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Religion, my family, and me
So I'm an atheist. I'm the kind of atheist who forgets the dates of even the most secularized of religious holidays. Every year I'm surprised by Christmas. It looks like Easter is on its way. Who knew? Obviously not me. My mother keeps reminding me about Easter dinner, which I've never quite embraced. Not like Christmas dinner, which I've cooked many a time.
See, my mother is a very lapsed Anglican. She feels a vague sort of religious guilt over decades of non-attendance of church services, and every so often talks about dragging me to some high holiday service. She should have been a Catholic, with all the guilt carries, but Anglican she is. Trivia of the me time: her father was a con man/preacher, who had satelite families all over the continent. Her mother though, was apparently a quite devout, humble protestant lady. All self-denial and work, work, work. After my grandfather abandoned them, my grandmother took the family to live with relatives, mostly female. So she went from my grandfather's freewheeling, faux religiousity, to her aunts' hardline, stripped down Anglicanism. This produced my mother and her sister, who are both relatively normal, if riddled with insecurities and various neuroses, and their brother, my uncle, who's an absolute nutter. And I say this as a part-time nutter myself: dude's effed.
The story of my maternal uncle, in miniature: after growing up in a house of repressive women, as their boy prince, he took off to join the army. There, he learned all kinds of useful survival skills, like how to kill a man with his pinky finger, and found Jesus. Not just any Jesus, but the sort that's worshiped at fundie churches who send you around the world doing missionary work, encourage you to beat your wife and children, and tell you that bipolar disorder can be cured through prayer. Lo these many years later, he now sits in the wreckage of what used to be a life, wondering where it all went wrong. I'd always known there was something wrong with him. He was the first zealot I met, and certainly not the last, but even as a kid I knew there was something more than extreme faith going on there. Over the years I came to realize that here was a man who, rather than finding comfort in his religion, was poisoned by it. He'd chosen a strict church that encouraged the kind of self-denial he'd seen glorified in his childhood, and the warrior spirit he'd found in the army. He'd chosen a sect that demanded he nurture the worst parts of himself, along with the best, and one that was ultimately inhumane. When he and his wife divorced, they were shunned. When he went into treatment after losing his mind and assaulting his new family, he was shunned by his new, somewhat milder church. So that's my uncle.
My father is an atheist, like his father before him. They're both very scientifically minded, rationalist, atheists. My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, was an hysterical Christian Scientist. And when I say hysterical, I mean, truly, she pulled some crazy stunts in the name of her god, including allowing herself to go blind. The less said on this subject the better.
I don't think I've had a single positive religious role model in my life. When people ask me if I have doubts, if I ever wonder about there being a higher power, or if I desire the comfort of religion, I can honestly say no. No, I don't have doubts about there being a higher power, because I don't especially care if there is one. I've seen no evidence that a god, or god-like being exists, and that it desires the worship of creatures like myself. And while I have tremendous respect for the role that religions have played in human society, I've absolutely no personal connection to them. I understand the idea of religious comfort in the abstract, but I've yet to see it in action. I have some very religious friends, so it's not as if I haven't met people who haven't been ripped to shreds by their beliefs. And yet, the thought of belonging to a religious order myself seems both like a joke (me? srsly?), and fills me with no little disgust.
So that's a truncated history of religion, my family and me. I don't want you to think I'm broadly anti-religion, like Richard Dawkins and his ilk. I don't hate religion. I just can't deal with it on a personal level, and there's no part of me that wants to. I'm not tempted by it, although I'm interested in religion as something to study. I'm sort of fascinated by religions. I enjoy reading, talking and writing about religions Western, Eastern and other. But no word of a lie, I can barely make it through a religious service, and only by suppressing the powerful urge to run.
See, my mother is a very lapsed Anglican. She feels a vague sort of religious guilt over decades of non-attendance of church services, and every so often talks about dragging me to some high holiday service. She should have been a Catholic, with all the guilt carries, but Anglican she is. Trivia of the me time: her father was a con man/preacher, who had satelite families all over the continent. Her mother though, was apparently a quite devout, humble protestant lady. All self-denial and work, work, work. After my grandfather abandoned them, my grandmother took the family to live with relatives, mostly female. So she went from my grandfather's freewheeling, faux religiousity, to her aunts' hardline, stripped down Anglicanism. This produced my mother and her sister, who are both relatively normal, if riddled with insecurities and various neuroses, and their brother, my uncle, who's an absolute nutter. And I say this as a part-time nutter myself: dude's effed.
