I don't know why but for some reason the idea of faith has
been on my mind recently.
I've never been very religious and I've rarely been very spiritual. My mother was raised Catholic but never attends church anymore and seems to have some sort of vague concept of God. My father is an atheist who barely tolerates the existence of religion. So I was never really overly exposed to it. I did attend church for about the first seven or eight years of my life, but I barely remember it. It's just a haze of uncomfortable clothes and sitting through a few minutes of some guy talking so I could get to the fun part, Sunday school. I think I asked my mom once about Heaven and whether or not it was real and if I would go there. She gave me the typical "if you're a good girl you'll go to Heaven" but even my childish brain was not really sure about the whole "Heaven" and "Hell" thing, let alone the concept of an almighty being, I'd sure never seen God, and he'd never answered me back when I'd talked to him, so my whole idea of faith began to waver very early on.
I've never been very religious and I've rarely been very spiritual. My mother was raised Catholic but never attends church anymore and seems to have some sort of vague concept of God. My father is an atheist who barely tolerates the existence of religion. So I was never really overly exposed to it. I did attend church for about the first seven or eight years of my life, but I barely remember it. It's just a haze of uncomfortable clothes and sitting through a few minutes of some guy talking so I could get to the fun part, Sunday school. I think I asked my mom once about Heaven and whether or not it was real and if I would go there. She gave me the typical "if you're a good girl you'll go to Heaven" but even my childish brain was not really sure about the whole "Heaven" and "Hell" thing, let alone the concept of an almighty being, I'd sure never seen God, and he'd never answered me back when I'd talked to him, so my whole idea of faith began to waver very early on.
Now, I was totally willing to believe in other things I'd
never seen in person. I knew the Santa at the mall was just a guy in a costume,
but I staunchly believed in Santa Claus and was even picked on and somewhat bullied
for believing in Santa in the 6th grade. I'd been presented with evidence that
Santa as I believed him to be didn't exist. In the 3rd grade, possibly 4th I
desperately wanted a "Super Poochi" (some early 2000s robot dog thing
that did tricks) and for some reason, I believed Santa could read my mind. More
so than I believed in God. Weird, right? When I didn't get my Super Poochi I
convinced myself that Santa must have decided some other kid needed my Super
Poochi more. Yep, that was my logic. Kids, amiright?
About that same year, my sister, brother, and I had what we now refer to as "The Babysitter from Hell". Her name was Angela (ironically, she was anything but angelic) and she was one of those Christians. Somehow the concept of the Big Bang theory and the theory of evolution got brought up and my sister got into an argument with her over the existence of God. Basically, it was a creationism vs. evolution debate, pre-internet. The only difference was my sister was about 6 or 7 years old. Yep. A woman in probably her late 20s/early 30s debated religion vs. science with a 6 year old.
My brother and I (who were about 4 or 5 and 8 or 9, respectively) tried to help my sister as best we could but being also small children with limited science education, naturally lost.
This woman kept throwing the same argument at us that many Christians do today. If there was a Big Bang, who caused it.
Modern science believes that at one point all matter was contained in a single point and as it expanded outward, it exploded, thus, the Big Bang. The idea that the universe had to have been created is shallow.
About that same year, my sister, brother, and I had what we now refer to as "The Babysitter from Hell". Her name was Angela (ironically, she was anything but angelic) and she was one of those Christians. Somehow the concept of the Big Bang theory and the theory of evolution got brought up and my sister got into an argument with her over the existence of God. Basically, it was a creationism vs. evolution debate, pre-internet. The only difference was my sister was about 6 or 7 years old. Yep. A woman in probably her late 20s/early 30s debated religion vs. science with a 6 year old.
My brother and I (who were about 4 or 5 and 8 or 9, respectively) tried to help my sister as best we could but being also small children with limited science education, naturally lost.
This woman kept throwing the same argument at us that many Christians do today. If there was a Big Bang, who caused it.
Modern science believes that at one point all matter was contained in a single point and as it expanded outward, it exploded, thus, the Big Bang. The idea that the universe had to have been created is shallow.
