Seeking an answer to a question
Sent in by Jim
Before I ask my question, I want to provide a brief overview of my religious background--a mini-testimonial. My Mother was a very religious person (Southern Baptist) who dedicated me to God at birth, bred me for the ministry, read to me from the Bible every evening, required me to say my prayers with her every evening, and she took me to our church for every single event which occurred there: weekly prayer meetings; Sunday morning and evening Bible study and services; Bible Study classes during special weeks during the year; revival services; Vacation Bible School; etc.
I attended the Baptist college in my state as a ministerial student, majoring in philosophy with a minor in religious studies. After graduation from college, I attended seminary and earned my B.D. degree. During my first year in seminary, mymother died, and as a result of that, I was able for the first time in my life to begin to "decide" what I really wanted to do with my life.
During the second year of my three-year seminary program, I began to have lots of doubts and misgivings about many of the Christian beliefs and doctrines which I had grown up believing. Consequently, I came to believe that I should abandon the ministry to pursue a teaching career in philosophy.
I attended graduate school to pursue my Ph.D. in philosophy, completed that program, and sought and obtained a full-time teaching position at a college as a philosophy professor. At that point, I left organized religion, rejected Christianity, and I am now an agnostic.
My Question:
I very much need any good responses anyone can give me in order to reply to a close friend who charges that I abandoned Christianity and became an agnostic because of my very religious upbringing, during which the religious views I held had been pretty much predetermined by my Mother's influence over me. In short, my friend claims that I abandoned Christianity and became an agnostic because "religion had been forced upon me by my Mother."
I have tried to identify the fallacious reasoning used by my friend and have found some answers. But my friend's claim is primarily a psychoanalytical claim, a claim about personal reaction to my past.
Any help would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Jim
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Before I ask my question, I want to provide a brief overview of my religious background--a mini-testimonial. My Mother was a very religious person (Southern Baptist) who dedicated me to God at birth, bred me for the ministry, read to me from the Bible every evening, required me to say my prayers with her every evening, and she took me to our church for every single event which occurred there: weekly prayer meetings; Sunday morning and evening Bible study and services; Bible Study classes during special weeks during the year; revival services; Vacation Bible School; etc.
I attended the Baptist college in my state as a ministerial student, majoring in philosophy with a minor in religious studies. After graduation from college, I attended seminary and earned my B.D. degree. During my first year in seminary, mymother died, and as a result of that, I was able for the first time in my life to begin to "decide" what I really wanted to do with my life.
During the second year of my three-year seminary program, I began to have lots of doubts and misgivings about many of the Christian beliefs and doctrines which I had grown up believing. Consequently, I came to believe that I should abandon the ministry to pursue a teaching career in philosophy.
I attended graduate school to pursue my Ph.D. in philosophy, completed that program, and sought and obtained a full-time teaching position at a college as a philosophy professor. At that point, I left organized religion, rejected Christianity, and I am now an agnostic.
My Question:
I very much need any good responses anyone can give me in order to reply to a close friend who charges that I abandoned Christianity and became an agnostic because of my very religious upbringing, during which the religious views I held had been pretty much predetermined by my Mother's influence over me. In short, my friend claims that I abandoned Christianity and became an agnostic because "religion had been forced upon me by my Mother."
I have tried to identify the fallacious reasoning used by my friend and have found some answers. But my friend's claim is primarily a psychoanalytical claim, a claim about personal reaction to my past.
Any help would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Jim
To monitor comments posted to this topic, use
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Comments
Your friend is giving you the common reaction. There are so many people who don't believe in Atheists. A lot of believers claim Atheists hate god. Atheists are just rebeling. All Atheists should die, they aren't human but demons. And so on...
This friend of yours thinks you're rebelling. Well, I don't know that you are but most Atheists aren't. We could go with the fact that the theistic brain and the Atheistic brain are different. Meaning, some people are more prone to believing then others. It's just a sad fact of life.
We could also go with the fact that you've done your own research and came up with the answers all by yourself. Your friend can accept you the way you are or not. Personally, its the final clue as to who are your real friends.
I don't think there is much of anything you could say to a believer who believes you are not a believer like they are for whatever reason they have made up in their minds. For the longest time my husband's parents insisted that he was "just going though a phase." My husband calls it "disbelief in disbelief." It's your friend who has to come to his/her own answers.
I'd guess that your friend is using the fallacious assumption if A (rejection of religion) then B (personal/psychological injury) to justify putting you into a safe category that lets him neutralize any challenge to his belief that you might otherwise offer.
Even if true, it doesn't diminish the fact that christianity is wrong.
You didn't reject your mother. You rejected christianity. Right?
It doesn't sound like you 'rebelled' or did it out of spite, or had reason for any spite.
If you have arrived at your decision by logic then it doesn't matter what motive you had, as long as you can support where you are now.
