Many of you who know me will have seen (and some have even asked why) I am very anti-religion.
This is for an inordinate amount of reasons- and I’d be here all day enumerating them all- but the most important reasons include:
• The ignorance of facts, evidence and reason.
• The bigotry and “in-group/out-group” mentality
• The thought we are “created sick; and commanded to be well” (—Christopher Hitchens)
• The very idea of worshipping a being so tyrannical, mysogynistic, misanthropic, manipulative, vengeful, jealous and capricious just because an old text says we should.
• The laughable idea that blind faith can be a virtue
• The forced indoctrination of children- told they are Christian/Muslim etc before they can walk and talk.
I have some personal experience with the last one. My mother and grandmother attend weekly Sunday services at a Church of Scotland, and identify as Christian. Despite being moderates by any standards- I was baptised and raised as a “Christian child”. As I grew older I naturally began to question things- and I sought, and found answers. When it came to religion however- asking questions was frowned upon- almost discouraged. On top of that, the more questions I asked, the more new ones kept appearing.
One of my questions was “What does Grandpa do when we are in church?” He never went- and that didn’t make sense to me- going to church was just something that people did on a Sunday, wasn’t it? So one week I asked to stay behind.
I was introduced to James Bond that Sunday.
Grandpa and I had several more Sunday mornings like that- I would feign illness or ask to have a week off whenever I could- and we continued to watch the 007 films- along with Fawlty Towers and other tv comedy of that era.
In a way- my grandfather deserves a massive thankyou from me; because it was then I realised that church was optional. But then- if church was optional- was believing in what the reverend said optional too? Gradually I went less and less- and when I did- I volunteered to stay out of the service; to amuse the young children who were too boisterous for the sermons and stories. I began to look into prominent people who didn’t believe in god. I started discussing it with people my own age.
Eventually, I told my mother that I was an atheist.
Telling a religious parent that is almost like “coming out”. (Indeed- there is an Out Campaign- google it). Her reaction was almost hysterical. At first she was angry- as if I myself had taken some kind of forbidden fruit- but she then dissolved into tears. She told me that she felt she had “failed as a parent” because she had made a promise to the church to raise me Christian- and by turning away from the faith I had made that redundant and worthless. I have to admit, that did hurt. Part of me was thankful that was it though- because had I been from a more fundamentalist family, I might have been disowned. My mum and I get on incredibly well still, although we do still butt heads on the issue at times- particularly around Easter and Christmas.
It is important to remember though- that is not the parents promise to make. Children should be taught “how” to think; not what to think. All this talk of Christian children, Muslim children and Jewish children is ridiculous. How can a child possibly know what theological viewpoint they have when they know nothing about the world? Can you imagine the outrage if people referred to children as "Tory children" or "Labour children" because of how their parents vote? It is a travesty that it is allowed at all, but- in a modern world of advanced knowledge, technology and science- baptism and spoon fed religion through faith schools really is the only way for churches to keep their numbers up.
So if you’re out there struggling with how to tell your religious parents that you don’t share their belief- contact me. Please. I want to help, because I never got any. Also contact the Out Campaign for support at
http://outcampaign.org
You are not alone.
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