons, former Jehovah Witnesses, former Muslims and former Christians bash their former religion. They talk about how members of their family will no longer speak to them now that they are no longer believers. So, these days I am more persuaded that we need more people like Bart Ehrman and fewer people like William Lane Craig.
Stephen, you’re angry about your upbringing. I didn’t think you were abused, but you’re still ranting about it, years later, and using it as a (very bad) argument for your POV. I don’t like everything about my parents either, and neither does anybody who ever lived. Nor is it terribly unusual for children to rebel against what their parents teach them. You do seem a bit damaged, but so are lots of non-Atheists. You misunderstood. You do that a lot. Too much emotion, not enough rationality.
Why do I have to stick a label on myself? Why do you think you need to do that?
Sometimes, its useful to try and look from the outside. Is Christianity benign? How do we get outside of our experiences and biases to evaluate this. Perhaps it would be useful to look at similar philosophies like Christianity. Certainly soon after 9/11 many people thought Islam was not benign. Many leaders tried to insist many if not most Muslims were benign. But there appeared to be some problems when talking to these benign Muslims. Were they explaining Jihad or rationalizing away dangerous behavior? In many countries there are common sense outcries against low ages for marriage (the standards are quite similar to those in the West in actuality). But exceptions for early marriage, sometimes to much older men, are made in the name of religion. So the vast majority of “moderate” religious people seem to feel threatened if you threaten the values of the extremists. They allow weird and outdated things to go on, purely in the name of religion.
This seems to happen here in America too. Even now people are basically kidnapped into scientology. Fundamentalist Mormons have high walls and do not let the women leave those walls. Its ridiculous. But the excuse is ” its religion.” And its the moderates, by their mass and vote, who give permission to the extremists, even though they rant about these same extremists as much as anyone.
Godspell, surely you jest.
I hope we (atheists) make you feel helplessly misunderstood as you are making Stephen feel. No matter what he says, you blame him blaming his childhood/parents. Your responses clearly are not based on what Stephen has said. Its not an attempt to read between the lines or use your textual criticism skills to take apart his comments. Its a blatant disregard for what he is telling you.
The reason I am responding when this is clearly none of my business is this happens to me all the time. Sitting around a campfire having a few beers, my Christian friends will try and figure out what I am blaming God for. It is honestly exasperating and I try to change the subject. How can I blame the nonexistent for anything?
Perhaps turn about is fair play here. How did you come to the ideology that atheists are broken people who blame God? Is it because you had doubts at some point and blamed God? Did you consider yourself an unbeliever or as one who has fallen away? Did you briefly disbelieve, then find again your faith and reconcile or rather kneel before God again? What makes you disregard what a person tells you caused their loss of belief and simply assert that it was a tragic childhood?
(apologies if I missed any blatant signals you were teasing).
FocusMyView said
Sometimes, its useful to try and look from the outside. Is Christianity benign? How do we get outside of our experiences and biases to evaluate this. Perhaps it would be useful to look at similar philosophies like Christianity. Certainly soon after 9/11 many people thought Islam was not benign. Many leaders tried to insist many if not most Muslims were benign. But there appeared to be some problems when talking to these benign Muslims. Were they explaining Jihad or rationalizing away dangerous behavior? In many countries there are common sense outcries against low ages for marriage (the standards are quite similar to those in the West in actuality). But exceptions for early marriage, sometimes to much older men, are made in the name of religion. So the vast majority of “moderate” religious people seem to feel threatened if you threaten the values of the extremists. They allow weird and outdated things to go on, purely in the name of religion.
This seems to happen here in America too. Even now people are basically kidnapped into scientology. Fundamentalist Mormons have high walls and do not let the women leave those walls. Its ridiculous. But the excuse is ” its religion.” And its the moderates, by their mass and vote, who give permission to the extremists, even though they rant about these same extremists as much as anyone.
You don’t need a belief in God to have these behaviors. And you shouldn’t need me to tell you that.
FocusMyView said
Godspell, surely you jest.
I hope we (atheists) make you feel helplessly misunderstood as you are making Stephen feel. No matter what he says, you blame him blaming his childhood/parents. Your responses clearly are not based on what Stephen has said. Its not an attempt to read between the lines or use your textual criticism skills to take apart his comments. Its a blatant disregard for what he is telling you.
The reason I am responding when this is clearly none of my business is this happens to me all the time. Sitting around a campfire having a few beers, my Christian friends will try and figure out what I am blaming God for. It is honestly exasperating and I try to change the subject. How can I blame the nonexistent for anything?
Perhaps turn about is fair play here. How did you come to the ideology that atheists are broken people who blame God? Is it because you had doubts at some point and blamed God? Did you consider yourself an unbeliever or as one who has fallen away? Did you briefly disbelieve, then find again your faith and reconcile or rather kneel before God again? What makes you disregard what a person tells you caused their loss of belief and simply assert that it was a tragic childhood?
(apologies if I missed any blatant signals you were teasing).
i wish more Christians were really good.
But even more, I wish most atheists were really smart.
😉
Steven Pinker is very smart, in my opinion. Pinker’s book, “The Blank Slate: Our Modern Denial of Human Nature” is excellent.
Now, back to the topic at hand.
Clearly, there is a tendency to look at our own childhoods or other people’s childhoods as the “real” reason why some is a Christian today or left Christianity. If someone is a Christian it common to think, “Well, of course. Your parents sent you to church and vacation Bible school from the time you were 4 years old. Of course you are a Christian. If you had been born in Saudi Arabia, you’d be a Muslim.”
If someone was raised Christian and later turns atheist or agnostic the common argument is, “Did someone say something offensive to you in church? Are you just rebelling against your parents?”
