by Grania
We’ve often talked about reasons for being an atheist on this site, but not so much about how we became atheists – that is if we weren’t one before. Probably few of us had as dramatic an experience as Jerry’s own Road to Damascus deconversion experience where there was one pivotal moment that marked: Here believer; and afterwards no more. Probably several readers here never believed and grew up in secular homes (you fortunate people). Jerry thought it would be interesting to ask readers: what did it for you?
TL;DR: you don’t have to read my overly-long saga below – you can now skip to the comments and add your own story.
For myself, looking back with the sort of 20/20 vision that hindsight blesses us all with, perhaps I was never a fervent believer. But I certainly had what Dan Dennett would call Belief in Belief. Raised in a moderately conservative family by a Catholic mother and a hard-to-pin-down father (he is technically Jewish, Lutheran on paper and was almost certainly skeptically agnostic but polite enough to never say anything about it).
I received a better-than-average schooling in being a good Catholic than the average Catholic circa 1970s. Unlike some modern Catholics who are outraged when Richard Dawkins had the nerve to point out that they are supposed to regard the transubstantiated communion wafer as the literal body of Christ, I was taught in painstaking detail exactly what Catholics were required to believe in. (Oh dear god, the wasted hours of frustration and boredom… )
I believed because everybody seemed to believe, perhaps not in my particular flavor of Christianity; but certainly pretty much everybody appeared to adhere to one of the myriad versions of it. But I expected more of it than tedious Catechism books and hours spent reciting mind-numbing prayers on and endless repeat cycle. Also the knees, damn wooden pews hurt like a sonofabitch after half an hour. I expected that the very least a benevolent God could do was at least once reply to my earnest prayers. There was never anything though, not even something that a relatively imaginative child could try to pretend might have been a response from a seemingly disinterested deity. The people and priests I talked to about this were kindly and patient and offered me all manner of conflicting advice: pray harder, don’t pray – just listen, read more about your faith (bad advice, really), maybe He has already answered you, sometimes God says No, sometimes God says Wait A While, don’t overdo the bookish learning – too much knowledge is enemy of faith (that’s true).
In the end, what killed my belief – or belief in belief was the following:
- a serious lack on God’s part of ever trying to acknowledge my existence. That was just plain rude.
- Latin in High School – Pliny opened my eyes to a version of early Christianity I had not ever heard about in church – especially the bit about female deacons.
- Actually reading the bible. Paul pretty much made me lose my temper with his sexist twaddle and I couldn’t take the book seriously as a moral guide after that.
- Law School – courses in subjects such as Comparative Law and Roman Law pretty much destroyed the last shreds of credibility the bible had left and laid bare its cobbled-together, plagiarised and fabricated origins. Ironically two of my very excellent lecturers were Catholics too.
Anyway, I came out of university accidentally unable to sit through any more Sunday sermons without getting fairly furious at the inaccuracies, the omissions and the one-sided version of morality that got served up. I didn’t call myself an atheist for many years to come after that, but I could not take religion seriously any more. It no longer held any interest for me and we parted ways amicably.
My sister was atheist (in a catholic family) and initially I guess I was jsut apeing her. But then, the more I thought, the more I thought belief in christianity is absurd. It was quite a hard process, because i think I am one of those people who are “predisposed” to be believers (religiousness has a heritable component). That is, I would love to believe in God, but my reason alone does not allow me to.
I went from Sunday school as a child to eastern religions as a teenager but found Krishnamurti right up my ally.
I then spent many years not bothering or bothered but holding the thought of some life essence, spiritual force or such was driving the cosmos.
Like any one who cared and thought about a world in conflict, the inequality, cruelty and indifference it was becoming rather apparent religion was not serving anyone but it’s own self serving interest and as a local NZ band, Split Enz sang, ‘What can a poor boy do’.. remain calm and carry on?
In my mid forties I happened upon a great science book, Children of the Universe by Hoimar Von Ditfurth, it was the kick start I needed. I followed that with The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene both Richard Dawkins of course and it was effectively over for religion and wishy washy woo.
Still it took a little nudging to rid myself of the residue as I firmly told myself and I remember doing this, there is no all powerful supernatural being and there never was.
Basically, it was like putting the rubbish out, off to the landfill (as we now know) of useless ideas.
I was brought up by undemonstrative Christian parents who went to church because that was what you did. So did I. I enjoyed singing in church choirs and carried on doing that for many years. As adults, my wife and I generally went to the local church because that was an easy way of getting into the local community, especially when we moved to a small village in SE England.
I am a bit embarrassed to say this in view of all the clear-eyed testimony above, but until quite late on in life I didn’t really scrutinise religious doctrines and beliefs in any detailed way. They were just there, in the background. Of course I read all Dawkins’ books on evolutionary biology as soon as they came out, and was convinced by them. I also read books such as Robin Lane Fox’s “The Unauthorised Version”, which discusses the Bible as seen through the eyes of an ancient historian (and is still a good read, by the way). The ‘Eureka’ moment for me was when my mother died, and I went to see her body in the hospital mortuary. For the first time I really understood, psychologically, that this life is it and there is nothing else to come.
I remember afterwards looking at myself in the bathroom mirror and saying ‘You don’t actually believe any of this stuff any more, do you?’ And not long afterwards I began to realise that I hadn’t believed in it for ages.
One final point. When I finally accepted my disbelief, I think I expected to experience a sense of loss and regret. On the contrary: I felt as if a burden had been lifted from my back, and the sense instead was one of release and relief. Better late than never!
Where it starts for me is in my lifelong passion for science. Atheism and so on was basically a side note of my general interest in intellectual fields, but quite a disillusioning side note nonetheless.
I have always been fascinated by science, though my appreciation for it has really increased in the last few years. I love watching David Attenborough documentaries. I never stopped learning about dinosaurs. Put me in an aquarium or natural history museum, and you’d have to drag me out after hours and hours. A good chunk of my bookshelf is devoted to scientific non-fiction, such as the works of Feynman, Sacks, and Pinker. I dabble – to a much lesser extent – in other fields of interest, such as history, film, classic literature, philosophy and so on.
There’s nothing particularly interesting about my atheism because there was never really a moment when I could honestly say I was a theist. Our family is almost entirely indifferent to religion; at most, there’s the occasional “belief in belief” and “it’s OK so long as people get along” line, but even that occurs once in a blue moon. At most, I was an implicit atheist who became explicit. I certainly don’t remember feeling particularly opposed to religions collectively.
No, the real change was my growing anti-theism, or more broadly my anti-religionism. It baffled me to learn – long after reading The Selfish Gene – that anybody could find it a bleak and even nihilistic read, because I found it wonderfully enlightening, even exciting. It explained so much, and introduced me to my first compelling understanding of Darwin’s theory (it was covered in school, but I barely remember it as a subtopic that maybe took up two or three lessons, and it certainly didn’t leave a lasting impression).
