#53

I’ve got a lovely, poignant memory of this hymn:

CW: death

We had this hymn at my stepmum’s funeral: at the graveside after the coffin was lowered. I remember some lovely old lady from the church starting it, and my eldest, clinging to my dad’s leg, singing every word, somehow in perfect pitch. And over the other side of the graveyard, the children from the local school were playing on their breaktime, and the sun was glistening on the fallen leaves. It was one of those weird moments where, in spite of the tragedy of the situation, you could feel a sense of hope.

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#55

Sorry I should have read the thread- this point is covered already! :laughing:

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#56

What really fascinates me about faith was watching both my parents slowly lose theirs.

We were quite a religious family. Going to church (Sunday school) for me while I was little. I think my parents were mostly attending baptist /methodist services. Definitely not CoE or Catholic ones anyway. When I’d grown up a bit I stopped going. They were fine with that. Then slowly they stopped going too.

I have a feeling that coincided with the sudden (and horrible) death of my dad’s dad who was very religious. I haven’t asked him about it but think my dad lost his faith at that point. Then he started reading some books (Dawkins etc) that challenged his thinking a bit more. Not sure either of my parents have been to church in 10 years now with the exception of a Christmas service every now and again.

I don’t think it helped that they never really found a church that shared their values even when they had a bit more personal faith.

#57

I was raised in a sort-of Christian household: we started going to church when I was about six, then about four years later my dad had some kind of reverse epiphany and turned aggressively anti-christian. Threw away all our Bibles, magazines, gave my mum a horrible time for attending church and discouraged the rest of us. Anyway, something (not sure what) happened when I was about 15 that led to him returning apologetically to church, and the rest of us followed.

Like @kermitwormit says, I find the whole subject of theology fascinating, of trying to figure out how to relate these massive concepts to everyday life. I attend church, though tbh it’s hard work as it doesn’t really properly cater for our eldest (it’s not that they don’t want to, it’s just they don’t really understand). If I look back, faith has probably saved my life along the way.

It’s nice that this thread exists - I remember in my early days on here feeling like an outsider for having a faith (I think my early days coincided with peak Dawkins etc). I think there’s an awful lot I disagree with about the way a lot of modern churches are ran, but it gives me something I haven’t found elsewhere.

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#62

Do any religeons believe in or accept science, as in except the evolution of species and all that? I’d definitely investigate if so. I don’t believe in god, but i definitely do feel faith or spirituality could be comforting.

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#63

I’ve never had any religious faith of any kind and the idea of it has always been pretty foreign to me. As I’m sure a lot of other atheists have I’ve gone from that dickish Dawkins dismissal to finding communities built around faith, and people’s interactions with their own personal belief awe inspiring and beautiful.

Worry about certain religious institutions as institutions of power, but that’s got far more to do with the institution of power part than the religion part.

Good thread

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#64

this has made me interested to know how my mum lost her faith, as she’s not really religious at all now but was a sunday school teacher when she was young. i don’t know if it was the influence of my dad, as he was raised fairly non-religiously - his dad and his dad’s dad were atheists and his mum had survived a genocide and struggled to believe in a god who’d let things like that happened.

my mum still thinks of herself as a christian, doesn’t feel the need to believe the bible literally as that’s not how her church taught it, and believes in jesus, but when i asked her if she literally believed jesus was the son of god rather than just a man who inspired people with his teachings, she did admit that no she didn’t.

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#65

My parents ran a sunday school which I enjoyed attending because I had friends there and we got to play soft ball football in the church hall after. I also went to some christian festivals / summer camps (New Wine, Soul Survivor) which I enjoyed because there were girls there. I think I was instinctively unconvinced theologically at age 11 and those feelings matured and deepened as I got older and wiser. Saw some hysterical ‘divine healing’ type shit and probably moved at points and deeply cynical at points. I think some aspects of religion point to how deep and untouched a lot of our subconscious mind is in daily life.

My parents are still religious and we respectably agree to disagree and never really talk about it. Occasionally I’m a bit miffed that they aren’t more perturbed by me potentially burning in hell forever, but…

I’m comfortably agnostic - I think the universe is too miraculous and mysterious to entertain the idea of atheism. to be convinced that the absolute truth of the existence of the universe is that we all came from an infinitely small explosion/implosion originating from a vacuum of nothingness that expanded is also just… mad.

aware that I sound a bit ‘flat earth’ here but, y’know… science continually suprises itself.

I respect the #ssp so please know I say this light-heartedly but I think the world would be a better place if all education insitutions and governments were agnostic. If everyone respected other cultures and religions and personal faiths but with a general underarching air of :man_shrugging::woman_shrugging: (to imply ‘who knows’, not to imply undermining religious conviction) we might all get along a little bit better (probably still be racism and brexit and tories though so who knows)

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#66

raised Catholic, but not in a particularly hardcore way - went to mass every Sunday with my dad until my mid teens, and did RE at my catholic school, but religion was very rarely discussed at home really. my mum believes in god too but doesn’t believe in having to prove it by going to his house once a week.

i did believe in God up until probably my mid teens or so, until i finally concluded that it wasn’t really compatible with my view of the world and the universe and it just didn’t really feel very likely to me at all anymore when i gave it a bit of thought. initially described myself as agnostic but nowadays would say i’m an atheist. i never had a militant atheist phase and consider myself pretty open to other people’s views but i do sometimes have a natural reaction to be a bit surprised when someone i know is religious, until i stop and remember i was once.

little things still kick in - the rare occasions i’m in a chapel now (weddings or occasionally christmas) i still get the old thing where i swear in my internal monologue and then think “OH SHIT I CAN’T THINK THAT WORD IN HERE” and then remember that it’s fine lol

also when i was having a bit of a shite time a few months ago i suddenly remembered how when i was younger if i was stressed about exams or whatever i’d have a little pray in my head (more asking God to do me a solid than a proper prayer) and how it was always sort of comforting to think he might help. i can understand why people like the idea of that omnipotent support being there and not being alone and helpless having to fend for yourself in a world where all bad things are entirely possible.

was surprised to realise a few years ago that one of my older brothers is actually fairly religious. but one of his best friends committed suicide while they were at uni, and a really sound priest at home who was our school chaplain and knew them all well was pretty supportive at the time i think, so that’s very understandable.

