Did you make the choice to be / not be religious?

[the0logical]

Just been reading another thread on here about religion and I always think the theological discussions on here are fascinating.

I'll start - I identify as an athiest, I was brought up in a non-religious family but attended heavily Catholic schools. I didn't like some of the ideologies that became mixed into the religious elements of my schooling (e.g. through correlation or randomness, the most "devout" children were always the most prejudiced) and this pushed me away from entering into any faith. I studied Philosophy & Religion at a higher level and then learned about my perception of fallacies in most major religions, which I couldn't seem to logically support especially when I didn't have any feelings of faith. I've never felt the capacity to let myself be succumbed by a religion, though I have tried - I just don't believe.

So, guess I'm just curious to know some reasons why people are / aren't religious and how much of a "choice" it is. Not a reporter before anyone asks, just a nerd who loves anecdotes especially in a religious debate!

YABU - I made an active choice to become religious, or to become non-religious
YANBU - I didn't make any choice, I have always believed / never believed
(hoping that makes sense!)

Tbh no one's going to sing a hymn praising hepatitis or ebola though are they. I would suggest that the reason for name checking the good stuff in hymns like All Things Bright And Beautiful is precisely because people know the world is bloody grim and they want to engage in positive affirmation as a way of coping with this.

I mean I'm not a believer but if I was I wouldn't be harmonising about the bloody pox.

I mean I'm not a believer but if I was I wouldn't be harmonising about the bloody pox.

Sure, but if you’re going to praise god for his role in the good, you can’t just gloss over his role in the bad at the same time.

An age old problem for believers.

@LadyfromtheBelleEpoque I can’t connect a ‘we’ that is completely outside of my own experiences.

You say you have never encountered any people of your faith who were dismissive or even bigoted - that’s exactly the opposite of my experience. The religious people I have known are absolutely amazing at picking and choosing which teachings they will abide by, and which they won’t. And the leaders of religion - well, you’d think that the fact they’d be led by the fact that they believe they’ll be judged most harshly by both their god and normal people, but it would seem that actually, persons of the cloth are protected more than most.

I’m sorry if this upsets you. But to me, religion is a form of control, and a bank that collects money. Human beings love the thought that they’re not responsible for their own actions so they love religion - but there are always loopholes that are exploited.

I expect more from the religious of this world as they expect to be seen as better - and I am constantly disappointed.

I don't think believers do gloss over the bad things though. They have answers that I don't necessarily like or agree with, but they don't gloss over them ime. My Catholic childhood for eg involved quite a lot of talk about earthly and supernatural suffering and penance, pictures of Jesus with his sacred heart on relatives' walls, eternal punishment and damnation and a general attitude that if you had it hard in life this was to be welcomed because it meant that you were more holy than people who had it easy.

Not my cup of tea at all, but not avoided.

@Teaandakitkat I love the way you describe your interactions with your church.

When I think of church and religious leaders, I think of stories like this.

This is why I can’t square away a god who would allow this to happen in his name.

@DogsAreShit I’m talking about more specific stuff, like the Magdalene laundries, priests raping kids, vicars engaging in adultery. Not a philosophical conversation about earthquakes, but a real life conversation about actual bad things happening in real life to real people.

Sorry @JackieTheFart I should have made it clearer that I was responding to the posts about the attitude to general bad things in the world, rather than your post which wasn't there when I started typing.

Agree with you about the deaths, abuse and denial and like I say familial experience of this from the Catholic church is what moved me to reject it. Absent apology or acknowledgement (possibly even with one, no way of knowing as it's never happened) that organisation for me is fundamentally an abusive and harmful one.

Magdalene laundries, priests raping kids, vicars engaging in adultery

This is not God. This is a group of individuals behaving appallingly and using God's name to justify themselves.

This is not the God I know and not a single person of faith (or of no faith) I know would condone this behaviour.

If I thought my Church was engaging in this I would stand against it without a doubt and so would every member of my congrégation.

I am aware that the Church of Scotland as an organisation has allowed criminal behaviour to happen in its children's homes. No-one I know would stand by and allow that to happen now.

I can't explain why it was allowed to happen then. It is a mystery to me. It happened in so many areas of life, big youth football clubs being another example.

But people allowed it to happen, not God. People equate the two but they are not the same.

Yeah it's people and yeah it happens in other organisations.

However the Catholic church's activities are particularly gruesome. To my knowledge Man U never put infant bodies in sewers and when challenged decades later about what happened rushed through procedures to sell the land for development.

For example.

Of course it’s people . But people were made in God’s image, and if he is omnipotent then why does he allow these things to happen?

Either he’s not omnipotent, and therefore he’s not a god or God, or he is and actively chooses to allow human beings to behave in depraved ways.

The hymn "All Things Bright and Beautiful" is laughable.
Butterflies, daisies and ponies are cute.
What about the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, or chlamydia, tape worms, Covid, Hepatitis.
What was the plan there?

