Here’s further information on the atheist population: http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/flynn_21_1.htm
As to the OP, I wasn’t really raised Catholic, although my father is. I became an atheist because of poison ivy. “If God’s good,” my reasoning was, “then why is there poison ivy?” A 10-year-old version of the suffering argument.
No, no, thorn, that’s “backslidden atheist”…
As I’ve mentioned several times on these boards, I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian. I originally went to a “Bible Baptist Church” which insisted that its members not see movies in the theatre, women not wear pants, etc. I remember one sermon where a guy drew a big elaborate diagram on a dry-erase board predicting the date of the Second Coming of Christ. He used variables such as the reign of David and various verses in Revelation and such. His date: Palm Sunday, 2000. :rolleyes: Anyway, this church also had a school, an ACE style school. You’d sit in these little “offices” that faced the wall all around a big room. You’d have big blue dividers between you and the person next to you, and you’d just fill out workbooks in silence all day, except of course for 10 minute breaks when we’d play “forts” (clearings in the woods) and beat each other senseless with sticks. I attended this school until 5th grade, when we switched to another Baptist church-school.
This one was kinda like a regular school, except with the ever-present fundamentalist Christian slant. I attended this school through 11th grade, when it shut down (the school, not the church. My dad and youngest sister still attend the church.) for lack of students.
During my last year in this school, I discovered an absolutely wonderful publication: Biblical Errancy It helped me finally deny the damned book that I had been trying to twist around to fit my own worldview for the past years. (i.e. exactly the same thing that every one of my authority figures had been doing throughout my education) I fooled around with designing my own religion (which I kind of believe) for about a year or so, then finally decided I was an atheist.
Just in case you’re interested, here’s my religion, in 100 words or less. Its basic assumption is that consciousness cannot be a simple product of chemical reactions in the brain. Therefore, there is a “spiritual” part of a person (or animal) which is part of what one might call “Supreme Consciousness,” or the mind of God. So human consciousness is to human body as mind of God is to physical universe (the body of God, essentially). The mind of God defines how the physical universe operates, so it encompasses natural laws as well. The mind of God “tries” to make conscious life evolve, because that is the strongest connection between the mind and body of God.
Ultimately, I decided that if I was saying that God is everything, it’s really fundamentally the same as saying that there is no God.
So that’s how I got to where I am today, a “religious atheist.” Except not entirely religious, since I don’t even have faith that my system is correct. I just think of it as an interesting way of looking at the world.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that seems a lot like Buddhism, Tzel.
Slight hijack here: What is the deal with ACE/“School of Tomorrow” schools? A number of them were approved as state-supported private schools here in Norway under the previous government (the fact that that government was led by the Christian Democrats of course had nothing to do with it :rolleyes: ), but they’ve managed to make a lot of enemies in a short time. From what I’ve read in the papers, they set up a very sterile environment, with very strict discipline, little cooperation between pupils, heavy emphasis on rote memorization (particularly of scripture) and a view of the family that makes Leave It To Beaver look downright progressive. How much resemblance does this have to the truth?
flodnak, have you been to my old school?
Despite the confusion that abounds about these words, they have very strict definitions: The basic questions are a) whether there is a deity and b) whether one can know whether or not there is such a being. An atheist says one can know the answer, and the answer is no, belief in a deity is a superstition. An agnostic, strictly speaking, has adopted the position that the question is, by definition, unanswerable… not that one isn’t certain, but that the nature of the question is unanswerable (from the greek: a (not) gnosis (knowledge) = not knowable).
There was a wonderful interview with the late Isaac Asimov who in Free Inquiry magazine where he states (direct quote, I have it handy…)
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unacceptable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I am a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”
Personally, I was raised Roman Catholic. Being the second of three sons, there was a family plot to get me to go into the priesthood (I guess the other two were sufficient to provide continuity for the family name and a “spare”, just in case…) The local parish priests were in on this, and there was real pressure to find someone with a “vocation” in this new, suburban parish. Sadly for them, part of my “accelerated” religious education was exposure to the Aquinian idea that proof of existence of god (as defined by the Catholic church) could be determined by reason alone.
Now, if the local parish priests had been Jesuits, and had I been a little less on the ball, they might have convinced me. Redemptorists, however, come from a tradition of piety rather than one of intellectual rigor. Shall we say that, having told me that the existence of god could be determined by reason alone, and then having been unable to demonstrate this, the parish priest could himself be said to have confirmed me as an atheist. I swallowed the part about the question being answerable, but couldn’t swallow the answer he tried to give me.
As to whether or not I have any deep animosity towards the Church itself, strangely enough, I don’t. I think most of what they do is rather silly, but they do provide a great deal of emotional support to their believers. Since they aren’t currently doing the Inquisition thing anymore, I am willing to accept that, on the whole, they help those who believe more than they hurt them. Indeed, with the whole liberation theology construct out of Latin America, they often serve a positive social function.
Still, on many fundamental issues they are wrong, and in individual cases and on specific issues (abortion, lesbian and gay rights come to mind) they do a lot of damage.
So, count me in as an Atheist… out of the closet about it too.
From that (http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html) I got 7.5%, the second largest group. .3% was for Unitarians. Agnostics got .7%.
But no, we’re not in the majority. We’ve still got a long way to go – not even a majority would consider voting an atheist for President. (49% according to Gallup’s latest) That’s the least of any group of people.
(Sorry for starting and keeping this hijack, btw)
Thanks for the definitions. I guess, that makes me an atheist. I am not quite sure whether this is a debate or not. What exactly is the argument here? What are the two opposing sides?
I’m an “open” agnostic. I was raised Episcopalian but I don’t think I ever saw a good reason to believe any of what they were telling me in church. I was baptized and all that and my parents expect me to get confirmed next year. (I’m only 15, btw.) I have told my parents many times that I don’t believe any of it, but they still force me to go to church, pray, etc. and I feel very awkward doing it when I know it means nothing to me. My dad was raised Catholic and my mom Presbyterian, so one would think they would have more respect for my decision to form my own beliefs rather than follow what I’ve been taught all my life. I go to at least one service every weekend, along with Sunday school and youth group. My parents refuse to listen, though, because in their eyes, it’s the right thing to do. I just get so sick of explaining my situation to them, and they never listen. 