I picked up on Dawkins’ atheism after reading the footnotes in that book (I had the 30th anniversary edition), and eventually got around to reading The God Delusion, though I think I delayed it for a while. I was hearing more about his “strident” and “outspoken” reputation, and while I read his other books, I still have never bought my own copy of TGD. I was uncertain, even slightly nervous, about what this “militant” atheist had unleashed, especially since the explicit idea of fully opposing belief in god was one I hadn’t really come across before, at least not that I can remember so vividly.
Yet, read it I eventually did. In hindsight, the book is probably not as compelling as I found it at the time, but it was certainly a gateway about finding out more about this God hypothesis and the case against it. I had other things to do at the time, so it came to me piecemeal at first, but eventually I found more time for subsequent reading.
To say I was increasingly disappointed with the theistic case was an understatement. Religious claims to morality and the Big Questions – areas alleged to be outside science – led me to read a few philosophy and ethics guidebooks. I was fascinated by the new world on offer. Here, I learned more about deontological ethics, consequentialism, virtue ethics, meta-ethics, normative and descriptive ethics, etc. There were other concepts I’d only vaguely intuited at best.
I found myself grappling with new ideas to understand consciousness, aesthetics, epistemology, reason, and even determinism and free will. Yet, I kept feeling like a lot of drek was being mixed in with all the good stuff; the standards felt much looser than when I’d been immersed in science and other “harder” subjects. And in every case, I found religion was consistently under the “drek” category.
I began to learn more about religions’ role in the perpetrating of atrocities, though later on I associated this more with other factors that too many religions seemed prone towards. That said, I find it bewilderingly naive when people either blame religion for everything (I found Hitchens’ book, the only other “Four Horseman’s” book I read, less compelling than the more intellectual angle of The God Delusion), or seemingly excuse it anything. In any case, religion could be totally benign, and I would still find too much wrong with its positions.
No, what proved the fastest way towards anti-theism was the rhetorical manipulation masquerading as goody-goody impression. This was something I found more often as I joined online communities and discussions, in particular. I was appalled at the oft-quoted idea that religious people were somehow “spiritually endowed”, as if my feelings of awe, wonder, love, and marvelling at beauty somehow didn’t exist or were inferior. The idea of belief in belief is to me the presumption that humans are mentally stunted sheep that need to be shuffled around like puppets if they’re ever to do the good thing. The fear of nihilism that keeps some people theistic struck me as the result of some serious warping, if not an outright admission of a severe mental disorder.
And the idea that religions get a pass in many fields – charitable status, the stereotype that a pious person is a notably good or better person, the shameless use of the “offence” canard to bully others – whereas us “mere mortals” who rely on little things like logic and reason do not, is so head-slappingly ridiculous that I can barely contain my frustration at the whole charade.
Don’t even get me started on the whole science-religion and larger reason-faith conflict. After comparing the endless and sound fascination of the former with the paltry offerings, manipulations, and underhanded play of the latter, I certainly don’t sympathize with anyone taking the accommodationist position, much less the full-on fideists and religious apologists. Watching religionists try to stick their crap over science et al is increasingly a sight I find saddening and irritating.
So that, in broad strokes, is how, over several years and readings and discussions, I became an anti-religionist.
My parents were religious though I doubt that grandparents were particularly. On my mother’s side were some non-conformists, as well as CoE, while my father’s grandfather learnt to play the organ in church so I was told. I was a chorister but I never really had any ‘faith’ to lose. It was just something one did – go to church, listen to some boring self-righteous pious spouting, sing some great music (I appreciate that at least), & do that every day for four years.
We rehearsed before school, after school then sang at evensong. We rehearsed Saturday morning for an hour then I went to school having missed maths – never caught that up. Sunday rehearsals & two sung services. I never put my name down for confiirmation classes, then the precentor said you can just come along & no need to go through with it – of course I did, but it never meant anything to me. I always thought the idea of an after-life was just too absurd. At the time I could just about credit some ‘intelligence’ in the universe, even if it was only the universe itself, whatever thast might mean, but ‘Heaven’ & ‘Hell’??? no – too silly for words.
And the idea for a soul?! I never doubted evolution – I was always eager to read about natural history & grew up with a firm understanding of the range, variety & chronological depth of life, & its relationships. (My parents would not have doubted that either, nor would most of the CoE since Darwin.) So when I read of new fossil discoveries such as were made by the Leakey’s in the 60s & 70s I would ask myself, ‘did they have souls?’ And the idea that there would be one person say 500,000 years ago that did not have one, then all of a a child of that one that DID have a soul, was just absurd. Either all creatures had one – which would be equally silly – or none did. The latter was the only answer that made sense.
I had no Damascene moment – I really am a natural atheist.
The De La Salle Brothers beat my belief out of me, and once I started to think that completed the transition.
Charming people religionists…
Born and bred an atheist Brer Fox, born and bred an atheist. My father had some sort of wishy washy belief in God, and a stronger belief in social conformity, which meant that he tried to send us to Sunday school, my brother and I. We did not cooperate with this. The last time I went to Sunday school they wanted us to learn the names of the craters of the moon, which I thought was pointless and I refused to ever go again. I would have been about 9 I suppose. We had religious instruction in school, of which I have no memory, except colouring in pictures of Bible stories.
My mother was a convinced atheist who, till this day, cannot understand how rational adults can possibly believe such nonsense as religion, even though she was raised going to church three times on Sundays, as there was nothing else to do. Her deconversion story is interesting though. She was in church in her early twenties in London (so sometime in the early 1950s), and the vicar, who was a very high church Anglican minister, told the congregation they should all go to confession! At that point she realised she didn’t believe a word of any of it, and she never returned. She is suffering quite badly from dementia now, but she’s still an atheist.
Learning the craters on the moon seems a non-religious activity & rather fun – wish I had done that! What I got from all the services is an appreciation of the violence of the Old Testament from the psalms that were omitted. One I liked that we did sing, was –
“Then the Lord arose out of sleep,
And like a giant refreshed with wine
He smote his enemies in their hinder parts
And put them to a perpetual shame.”
That god is a proper Bronze Age god like Enlil or any of the Babylonian gods to whom he is akin.
If we’d sung hymns like this one I might have gone for longer. I love “smote his enemies in their hinder parts”, I guess this is Aramaic for “kicked their asses”!
Why would a Sunday School want you to learn the names of the craters of the Moon? That’s a (probably fairly obscure) branch of astronomy, I would have thought. I find that curious.
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I didn’t get it either. I had finally agreed to go in the spirit of anthropology, but the craters of the moon had no relationship to religion that I could see.
