| This was written by Bill on the newsgroup alt.atheism
in response to the question "Why are you an atheist", from the
Atheist Questions List.
>#62. Why are you an atheist? I was raised Presbyterian. My parents and my church had the good sense not to explain things very well. Rather than teaching the complexities of theology, they just gave me a set of fables and rules, arbitrary but backed up with a big stick. As I got older, my interest in science blossomed. I tried to rationalize my religion with my growing knowledge of cosmology and became one of the "God made the Big Bang happen" people. It got harder and harder to do as I learned more about the roots of religion, and ultimately, I reserved a certain part of my brain - the "No Thinking" section - as a safe haven for God and kept my belief alive there by the simple expedient of pretending there was no conflict. I could analyze the mythologies of others without even thinking about applying the same techniques to my own beliefs. But my faith began to fail when I realized that religion was democratic. If something becomes socially acceptable, religion will find a way to embrace it. I started seeing this pattern everywhere. It started with homosexuality, which I'd been taught was a terrible sin; but churches began welcoming gay members and even ordaining gay clergy. Womens' equality? The Bible is pretty clear that women are subservient, and Christian nations kept them that way for centuries, but now we have female pastors. A "personal relationship with God"? For hundreds of years worship was conducted in churches where the great bulk of the denomination couldn't even see the ceremony - nor understand it, as it was conducted in Latin. They believed the God's blessing rained down on you just because you were within earshot, no need to understand. Race? Religion supported black slavery here until it became unpopular, then it jumped ship to the abolitionist side - except for the Southern Baptists, who split off the main denomination so they could keep their slaves. That's when the bottom fell out. If I'm going to take a 2000-year-old book as the basis of my life, the lessons that book teaches had damned well better be timeless and unchanging. But I saw that the practices I was following would have seemed bizarre, even heretical, to someone who worshipped the same God a few hundred years before. If religion doesn't offer absolute, timeless truth, then even if it's a pretty story and a teaches good values, it must be a sham. So you might say I'm an anti-fundamentalist. I agree with the fundies that you can't pick and choose Bible passages. You have to either accept the whole thing literally, or reject it.
Bill Thacker
|