My family is predominantly comprised of fundamentalist christians…
I mean both my immediate, and my extended family. My grandparents were Catholics, the kind that listened to the “Every sperm is sacred rule”, so they had 9 kids- all of my aunts and uncles are married, all but one pair of them have kids. I have something to the effect of 30 cousins, plus my brother and sister.
All of them (except my sister, and perhaps one or two of my cousins by the one remaining catholic uncle) are creationists, most are young-earth creationists, one likes Kent “I-don’t-pay-taxes” Hovind. My cousin, who we’ll call Mike, so as to protect his privacy (I have no cousins named Mike), had Expelled on his computer. Thats the level at which my family’s views differ from my own.
I spent most of this afternoon in Hanover, MA. At my Aunt and Uncle Hovind-fan’s house. I love my family, but sometimes I feel so alienated from them — I really feel like the black sheep. I guess the point of this is to allow me some reprieve from the incredible sadness I feel because I don’t think like them — the sadness I feel because they can’t see the beauty… not without hiding it behind their religion. People oftentimes wonder how I, as an atheist, can see any point in living — since there is nothing, no one, to live for. The unstated major premise of course is that the only thing worth living for is one’s religious beliefs or one’s diety. I don’t live for those things — I didn’t even when I was a christian. I wonder sometimes if people really think like that — if they really think the only reason worth living is for this invisible man. I try to imagine the way in which my brain was twisted to believe such a thing. I don’t mean to say that you must be twisted or deranged or something to believe these ideas, I mean that I cannot physically remember how to cause my brain to accept these old ideas which I now find demonstrably untrue. Sometimes my family tries to convince me that my position is incorrect, and I should come back to the “fold”, as it were. I always get the same feeling, and I imagine they get the same, I always feel as if they are bumbling through the hallways of cognition — eyes closed even though the lights are on — trying to find a way to me, to pull me back. I feel that I have opened my eyes — at first blinded, but slowly adjusting to the light. A searing, painful, beautiful light which simultaneously begs me to stare and orders me to look away. It’s as if I’ve been focused so intently on this tiny little world, only to be yanked back by common sense to see the whole starry cosmos sitting — silently — before me. I think that they feel the same way — but I can’t find a way to remember how it felt when I did what they do to me, to others.
This blog post is, as you may have noticed, markedly different from my usual fare — if not in the flowery language which I so dearly love, then certainly in the tone. I know that I usually write very technically, but I felt retrospective this 2:30am, and as such I decided to write. I think the point of it is partially for solace, I don’t like being the black sheep, and partially as a plea for a kind of — a kind of new family. Not a replacement for the old, but an addition to the previous 50-or-so brood. One thing I miss about being a christian is the constant reminder that ” we are family”. Atheists, Nonbelievers, etc sadly lack this feature, I think. It’s been said before, and now again, we are not good networkers, we are individualistic, mostly — our beliefs belie our nature. I wish though, that sometimes, sometimes I had a familial relationship with other likeminded folk. I talk to a few nonbelievers on occasion, but it’s never been a familial or friendly relationship, it feels more like being with a comrade-at-arms, than with a close cousin.
I suppose it really boils down to a fundamental sadness — like that feeling you get at first after realizing that Santa wasn’t real, or that Barney the Dinosaur couldn’t be incanted by dancing around a stuffed facsimile. It was that dread feeling of “Nothing is the same anymore, I can never go back”. At first, you are sad, or even scared — depending on the context, but soon — soon you realize that you have embarked on a brave new adventure. A world which those you left behind cannot see. They are still bumbling in the dark, blind to the great white light of possibility. Perhaps I’m being fantastical, perhaps not, but where my family may see god, I see opportunity to learn. Their minds stop short at deity, my mind dares to drive past it. I don’t mean to sound smug, but it feels to me like they are limited, and I hate limitations — on anyone. Limitations, constaints, rules. I hate rules! I seek to break them whenever I can, the rules are a lie! But they are beholden by them, I just — I feel so much I cannot organize it into a coherent notion. It’s anger and sadness and disapointment and excitement and perhaps a sprinkling of fear. I want them to see what I can see — I want them to feel the wonder that I feel. When I look at the world I see machines and mechanisms and myriad moving parts — all they get to see is the hand of an invisible deity. They can never see the beauty and the wonder of the nothing-at-all, and not because it is impossible for them, but because they have their hands over their eyes. To see the universe — working and moving and bending through time and space, and then to willingly cover your eyes? I cannot comprehend it.