Coming out of St Benedict’s church in the Bronx after having served as an altar boy that morning, I realized the only reason I was Catholic was because I was born into the faith, and the same goes for almost every other child. That started the long road. A couple of Geology degrees essentially ended the journey.
I had the good fortune to be born into a home where both parents weren’t atheists openly but didn’t practice any religion either. They were also both openly critical of the RCC, which is the prevalent Christian church in my area.
You might say I grew up agnostic.
As an adult, I briefly converted to protestantism which seemed to be less gaudy and ridiculous to me than Catholicism with its manifold saints, the Maria worship and belief in transubstantiation.
I became quite serious as a believer for a short period but being someone who needs to understand things, I started to study earnestly. This lead to a slow but steady de-conversion process which slowly turned me from a believer to someone having doubts, then on to atheist and at present I would classify myself an anti-theistic atheist.
I’ve written a series of posts about my de-conversion, for those interested:
https://www.beris.nl/blog/tag/why-i-am-an-atheist/
I am more of a religious non-believer. I became one by reading the bible for myself.
I am more of a religious non-believer. I became one because I read the bible, the qur’an and some of the believes religions of the world myself instead of listing to someone else.
Mother read Bulfinch’s Mythology to us before school as early as I can remember, I read all the classic fairy tales, etc. By the time I got around to the bible, it was one more story. And not a particularly interesting one at that.
At 16, one friend gave me Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Place” and another questioned why God would punish his kind and caring mother with so much pain, losing many family members over a few short years, each death unrelated to the others. He also questioned why God would punish innocent children, starving them to death in poor countries, and so on.
About 5 years later, I wondered in the same vein why I was being punished, knowing I’d done nothing worthy of the harsh, even brutal life I lived. For strength, I turned to anger, and for safety, I aimed that anger at God. I could not aim it at the individual humans involved, but God supposedly created them, so He was ultimately responsible.
I broke from Judaism. Despite or because of a comparative religions course, I felt zero attraction to any other religion. Eight years later, missing mostly the prayer melodies, I gave Judaism another try. Twenty years more, and I came to appreciate that Judaism was a culture worthy of keeping, God was not. My rabbi accepted this without argument and welcomed me same as ever.
I think Jewish culture, which praises good argumentation for its exercise in critical reasoning, just might naturally mature its bravest followers into non-belief. The disproportionate numbers of scientists, writers, philosophers, etc., along with my growing appreciation for the historical numbers of Jewish atheists, not just coming out of the Holocaust but even centuries before, are good signs.
Perhaps the legendary Abraham truly meant to destroy all idols and gods, but found the change too radical for others. Perhaps he compromised on one invisible god, just to help others transition.
Since then, Christianity has added two back: Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Islam has effectively added back Muhammed, since Muhammed is treated like a god. Judaism at least hasn’t done that, and I am hoping, despite the few extremists on its right fringe, that the tiny population of world Jewry finds a way, in addition to science, to lead the world out of superstition.
Heinlein’s Stranger In a Strange Land, presumably?
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Reblogged this on docatheist and commented:
It’s about time I posted this on my own site.
Wow, what a lot of responses!
In my case, a lapsed-Catholic Anthropologist father and a Lutheran (turned Christian Scientist turned woo-inclined Hindu/Vedanta-infused) mother baptized me Catholic, sent me to be confirmed as a Lutheran, while simultaneously giving me books about human evolution. The latter always made more sense than any of the religious nonsense and I was never a believer. I wasn’t “out” about atheism, however, until Sam Harris’ The End of Faith which struck me as a profoundly courageous thing to write at the time.
I grew up Southern Baptist, bent on pleasing my very Christian parents, extended family, and friends. I attended a Baptist college then taught kids at small Christian schools. Total immersion and true belief. But from middle school on, I had been a different thinker than everyone I knew; I enjoyed tough questions and digger deeply into my faith. I started reading “forbidden books” about a year ago, like Jesus Interrupted by Bart Ehrman, and everything started crumbling.
What struck me most in the beginning of my turning away was how the church had taught me that the Bible was inerrant. But there are differences in all the gospel accounts…so which is true? One has to be a lie…why would God allow a lie in “his” book? And so forth to the point of atheism.
I struggled a lot and didn’t want to be an atheist. I prayed and prayed and cried, but I never felt that “overwhelming sense of peace” again; I had pulled the plug on the magic. Now I’m a secret atheist to my family and most friends, because I undoubtedly would be abandoned if I shared my secret.
I am very glad you are here, where you can feel so welcome and safe, where you can continue learning and even teaching, as we all try to learn from each other. Good on you for pursuing truth and staying practical.
Thanks for the encouragement! Thankfully, I’m pursuing a Masters in a different profession now where my beliefs are much more well-suited!
I totally get where you are with your family. I guess I never prayed that hard; belief just went away, and I felt better almost immediately.
My Departure from Religion mirrors much of the path of Grania.
I was raised Catholic.
Studied Latin.
Three years of excellent Catholic Schooling.
Served as an alter boy for 4 years right up to my Junior year in High School.
What killed it all for me…..
1. I actually read the Bible (Old Testament)in my Sophomore year of HS, and the precise moment when the first seed of everlasting doubt was placed in my head was when I read the story of prophet the Elisha calling the bears from the woods to kill little children because they teased him about his bald head. No doubt I had read numerous insane passages prior to getting to that horrible part, but that one did if for me.
2. I loved biology, but became forever immersed in it when I read the first chapters about natural selection that same year. I was in a High School in the South in the Mid 1960’s, but my biology teacher was a really enlightened women, probably near 60 years old. She opened my world to science…. leading to an undergraduate degree in microbiology and a masters in environmental engineering.
3. I stopped going to Sunday mass every week within a month of entering university. I attended a few more times in my freshmen year with my Catholic roommate because we found it a really good place to meet girls. This was in a southern city with a very very small Catholic population. When Catholic parents saw two clean cut college boys in the pews, they practically handed over their daughters to us, not unlike Lot handed over his daughters to the mob to protect his visiting angels.
Maybe not the exact moment, but definitely the genesis of my Atheism, was coming out of the cinema, after watching the 1976 remake of King Kong.
It was in Neinberg, West Germany, (at the time), where my Father was serving in the British Army. I came from the cinema on camp and went into a shop, where I had seen a book on King Kong and was hoping to persuade my parents to buy it for me. I lifted it and saw another book on dinosaurs beneath it… what to do? As any parents out there know, the answer is, ‘throw a fit and get both’
That dinosaur book sowed the seeds of the many questions I would have about the existence of god(s) and ironically, the shop was run by the Salvation Army
I sort of went through several stages.