But of course as children, this was beyond our grasp and we
hadn't really learned much about the Big Bang except that it involved a big
bang and maybe had something to do with cells. We "lost" the argument
(as much as one can lose an argument with someone who's arguing circular
logic), but this conversation has stuck in my head for a very long time. This woman was so single-minded in her belief
that God created the world that she would argue it with children who weren't
hers. As a child care provider now (I work as a summer camp counselor for the
YMCA) her actions are appalling and pale only in comparison to her dumping us
on a playground in the middle of a hot Texas summer day in no clothes but our
swimsuits, and driving off, intending to leave us.
This conversation stayed with me, for years and years, over
a decade has passed since then and I still remember this fight with a
babysitter. Not word for word, but clearly enough. This and other things I
have run into in my life, make me 100% certain that religion is not appropriate
for children. Children, more than anyone else, are the most likely to blindly
believe. Children believe in magic, even if they don't admit it. Most children
believe in Santa at some point in their life. They believe in the Easter Bunny
and the Tooth Fairy. And they will believe almost anything their parents,
teachers, pastors, priests, and other adults tell them. Which to me, is
dangerous.
Children aren't 100% capable of deciding for themselves what to believe. As a child I believed in God because my mom told me too, I stopped believing when my mom realized we didn't really get anything out of church and after my parents divorced and my dad took primary custody of the three of us. My dad is a scientist (meteorologist to be specific) and he doesn't "believe". He will accept something as a fact when it is proven to be so, and he actually understands science, unlike much of the general population.
Children aren't 100% capable of deciding for themselves what to believe. As a child I believed in God because my mom told me too, I stopped believing when my mom realized we didn't really get anything out of church and after my parents divorced and my dad took primary custody of the three of us. My dad is a scientist (meteorologist to be specific) and he doesn't "believe". He will accept something as a fact when it is proven to be so, and he actually understands science, unlike much of the general population.
So for most of my childhood I adopted my dad's lack of
belief in anything. Generally, if asked, I'd tell people I was baptized
Catholic (because I was) and most of them would leave me alone.
The school the three of us went to after we moved back to North Carolina from Texas
is a place called Evergreen
Community Charter
School
The "Evergreen Years" were fairly uneventful as
far as religion is concerned, other than that I began to take an interest in Wicca
in middle school. The feminine nature of the religion appealed to me, as one of
my biggest issues with the Christian God was and is, the insistence on making
Him a He. I didn't relate to men or boys at that time in my life, other than my
father, and he was the only man I needed at that point. I had one troublesome
guy friend, but "he" was transgender (I learned after I lost contact),
and so obviously feminine that it was even hard to think of him as a he. I
digress a little, the point is that the masculine didn't appeal to me,
especially as a pubescent preteen who was trying to figure out what it meant to
be a woman. So Wicca appealed to me,
even after I found out that there was a male aspect to it as well, perhaps even
more so. And as I implied in my story about believing in Santa in the 6th
grade, I wanted to believe in the possibility of Magic.
High school was an entirely different story.
High school was an entirely different story.
In the 9th grade, I had graduated from Evergreen and was now
attending a public high school. I had no friends and was quiet, too nervous
about my new surroundings to make friends or attend afterschool activities.
I rode the bus in the afternoons, and one afternoon got into another of my more memorable religious debates with a girl who rode the bus with me.
She was being kind, and somehow the topic of religion got brought up. I mentioned my earlier excuse, that I was baptized Catholic (at the time I was still practicing Wicca, but was afraid of anyone at my high school knowing, for good reason, as the school was as a whole, closed minded). This, for some reason, set her off. She said that Catholics weren't really Christians. I named all the things Catholics did, and she agreed that most of them Baptists (which is what she was) did too. But still she insisted. I was confused. I was smart, especially with language and I happened to know that the root of the word "Christian" was "Christ". Both Baptists and Catholics believe in Jesus Christ making them both Christian. But this girl was pretty insistent. I hadn't been Catholic most of my life and I wasn't truly able to argue what they believed (I knew they had a Pope, and saints, and that Mary was given a little bit more respect) but beyond that, I couldn't really figure out how to counter her arguments, especially given that they were circular and idiotic. I don't think I "lost" that argument but it confused me, and in a lot of ways still does. Up until that point Christians had never given me flack for being "baptized Catholic" unless I said I no longer WAS Catholic. But her this girl was arguing that Catholics (who came first, by the way) weren't Christian.