We all have emotional reasons to think what we do. It is dishonest to claim we dont. Emotional valence saturates our psychic lives; that is the central psychoanalytic insight, and I think it applies to everyone, Christian, atheist, or otherwise. More biologically, the brain's limbic system is an old and deep part of the brain that connects to all of our higher cognitive functions. All that is saying is that we are never totally emotional neutral about anything and that emotionality can serve as a motivation.
But that motivation does not have to be determinative, and even if it was, it does not therefore follow that the belief so determined is wrong.
So maybe you were rebelling. So what? That does not preclude a concommitant reasoned, and reasonable, assessment of the truth claims of Christianity. It may mean you have to work a little harder to separate out what your motivations are, but it does not mean it cannot be done.
I am unabashed in admitting that part of the reason I deconverted is that I found Christianinty to be psychologically destructive for my emotional health. That does not mean I did not also have intellectual reasons also.
We are not robots or Vulcans. We are human beings an emotionality, I believe, *ought* to be included in our refelection about such basic, life-encompassing issues like religion.
Richard
are genuinely maturing and have come to a fork in the road that is further along than Paul, Jesus or any of the others ever got.
I have a question for you, though. What does it matter what your friend thinks of your motivation? Isn't it more important what you think about yourself? As I'm sure you know, it isn't what others think about us, but what we think about ourselves that make us insecure, unhappy, bitter, etc.
Freethinking is about finding a firm foundation in reality where we are not disturbed by delusional nonsense. It's not just a philosophical position, but an actual life practice. We falter in that practice when we let ourselves become caught up in our own doubts and fears and don't put our feet squarely on the ground.
I suggest that you thoroughly investigate your point of view, and know it inside and out. Study your behavior, too. It will give you clues as to what you really believe. For example, if you act defensively when someone challenges an agnostic statement, you've demonstrated to yourself and to everyone that you are threatened by your own belief that your friend may be correct.
It does take time to change your mind. It is a long and twisty road to go from devout believer to freethinker, so be compassionate and patient with yourself and your friends.
Perhaps he is questioning, as is trying to "feel you out."
Are you having a hard time finding a belief in God in your mind? Or are you sensing that the belief in God that you currently have is vanishing? Do you still believe in God?
Or, maybe you believe and ARE mad at God and want to rebel. Look at that feeling. People DO feel that way sometimes. Looking at why, just LOOKING won't kill you. Just do it. Is the stuff you learn contradicting your values? Look at it. Cut it open and look. Maybe you ARE rebelling. So?
So? Find out if there is a good reason. Don't be afraid of those attack words, like "oh, you are JUST X or Y, therefore it's not legitimate." Those are phrases of fear. Perhaps you are losing that fear, and that's what scares people who haven't.
I think that has more to do with *when* you became an agnostic, not *why*. You say yourself it wasn't until your mother was gone that you felt you could decide for yourself what to do with your life. So in the sense that you were a Christian because you wouldn't question the validity of it while your mother was alive, and you are not a Christian because you will question it now, your friend is on to something. But he mistakenly believes that the religious upbringing CAUSED your current agnosticism, and that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead, it seems that your very religious upbringing CAUSED your lack of questioning about Christianity, and once you no longer had the outside pressure, you moved naturally toward agnosticism.
Though only you know for sure.
You may have decide whether he is still able to be your friend. He may decide to accept you as you are and not rag on you for your new way of thinking.
If not, there are many freethinking people out there that will be just as good a friend to you.
No good friend tells you what to think.
I would also imagine that, since you are well trained in philosophy, you have thought through many of these things for yourself. Just learning to trust your own judgment can be a huge step forward out of the brainwashing of the religious cult you grew up in. (Having grown up in a similar background, I do consider it a cult.)
I wish you well on your continuing journey.
Personally, I think that any child who is brainwashed with religious dogma before that child can develope any congitive and questioning capabilities is a form of child abuse.
So, I would suggest to your friend that you simply woke up after a long period of your mothers religious brainwashing and that YOU are fortunate to be freed of all that bondage. In essence perhaps you were liberated by your mother's death. Don't mean to sound insensitive however...
I fully embraced my atheism AS A RESULT OF READING THE BIBLE AND DOING RESEARCH ON MY OWN. The god portrayed is a BEAST, not an all-loving entity. But of course we know that he doesn't exist anyway. LOL
I'm happy for you that you are free and make sure to suggest to your caring friend that he should be happy for you as well.
Enjoy your new and exciting journey through life!!!
Cheers to you!
Max L.
Sometimes when you wake up during the night and your eyes are all dry and red and your eyelids feel scratchy, etc., and you squirt a couple of drops of Visine in, have you ever noticed how much _quieter_ the world seems? Why is that? It's not like you missed, and squirted it into your ear or anything. It's just the global, general relief from having reduced the burden on your faculty to perceive naturally.
Your friend can't see the world right any longer, and he can't see you right either. Whose problem is that?