The story of my maternal uncle, in miniature: after growing up in a house of repressive women, as their boy prince, he took off to join the army. There, he learned all kinds of useful survival skills, like how to kill a man with his pinky finger, and found Jesus. Not just any Jesus, but the sort that's worshiped at fundie churches who send you around the world doing missionary work, encourage you to beat your wife and children, and tell you that bipolar disorder can be cured through prayer. Lo these many years later, he now sits in the wreckage of what used to be a life, wondering where it all went wrong. I'd always known there was something wrong with him. He was the first zealot I met, and certainly not the last, but even as a kid I knew there was something more than extreme faith going on there. Over the years I came to realize that here was a man who, rather than finding comfort in his religion, was poisoned by it. He'd chosen a strict church that encouraged the kind of self-denial he'd seen glorified in his childhood, and the warrior spirit he'd found in the army. He'd chosen a sect that demanded he nurture the worst parts of himself, along with the best, and one that was ultimately inhumane. When he and his wife divorced, they were shunned. When he went into treatment after losing his mind and assaulting his new family, he was shunned by his new, somewhat milder church. So that's my uncle.
My father is an atheist, like his father before him. They're both very scientifically minded, rationalist, atheists. My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, was an hysterical Christian Scientist. And when I say hysterical, I mean, truly, she pulled some crazy stunts in the name of her god, including allowing herself to go blind. The less said on this subject the better.
I don't think I've had a single positive religious role model in my life. When people ask me if I have doubts, if I ever wonder about there being a higher power, or if I desire the comfort of religion, I can honestly say no. No, I don't have doubts about there being a higher power, because I don't especially care if there is one. I've seen no evidence that a god, or god-like being exists, and that it desires the worship of creatures like myself. And while I have tremendous respect for the role that religions have played in human society, I've absolutely no personal connection to them. I understand the idea of religious comfort in the abstract, but I've yet to see it in action. I have some very religious friends, so it's not as if I haven't met people who haven't been ripped to shreds by their beliefs. And yet, the thought of belonging to a religious order myself seems both like a joke (me? srsly?), and fills me with no little disgust.
So that's a truncated history of religion, my family and me. I don't want you to think I'm broadly anti-religion, like Richard Dawkins and his ilk. I don't hate religion. I just can't deal with it on a personal level, and there's no part of me that wants to. I'm not tempted by it, although I'm interested in religion as something to study. I'm sort of fascinated by religions. I enjoy reading, talking and writing about religions Western, Eastern and other. But no word of a lie, I can barely make it through a religious service, and only by suppressing the powerful urge to run.
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I kind of feel bad about my mom, though, who was basically run out of her mexican catholic church because I was born out of wedlock.
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Heh.
I fucking hate this place.
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On the other hand, when I've been reading a History book about the US or Europe, I'm happy to check 'Hispanic/Latino' on forms for /weeks/ afterwards.
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I'm kinda afraid I come across condescending or rude. It's not that I don't have respect, I just think it's bunch of hooey and I'm really crap at lying.
I can do the theory part but the actual faith is weird to me. Like, alien abduction weird.
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I often find it difficult to explain my atheism to religious friends/relatives without it sounding like I'm preaching or trying to "break their faith" or whatever. Sometimes I worry that I'm too afraid I'll sound like Richard Dawkins (who irritates the hell out of me), and too compromising.
I can barely make it through a religious service, and only by suppressing the powerful urge to run.
I'm usually good at sitting through it all, but there are some aspects of religious services that never fail to turn me off. A few years ago my (atheist/agnostic) parents decided my brother and I should get a feel for what Christmas Eve services are like, since they both had fond memories of the music and everything from when they were kids (my mom was raised Baptist, and my dad Catholic). So we went to midnight mass at one of the bigger Catholic churches downtown that supposedly had a great choir. Well, at one point the priest started saying how everyone should talk to their MPs about banning abortion and gay marriage. Merry Christmas, indeed. Instead of putting money in the collection plate later, my brother and I gave our change to a homeless guy outside.
I can't even talk about the priest from my Grandma's funeral.
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