My parents are as I say jokingly, “homeopathically religious” – they are UUs. I was dragged to their church every Sunday (while it ran, coinciding with the school year at the time) until about age 8 when I really found it mind numbing. Acted out, etc. eventually told I didn’t have to come (age 10 or so). I was still likely a theist, since almost everyone around was (I know now my father wasn’t!), but in a weird non-standard sciencefictionesque way. I was very religiously skeptical (and read some fantasy, for example, which helped) from then until I read usenet alt.atheism for the first time at the end of high school. Then I became antitheist.
Later developments included reading Michael Scriven (whose book I got from my grandfather!) and reflecting on what I had learned in physics classes about conservation laws, etc. (Bunge was a help here.) I also became interested in the history of religion and other social and mixed sciences of religion. Reading Greek philosophy in class and elsewhere allowed me to realize that the weirdness of the NT which we breezed over in religious education (non-dogmatic) in school was actually *meant* to be weird. And this helped me understand where people are coming from, etc.
My only major change recently (past 10 years or so) is that I’ve become more patient with those who might not have had all the reading and discussion opportunities I’ve had, and in a way less patience with those who have and still make inane comments or what not.
I’m 47. I was born into a nominally Episcopalian family but we stopped going to church when I was around 5. I probably stopped believing in God a year or two later, around the same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus and like, for the same reason: extraordinary claims with no evidence, let alone of the extraordinary variety. That it was all one or other form of mythology was what made the most sense. I grew up in (US) town that was small and conservative but had a college that helped to “balance things out” — my father was a professor and most of my friends’ parents were as well or at least had some academic connection. I watched a lot of PBS (“NOVA”, “Cosmos”, “Connections”, even “The Ascent of Man” though I was too long to get most of that) and sci-fi (Star Trek:TOS, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone), and I think these all helped me develop my world view. Not least, I liked rock and roll. When I was 9 or 10 my older brother brought home Black Sabbath’s “Volume 4”, and pretty soon they were my favorite band and “Under the Sun” one of my favorite songs (if you don’t know it, Google the lyrics — I don’t listen to Sabbath much anymore but this song could still be my anthem.) Today I’m a scientist; still an atheist but with a world-view that owes a lot to Buddhism.
“too young”, not “too long”. I’m not that long. 😉
There was no earth-shattering conversion, as the exposure I had as a child with Catholicism didn’t take hold. I was never indoctrinated into any faith, as my non-religious parents pretty let me and my siblings raise ourselves. My mother had some Buddhist exposure as a child but wasn’t ground in any faith. My parents just believed in the necessity of hard work, kindness, common decency and fairness.
Out of pragmatism, they sent us to whichever ‘good’ schools were closest, and our kindergarten was run by nuns and was more like nursery school, learning our ABCs and basic maths and our times tables. We didn’t really learn much about religion except how to recite prayers. I was pretty clued out about religion, as we didn’t do those things at home. Prep school was secular, and my parents hired a driver to take us there. Then we were sent to Catholic high schools as they were reputed to the better schools with better teachers from abroad and nicer environment. The boys went to a boys’ school run by Jesuits, and I went to a girls’ school run by nuns. The education was pretty good and I was mostly interested in science and literature. We had to do religious studies including reading the bible and attending mass in the chapel on the school grounds. As I said, nothing would stick and I just learned to recite off stuff, and it became more about adopting the cultural habits of the society we found ourselves in. The first time we had to do the Stations of the Cross, I was privately appalled at the barbarity of the Crucifixion and felt something was not right or making sense about all of this. I used to call it the crucifiction, and I was equally appalled at having to sip the blood of Christ from the same chalice on which the old priest and all the other kids with their coodies had put their lips. According to one of the girls, there was a priest there who was creepy. I also could see that the head mistress lacked some basic compassion and good judgement in dealing with certain disciplinary situations – so much for her being a loving Christian and the head of the convent and the school.
So that was the price we had to pay for getting a good education on a little island in the Caribbean. We got absorbed into the culture. My eldest brother was supposedly placed in charge of taking us to Sunday Mass, but I most often ducked out. When he was in University, I think he took up with some people who were Seventh Day Adventists and my parents had a fit, because he was trying to preach to them that they had to donate (tithe) money to their church. I think they even threatened to kick him out if he continued this way. Of course they didn’t mind going along with the Catholic culture, as that’s what they saw it as — something you could partake in or not, not as a life-defining thing.
And so it was that when I married an equally blase and ‘lapsed’ Catholic guy who had a hardcore religious mother and sisters, we just continued in what we saw as a cultural scene, even though we were privately atheists. Our children were exposed to religion in Catholic schools too, as part of learning about several religions, but nothing stuck to them either, and they’re atheists too. All of my family except for one other brother (who married someone fairly religious) have left those things behind. The ‘outlaws’ haven’t though, and we tolerate their occasional random spouting of scripture, as they are nice people and still family.
Which island in the Caribbean?
Never believed.
Raised Catholic, went to Catholic school with weekly Mass and catechism. To me, it was all obviously something left over from the old days in my grandparents’ time when people didn’t know any better. Something that was just being carried on out of tradition. My six-year-old self would have been astonished to know that people still believe in religion 50 years later.
It’s hard for me to pinpoint when I actually realized what I am. Growing up, my parents went to church on Easter and maybe Christmas, but all I remember is Easter. But they did send me to Sunday school when I was very young, and my mother used to read me Bible stories out of a book that was not the bible itself. She also made me say a prayer every night before going to sleep (“Now I lay me down to sleep . . .”) My father had no discernible interest in Church or the Bible. So I can’t say I was steeped in the Christian religion as a child. Mother had a copy of Rousseau’s Emile, which I think she told me once was a book on how to raise a child; but I don’t know how much of it she read. I still have the book. Maybe I will understand Mother better after reading it.
After I was 10 years old, my mother became increasingly irrational, no doubt due to worsening alcoholism. She often said “Science and religion will someday be one”. But she never explained how that would come to pass. Somehow she heard about Christian Science, and the name was enough to convince her to send me and my sister to CS Sunday school (this was in Phoenix, AZ). We both got copies of their “holy book” Science and Health. Anytime I got sick I would read it thinking it would cure me. It didn’t. I couldn’t make any sense of it. The best time I had as a Christian Scientist was a picnic outing with our class, when I found a king snake and showed it to our teacher! That shook her up pretty good. I knew enough about snakes to identify it, I guess.
I was not yet 14 when Mother died. As I was walking home from school, I saw the ambulance in front of our house. She had been suffering fainting spells when she would stand up, and hit her head once too often. She spent months in a coma.
In high school, my best friend and I sang in a local church choir and joined Methodist Youth Fellowship. I must have taken some interest in learning more about Christianity, because I visited the pastor and borrowed an old book about Paul. (I was reading it in the bathtub when it fell in. I had to return it in considerably worse shape than when I borrowed it.)
