A friend recently made a snarky comment to me regarding my atheism. I called her on the remark: I asked her why she would say such a thing.
As an atheist, I am used to sarcasm and contempt from
members of the various Christian sects-- that religion, along with its sister,
Islam-- are most demanding that its followers work to convert others not of
their faith, and unofficially to treat them with ill-disguised loathing if they
refuse to convert. Seeing that loathing come from a friend was a wake-up call. I
came to see that the hate for the unbeliever is a feature of Christianity; that
even friends and family members are not immune to it.
I did not face indoctrination into religion at an early age.
When the subject finally did enter my life at aged twelve years, I faced a
world of people who came of age steeped in a belief in what appeared to me as
the power of wishful thinking; in an invisible person who would come to their
aid in times of trouble; and that some undefined element called a “soul” would
arise from the body to represent the believer in an infinite utopian existence following
his or her death. Reading those responses to my newfound knowledge might give a
slight insight into the confusion those followers of faith aroused in me at
that tender age. How could otherwise reasonable adults believe such nonsense, I
thought. The awareness that they did, in fact, believe those things to be true
was a rude awakening.
Even before my introduction into religious thought, I bowed
my head as instructed for the school prayer that started each day, just before a
geography class taught by a devout teacher who denied the science of
meteorology. She taught us that rain was not caused by condensation and air
temperature but came as a gift from God. Even at ten years, I knew she was spouting
bullshit, though “bullshit” was not in my vocabulary at that time. I knew instinctively
of its prevalence in matters of belief.
I hid my thoughts about religion from others, even pretending
to agree with it to avoid strife. Then, sometime after my thirtieth birthday, I
came across three books that forever changed my own world view by introducing
me to philosophy: Richard Hittleman’s introduction to Hatha and Raja Yoga,
Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and the works
of Alan Watts. Those tomes led me to the entire panoply of philosophical writing,
careening through the Greeks to the Enlightenment, the Existentialists, and
currently—Alain de Botton. Now, as a novice student of philosophy, I have become
more tolerant of religion. I work to understand belief: its causes and effects
and the reasoning behind it.
If only believers would extend that same tolerance.
