I came home and found out she had been getting acupuncture. And I looked her right in the eye and said, "Isn't that against your religion? You think Yoga is evil. How are you getting acupuncture?" And we were in the middle of this nice Italian restaurant, and my parents just lost it.
After my dad backed off on the issue of tuition, I very slowly got them into the idea that their son wasn't going to be a Christian. I was dating a non-Christian girl during
freshman year, and I didn't tell my parents about it for nearly two months, and then I told them that I was dating her but trying to convert her. Then I had my sister back at home who was listening to the dinner conversation and knew what was going on, and she was
advising me about whether it was safe or not to bring things up with my parents, and she would tell me things like, "Cool off a little, wait a week or two before you tell them anything else."
I was constructing these horrendous lies that I still, to some extent, live in. I was lying to them for three solid years about what I was doing on a daily basis. But they've gotten to the point
where they don't ask questions so a lot of those have abated. The problem is that religion is really the only thing that I've ever disagreed with my parents on, but
it's so encompassing that it touches everything. I justified my agreeing with them as a child because I didn't have access to other material. But they are full-grown adults, and I don't know how they can still hold that the Bible should be taken 100 percent literally.
I'm deeply cynical of Christians. I wouldn't say that this is justified all the time, but if someone says they are a Christian, I roll my eyes. I don't trust Christians. I'm not skeptical in the same way of Buddhists or Muslims, for
example, in the same way that I am of Christians because I haven't been hurt by them in the same way. I don't agree with them. All religions can take really good forms and really
hideous forms. When someone says they are religious, I try to find out where they are on the spectrum, but there is a strong prejudice in my mind about what it means to be a Christian and the attitudes that Christians
have that is seared into me from my upbringing. I have a natural aversion toward
Christians that I realize is unjustified. I should really figure out what type of Christian they are first.
I guess I always forget that evangelical Christianity is one small sliver of
Christianity that is a phenomenon of the last 80 years, on the east coast of the United States. I wrongly connect evangelical Christianity to all Christianity. I was in Munich, and all the beer gardens are run by monks, and I couldn't believe it because in my Pentecostal background this was impossible.
One denomination that I have a lot of respect for is the Catholic Church. There are certainly hardliners, but the majority of Catholics I have met and a lot of Catholic literature I've read feel the need to justify their faith on an intellectual and spiritual basis, and I think that keeps them in check. It's not just, "God spoke to me and told me to do this." This justification keeps you from acting on the complex prejudices that we learn from growing up wherever we grow up.
Over Christmas break, I thought about going to church on Christmas Eve, and if I had been at home and not in a big city where I didn't know the churches, I probably would have. So I wouldn't say I'm Christian, but I'm certainly not an atheist. I don't think atheism has logical grounds - you can't disprove the existence of God. All you can prove is that he has no influence. By definition, I'm an agnostic.
The student interviewed for this article , a senior engineering major from Northern Virginia, was granted anonymity in order to speak freely about his faith background.
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Other than your incorrect implied definition of atheism at the end (atheism is not that not the belief that no gods exist, it is the absence of belief in any god), this article was great, and in many ways mirrors my own experiences and the experiences of many others.
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I can empathize with many of the experiences discussed here, and I imagine many others can as well. As Marc pointed out, though, atheism does not require disproving the existence of god. Atheism merely results from the realization that any existential declaration bears the burden of proof.
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I relate to much of your story. You might be interested to check out the Freethinkers at Virginia Tech website: http://www.freeatvt.org/ . Come to our next meeting Thursday, April 23 at 7:30PM in Squires 147. We will be watching a cool short film called "Here Be Dragons" and talking about critical thinking. There are a lot of people in our club with a similar background.
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I can relate to your situation. I attended VT in late 70's and grew away from God and Jesus at that time. I think many college students experience this. Note colleges are generally liberal where students begin to explore their new found freedoms. However, there is spiritual world at the ready. But we, as physical beings and critical thinkers, can have problems relating. I didn't rediscover this until 30 years old and 1 child. My faith in Jesus has returned helping me raise a family of 4 children... and stay married too. Now that I'm 50, I can wholeheartedly suggest you stay open minded in your faith.
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