What stays with me about that time is that, while I assumed the other kids were taking Christianity seriously, I felt like an outsider who was faking it. It was during this time that, even though I still believed in a
God of some sort, I knew he wasn’t a “person” but imagined him as some kind of vague spirit or creative principle. I suppose I was a deist. Another friend wrote to me “of course there is no real god”, which I found shocking. Yet when I filled out forms for enrolling in university, I remember putting “agnostic” where it asked for my religious preference. I thought it was cool.
Another curious brush with Christianity came in high school when my best friend got saved at a storefront revival. He invited me to come–dragged me against my will almost. I marched up with the others to get “healed”. When the pastor asked how I felt, I didn’t know what to say, because I didn’t feel anything. But I didn’t want to embarrass myself and him.
Just before my senior year at university, I got married. My wife had joined the Lutheran Church, so I joined too, for domestic harmony. As a musician, I enjoyed singing in and later conducting church choirs. I knew the liturgy by heart, and occasionally listened to the sermons. Our marriage lasted 17 years, and during that time I took religion for granted as just part of living. We raised our two daughters to get used to going to church and Sunday school. But underneath I was always glad on those days I would skip church (which of course I couldn’t do when employed there!)
After my divorce I did attempt to have a serious relationship with God. I was unemployed, single, with few prospects for the future. I bought a Bible and read it for inspiration and solace. One lonely night I was lying in bed in the dark, and had the feeling that God was in the room with me, saying things were going to turn out all right. And I suppose they did, but I later realized that the feeling was an illusion of the brain to ease my despair.
I continued to attend (Methodist) church with my second spouse, and often played a violin solo in church. But during this time my friend (who took me to the revival) had been learning about evolution and sent me some issues of “Creation vs. Evolution.” This was in the late 80s and early 90s. About that time I subscribed to Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry. I suddenly understood that there were people who weren’t afraid to call “bullshit” on religion. I believe those influences caused me to think seriously about continuing to attend church. I began to attend some skeptic conferences, which further strengthened my point of view, and the rest is history.
Still, the term “atheist” still had baggage for me, so even though I didn’t think God existed, I didn’t want to label myself as one. It probably was another decade before I was comfortable with doing so. Atheism is not a belief system; at most it is just a descriptive term, used for convenience.
In summary, I would say it was the weakness of my commitment to Christian dogma coupled with become a critical thinker as the century drew to a close were chiefly responsible for my atheism. I learned to take responsibility for my beliefs rather than identify with them, that is, not to let my beliefs define me.
The hardest thing I had to accept was that there will be nothing for me after I die. But knowing that it is the fate of every living thing (except possibly cancer cells) to die helps to keep me grounded. I like to think it makes the moments of this life more precious.
Going through my divorce – That really pulled the rug out from under a lot of cherished beliefs. But things are a lot better now.
I think that through the experience I learned just how un-necessary faith is – That has really been my enlightenment. I see now that faith and religion was always an impediment to my moral life and self honesty. Being honest with my self is the greatest gift I have today. I am more honest and able to accept criticism and more content when I am not religious. That we are “lucky” fortunate and happy when things go one way and sad and bummed when they dont and that has nothing to do with a god. I love Dr. Coyne so much and his podcast with Sam Harris was a peak experience for me. Coynes books are like scaffolds or latices.. they help me think.. I find myself thinking and putting things together after his books in a way that feels spiritual.. or like I have some suitable answers to the big questions.. like why am I here and what am I here for..
My parents were atheist buddhists. Buddhism was unconvincing so I wound up with no religion at all 🙂
I was raised Methodist but was rather bookish as a child. I read the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion fairly young. I also read lots of Norse and Greek mythology. By 6th grade I realized that the bible was just another collection of myths like others I had read, and nothing special.
So I guess I became an atheist at 13, although I was unaware of the term until I was at university in the mid-2000’s. While at college I had a friend tell me that I was more christian than most christians he knew, which is a humorous thing to say to an atheist.
Although I do have to admit that I’m an ordained minister in the church of the flying spaghetti monster and have officiated a wedding with a pasta colander on my head.
Realized around 13-14 that I was an ape after watching a NOVA episode. My very first question to an adult after the program was whether or not they believed in God. I was told that that was a silly question and was subsequently asked the same question. I replied no with little hesitation. This enacted a violent emotional outburst up to being asked never to return (my older sister’s house where I stayed weekends in the summer). Not joking.
I kept the family peace throughout my teenage years and throughout young adulthood.
Then the internet happened and it was only a matter of time before I reconnected with the obvious. Though there were many sites, I credit the Craigslist atheist/religious forums, of all places, with helping me back to atheism.
Mike
Synopsis for sure.
I grew up in a very devout Catholic family, who was forced to go to church pretty much every Sunday. I wasn’t as devout but I was still a strong believer and had friends who were also as religious. I stopped going to church out of laziness at first, but I still identified myself as Catholic. However I met a pretty hardcore Christian who proclaimed that non-christians have a one way ticket to hell. It took me by surprise as I have friends who aren’t christian so I ask myself is this what I truly believe in?
Breaking away from Catholicism was very difficult, my mum especially could not understand why I refused to go to church. But once I did break out, I could look from the outside in and see how much I was brainwashed from birth to believe in a religion. I do not blame my parents, they were brainwashed from birth as were their parents. It sort of disgusted me how religion works, get them while they are young and is difficult for them to think otherwise.
I am glad I am out of religion, I did hide my atheism initially from others as I didn’t know how they would take it. However with Richard Dawkins and co. championing the Atheist cause, I am more comfortable to let people know I do not believe.
At this point, reading all the comments is like reading a novel. Not since Ben Goren asked the three questions about the historicity of Jesus have I read so many new stories and comments. It’s cool to hit the tiny button that spurns the hoards…and I’m a hoarder too.
I’m still glitched by PCC getting a half ton of wood on his Big Toe. OWwwwwwww. The most painful thing ever was another everlasting thread.
Reading through the fascinating posts on this thread has encouraged me to tell what seems to me “yet another boring story”. One of the main reasons for telling it is to express my gratitude to the non-believing community whom I have felt to be an important support in a fairly long and difficult period in my life leading up to the death of my partner just over two years ago. I haven’t been religious for a very long time, but it is since discovering the freethought community and reading the mind-freeing books of Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Coyne and a long list of others that I have felt truly liberated from the shackles of the “respect” due to religion and the religious that was very much a part of my upbringing although nothing was ever harshly imposed. My English/Irish paternal grandparents were both lay preachers and missionaries and my widowed grandmother emigrated to Argentina after the First World War with her six children. The “Mission” and an allowance from her father-in-law’s family permitted her to become established and she went on to teach in a number of British schools and became the Headmistress of several of them. Argentina at that time had the largest British Community outside any Commonwealth country. Religion didn’t ever seem to be an important part of my father’s life and by extension of our nuclear family, but when we stayed with my grandmother it was Grace said at meals and prayers every evening; she also used to set her six grandchildren tasks to be completed before we all met up the next time, such as learning the 23rd Psalm and we had fun proving, in front of the other cousins, that we had been diligent in completing whatever the tasks were. I am sure that there were times (possibly when living far from my Grandmother) when I don’t think we even went to church every Sunday.