I had never encountered ignorance like this before. At the time, I was pretty naive, as my next story will most likely demonstrate, but I wasn't stupid. So it bothered me that this girl seemed to be so uninformed about her own religion.
My next distasteful experience regarding religion came in the form of a boy.
I dated an older guy in secret my freshman year of high school (yeah, I know, already a bad idea). Likely, he was cheating on someone else with me, or didn't want his ex girlfriend to know he'd been chasing another girl (he started bothering me in Chorus, touching me inappropriately without my consent, even while he was still dating this other girl). We started dating after the Christmas Break.
At some point, someone started to spread rumors about me. Wes (the guy) told me that someone was calling me a slut, and my friend Juan had told me that someone was saying I was a Witch (which was partly true, I had told a couple people that I was Wiccan). At the time I assumed that it was Wes's ex spreading rumors, but she came to me later (after Wes had dumped me, the first time) and assured me that she hadn't. I'm almost certain the rumors came from Wes, as he was one of the few people I'd told that I was interested in Wicca. He'd changed the rumor to sound like it was coming from his ex, not expecting me to hear it from Juan that that wasn't true, or at least that's what it seems like
While this doesn't directly involve religion, the rumor that I was a witch was enough to really worry poor Juan that someone was trying to hurt me. This was the year 2006. The whole idea that calling someone a "Witch", and meaning someone who practices dark magic, could be an insult still seems ridiculous. But that's how it was. Wicca isn't dark. It's quite joyful and full of the celebration of one's self, Nature, both the feminine and the masculine, sexuality of all kinds, and life in general. There's no Hell in Wicca, nor Heaven, just reincarnation. It appealed to me for all of these reasons, I was tired of the negative messages I kept receiving from (especially) Christians. I was in a very vulnerable time in many ways, and this positive nature religion was helpful.
Wes however, was poison, and I gave up Wicca, thinking he would judge me because of it.
Wes was in an out of my life for the next two and a half years of high school. Two very wonderful friends finally talked me into cutting ties with him my Junior Year of High School, about half way through the year. I won't go into the details, but he strung me a long, we weren't dating and we weren't not dating, it was very confusing for me. Through this period of time I cleared off my Wiccan Altar and set aside my books, occasionally flipping through them, but not seriously. I picked it up again after Wes was out of my life for good.
I rode the bus in the afternoons, and one afternoon got into another of my more memorable religious debates with a girl who rode the bus with me.
She was being kind, and somehow the topic of religion got brought up. I mentioned my earlier excuse, that I was baptized Catholic (at the time I was still practicing Wicca, but was afraid of anyone at my high school knowing, for good reason, as the school was as a whole, closed minded). This, for some reason, set her off. She said that Catholics weren't really Christians. I named all the things Catholics did, and she agreed that most of them Baptists (which is what she was) did too. But still she insisted. I was confused. I was smart, especially with language and I happened to know that the root of the word "Christian" was "Christ". Both Baptists and Catholics believe in Jesus Christ making them both Christian. But this girl was pretty insistent. I hadn't been Catholic most of my life and I wasn't truly able to argue what they believed (I knew they had a Pope, and saints, and that Mary was given a little bit more respect) but beyond that, I couldn't really figure out how to counter her arguments, especially given that they were circular and idiotic. I don't think I "lost" that argument but it confused me, and in a lot of ways still does. Up until that point Christians had never given me flack for being "baptized Catholic" unless I said I no longer WAS Catholic. But her this girl was arguing that Catholics (who came first, by the way) weren't Christian.
I had never encountered ignorance like this before. At the time, I was pretty naive, as my next story will most likely demonstrate, but I wasn't stupid. So it bothered me that this girl seemed to be so uninformed about her own religion.
My next distasteful experience regarding religion came in the form of a boy.
I dated an older guy in secret my freshman year of high school (yeah, I know, already a bad idea). Likely, he was cheating on someone else with me, or didn't want his ex girlfriend to know he'd been chasing another girl (he started bothering me in Chorus, touching me inappropriately without my consent, even while he was still dating this other girl). We started dating after the Christmas Break.