I’m always confused by how people base their disbelief in God by judging him/her by how we think he should be by our standards. What makes people think our time on earth should be idyllic . Do we really think that God should be intervening in all our sufferings. What would be the point in us being on earth. We’re here for a speck in time.......Why are we presuming we should have a perfect life. Something goes wrong.....there can’t be a God, he wouldn’t allow that to happen. It’s a strange mindset imo. What about the miracle of making a baby? Such huge things that are a miracle in itself taken for granted as if it’s nothing.

Where does consciousness come from?

*Yeah it's people and yeah it happens in other organisations.

However the Catholic church's activities are particularly gruesome. To my knowledge Man U never put infant bodies in sewers and when challenged decades later about what happened rushed through procedures to sell the land for development'

I can't justify that. You would need to speak to the individuals involved, and the leaders of that Church today have to justify how they have owned up to the things that happened in their name.

The Roman Catholic Church is (was) such a huge and powerful organisation, too powerful to my mind. It feels to me that those at the top have little to no idea of what's going on at the bottom and what's going on in real life. Power corrupts and all that.

But the Roman Catholic Church a man-made construction. My faith is between me and God. I would walk away in a heartbeat if I thought my church was behaving in that way. And I would be heartbroken, I really would.

(I'm not a member of the Roman Catholic Church btw, I don't speak for them or try to justify their actions at all)

@Teaandakitkat absolutely your conversation with God is not to do with what the Catholic church gets up to. I hope you don't feel that I'm pointing the finger at you or any others of sincere faith.

As for the Catholic church's justification, here is an extract from a BBC report, in 2017, about the proposed £6m sale of land pushed through after it was found to contain hundreds of infant bodies:

Two representatives of the Daughters of Charity gave evidence to the inquiry this summer in which they said they could find no records of any abuse taking place.

They have not replied to requests to comment on the land sale.

If there's only one God why are there literally thousands of different religions, all with different rules to follow and in some cases multiple dieties?

If you are a believer why have you decided that your God/religion is the correct one to follow? If your Christian, Muslim or Jewish how do you square the fact that Hinduism predates your religion by thousands of years?

Why would a Chritian God want/allow billions of people to worship false idols by letting other relgions rise before the "true faith".

The existence of so many God's and religions suggests to to that either A) God is a dick and deliberately leading/allowing billions of people to live a life of "sin", B) doesn't exist, or C) has absolutely no interest in how you live your life. Either way living and restricting your life based on one organised religions teachings is just ridiculous.

I feel I should make clear @Teaandakitkat that this is absolutely not your issue. You said that you would have to leave a church that acted in that way. I agree, and it's why lots of people are leaving the Catholic church, because even now it is acting in a horrendous way in regard to these events.

I don’t think it was a choice as such I just got to about 14 or 15 and realised there was absolutely no scientific proof for the existence of God. If there is some sort of deity he/she/it is the most messed up one ever because look at the state of this planet. People say oh but humans have free will but then then also say oh but it’s God’s will?? Religion is utterly messed up.

My immediate family had a sort of vague religious practice. I largely discontinued with that as a teen apart from attending large family celebrations and such, and was a vague nothing, but went in a different direction as a young adult.

As far as a choice - I guess in a way. I came to think, as a philosophy student at the time, that a certain set of propositions was true (or the most likely thing to be true), and a certain kind of response was appropriate or right. That included a religious practice, which is something that arguably isn't identical to a belief or conviction about the nature of reality.

(FWIW I would include some kind of atheism or principled agnosticism as beliefs or convictions about the nature of reality as much as any particular religious viewpoint.)

I don't know if I could "choose" to think something different is true very easily, just as a matter of will. I usually can fairly easily think "as if" I accept a different set of basic propositions that lead to a different set of ideas, and I can often see why someone might choose those propositions - but I don'y know if I could just switch. There are some things that I certainly could never make myself believe, and I don't find them even plausible.

But I do think that there is a sense of leaving oneself open to different ways of seeing the world, or looking at things through different lenses, that make it more likely you could change your mind. Some people do this well and some find it a struggle to even realise they are looking at things through a lens at all.

As for a way of practicing, which is about half of what religion is about - often people end up choosing a best fit, rather than something perfect, because in many cases its a communal practice - that's part of what it is for. That might be an easier area in which to change direction, in fact choosing one and sticking with it is the problem for some people.

I’m always confused by how people base their disbelief in God by judging him/her by how we think he should be by our standards. What makes people think our time on earth should be idyllic . Do we really think that God should be intervening in all our sufferings. What would be the point in us being on earth. We’re here for a speck in time.......Why are we presuming we should have a perfect life. Something goes wrong.....there can’t be a God, he wouldn’t allow that to happen. It’s a strange mindset imo. What about the miracle of making a baby? Such huge things that are a miracle in itself taken for granted as if it’s nothing.