When I was at a Church of England boarding school between the ages of 13 and 16 (one my Grandmother had been Headmistress of) it was my decision to be confirmed although there was no pressure from my parents.
During my young adulthood I seem to remember being rather weighed down with guilt whenever I “transgressed”, and as a child that guilt and fear of the repercussions was definitely there. All of which I bitterly resented at the same time while hating the Church’s assumption that it had the right to dictate what was Right and Wrong across a broad swathe of everyday situations in relationships between the sexes.
I married a non-believer at 21 (which did me good. That relationship split up and I then (feeling guilty the while)moved continent with a new partner and built a new life in Spain. Interestingly my partner and I were never actually married.
When my son from that relationship was at boarding school in N. Ireland he became evangelized (not for very long, happily) but it was at that moment that I realized fully that the Bible was nonsense, that I didn’t believe and was rapidly becoming anti-religious. For nothing in the world would I have tried to argue him out of it, but was much relieved when he came to his own conclusions, and eventually became my co-conspirator in anti-religiosity and we discovered the freethought community together.
My partner agreed with me, but was possibly less militant. My militancy is mainly in my own mind, because I am still very reluctant to confess my atheism to those of my many friends who sincerely believe. I can admit that I question everything but find it difficult to say I am an atheist. I now live in deep rural France with many friends belonging to old families to whom the Church is part of their identity, but France’s separation of Church and State and the insistence for respect to all, believers or not, is music to my soul. The difficult years I mentioned above occurred at the same time as I discovered Freethought radio, books and blogs on the subject and all that gave me a sense of freedom and self-worth that I have never felt before. Thank you Freethought community and sorry for the long and boring recounting, which has done me good.
Not boring at all. An interesting story. Thanks for sharing.
cr
I was raised a Christian Scientist. Both my parents were very dedicated to the religion, reading the prescribed passages in the “good books” daily, expecting that it would protect their family, and rid my mother of multiple sclerosis, which she had been diagnosed with about the time I was born.
Attendance at Sunday school for us kids was mandatory well into high school. It involved taking turns reading the scripture, punctuated only by singing an occasional hymn. I can’t remember a single time when there was a meaningful discussion. Questioning the scripture was not welcomed.
Entering school in the early ‘50’s, I saw kids who were suffering the ravages of polio. Within a couple of years when vaccine became available, most of my classmates were inoculated, but not me. I had a religious exemption. Luckily the umbrella of “the inoculated” stopped the spread of polio to those of us who were under the delusion that we were protected by our prayers. My mother was not so lucky however, as she died at an early age despite my parents spending many thousands of dollars on professional Christian Science “prayers”, known as Practitioners. The reason for her inability to cure herself by praying and thinking the right thoughts was explained to me in an unsolicited comment by one of her Practitioners – she was not cured because she was “not a good enough Christian Scientist”.
Like many before me, I cannot point to an instant in time that I became a non believer, it was an accumulation of questions that nagged me, such as none of my classmates who were inoculated against polio getting the disease even though I was not aware that any of them had prayed for protection, my mother’s worsening condition, plus lots of other illogical and contradictory religious claims along with my wife’s religious doubt. Furthermore, prayer didn’t seem to help day to day issues turn out as desired. As George Carlin said in his comedy routine, Religion is Bullshit, praying to God or Joe Pesci, about the same results, 50/50.
Frankly, until I was a grandfather, I never thought about religion a lot after I drifted away from Christian Science, except when my father kept wanting me and my wife to indoctrinate our kids as I had been indoctrinated. Then the damage of religion hit me like a hammer between the eyes.
About 7 years ago our daughter in law placed our 5 year old granddaughter in a fundamentalist Christian school over the objections of our son. At a very formal ceremony at the school celebrating the end of our granddaughter’s kindergarten year, her teacher droned on and on about one little child who would not accept Baby Jesus as her savior regardless how they tried to convince her. The teacher continued, saying that several months into the school year the little girl came crying to her and said that she would now accept Baby Jesus as her savior. The teacher then announced the identity of that little child who had resisted when all her classmates had long since agreed, our granddaughter. I was furious and sickened, just imagining the pressure the poor little girl likely endured. The teacher was just as proud as could be that she could report that 100% of her class had been successfully brainwashed. It was at that time that I became as hardened and outspoken about my religious opinions as Christopher Hitchens was about Jerry Falwell.
I realized that if there was any real evidence for souls (or any kind of consciousness absent a material brain), real scientists would be testing, refining, and honing that evidence like the do with x-rays, electricity, magnetism, and other things that are real.
Without souls, gods are irrelevant. I only tried to make sense of “god” when I thought I had a soul that might suffer eternally if I didn’t believe in “god” (whatever that is).
Consciousness is so obviously a product of evolution… it helps it’s possessor survive and reproduce; consciousness without a material body makes no more sense than sound in a vacuum. I can understand why humans could believe in such things, but I also understand why it cannot map to anything real.
Was at best Agnostic until 5 years ago when a bad COPD exacerbation resulted in a long hospital stay and, for the first time in decades, a lot of “Me time”. It was easy to realise that I really didn’t believe any gods existed. Bottom line, just take the time to think things through.
it was pretty simple for me. i was 8 or 9 yrs. old, waiting in the basement of st. teresa’s rom. cath. church on the lower east side of manhattan, i was next on line to answer my little 10 weekly questions on the way to doing my “holy confirmation”, when a voice came on the line, or i felt a push, or I GOT IT. i looked around me, i remember it all precisely, and i was flooded with the absolute certainty that this was all b.s. i didn’t know what to do with this so i did nothing except that was bye- bye church for me. grew up some, went to viet-nam, marines, not that i felt i that i needed confirmation, but i felt vindicated i guess, “yea this whole god crap is just that.”
i can feel for people who grow into adulthood and then all of a sudden it hits them. after so many yrs. something that has always been so solid, is now crumbling around your feet.
i sense a certain small measure of excess pride in having helped my younger brother through the process of navigating the minefield of guilt and shame and mostly fear that is laid down all around you as you grow up theist. he is now god-free and quite the militant. i have no doubts, like ron reagan, i expect no rewards and fear no punishments.
My parents are both quite traditional Christians, I grew up attending church most Sundays with my family. I took the whole God thing on board without questioning it much at all until I was older. One of my best friends during school was a strong believer and I went to different religious events and youth things with her which led me further down the path of delusion..