At some point, someone started to spread rumors about me. Wes (the guy) told me that someone was calling me a slut, and my friend Juan had told me that someone was saying I was a Witch (which was partly true, I had told a couple people that I was Wiccan). At the time I assumed that it was Wes's ex spreading rumors, but she came to me later (after Wes had dumped me, the first time) and assured me that she hadn't. I'm almost certain the rumors came from Wes, as he was one of the few people I'd told that I was interested in Wicca. He'd changed the rumor to sound like it was coming from his ex, not expecting me to hear it from Juan that that wasn't true, or at least that's what it seems like
While this doesn't directly involve religion, the rumor that I was a witch was enough to really worry poor Juan that someone was trying to hurt me. This was the year 2006. The whole idea that calling someone a "Witch", and meaning someone who practices dark magic, could be an insult still seems ridiculous. But that's how it was. Wicca isn't dark. It's quite joyful and full of the celebration of one's self, Nature, both the feminine and the masculine, sexuality of all kinds, and life in general. There's no Hell in Wicca, nor Heaven, just reincarnation. It appealed to me for all of these reasons, I was tired of the negative messages I kept receiving from (especially) Christians. I was in a very vulnerable time in many ways, and this positive nature religion was helpful.
Wes however, was poison, and I gave up Wicca, thinking he would judge me because of it.
Wes was in an out of my life for the next two and a half years of high school. Two very wonderful friends finally talked me into cutting ties with him my Junior Year of High School, about half way through the year. I won't go into the details, but he strung me a long, we weren't dating and we weren't not dating, it was very confusing for me. Through this period of time I cleared off my Wiccan Altar and set aside my books, occasionally flipping through them, but not seriously. I picked it up again after Wes was out of my life for good.
My friend Juan also struggled with some after-effects of
religion, though he never abandoned his Catholic faith because of it, something
that still amazes me.
He came out of the closet as gay to a few close friend around sophomore year, myself included. One of those friends was a prominent member of the school's religious club, the name of which escapes me.
This "friend" of Juan's shoved him out completely. He wrote a very cruel letter to Juan, explaining why he was going to hell, and condemning him for his sin. He and I got into an argument in Chorus over whether or not people who didn't believe in God could go to heaven. I drove him crazy with my argument that "it might be true for you that you can't get into Heaven without accepting Jesus, but it's not true for me". He just couldn't accept that others thought differently than him and believed in different truths, and he nearly broke poor Juan into pieces when he rejected him for being gay. Juan had a lot of good friends around him that picked him up when he came out and some rejected him, but he experienced a lot of difficulty. When people try to tell me that being gay is a choice I can't help but find them ridiculous. Juan STRUGGLED so intensely with his sexuality because of his religion and because of the religions of others. No one would CHOOSE to go through that, and my belief that there was something fundamentally wrong with a religion that would shun people that way was cemented at that point in time with my empathy for Juan backing it up.
College was a weird time for me. I was Wiccan for a while, then just kind of fell out of it, feeling like I didn't need it anymore. I became more agnostic, kind of wanting to have a religion but ultimately not feeling like I could.
By the time I hit my junior year I was pretty much a solid atheist, though I wavered a few times. I met my current boyfriend around that time, and his support and love have gone a long way to healing the wounds caused by others.
My current job has given me some perspectives as well.
There is a girl who was in my afterschool group that was normally really sweet, except to one boy in particular.
According to the boy's mother, this girl in particular had picked a fight with the boy over the existence of God. When the boy said he didn't believe in God the girl did much as my sister's "friend" did and wouldn't leave him alone about it. Religion is just as much of a target for bullying as gender norms, but we rarely see it discussed in the papers.
My brother experienced bullying in high school for being an atheist.
He was targeted for this, questioned when he didn't pray during the school's morning "moment of silence" and once heard someone accuse another student of "acting like an atheist" But we never hear these stories of bullying because of lack of faith. We've heard the occasional anti-Semitist story of Jewish children being bullied, and we KNOW that anyone who resembles a Muslim gets bullied, but we never talk about atheists or pagans.
