Hello! First post here. I am a woman, early twenties, atheist. It's been some time now, a couple of years maybe, that I've found myself in a weird situation that looks like it's shared by a number of people.
I was raised culturally Catholic by a vaguely observant mother and a non-observant, completely disinterested
father. I remember being bored and skeptic during religion class in elementary school already (also cracking
blasphemous jokes about The Jesus, which landed me in trouble in various occasions) and when I was about 11 I just declared I didn't believe in any of that stuff and that I was an atheist. My parents basically shrugged. I spent the following few years being the obnoxious atheist kid trying to 'convert' people to the brave new godless world I had discovered for myself. When I got to about 17 I had gotten all of the militant attitude out of my system and I just kept quiet about my lack of belief. It also became dramatically easier when everybody around me declared their atheism too. I'm not lying when I say that about eighty percent of people in my social circles are atheists or pretty hard agnostics (although ours is a historically deeply Catholic European country).
I've always been deeply interested about religion. At first in a combative, know-your-enemy way when I was twelve or thirteen, and later on from philosophical, historical, anthropological standpoints. It's been a couple of years now that I've found myself living the reluctant atheist paradox.
I believe that atheism has been wildly over-rated, as far as human happiness goes. I would gladly swap my sadly unwavering belief in science and rationality and Russell's teapot for the warm comfort of believing in some kind of higher power permeating all matter visible and invisible. I wish there was a Creator, and that I could believe in it, and pay tribute to it; but what I feel is also not about a personal God per se, if that makes any sense. I could be content, I think, even believing in a Spinozian God, the pantheist type. I feel actual longing for the ritualistic aspect of religion, the act of elevating every day to the divine through rites, and coming together with other people, sharing a community, a deeply felt idea, instead of just counting 'paper-thin' days down till the end, as a lone atom without any bonds to a higher, older, holier kind of community that predates my birth and will exist after me. I guess it's not even about the afterlife. I'm not afraid of death, the nothingness (although I do feel a bitter pang when I consider the annihilation without chance of return or reunion of everyone I love). I guess I just dearly wish there was more to this physical realm: sense, truth, some kind of reason for it all, or purpose, something under, between, the matter, a coherent principle; that I could believe in the existance of this principle, and that I could truthfully and joyfully pay my tributes to it.
There is also another level to my longing, in the sense that religion is just so damn fascinating and bizarre and beautiful. I can't help but be fascinated by the religious (and observant) mindset and envious, in some ways, of the richness, depths and beauty of its best manifestations (although that doesn't stop me from being annoyed and horrified by the horrors and backwardness inflicted on the rest of humankind by the fundamentalists).
The funny thing is that I think the turning point for me was watching a pretty popular movie, The Believer, the one with Ryan Gosling as a Nazi self-hating Jew. There's that part towards the end where Gosling's girlfriend, who is like the daughter of bonafide fascists, and who is sliding into Judaism for no logical reason other than an unexplicable urge, says something like 'What if surrendering to God is the best feeling we could ever have'. What if it is?
Every time I pass in front of the local synagogue [to be clear: there is no link between the movie's subject and my interest in Judaism] I get this nonsensical desire to just go inside and try with all my might to believe, to feel it, to lose myself into it. Or just go to a service and bask in the atmosphere. And then I remember I am an atheist, and feel like a weirdo and a fraud.
I am aware this is completely bizarre but some long Google searches have told me it's not really unheard of, so... I guess the questions are:
- am I, and the people who think like me, total loonies?
- does this make any sense to any of you? I guess this one is a question especially for the atheists who may be reading
- any thoughts from the theist side of the barricade?
- is this all a cry from a lost soul in the liquid world described by Zygmunt Bauman?
I was raised culturally Catholic by a vaguely observant mother and a non-observant, completely disinterested
father. I remember being bored and skeptic during religion class in elementary school already (also cracking
blasphemous jokes about The Jesus, which landed me in trouble in various occasions) and when I was about 11 I just declared I didn't believe in any of that stuff and that I was an atheist. My parents basically shrugged. I spent the following few years being the obnoxious atheist kid trying to 'convert' people to the brave new godless world I had discovered for myself. When I got to about 17 I had gotten all of the militant attitude out of my system and I just kept quiet about my lack of belief. It also became dramatically easier when everybody around me declared their atheism too. I'm not lying when I say that about eighty percent of people in my social circles are atheists or pretty hard agnostics (although ours is a historically deeply Catholic European country).
I've always been deeply interested about religion. At first in a combative, know-your-enemy way when I was twelve or thirteen, and later on from philosophical, historical, anthropological standpoints. It's been a couple of years now that I've found myself living the reluctant atheist paradox.
I believe that atheism has been wildly over-rated, as far as human happiness goes. I would gladly swap my sadly unwavering belief in science and rationality and Russell's teapot for the warm comfort of believing in some kind of higher power permeating all matter visible and invisible. I wish there was a Creator, and that I could believe in it, and pay tribute to it; but what I feel is also not about a personal God per se, if that makes any sense. I could be content, I think, even believing in a Spinozian God, the pantheist type. I feel actual longing for the ritualistic aspect of religion, the act of elevating every day to the divine through rites, and coming together with other people, sharing a community, a deeply felt idea, instead of just counting 'paper-thin' days down till the end, as a lone atom without any bonds to a higher, older, holier kind of community that predates my birth and will exist after me. I guess it's not even about the afterlife. I'm not afraid of death, the nothingness (although I do feel a bitter pang when I consider the annihilation without chance of return or reunion of everyone I love). I guess I just dearly wish there was more to this physical realm: sense, truth, some kind of reason for it all, or purpose, something under, between, the matter, a coherent principle; that I could believe in the existance of this principle, and that I could truthfully and joyfully pay my tributes to it.
There is also another level to my longing, in the sense that religion is just so damn fascinating and bizarre and beautiful. I can't help but be fascinated by the religious (and observant) mindset and envious, in some ways, of the richness, depths and beauty of its best manifestations (although that doesn't stop me from being annoyed and horrified by the horrors and backwardness inflicted on the rest of humankind by the fundamentalists).
The funny thing is that I think the turning point for me was watching a pretty popular movie, The Believer, the one with Ryan Gosling as a Nazi self-hating Jew. There's that part towards the end where Gosling's girlfriend, who is like the daughter of bonafide fascists, and who is sliding into Judaism for no logical reason other than an unexplicable urge, says something like 'What if surrendering to God is the best feeling we could ever have'. What if it is?
Every time I pass in front of the local synagogue [to be clear: there is no link between the movie's subject and my interest in Judaism] I get this nonsensical desire to just go inside and try with all my might to believe, to feel it, to lose myself into it. Or just go to a service and bask in the atmosphere. And then I remember I am an atheist, and feel like a weirdo and a fraud.
I am aware this is completely bizarre but some long Google searches have told me it's not really unheard of, so... I guess the questions are:
- am I, and the people who think like me, total loonies?
- does this make any sense to any of you? I guess this one is a question especially for the atheists who may be reading
- any thoughts from the theist side of the barricade?
- is this all a cry from a lost soul in the liquid world described by Zygmunt Bauman?