It wasn’t until I was into my 2nd or 3rd year at University that I really started seriously questioning it all. I felt I was half assing being a “Christian”, and if I wasn’t going to fully commit why bother at all. That’s when I saw all the hypocrisy and cherry picking that happens in Christianity.
I started considering other possibilities. I heard what Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris had to say. I realised how warped my thought paths were because I’d been indoctrinated into believing. I remember being told at a youth fellowship meeting years before, “Questioning the bible and god is the devil’s influence.”
It was a slow and unnerving process to be honest but I finally admitted to myself there is no god or afterlife, that this life is all we have and that’s perfectly fine!
At samharris.org, Sam Harris has an interview with Megan Phelps-Roper, granddaughter of Fred Phelps who is the head of the Westboro Baptist church. She talks about leaving the church. I don’t think she claims to be an atheist (I may have missed some parts), but her story is probably one many here can relate to.
Incidently, Fred Phelps died (of natural causes) a year or two ago. Before dying, his own church spat him out. He just might have grown a conscience or gotten in touch with reality, but whatever his turn around, they couldn’t handle it. And, they still didn’t allow his son to visit him in the hospital on his death bed. I’m referring to the son that left the church and became an outspoken atheist.
Oh yes. I forgot that he died last year. I listened to this when I couldn’t sleep in the night and dozed through parts I’m sure.
The atheist son is Nathan Phelps.
Ah, yes! Thank you. I am bad at names.
Thanks for this. I didn’t remember her until listening to the interview, and seeing some images. She seemed very well spoken. I kept thinking “Wow, this is the person that held all those horrible signs (with a smile on her face)?” When Dr. Harris asked her if it was a cult, she got a bit dodgy, but she’s on her way (hopefully).
Mine was not dissimilar to yours, Grania. My faith just withered away at university. I was a “believer in belief” for a long time afterwards however.
Reading The God Delusion is what crystallized my thinking on religion. I’m a 6.9999999… on Dawkins’ scale.
I am sorry this response took so long. I wasn’t even going to post… but Grainia’s comment struck a chord that I couldn’t suppress: where she said she would get “fairly furious at the inaccuracies, the omissions and the one-sided version” presented in church. Because, as I see it, this is exactly how liberals present Charles Darwin. I started reading Darwin’s books in March of this year, and was very surprised to learn that: (1) he very clearly invoked a supernatural explanation for the laws of the universe and the origins of life in The Origin of Species, and (2) he wrote that humans have diverged into “distinct races or … subspecies” in the Descent of Man. Despite the popularity of his books and the clarity of his writing, these points are often utterly misrepresented.
My family are religious and I went to a private Christion school that taught Young-Earth Creation. However even as a child, I knew that encyclopedias gave a very different account, and I couldn’t square the contradiction. It was only after studying chemistry (my major) in university that I realized how reliable radiometric dating is, and how wrong the Young Earth claims are. But now I am starting to realize that it is not just religious fundamentalists who try to mold reality to align with their worldview:
(1) In Origin of Species, Darwin debunked the notion that each species was the product of “independent” or “special” creation. But he relied on a supernatural explanation for the beginning of life, writing in the second edition (page 484), “probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator.” Note the similar wording to Genesis 2:7, which says that God formed man and “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (KJV). Darwin also wrote that the physical laws were “impressed on matter by the Creator”.
Numerous atheists pass off Darwin as endorsing the claim that natural selection can explain the natural origins of life. (I understand this to be the central thesis of “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” by Daniel Dennett.) In fact, Darwin wrote that understanding how mental powers first originated “is as hopeless an enquiry as how life itself first originated. These are problems for the distant future, if they are ever to be solved by man.” (Descent of Man, Ed 2, page 66)
(2) On March 1, 2015, the Guardian newspaper published an article, titled “Why racism is not backed by science”. In it, Adam Rutherford wrote that Charles Darwin did not think that human races were separate subspecies. This left me confused because Wikipedia pages on Darwin suggested that he maybe might have sort of considered that it was possible that perhaps human races might be subspecies.
So, I started reading the Descent of Man and realized with fascination just how explicitly clear Darwin claimed that humans WERE separate subspecies. (In Descent of Man, Ed 2, page 608, Darwin wrote, “since [humans] attained to the rank of manhood, he has diverged into distinct races, or as they may be more fitly called sub-species.”) I was horrified to realize just how brazenly deceptive and even dishonest the likes of Rutherford and contributors to Wikipedia can be. This led me to email the complaints department at the Guardian newspaper directly. My first email was ignored, so I sent another strongly worded email, pointing out that their editorial code required that significant inaccuracies required prompt correction, and I questioned their integrity in the matter. At this point, they amended the article, but it is absolutely disgusting that they resisted correcting something so clearly false.
Another example of the dishonest representation of Charles Darwin is a conversation with Steven Pinker where Adam Gopnik goes on a long rambling spiel. He says that Darwin toys with the idea that races might be separate in the way that subspecies might be, but then says that Darwin explicitly rejects because “all human beings belong to a single race”. In fact, Darwin used the term “races of man” many, many times, and wrote that humans formed “distinct races”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d0HUH2vSaU
Social justice warriors claim that Darwin was a radical egalitarian, and that he only came up with his theory of natural selection because of his opposition to slavery. This is complete nonsense: many abolitionists were religious; Darwin didn’t need natural selection to oppose slavery.
True supporters of Charles Darwin will counteract this ridiculous campaign of distortion and lies from the left, instead of just pointing fingers at religious people.
“Numerous atheists pass off Darwin as endorsing the claim that natural selection can explain the natural origins of life. (I understand this to be the central thesis of “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” by Daniel Dennett.) In fact, Darwin wrote that understanding how mental powers first originated “is as hopeless an enquiry as how life itself first originated. These are problems for the distant future, if they are ever to be solved by man.” (Descent of Man, Ed 2, page 66)”
There’s a disconnect there. You refer to origins of life, but then quote Darwin on origins of mental powers – not the same thing.
Second, Darwin said “these are problems for the distant future” – well this IS the distant future. No contradiction of Darwin there.
I’ll leave the biologists to deal with the rest.
cr
Darwin did not say that the origins of mental powers was the same as the origins of life. What he said was that he was not in a position to explain either. I am sorry for not posting the entire sentence: “In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the lowest organisms, is as hopeless an enquiry as how life itself first originated.” (Descent of Man, Ed 2, page 66).
You wrote, “No contradiction of Darwin there.”
Any suggestion that life naturally arose from non-living matter or that there is no supernatural entity clearly DOES contradict On The Origin of Species (as I pointed out above). In his autobiography, Darwin explains how he had lost faith in Christianity before writing On The Origin of Species, but that he was still a “Theist”. Over time, he became agnostic, which explains why such claims would not contradict The Descent of Man (as far as I know), which was published 12 years later.