I just want them to see it, I just want someone to see it.
I vividly remember the first time I saw a bird, and understood what it was. It was a yellow finch, a small little yellow thing which fluttered around a birdfeeder in fall at the Old Country Gift Barn in Mendon, I sat there and stared as it flew. A flash of yellow and it was gone, off to a high tree 10– 20 feet away. I was stunned, I didn’t realize something could be that beautiful, that vibrant. I didn’t realize until then that it flew– the thing flew. I was quite young, maybe 5 or 6. I understood that birds could fly, but I never really grasped the concept. When I finally got it, I jumped up, I told the first person I saw, “They fly!” I shouted, to my poor mothers chagrin, “They fly!” I finally realized what the idea meant, I finally realized that things could fly.
I vividly remember the first time I truly understood evolution and physics and cosmology and all those things, I remember, to myself, whispering, “Beautiful.” It was the same sense of wonderment and understanding I had when I was six, and I saw the birds fly. All I want is for my family to have that feeling.
I’m sure by now my paragraphs have become more like the lunatical ramblings of a manic-depressive martian robot, and so I’ll stop, I don’t know who may read this- but I only ask you this, try to understand one thing. They fly.
Hie!
Apparently you’re from the US aren’t you? I’m French so from an outsider point of view I have to say I find the religious direction that the US is currently taking really dangerous. Mind you, our current president is sort of licking up to American politicians as well although if he talked like them he would be sure not to be elected. We hate religious fanaticism here.
But coming back to your post, I completely understand what you mean. The more I learn the more I’m in awe with the Universe and all the creatures which are in this world. I have no problem finding a purpose in life. I need no deity and my one goal is, on top of leaving my own life to the full, defending LIFE in all its various shapes on our precious earth. I find this far greater than celebrating a deity you cannot prove exists, worship a man who probably never existed for an eternal life in a supposed heavens. I always wondered why there should be a paradise anyway… Isn’t our planet with all its diversity of life, plants and animals alike, beautiful enough? Shouldn’t we try to protect this beauty we have access to? This is truth, not blind belief, you don’t have to convince yourself that Yellowstone is beautiful, you see it and if you go there you also “feel” a connection between you and its many wonders. But I’m babbling here.
Until yesterday I considered myself to be a deist… For quite awhile actually… I’d say 4 to 5 years. Now however I moved to the atheist side. And I gotta say being from a Muslim family, I always felt out of place in all the ceremonies we attended… I never felt any sort of holy connections and when I talked about this issue with my mother, who is devout, she used to tell me that if I didn’t practice I would never feel anything anyway. When I asked her when I was around 10, that if God had created us, who had created God, she used to answer me that he had always been there. But obviously I would ask “How come?” and she would say that I wouldn’t know because this kind of questions were just too big for somebody who was not a saint or in the Muslim vocabulary: A soufi. Well I never really was satisfied with that answer.
Me feeling apart from the rest of my family has become even more difficult now that both my brothers are doing their 5 prayers a day. They used to not practice like me but now they do. I suspect part of the reason is that while I still live in France for my studies, they’ve moved far away on one of the French territories where the muslim community is tighter. You are surrounded by muslims who talk openly about their faith at work or at University and therefore, not believing is putting yourself apart from the group. So again, this is more a community thing than the faith in itself.
In fact the only time when I really did try to practice was when I was around 14 and I read some creationist books we had at home which threatened me with going to hell if I didn’t start praying. I didn’t even know this was creationism, I didn’t understand Evolution so I stubbornly rejected everything without even trying to listen ( if you start to know too much you’re bound to become a know it all and believe yourself equal to God and become immoral and blasphemous and go to hell etc. etc.) But again… I never felt anything. It was just reading pages after pages of the Qu’ran in a language I didn’t understand, didn’t even want to learn ( my mother has a habit of saying that the arabic language is the richest of the world which is one of the reason we keep on reading the Qu’ran in arab and I simply didn’t think anyone could consider one language above any other…).