I recently read “Unfollow: Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church,” by Megan Phelps-Roper. It’s an excellent book describing how Megan was raised to believe that “God hates fags” and that “Your rabbi is a whore” and that almost everyone is going to hell. Only members of Westboro and perhaps a few other tiny congregations will make it to heaven because they interpret the Bible correctly.
I came away with the sense that Megan’s peer group ended up being a very powerful influence in Megan’s conversion to non-belief at around age 27. She went on twitter to spread the message of Westboro Baptist Church’s theology. But she was familiar with the current pop music. Her family would even re-write the lyrics to pop songs so that the songs would talk about the wrath of God instead of whatever the pop singer was singing about.
On twitter, she interacted with people who would not celebrate a famine in Africa as God’s just and wonderful judgement against sinful humans but would mourn these deaths and send money to help them. Eventually, she became like them and less like her family. Megan’s Mom celebrated famine in Africa while Megan herself cried about it.
I think our reasons for accepting or rejecting Christianity are complex. We shouldn’t assume that we know why someone changed belief systems.
I was not saying all atheists are dumb. I don’t believe that. But I hardly ever meet avowed atheists in three dimensions. And the internet tends to bring out the opinionated crank in many of us. Or hadn’t you noticed? 😉
I think you’re probably unfamiliar with this story. Read it, see what you think.
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If it’s religion that’s the problem, how do you explain this? UNLESS you want to say atheism itself (as opposed to just not participating in any organized belief system, or praying to any deity) is a religion?
This is something that invariably drives most atheists crazy when I say it.
Another thing I wish they’d work on is the sense of humor.
(The statue with Satan and the kids was funny, but it kind of makes my point for me.)
Spiral I appreciate your post. I am intensely fascinated by the experiences of other people. On one level of course I want to see how your experience jibes with mine. Since you asked I will expand my point. But it might be a couple days. I am visiting with my cousin and we are in the post-Christmas/pre-New Year’s zone. Today is house cleaning day. But I will get to it.
godspell says
Stephen, you’re angry about your upbringing…
How could you possibly know this? What does make me angry are people who think they know me better than I know myself. This is exactly why it is impossible to have a conversation with you, both before my two month hiatus from this site and now that I am back. Aside from the fact it’s knuckle-dragging stupid, it’s also very rude.
I have no interest in labeling you. I am interested in your thought processes. Not just your conclusions but how you arrived at them. Of course you’re under no obligation to respond but I at least had the courtesy to ask.
FMV wrote
…this happens to me all the time. Sitting around a campfire having a few beers, my Christian friends will try and figure out what I am blaming God for. It is honestly exasperating and I try to change the subject. How can I blame the nonexistent for anything?
Yep, been there too. I’ll discuss it more when I respond to Spiral but it’s part of the Christian (and their fellow travelers’) foundational mindset. I had the same attitude when I was a Christian. (Atheists are broken toys, or better yet they just don’t understand Christianity. Cause if they really understood it they would have to accept it!)
Uh oh my cousin’s wife JoAllison is descending on me with a broom and a mop. I intuit what tasks I have been assigned.
Why. Did. You. Bring. It. UP? 🙄
Dude, seriously. If you don’t want people to ask, why raise the question in the first place? “I know about Christianity because my parents were serious fundies.” You know about one out of a billion possible iterations of Christianity, and I know a different one (I have issues with that too, btw), and it’s just frustrating that you want to play that card, but then you get peeved when somebody actually responds.
I can understand why there is a feeling of resentment and betrayal among many folks who come out of religion. I was raised in a hardcore rural fundamentalist sect and I consider many of the things I was taught to be dangerous and destructive. To teach a child there is something wrong with you just for being born, that you are inherently guilty and worthy of eternal torture is a form of child abuse, I agree. To try to divide you against your own nature, to teach you to believe there is something wrong with your natural impulses causes much evil. Look at fundamentalist culture in the USA, certainly a form of sadomasochistic death worship.
But I don’t blame my parents. They were just passing on the “wisdom” they were taught, the highest values they could conceive. And they had it much worse than I did. After all, I escaped. They didn’t. What there is to miss about it all is not the silly, foolish doctrines but the reality of a close knit supportive group. To feel surrounded by love. And there was much love. This is what makes is all a tragedy rather than a crime.
Sounds pretty angry (though with a bit of distance). And “I don’t blame my parents” is universal shorthand for “Yes, I blame my parents.” Big club. I won’t say join it, because you sound like a charter member.
“Escape”? I dont go to mass, or take confession. I don’t see that as escape. It’s just a choice. There are many valid choices individuals can make, and you made yours–and you think everybody else should make the same choice. That’s obvious. Why even bother to pretend otherwise?
Bart was raised in a pretty ordinary-sounding Protestant family, and he chose to become a Fundamentalist evangelical. Then he chose to become a liberal Christian, when he realized all of scripture couldn’t be literally true. Then he became an agnostic, leaning towards atheism. At present, he seems to be flirting with Socratic paganism (which isn’t atheistic) and saying “Either there’s nothing after we die or it’ll be nice for everybody.”
The variations are endless. You ain’t so special. Get over it.
😀
godspell,
All of us are special because we are members of this forum.
No. Seriously.
When people are told from birth that there are good Christians on the one hand and the other 94 percent of the human population on the other hand, they have a right to be a little angry at that worldview/religion once they reach the recovery stage and leave fundamentalism.
What if you were raised as a fundamentalist Christian and based on your religious beliefs decided to scold a friend of yours who admitted he was gay? Later, after leaving fundamentalism you might be a bit angry that your previous worldview had nearly ruined a good friendship.
Maybe your experience with Christianity was benign enough to where you don’t have much resentment. But that’s not the case with everyone.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert