There are a few religous threads going around the board at the moment and I just feel the need to ask you how much you really care?
I’m baptised and confirmed in a Lutheran church (different ones though) and go to funerals, when that is called upon. But I don’t really care about the religious things. All the people I know are confirmed (mostly since they get presents) and all of my friends (so far) have gotten married in a curch (since that’s what you do) but nobody (as far as I know, and I know some of them very well) believes anything special.
Sure, I haven’t had a God-talk with most of my friends, but looking upon their daily lives and daily experiences I sincerely doubt any of them are serious believers. And the same applies to me.
What I’m basically trying to say is: These rituals are important to them (and me), but in daily life they don’t really matter.
It’s kinda connected to what I said in the “ask the Icelandic dude”-thread that all of us were Secular Christian: Hence, we believe in the rituals but not in the words, but haven’t really thought about it.
Well. I’m not sure this is a poll or a ?, but feel free to add whatever you have to say.
Like my whole family, I’m an atheist. My mom was raised hard core Catholic, and left the church when she left her parents’ house. My dad is from a family of “religion is the opiate of the masses” communist Jews, where being Jewish was extremely important but actually practicing Judaism was cringeworthy. (I’m not kidding, I once mentioned something about davening* to my bubbe, and she was all “YOU didn’t daven, DID YOU?” Of course I lied, as I was going through an “attempting to be religious” phase at the time, and told her I didn’t. It’s a mitzvah to please your grandparents, after all.)
I was raised totally lacking in any religious instruction (we did do secular Christmas, and when I was younger, Easter, but now that I am an adult I don’t really bother), and am an atheist pretty much by default.
I don’t really feel that my atheism is particularly important to me. Since it’s how I was raised, it just feels normal. Frankly, it strikes me as really overly complicated and time-consuming to spend time worrying about what god wants.
I ‘invented’ Atheism when I was 9 years old.
I deduced that since everybody had lied to me about Santa and the Easter Bunny, that the related magical, invisible characters, god and jesus, must be fake too. I figured that the reason older people still believed in them was because–way back when–someone didn’t get (or believe) the news that it was all just a little white lie you told the kids to shut them up when they wouldn’t stop asking questions you had no answer to.
I could just see a kid asking Dad, “Where did the world come from?” and the Dad saying, “Uh…Gort…no, um…god did it. Yeah, that’s it, god!”
I easily convinced my siblings of this because they are all about as intelligent as me. We didn’t talk to Mom and Dad about it.
Needless to say, my views have evolved since then. I’ve been an Atheist for 80% of my life and I’m pretty used to it by now.
It never comes up except when I have to deal with the low-grade morons who are the only strongly religious people I meet (there may be a lot of deeply devout believers out there that are, nonetheless, reasonably intelligent, but I never meet them). Or when the xian supremacists try to force through some biased law or get their myths into the science classes again.
Most people I know have some sort of religious beliefs or at least go through the motions of the rituals, but none of the smart ones proselytize, debate beliefs, or otherwise make it a big part of their lives. They don’t bother me. I don’t bother them.
My friends accept that I’m non-Christian and not religious in any organised way. Others in the past who don’t know me well tend to think I must be Christian (my love for ecclesiastic architecture probably helps with the confusion), but I’m not all that fussed if folk expect me to join them in prayer etc.
I am not an adherent to organized religion at all (raised in a very lukewarmly-Catholic family FWIW), but I think some of the aggressive, devout atheists can be as ridiculous as religious fundies when it comes to spouting off about their beliefs and values.
Is this addressed to non-religious AND religious, or just to the former?
Btw, I thought davening went beyond praying & referred to the head & torso bobbing that sometimes accompanied it.
I was raised in the Southern Baptist religion, most by a grandmother who constantly tried to put the fear of hell in me. She and a coterie of her friends pressured me relentlessly and when I was twelve or thirteen years old, I finally gave in and submitted to baptism; I mouthed all the correct words but I didn’t believe a damn one of them and I found no peace after all the bullshit was finished. I was exactly the same after baptism as I was before; the night before the baptism ceremony, I experienced the first migraine headache of my life. Now I believe organized religion is the source of more pain to mankind than any other single entity. I believe now that it is all a fairy tale and I believe those who swallow that fairy tale are delusional. But I will admit that some of the crap I heard as a child in those Southern Baptist churches still disturbs me----it takes a lot to dislodge crap that was embedded as a child.
My mum was raised an Irish Catholic and my dad raised as an English Prodestant - I was raised as a socialist. The joke on the Irish side was they could never decide which was the worse of my mothers crimes - marrying an Englishman or marrying a Prod! I went to a Church of England primary school so it’s not like they didn’t get a chance at me.
I used to think religion was charming and rather sweet. I’m getting less and less tolerant of it all now.
