Believer to Nonbeliever (Jesus, morals, Torah, celibacy, beliefs)

Victor · #1 05-09-2006, 01:05 PM

I often read articles of people who have gone from believer and nonbeliever (specifically Christianity). See:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl.../findrelig.DTL
I like to hear out why they left and their reasons behind it. Now, in the various live discussions I've had, I have not once come across a person that I could say left with a very matured understanding under his/her belt. I hardly find that they got into discussions of the Canon of Scripture, hypostatic union, theosophy, and a number of other issues concerning Christendom. Now I'm well aware that it goes both ways. You hardly bump into an atheist that has years of dialogue and knowledge that turns theist. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you can find both switching to the other side. But my point is that it's a rare bird that actually does understand both and make a decision.

I was curious how many of you have observed this as well. Let me know your thoughts.

robtex · #2 05-09-2006, 01:27 PM

I am a member of my local atheist group called the Atheist Community of Austin. I would say that more than 2/3's of them have situations similar to Sweeny. Incidently ,Sweeney just did a show in Austin on Sunday. A bunch of the people from the ACA went to that. The atheist that I meet in real life pretty much parallel alot of the atheist posters on her when it comes to knowledge of religion.

What strikes me as familiar about Sweeney's atheism is that she found it after studying religion. Most atheists I have met in cyberspace (cyberspace but not in RF) and locally had a time where they believed in a God, self included and are very knowledgable in a whole spectrum of religions as opposed to just one. When I first became a UU years ago, like many UU's I went out and canvases other faiths by first hand discussions. I was immediatly shocked at how poorly educated the average Christian was about their religion. John 3:16 pretty much summed their formal knowledge of their religion. I am not even slightly exaggerating this statement. The Muslims, hindus and pagans that I met by contrast were very educated about their faiths. (austin is very multicultural).

I remember thinking about that over a year ago when Ceridwen018 posted something about the abstractions of theism which I posted prompted me to construct a debate topic on RF here:
the santa claus arguement

What has been even a bigger learning experience is how outside of communities like this narrow most religious "students" are about religion outside of their own. Go ask a muslim about the Torah, a Jew about the NT or a Hindu about the 5 pillars of Isalm. The focus is extremely narrow of most religious groups and completely exclusionary making academic intregity improbable at best and impossible in many cases.

In regards to Sweeney I have such a deep respect at her not focusing so much on why she became an atheist but moreso on her trials and tribulations on coming out. She does a good and candid job of the trials of stating your atheism in country where morality is many times exclusivly attached to God. It looks like she really thought it through and came to an objective decision after weighing both sides of the issue.

Ormiston · #3 05-09-2006, 01:44 PM

For me personally, I was introduced to Christianity at a young age (around eight years old). I say introduced because it wasn't a part of my upbringing until then. My mother met someone who attended a specific Baptist church and wanted to join. Don't get me wrong, she was somewhat educated about Christianity and had some previous experience, but hadn't practiced in I don't know how long. I took church and faith very seriously for a few years and quit going around 12 or 13 years old.

My reasons for leaving, whether they are good/bad/other are:
1) I no longer believed in what I was doing
2) I disagreed with many of the convictions of the congregation. Most of the differences were silly, eg. I loved Dungeons & Dragons and some old guy jumped my butt about it.
3) Most importantly, I felt like a clown worshipping and praying (I still would). I think this ties strongly into #1.

Finally, regardless of how silly my reasons for leaving were, the reasons for staying would have been even sillier.

standing_alone · #4 05-09-2006, 01:52 PM

I left Christianity after a long process of serious thought. It wasn't like one day I snapped my fingers and said, "I'm no longer a Christian." It started off with things in scriptures I disagreed with. Lots of the violence and killing in the Bible and the depiction of an angry god. Also, I had difficulty going to a church that I knew would kick me out if they ever found out about a certain little detail about me.

I got tired of the hypocrisy in the church I attended - all the Sunday Christians who would treat people rather terribly all through the week and go to church on Sunday and everything is all good and forgiven. I thought that good people that didn't believe in Christ going to hell was an absurd idea. As I started to develop more critical thinking skills, I found it less and less likely that a god, or at least the Christian god, exists. I remember the moment that I gave up on Christianity, though. I was in church, by myself (since my parents never went to church, I'd find my own way there), listening to the sermon when the pastor was reading some scripture containing violence. Listening to is disgusted me and I felt that it contradicted what I wanted to be with my own morals. I couldn't believe in something like that. As I became older, more and more of my own beliefs contradicted the church - and my own beliefs were more important to me than some old book's. I think this about sums it up.

Revasser · #5 05-09-2006, 01:56 PM

I don't really think a thorough knowledge of all the intricate theological details of one particular brand of theism is necessary for someone to become an atheist. If you give it a little thought and find you don't actually believe there's a god, regardless of whatever label you wear at the time... what good will intimate understanding of all the extra trappings that stem from that initial presupposition of the presence of a god do you? They'll still be essentially meaningless outside of an intellectual knowledge of the concepts, because you don't accept the foundation upon which they all rest.

It's been my experience that the majority of theist-to-atheist changes happen because the former theist had previously simply accepted the idea of god without really thinking about it, but as soon as they gave it even the slightest bit of mental prodding, the idea fell apart. They don't know the intricate details of the religion they were nominally a part of because they never really made a conscious, informed decision to be a part of it in the first place.

Of course, if you find atheists who declare themselves as such and engage in religious discussion... well, of course they're likely to have a good knowledge of at least one religion, because engaging in the discussion probably means they have an interest in religion to begin with, at least in how it interacts with their atheism. Most atheists probably don't care enough about religion to bother.

robtex · #6 05-09-2006, 02:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by standing_alone

I left Christianity after a long process of serious thought. It wasn't like one day I snapped my fingers and said, "I'm no longer a Christian." It started off with things in scriptures I disagreed with. Lots of the violence and killing in the Bible and the depiction of an angry god. .