So if all of the above is true about God, what's the point of him and why does anyone want to worship him? By your reasoning, he's basically created the universe and left it to its own devices without a care. I mean, if you as a parent did that to a child you had, Social Services would have your guts for garters.

And that's why I believe there is no God. It's comforting.

FWIW I would include some kind of atheism or principled agnosticism as beliefs or convictions about the nature of reality as much as any particular religious viewpoint.

No. I'm an atheist. I don't have a belief. It's the absence of belief.

I do wish believers wouldn't do this. It's an attitude I've encountered before. I am outside your frame of reference and I genuinely place myself thus deliberately and with care and thought. Do not attempt to pull me back into it for your own purpose.

Don't worry @DogsAreShit I know you don't mean it personally.

So many people use these dreadful situations as examples of why religion is a terrible thing. I think they show that huge organisations are a terrible thing, organisations that have grown too big, people have grown too powerful. They forget they are acting in God's name. They forget why their organisation was founded in the first place. And people were too afraid to challenge.

I don't think that is the case nowadays. I think people would be brave enough to challenge the church or a school or any other organisation. People are more questioning. They don't just blindly accept what they are told by their parents and teachers and religious leaders. That is a good thing.

And I think it's good to be challenged on why you have faith, or don't. You need to think about what you stand for and be willing to stand by it.

@Teaandakitkat people are definitely challenging the Catholic church but it's so frustrating when they refuse to treat the challenge with the respect and care it merits.

Hopefully we won't see another Bon Secours as in the events won't be repeated. But I am convinced, due to contemporaneous accounts, that there are numerous examples of such practices within the Church as was until forty years ago. And I regretfully feel that any further discoveries will bring about the same denials and cover ups that the Church has exhibited to date.

I wasn't Christened but I went to the local CofE church with my neighbours' children & attended Sunday School from the age of 5 to 13... it was fun & while three of my friends also attended but they all moved away in time... I stopped going to Church by age 13 though...
First my beloved pet rabbit died of flystrike which I thought was an especially cruel death of God to invent.
I found the other Sunday School kids very cliquey & quite unfriendly- not very Christian like!
And the ordinary CofE Church had become more radical & they said things like 'if your partner has no faith in God you should get divorced'!! Also that only Born Again Christians would go to heaven.
But by then my best friend was a Muslim, and half my family weren't religious at all so I wasn't enamoured with a religion that preached against the people I loved being saved.

I still had a belief in God though, but definitely not in organised religion, probably until I started working in healthcare.
I think that seeing decent people suffering awful things has left me feeling that if God exists he is not very nice. Or just doesn't care?
I have quite a few colleagues who are religious Christians, Muslims, Buddhists etc & I respect their beliefs, but i never say my beliefs that I feel organised religion was created by Man in the name of God, & has been used by men to control the masses.
I think Jesus possibly existed as a historical figure but was not raised from the dead.

I have had serious MH problems since 2012 & suffer with paranoia, delusions & hallucinations mainly but not always controlled by meds.
I'm very aware that lots of people with my problems are vulnerable to religious delusions & obsessive behaviour so I find I have to check myself every so often.

When I was becoming ill in 2011 I developed an strong interest in Judaism as my Nan had Jewish ancestry, I even considered contacting a local Jewish outreach group. I then got a bit obsessed with Islam later on. Nothing wrong with these religions but there is something wrong with getting religious when you're not well.

@DogsAreShit

FWIW I would include some kind of atheism or principled agnosticism as beliefs or convictions about the nature of reality as much as any particular religious viewpoint.

No. I'm an atheist. I don't have a belief. It's the absence of belief.

I do wish believers wouldn't do this. It's an attitude I've encountered before. I am outside your frame of reference and I genuinely place myself thus deliberately and with care and thought. Do not attempt to pull me back into it for your own purpose.

Yes, people say that, but honestly, it's shit philosophy.

You have a belief about how reality functions. No one is really just an atheist. They are maybe a dialectical materialist, or an existentialist, or a lot of people who say things like "I have an absence of belief" when you quiz them are logical positivists. They see reality structured in a particular way and that way does not include a god or gods or anything else equivalent.

A person who says "there is no proof of God" is operating within an epistemological framework that says something specific. That is not an absence of belief, though a failure to recognise that suggests taking that particular viewpoint as a given.

I'd make an exception for people who are cynics or skeptics in the classical, rather than modern, sense, which is why I excepted principled agnostics in my statement. Or, I suppose, people who simply don't have any views on anything at all.

People who believe in a God, or gods, or something equivalent, also believe a certain set of things are true about reality, that it functions and is structured in a particular way, and they operate within a particular epistemology.

If you can call atheist "a lack of belief in a universe with a God" you could equally call theism "a lack of belief in a universe predicated on a universe without a God." Neither is a neutral statement.