Plus, if God was such a great being, how could I understand what he wanted from me? I mean Why did he create us to go to heaven? Was he feeling lonely? No, God is almighty, he is God he cannot feel lonely. So maybe he just created our Universe ( or Universes according to the String Theory), the rules etc… and went away letting us deal with the rest… But again this arose another question. Why did he do it? Did he wanted to make some sort of experiment? See the extent of his power? Wait, God is almighty, he cannot be limited so why would he experiment his powers? Why any experiment at all? Wait, I’m trying to reason with my “human” thought about God. God is above those things, he is no man, no female, he doesn’t have this sort of considerations because he is not human. But if that is so why did he create us in the first place? and it went on and on…
I’ve talked to my parents about my not believing in dogmas…. I’ve yet to tell them I’m an atheist. I wish I hadn’t to do so, but I just cannot live a lie and pretend to go a holy place and pray when I don’t feel anything. I used to refuse to pray because I considered it to be an insult to God to pray half-heartedly, and I anxiously waited for the day I would feel any kind of holy connection which would enable me to really pray with all my heart. My father used to be quite angry with me for that, to which I answered if religion was going to the mosque, do movements with words and coming back home, it was no different than going to school ( except in schools at least you learn things) and I didn’t understand why I should bother. He never answered. I personally believe he doesn’t feel anything either, he just does it out of habit or education probably.
The fact that I’m an atheist however doesn’t mean I reject all the teachings I’ve received ever since I was young. Lots of things regarding morals and attitudes of lives, I took them from my mother who took them from reading religious books. I don’t believe in all the fairytale things, but I learned a great deal about life from her. She is the most devout person but also the most tolerant and this includes Atheists I know ( you see in France you will never have any problem finding atheists outside your family. Fact is even who says are Catholics here don’t practice at all except at Christmas and Easter. Once a friend who I thought was a devout Catholic told me she had turn on a Christian radio station and she felt like listening to some cult thing!!! You probably would never hear that kind of comments from Christians in the US). I turned vegan less than a year ago but if I still ate meat I still wouldn’t eat pork, I never drank alcohol and still is not tempted to taste, I never will drink alcohol, never smoke nor will, never took nor will any drugs even cannabis ( I think you call this marijuana in the US) and will never gamble or go to any casinos. And I will still do the Ramadan in the coming years because of the spirit of sharing, of getting rid of material considerations and of moral virtues in general is re-enhanced during the month of Ramadan, but not because of the tales.
I love the principles I’ve been raised to follow, it gave me an a balance, a conduct, I know why I follow them as they back up my own ideals and vision of life. Getting rid of the Jesus legend ( I don’t really know about the prophet Muhammad… Apparently he really existed but since Islam accepts Jesus as a true being when there is absolutely nothing to back up his existence, I cannot believe it either… If he really existed… Well according to what my mother told me, he was certainly a very respectable person and the religion he practiced doesn’t go against that fact. Being a humanist has nothing to do with being a believer or not after all) just allows me to have more freedom regarding moral issues such as giving your body parts after death, homosexual marriages or sexual relations before marriage ( which was understandably forbidden when nobody knew about contraception).
I already had great difficulty telling my parents of my religious doubts… This is gonna be even more “hellish”. I don’t want to hurt them. I know they feel it is their duty to teach me about religion and they will certainly feel this as a personal failure, not that they feel they will go to hell because of that ( by the way, my mother always tells me that it is not possible to know what God is going to decide. It’s not because you don’t practice that you won’t go to heaven and it’s not because you practice that you will. Religious practices is not only a matter of praying it is for the most part a matter of behaving), but their belief is so strong, that I probably have to fight tooth and nails with them.
I will however. I respect them too much to lie. Wow, long comment never posted anything that long. Anyway the bottom line is, you are not alone but I feel for you, because you’re now living in a country in which atheists feel extremely isolated… I have nothing against religion so far as people remained open minded but if you have a 1000 evidences which prove your beliefs are wrong, claiming that theologians, historians, people who objectively studied these things and which have nothing to gain from going against the flow and have studied these things in minute details are telling bunch of lies frankly, it is blind stubbornness.
Comment by La Plume — May 8, 2009 @ 11:09 pm
Thanks for the fantastic comment, it’s good to hear I’m not alone.
Comment by admin — May 8, 2009 @ 11:25 pm