How important are my feelings? Well a case in point this morning when I had a visit from the Jehovah’s witnesses. I used to give them a dollar and take their leaflets - I like to read them and I love the pictures. Today I said - no thanks, I’m not a christian. He replied - well, in these hard economic times people are suffering from despair and lack of hope. I said I’m not. A lot of it seems to be based on fear and keeping up appearances. I think it’s a cop out to put your trust in a higher power instead of taking responsibility for yourself and those around you. The lord will not provide.
I sent my daughter to a Catholic secondary school. I really enjoyed discussing the Christian Family Life lessons she had. I later discovered I was one of the few parents to take advantage of discussing morals and ethics with my kid.
As a non-Christian in North America, and as a secular neo-pagan, I am very glad I live in a country where there is no overwhelmingly-powerful religious majority*, and in a city where religions are a dime a dozen, but the ‘framework’ culture is secular. I am very sensitive to religious pressure, abhor religious authoritatianism, and just want to be Left Alone. I’ll make my discoveries on my own time, thanks.
[sub]*The two largest groups are English Protestants and French Catholics. Fortunately, these have been at odds politically for some centuries. More liberty for the rest of us![/sub]
Skepticism and critical thinking are important to me as general philosophies of life, but I’ve never thought of my lack of religious belief as being important in itself.
I stopped believing in god as a child and once I got out of catholic school I rarely if ever thought about it. Then I started posting on secular boards where it was endlessly discussed and fought over so I gave it a bit more thought. I think that I’m a “don’t give a shit-ist”. I don’t care what people want to believe in as long as they don’t try to shove it down my throat and they don’t try to influence public policy with it, and I don’t feel a need to attack them unless they go after me first. I can’t stand watching theists get piled on and driven away just because they want to talk to atheists (as opposed to preaching at us.) Maybe it’s different for people that grow up in fundamentalist areas because they do face real consequences for outing themselves as atheists. I never did.
I’m a “shrugnostic,” in that the issue of a Supreme Being has no relevance to my life. I went through a very atheistic period when I was younger, but the issue no longer has any significance to me.
I was baptized and raised Catholic, and I’ll defend the culture when I think it’s getting unfairly dished, but I won’t defend the religion. I try to be polite about matters of faith, but I don’t actually respect faith.
As long as it’s harmless, it’s more or less amusing to me. When it gets political and harmful, (I’m looking at you, Mormon so-called-church) I get less condescending and more “fuck you, we need more lions.”
Mostly agnostic, myself. There are things we don’t understand about the universe. “We don’t know” doesn’t mean “you do.”
Pretty much exactly as above. I was raised the atheist son of atheist parents and essentially irreligious grandparents ( technically Eastern Orthodox and Southern Baptist, but mostly of the cultural sort ). My immediate family consists entirely of atheists, my extended family largely so ( w/ more agnostics ). It simply doesn’t come up much and I’ve never dwelt on it since I was very young ( I was scared into minor belief for a little while by a babysitter in 1rst or 2nd grade ).
In general I have the same problem with fervent, militant atheism as I do with fervent, militant religiosity. Both irritate me a little, though I try to make allowances. I’m just not crazy about zealotry of any sort.
My day to day life is deeply spiritual but I eschew religious rituals because I think the very act of ritualizing an experience turns off the mind, and thus eliminates one’s spiritual connection the experience.
I announced to my parents that I was an atheist at 8 or 9 years old. They are believers.
Although my ways of thinking about the world have devlopped and changed over the years, I have always been an atheist and it’s somewhat important for me that others know this. Why? Because when I grew up I was made to feel abnormal, even though I knew better. That fucks a kid up. The young atheists today will feel more “normal”, and the more people are open about their lack of belief, the less stigma will be attached.
I never throw my personal belief system in anyone else’s face, but I’ll never pass up an opportunity to make it clear that I don’t believe if challenged on the topic.
I’m an atheist, and I’d say it’s moderately important. I try to avoid the militant atheism in daily life, but if someone tries to witness to me or my parents start something. My parents are Jewish, and they inexplicably think that by raising me to think for myself, including in terms of religion, the did something catastrophically wrong. Which is rich coming from the folks who go to synagogue maybe twice a year, and especially my mother who was raised catholic and technically speaking is not a Jew. (Which, furthermore, technically makes me not a Jew to begin with.)
I also don’t go to religious services for the sake of others. The family is off to Christmas mass? Great, enjoy it. Passover seder? I hope it’s very pleasant, and I won’t bring bread into your house during the holiday, but I’m not sitting through two hours of meaningless prayers and false history.
This is probably the closest to my status on religion. And I really think, closest to most the way most people around here think about it.
It makes me wonder how the Nordic countries have gotten so secular, while Religion still seems to be quite important in many other places around the world.