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#67

The way Christianity was presented to me in primary school was as if it were all indisputably factual, until year four when RE actually started to cover other religions and my nine-year-old self got very confused for a while about what was going on that there were several non-conpatible different sets of facts that you could choose from. I am not articulating this very well… just trying to say that theistic faiths confused me so I never grasped on to any.

I do actually find a lot of comfort in atheism, that the ultimate end is (for my beliefs) a simple and final darkness, a true end for your own ‘spirit’. For me it places an importance on personal accountability more than an idea of afterlife, that the present matters and you should try also not to in that present fuck up the futures for everyone left after you are released.

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#68

pretty much my experience within a fairly progressive baptist upbring with parents involved with the church. also did the new wine/soul survivor thing when a young teenager but drifted out of going when 15/16 and started playing sunday league.

still have friends/family who believe and go to church and most of them are good eggs although there are some troubling and problematic elements.

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#69

there was a time, when i was first starting to question religion, where i started to get quite freaked out about the idea of heaven and the fact that it was eternal, forever and ever and ever and ever stretching on and on with no end.

can’t entirely remember why exactly it freaked me out to that degree but it feels kinda funny that it wasn’t hell or purgatory that freaked me out but actual heaven.

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#70

The forever idea is what filled me with dread when I was younger, I prefer the idea of being fleeting.

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#71

I think you’d be surprised at how many ostensibly religious people do believe in evolution and interpret many of the creation stories to be allegories.

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#72

“the skill in attending a party is knowing when to leave” etc

If I think about death and eternal darkness for too long I get The Fear very prominently in my chest but someone told me once to combat the fear of death by thinking about how horrifying and meaningless literal eternal life would be and it calms me right down

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#73

Just teared up at that. A lovely feeling amidst all the sadness.

None of that at my Grandad’s funeral, we just had a bugler scare the shit out of my brothers when he started the ‘Last Post’. The two lads hadn’t noticed him walk up behind them at the graveside and they jumped out of their skins!

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#74

big part of my parents religion [redacted] is that it says there is harmony between science and religion, and any religious belief that does not hold up to science should be rejected as superstition, completely fails to apply that principle though, and the religions founder and its subsequent guardians, and institutions are regarded as infallible despite unscientific claims, and especially problematic unscientific views around mental illness and sexuality
edit: my parents religion is a bit unusual as its not like there are lots of different interpretations, or denominations, there is just the one institution allowed, hence I can talk about it in a fairly monolithic way

#75

Religion just hasn’t been a part of my life at all. Non-religious parents and schooling. Don’t even know any of the bible stories.

#76

“ostensibly”… :grimacing:

i would be quite surprised to find that many Christians in the UK didn’t believe in evolution. anecdotally i have very rarely encountered creationists and the Christians I know well (well enough to have had faith-based conversations with) consider most of the Bible to be allegorical, but particularly creation stories. obvs skewed towards the denominations i’ve had more interaction with but even so I don’t think creationism is that common.

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#78

I was Christened when I was a baby but only because it was seen as the done thing, neither of my parents went or go to Church. At primary school I remember religion was quite a present thing (though I don’t think it was a CofE school) - watching bible story videos (narration over these pastel illustrations), singing hymns etc, though we did learn about other religions too. I found it all really interesting, but I remember the specific moment I got turned off from it in an emotional sense - I read a lot, and used to read after I was meant to have gone to bed by lying down by the nightlight, and one night I must have run out of other books because I was reading a children’s bible. I got to the story of Moses and the ten plagues, and remember how sick I felt when I got the last plague - the eldest born son of every family, dying. We weren’t Jewish, I thought, so does that mean my brother would have died? I was revolted. I couldn’t countenance how this could ever be a good thing. or something I was meant to agree with. It felt fairly profound.

So from then on I think I just kind of switched off to the idea of trusting in a God or engaging in religion except as an academic thing - which I did, because I found, and still find it fascinating. I did RE up until A Level, and thought about doing theology at university (but dismissed it in the end because I didn’t want to learn Latin and Greek).

Now I consider myself atheist, though I guess I’m maybe open to vaguely “spiritual” ideas (I like the basic concept in His Dark Materials, that we exist as energy made into matter and when we die we return to energy and are absorbed back into the fabric of the universe).

My wife is culturally and ethnically Jewish and raised with enough faith that she had her Bat MItzvah, but we’re not raising our daughter (who is also technically Jewish since it’s maternally passed on) with any particular faith, though we’ll encourage her to learn about her heritage when she’s older and hopefully mark things like Hannukah like we do with Christmas (I’m also kind of hoping we don’t ever have a son so we can avoid the circumcision question).

I don’t think I’ll ever quite be able to see eye to eye with people who believe in the literal stories of the Bible or other religious books, but I try not to judge and accept that I’m sure I hold my own irrational beliefs. Obviously I think religion, broadly, can be a force for good and bad depending on how it manifests, but I don’t want to throw out all the positives just because of some of the negatives.

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