He came out of the closet as gay to a few close friend around sophomore year, myself included. One of those friends was a prominent member of the school's religious club, the name of which escapes me.
This "friend" of Juan's shoved him out completely. He wrote a very cruel letter to Juan, explaining why he was going to hell, and condemning him for his sin. He and I got into an argument in Chorus over whether or not people who didn't believe in God could go to heaven. I drove him crazy with my argument that "it might be true for you that you can't get into Heaven without accepting Jesus, but it's not true for me". He just couldn't accept that others thought differently than him and believed in different truths, and he nearly broke poor Juan into pieces when he rejected him for being gay. Juan had a lot of good friends around him that picked him up when he came out and some rejected him, but he experienced a lot of difficulty. When people try to tell me that being gay is a choice I can't help but find them ridiculous. Juan STRUGGLED so intensely with his sexuality because of his religion and because of the religions of others. No one would CHOOSE to go through that, and my belief that there was something fundamentally wrong with a religion that would shun people that way was cemented at that point in time with my empathy for Juan backing it up.
College was a weird time for me. I was Wiccan for a while, then just kind of fell out of it, feeling like I didn't need it anymore. I became more agnostic, kind of wanting to have a religion but ultimately not feeling like I could.
By the time I hit my junior year I was pretty much a solid atheist, though I wavered a few times. I met my current boyfriend around that time, and his support and love have gone a long way to healing the wounds caused by others.
My current job has given me some perspectives as well.
There is a girl who was in my afterschool group that was normally really sweet, except to one boy in particular.
According to the boy's mother, this girl in particular had picked a fight with the boy over the existence of God. When the boy said he didn't believe in God the girl did much as my sister's "friend" did and wouldn't leave him alone about it. Religion is just as much of a target for bullying as gender norms, but we rarely see it discussed in the papers.
My brother experienced bullying in high school for being an atheist.
He was targeted for this, questioned when he didn't pray during the school's morning "moment of silence" and once heard someone accuse another student of "acting like an atheist" But we never hear these stories of bullying because of lack of faith. We've heard the occasional anti-Semitist story of Jewish children being bullied, and we KNOW that anyone who resembles a Muslim gets bullied, but we never talk about atheists or pagans.
But as you can see, I became disillusioned with Christianity
in particular (and ultimately faith in general) early on. My experiences have
shaped who I am, and what I believe.
I believe the following things about religion:
I believe the following things about religion:
- It can be helpful for many. My experiences with Wicca taught me that. Being Spiritual I think is healthy for many, however there is a difference between being spiritual and being religious
- It is extremely damaging to be totally blind in one's faith. It closes the mind, and refuses to let in new truths. Like Juan's friend who rejected him outright for being gay, many religious people believe so strongly that they are right that they refuse to think critically. Juan himself tortured himself for a long time over the fact that he was gay, and that his religion forbade being gay, and no one should have to go through that
- Religion is toxic for children. Children are always at least a little blindly faithful in something. Many of those blindly faithful children grow up to be blindly faithful adults. And many of those faithful little children bully other kids if they don't believe in God or Jesus, or celebrate Christmas, or write X-mas instead of Christmas or would rather be wished "Happy Holidays!" Exposing children to religion is just wrong. It's akin to brainwashing, and it doesn't allow those children to learn to think critically for themselves. Some will overcome it and begin to evaluate their choices later on, but some don't, and it's those that don't that become the mindless masses who refuse to understand the importance of science
- Adults don't need to engage children in religious arguments. Ever. Adults can teach children that there are religions out there and that many religions exist (though skipping over the ones that aren't the three monotheistic ones is an idiotic move. Don't forget that Hinduism is one of the largest religions in the world). But arguing with children about the existence of God or the validity of Creationism is not only pointless it's hurtful. Angela's refusal to acknowledge our arguments as valid planted a dark seed in all of us.
I have very strong feelings about religion even though I
don't currently believe in anything. I don't hate Christians, many of the best
people I've known have been Christian, and many of the worst have been
atheists, and visa versa. A religion doesn't make you a good or bad person, nor
does lack of religion.
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