As many current atheists, I used to be a person of faith. When I left that behind, I wondered what it was that ever made me into a beiever in the first place. I was never forced as a child to go to church, read the bible, or pray. My mother on ocassion used to go to church, but my father never, ever did. So what was it that caused me, and others I knew of like upbringing to suddenly decide that we were going to believe in something that wasn’t part of our experience to that point?
I recently read an article that caused me to pause. It is an essay in Quillette that tries to explain how and why people seem to be drawn to the spiritual even as we leave traditional religion behind. I don’t disagree that yes, more and more people are leaving the traditions of their parents and grandparents behind, and yes, there are people that want to believe in something, and gravitate to other forms of what I refer to as mumbo-jumbo, but it was one paragraph that specifically caught my attention.
I’m a former Evangelical. It’s been a long time since I rejected what I thought was a belief that would not only provide for me in this life, but in the next as well. When I was older, in my early 20’s, I began to question that same belief. I worked hard to believe, I wanted to believe, but after a time, not overnight, I came to the conclusion that I just could not accept what I had been told all my life was the truth.
Why do people continue to hold on to their religious beliefs ? I think about this on a regular basis and even though I never come up with something that I could say is the reason, I have some thoughts on why we still have a religious tradition. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s really more about tradition than actual belief. Your parents, their parents, etc., were believers and as you and I were raised, we too just became a part of that chain.
Lately, I’ve been in a few discussions with people I know in real life about atheists and atheism in general. These don’t happen very often, not because I hide my atheism, but because the subject just doesn;t come up and I’m not one of those people that stand on the street corner shouting about my non-belief.
Conservative Skeptic 