The last time I appealed to God and “meant” it was when I was facing a kitchen fire growing out of control. I had been a functional atheist for years, but panic set in. As the words were leaving my mouth, I immediately thought, “He’s not real, I’m going to have to deal with this myself.” I did and that was that.
I still use Christian-y phrases like bless you for sneezes, goddam it, and thank god (although I’m gradually shifting to thank goodness). They’re just phrases. I also still roll up my car windows and dial a phone.
I went through cancer treatment never needing anything beyond my doctors’ guidance and expertise. I spun a car never thinking about anything beyond regaining control, and when it flipped over I was oddly fascinated that the side airbags went off before I realized I had flipped.
I guess I understand the appeal of a higher power, but I’ve long since realized the world is chaos. There is meaning only in what we make of it. Put out your own fires.
Being atheist rather than Jewish I have exactly the same response as you. Some day we’ll recognize that teaching religion is child abuse. It irrecoverably warps minds in bad ways.
This may depend on the irrationality. For example, I think the Santa thing can be handled in a way that doesn’t require you to teach him as dogma. (And the part where they figure out he’s a myth can be a learning experience! Or, you know, soul crushing. Whichever.)
Well, I think if you start off with the attitude that “If we don’t teach the kid all about God and what is and is not sacred and holy, the kid will never know about it”, you’re already an atheist, you’re just lying to yourself about it. I mean, no one goes around saying “If we don’t teach kids that there’s a seriously bright thing in the sky that we call the sun, they’ll never see it or notice it on their own”!
@Two_Many_Cats2, I apologize for helping to derail your thread. I’m trying to do better about resisting the siren call of Someone On the Internet is Wrong, but I still give in on occasion. I’m sorry it was in your thread.
I haven’t directly replied to you yet, because I’ve been trying to think of something meaningful to say, and not coming up with much.
My mother was a devout Lutheran, and tried to raise my sister and I in her faith. My sister eventually converted to Mormonism. I just…kind of drifted away. I stopped going to church when I was fairly young, because I just didn’t get anything out of it (well, I enjoyed the hymns…). I never had any sort of epiphany, I just never remember a time when I actually believed in any of it. I don’t consider myself an atheist, but it was clear to me that my mother and her side of the family had some sort of profound connection to Something that I just didn’t.
It sounds like you had a similar sort of connection, and you’ve now lost it. For someone who felt a profound connection to a Higher Power, that is a profound loss. You’re grieving that loss. That’s natural. It’s possible that nothing will every really fully assuage that grief. Losing loved ones is hard.
The best I can offer, as so many others have done, is to suggest looking around yourself to your fellow flawed, lonely humans, most of whom are also looking for Something. Obviously, it’s harder during the current pandemic, and civil society in America, and elsewhere, is becoming increasingly fragmented and atomized. But there are still some places (coughSDMBcough) where you may be able to find a connection to Something (even if that Something is a squabbling hive mind).
And if you find yourself “slipping” and offering a prayer on occasion in a moment of crisis…who cares? Life is hard. We all have to find our own way through it. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with occasionally falling back on a comforting ritual, even one you think you “shouldn’t” resort to.
I don’t understand your post. Are you saying that the kid will learn about god because he is in the natural world (the old there are trees, therefore god argument) or that the kid will hear about god because they’ll see churches and people saying god bless?
Not indoctrinating my kids with god belief - and teaching them critical thinking - worked for me. Neither was prevented from going to religious places with friends. They both came out saying that their friends were nuts for believing that stuff.
I’m saying that if God is real, you could magically erase everyone who has ever said diddly squat about God, erase all the holy books, eliminate all the religions, and someone will still encounter the reality of God and invent a name for same and, if relevant, speak to people about same.
If the notion of God can only be perpetuated by passing it down and teaching it, God is just a figure in literature.