You wrote, “well this IS the distant future.”
This is exactly my point. Contemporary scientists are hypothesizing how life started, and that is great. But any claim that life originated naturally from inanimate matter needs to be presented as their own. Darwin never made such a claim.
You wrote, “I’ll leave the biologists to deal with the rest.”
You are missing my main point. Whether Darwin was correct or not is entirely orthogonal to my critique. I am saying that people are misquoting Darwin, both inadvertently and also deliberately. This is a problem. We need to report what Darwin actually wrote, BEFORE biologists can discuss the merits of his claims. To quote Darwin, “False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.” (Descent of Man, Ed 2, page 606).
Stan
“Any suggestion that life naturally arose from non-living matter or that there is no supernatural entity clearly DOES contradict On The Origin of Species (as I pointed out above).”
I think that’s hairsplitting. In Descent of Man he states that origin of life is “a problem for the distant future” (i.e. arguably now), leaving the door open for a naturalistic process.
I do agree Darwin shouldn’t be misrepresented. But I think you’re doing a bit of misrepresenting yourself: “Numerous atheists pass off Darwin as endorsing the claim that natural selection can explain the natural origins of life.”
I think most better-informed atheists (certainly those on this site) emphasise that origin of life != natural selection, that the two questions are quite distinct.
cr
No, it is not hairsplitting to say that Charles Darwin relied on a supernatural entity to explain how life began in On the Origin of Species. We are talking about the most famous book in the science of biology. That he made this point, at that time, is a basic fact. Whether it is correct or not, is another matter altogether. As we both agree, he did not maintain this position when he wrote The Descent of Man.
I wrote that “numerous atheists” are guilty of X, and your response is “most better-informed atheists” are not guilty of X. Logically speaking, that does not address my point at all. Even if most atheists are not guilty of X, there still could be numerous atheists guilty of X. Even if all “better-informed” atheists are not guilty of X, there are probably many ill-informed atheists guilty of X.
I wrote that numerous atheists are guilty of misrepresenting what Darwin wrote in a specific book (The Origin of Species). In response, you wrote that better-informed atheists distinguish between natural selection and the origins of life. Your response entirely ignores what these atheists do and don’t say about Charles Darwin. That is the point of my post: prominent atheists are misrepresenting what Darwin wrote. I’m not writing about the differences between natural selection and the origins of life per se.
Check out the conversation between Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, where they both sing the praises of Charles Darwin. Dennett says that Darwin brought together the world of material lifeless matter and the living world. Dawkins endorses this position. What Darwin actually brought together was all of life, into one amazing, branching tree with shared ancestry.
At 8:25 in the video, Dennett describes “cranes” (natural mechanism to speed up evolution) and “skyhooks” (supernatural events too complex for natural selection), and says there are no skyhooks. Dennett describes the idea whereby its cranes all the way back to the origin of life, but then a skyhook is needed to start life. He says many people find this idea attractive, but he says this idea is incoherent. Well, maybe it is incoherent and maybe it isn’t; I don’t know. But please don’t pretend that Darwin didn’t rely on that exact idea in his most famous book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lfTPTFN94o
Here is Professor Coyne discussing On the Origin of Species:
“I don’t see how the equality of votes for Darwin and the Bible shows anything like a “balanced approach to ideas”. Those ideas are inimical and incompatible, one book adumbrating natural causes for life and its diversity, the other offering untenable supernatural explanations for not only those phenomena, but everything else. What it shows is that half of Brits are science-friendly, and the other half can’t extricate themselves from the quicksand of superstition. And if someone voted for both, well, God help them.”
So, Jerry wrote that On the Origin of Species reports “natural causes for life” and the Bible offers “untenable supernatural explanations”. Well actually, both books rely on supernatural causes for life. Both books claim that life was “breathed” in at the start (see quotes in my original post; Darwin also uses the term “the Creator” several times).
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/uk-survey-the-bible-noses-out-darwin-as-the-book-most-valuable-to-humanity-but-not-by-much/
In closing, I want to say that most of my family believe the Six-Day Creation narrative and have very negative views towards Charles Darwin. I appreciate efforts of the atheist community to protect Darwin’s idea of evolution by natural selection. But there is so much room for improvement in this endeavor.
@ Stan
What do you think Jerry meant when he said “adumbrate”? It can mean “foreshadowing”, in which sense Jerry’s statement is not inaccurate.
Why do you quote the second edition of Origin as definitive of Darwin’s thoughts? (Jerry has previously discussed hereabouts the reasons why Darwin added references to a “Creator” in this edition.)
/@
My original post was in response to Grania writing that “the inaccuracies, the omissions and the one-sided version” presented by Christians made her upset. Taking the analogy further, I think that the responses I have gotten here are similar to responses when I tried to talk about evolution in Sunday School. Which I’ve done twice. Staunchly conservative Mennonites don’t want to hear about evolution in Sunday School, especially when the lesson is on Creation. I knew there wouldn’t be a productive conversation, but I knew I had to try. There were awkward pauses. A few people hit the usual talking points. Everyone was happy when the subject moved away from evolution.
Back to my critique about how liberal atheists portray Darwin, nobody commented on the substance of my criticism. Nobody acknowledged that I might be right. There was some vague claim that I was misrepresenting atheists. I am reasonably confident that most people here are just wishing that the subject will change so they can go back to portraying Darwin the way they want. As a liberal atheist. And a social justice warrior.
LOL! Please post a link to anyplace atheists are portraying Darwin as a liberal atheist and social justice warrior!
Why am I feeding the troll?
Actually I was reading them until Stan the man co-opted the stream of consciousness! The question wasn’t about Darwin anyway right?!? Definitely used as a forum for his gripes and not about answering the question.
Good point. Totally irrelevant to the subject here.
I’m reasonably confident nobody’s reading this any more. This thread started a month ago, that’s a century in WEIT terms. Seriously, if you want his discussed, find a current (i.e. new) thread that’s reasonably apropos and re-post. I guarantee you’ll get some traffic and from people better qualified than me to discuss it.
cr
that was, of course, a response to stan giesbrecht…
As you suggested, I posted my concerns with the misrepresentation of Darwin in a more recent post:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/08/06/adam-rutherfords-article-on-epigenetics-invokes-profusion-of-angry-twts-from-deepak-chopra-and-his-minions/#comment-1220681
I am not the quickest in putting my thoughts into print. But I really think there is a conversation that we all need to have.
Cheers
I would help if there was a way of telling when new post are added otherwise I have to scroll through and reread the post by what I think was the last date. How about some kind of marker?
Willard, below the comment window there is the option to “notify me of new comments via email.” Just click the box beside it before hitting “Post Comment.”
(This works for most if not all WordPress bl*gs, IIANM.)
YANM.
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