A Rude Awakening

 

Photo by Dylan from Pexels

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.