I had the same experience when I was 19. I was in college and reading the Bible for the first time and was shocked that this book was being passed off as a system of morality. I was already a pacifist from being in my martial circles and the two were incompatable. My friend Natalie who was a baptist (and not part of my church group), was convinced there was a Noah and Ark and blew a gasket when another classmate laughed at the notion. Two of the three church leaders kicked a guy out of my church group for being an epilepic because they were convinced he was possessed by a demon. A local pastor with a doctorate in theology gave a speech on campus equating God to love and asking us to worship our emotions. My gay friend Ismael choose celibacy and hetrosexuality to stay in the good graces with Jesus that same year. It only took one year for me to realize morally that Chrsitianity at least, was not for me.

standing_alone · #7 05-09-2006, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by robtex

It only took one year for me to realize morally that Chrsitianity at least, was not for me.

Most certainly. I can't put my faith behind something that forces people to repress and deny so much of what makes them who they are - when what they are is nothing wrong. I believe in treating people with respect, understanding, and dignity. I just didn't see that in the churches in my area.

Victor · #8 05-09-2006, 02:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by robtex

I am a member of my local atheist group called the Atheist Community of Austin. I would say that more than 2/3's of them have situations similar to Sweeny. Incidently ,Sweeney just did a show in Austin on Sunday. A bunch of the people from the ACA went to that. The atheist that I meet in real life pretty much parallel alot of the atheist posters on her when it comes to knowledge of religion.

What strikes me as familiar about Sweeney's atheism is that she found it after studying religion. Most atheists I have met in cyberspace (cyberspace but not in RF) and locally had a time where they believed in a God, self included and are very knowledgable in a whole spectrum of religions as opposed to just one. When I first became a UU years ago, like many UU's I went out and canvases other faiths by first hand discussions. I was immediatly shocked at how poorly educated the average Christian was about their religion. John 3:16 pretty much summed their formal knowledge of their religion. I am not even slightly exaggerating this statement. The Muslims, hindus and pagans that I met by contrast were very educated about their faiths. (austin is very multicultural).

I remember thinking about that over a year ago when Ceridwen018 posted something about the abstractions of theism which I posted prompted me to construct a debate topic on RF here:
the santa claus arguement

What has been even a bigger learning experience is how outside of communities like this narrow most religious "students" are about religion outside of their own. Go ask a muslim about the Torah, a Jew about the NT or a Hindu about the 5 pillars of Isalm. The focus is extremely narrow of most religious groups and completely exclusionary making academic intregity improbable at best and impossible in many cases.

In regards to Sweeney I have such a deep respect at her not focusing so much on why she became an atheist but moreso on her trials and tribulations on coming out. She does a good and candid job of the trials of stating your atheism in country where morality is many times exclusivly attached to God. It looks like she really thought it through and came to an objective decision after weighing both sides of the issue.

Doesn't this show that most atheist are not exposed to the elite of Christianity? That is certainly my experience.

robtex · #9 05-09-2006, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Victor

Doesn't this show that most atheist are not exposed to the elite of Christianity? That is certainly my experience.

What it shows is that atheists, percentage wise are more apt to do their homework when it comes to religion. Take the next year Victor, and email or speak with people you know to be atheists, who are out and open about it. Ask them if they have read things like, Koran, the KJV, the NIV, anything on buddhism or taoism. If they know the 5 pillars of Islam the 10 commandments, (or how many they know), the hindu trinity ect ect. Take the same questions you wrote down and ask them to other groups.....a muslim you work with or a hindu you are friends with.....and I realize you may not have the same opportunity as me to meet so such a diverse crowd in person so the net may be your only option but what you will find....I am guessing is the same thing I have found.

1) Most atheists have looked deeply into 2-5 religions. The biggest exception being those with strong science backgrounds who are usually so focused on their field they haven't looked into much of anything outside of science.

2) Most theists who belong to a particular faith (UU's and Pagans being the large exception) have no or very very little knowledge of other faiths outside their own

3) Most Christians (as opposed to muslims, Jews hindu's or other) have not actually read the bible from cover to cover. Can not do simple things like name the 10 commandments, identify some of the major and minor prophets of the OT, or articulate information on the first couple hundred years of the Christian religion.

To give you an example at my part time job in my department there are

atheists = 1 (me)
Muslims =2
Hindus= 3
Pagans =0
bahai = 1
christians = 15 +
agnostic = 1

Out of that group, and we have person-to-person religious disscussions....the two muslims have read the koran. The three hindus have read much of their religious texts (there is 10 times the info as the bible so reading the whole thing is not realistic). I don't know about the bahai. The atheist and agnostic have read the bible plus other religious works. Of the Christians only two have read the bible. Of the whole group the atheist and the agnostic have read diverse religious works but only one christian has.

by saying "elite" which incidently was not the way of Jesus as portrayed by Paul, Jesus was big on laymen have access to religion and faith..not just the "elite", I would quality that as one who studied theological writers historians and philosophers. I would say in my experience non-theists are much more open to the idea of study and theists, particulary Chrisitans and muslims are more open to the idea of accepting their religion on faith independant of study.

A further complication is what qualifies as academic study? Academic to me means being open to an objective analysis of the subject at hand. Abrhamic theists by the nature of their belief structure, meaning accpeting it on faith, have a disadvantage of looking at the subject of religion from an academic standpoint. I am not saying i can't be done because a couple of christians on here are very academic in their approach to religion, but more to the propensity of academics to be slighted by faith which is a preconcieved and decided notion.

It kinda goes back to the long-standing internet joke that "atheists are people who think too much."