There’s of course the third option, where people keep inventing god spontaneously because the human brain is prone to various cognitive, emotional, and otherwise odd effects that can be interpreted as being spiritual and supernatural in origin.
The presence of organized religion leads people to associate their experiences with existing religions rather than starting new ones, but if you magically erased everything about existing religion people will still invent god even if there is no reality to it.
That’s actually my attitude. A desire for a god of some sort is a bug in the human psyche. Humans, unless educated to avoid this bug, will keep inventing new versions of the same dumb idea.
It’s just like the fact that people (at least male people) will generally decide that violence is a great way to manage their interactions with others. Unless educated and encouraged from a young age to avoid using violence,
We don’t tolerate violence in civilized society. How long before we stop tolerating the other bugs?
No, but we teach them about the sun: how far away it is, how big it is, that it’s a star, how we think stars work, how the position of the sun relative to the earth affects the seasons, not to look straight at it, what’s going on during a solar eclipse, etcetera.
Hey, we even sing songs about it.
– I don’t think it’s remotely practical to expect genuinely religious parents not to teach their kids about religion, because for most religious people their religion is an inextricable part of their lives. ‘Why are you lighting those candles, Mommy?’ ‘I can’t tell you, it’s religious; and you have to put your fingers in your ears so you can’t hear the prayer.’ ‘Why are we going to church, Daddy?’ ‘I can’t tell you, it’s religious, and you have to wait in this soundproofed room so you can’t hear the sermon or the hymns.’ ‘Why don’‘t we eat pork, Grandma?’ ‘I can’t tell you, it’s religious.’ ‘Why do you always want this day of the week off work, Auntie?’ ‘I can’t tell you, it’s religious.’ ‘No, you can’t go to your sister’s wedding, it’s religious.’ ‘No, you mustn’t read that book I read all the time, it’s religious!’
I mean, there’s just no way that’s going to work.
What could be done, and is done by a lot of people religious or otherwise, is to teach their kids ‘this is what we believe. There are people who believe in (other) religions, in which people believe different things. There are people who don’t believe in any religion. All of these people can be good people, and when you’re grown up you’ll make up your own mind.’ But I don’t know how you could legislate that everyone has to raise their children that way.
Well neither do I. I don’t even argue that they shouldn’t. I’m just saying that if they’re approaching the matter as if the only way their kid is going to experience God is if they indoctrinate spoonfeed the kid religious education, they don’t really believe God is real. I’d say the same about science, by the way: yeah, obviously we don’t want to discard all we’ve learned, but we do believe that if, hypothetically, all the science books got burned and all the scientists had their memories erased, people would rediscover the same stuff given enough time, because it’s really out there to be found.
I’m saying that we should avoid the dichotomy of EITHER it is that (in which case there’s no healthy purpose for that “reaching out” inclination, it’s just an artifact and not even a particularly harmless one) or ELSE there is an exterior entity, God, to whom such “reaching” is legitimately aimed.
I’m saying that there could be a productive and legitimate purpose in the “reaching” that leads people to some kind of awareness or understanding WITHOUT there necessarily being a God. Particularly as posited.
Based on my personal experience on the end of the spoon, the issue is that they’re not worried that we’ll never experience spirituality, the worry is that we’ll end up experiencing the wrong kind of spirituality, and end up either in the wrong sect or the wrong religion. (Or playing D&D, I guess.) So it’s not a matter of not believing God is real, it’s a matter of thinking it’s possible to ‘fall off the path’.
Unless I’m completely misunderstanding the topic of conversation here the reason for the “reaching” under discussion is because the person is lonely, desperate, in pain, or otherwise wants help.
Well, yes, but I’m talking about reaching other than towards another human being. I think we’ll all agree that doing that is not maladaptive or delusional or whatever. No one’s confusing the atheist in the foxhole who is desperately seeking Gunner Sgt. Malcolm with the atheist in the foxhole who is desperately seeking some exterior / abstract / whatever “out there”.
π 