The first reason for me is that church was boring. We had an old, nice man for a pastor who I distinctly remember recycling the same sermon at least three times (“Humble yourself and you will be exalted, exalt yourself and you will be humbled” – clear enough, right? But no, we need a half hour sermon relating this to some crap in the bible). There weren’t any fun activities that were church-related. I hated the boring old hymns and the old geezers I had to stand next to and listen to them sing awfully. My dad once made a joke about communion – “You get a little snack today, kids.” But it was actually a slight motivating factor – the communion bread was tasty. Little did dad know it really was the only thing my brother and I had to look forward to in church at times. Apart from the normal angst at having to get up early, I really hated having to dress up. For what? They say god loves you no matter what, so why the hell do I need to wear a nice sweater to impress him? Oh, it is not about impressing god, it is about impressing everyone else.
I remember a sunday where the ususal reverend couldn’t make it so they had some fire-and-brimstone asshole get up and run the show for a day. He told the men not to “look with lust” on women, for that was adultery. For some reason the phrase stuck with me, and when going through puberty I started noticing breasts on women of all ages, but at the same time feeling ashamed about it. I eventually got over that but it sure was annoying.
The only thing that made church tolerable in high school was the fact that they filmed the services, and I learned how to run the camera. This paid off in college when I easily got a job with the A/V department at minimum wage. Thanks religion!
In late elementary school, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos was on PBS. Now that show filled me with awe and wonder, and explained a lot of stuff that church glossed over or ignored. My jaw dropped at the sophisticated animation (for 1980 or so) of polymerase spiraling up some DNA, grabbing nucleotides, and building an exact copy of the split molecule on both sides. So that’s how it works! Awesome! I want to learn more about genetics! There were many other moments on that show that made things clear and inspired me to learn more. I brought it up in science class in 5th grade, “When I was watching Cosmos the other night, they explained that” and all the other students would roll their eyes, because they’d heard that line before.
In 8th grade I actually read almost all of my chemistry textbook over one weekend, again captivated by how the world actually works, with protons and electrons that have opposite charges, and how the charges seek to neutralize each other in chemical reactions. It explained why salt is a cube, why plastic is durable, and why metal conducts electricity, all at once. You never get this in church.
I had a close friend in high school. We were both extreme science nerds, and took three years of Latin as well, just because it was hard. But my friend went the way of creationism in 12th grade, believing the earth was 6000 years old and that Jesus was coming back after the rapture. At one point I went with him to some church where they had a ventriloquist/puppet operator who told christian jokes, bringing on the awkwardness of feeling obligated to laugh. I was still wavering at that point, and may have come close to making the circular connection in my brain that makes christians feel warm and fuzzy all the time, which they call “being saved.”
But later, I didn’t buy any of my friend’s arguments. He said it all came down to your assumptions, which I have heard other creationists retreat towards since that time. I saw him once after graduating high school, I think, and then pretty much didn’t bother tracking him after that. He was the poster boy of a wasted mind to me for two decades.
College was of course eye-opening. I took genetics, biogeography, anatomy, ecology, and evolutionary biology, and started reading Richard Dawkins’s books. I took a lot of anthropology, and I have to say it was more of a distraction than anything, but it did lead to some good times and interesting experiences. I learned about cultural relativism, which is the belief that cultures need to be understood on their own terms and that all are worthy of preservation and respect. I don’t buy that so much any more, given knowledge of people living under Sharia law, for example. But I did learn about archaeology which is about empirical evidence of past events. I worked as an archaeologist (“field tech”) for a few years after college.
I also took some geology in college, although somewhat late in my Junior year. Had there been enough time, I would have changed majors. The field trips taught me to see things in hills and along roads that my eye had glossed over before. The earth was clearly very old for such complexity to be present, no doubt about it, and I had only seen a very small portion of it. I started reading Steven Jay Gould’s books about that time.
I also had a good friend in college that was as nerdy as me and like-minded about a lack of a benevolent or even interactive god. We used call up christian hotlines and harrass the racist/sexist idiots at the other end with questions about morality that they gave extremely bad advice about. My friend asked if it was okay to have a freind that was a muslim who was gay. The answer was no, of course. I used to go off about design flaws in anatomy at them, such as the fact that the esophagus and trachea cross making it easy for humans to choke, to see if they had any sensible reply, and they never did.
Somewhere in early college I learned about Richard Feynman too. It is hard not to agree with that guy.
And I got into Rush – listen to Permanent Waves sometime.
I should mention a lapse into irrationality I had for a few years. This is embarrassing, but I read Whitley Streiber’s ‘Communion’ and its sequels, and I believed a lot of it, and was scared by it to the point that some nights I couldn’t sleep for fear of aliens hiding in the closet. But who do I have to thank for clearing my head of such nonsense? Carl Sagan. I read ‘The Demon-haunted World’ and was cured.
I got to grad school after my stint as a field archaeologist, and majored in geology. It mostly solidified my well-established atheism, through better understanding of the complexity of the geologic record and deep time required for it. Creationists have no adequate answer for the geologic record – they run away from it, or lie about it.
And of course, most recently I’ve been reading Pharyngula.
I saw my creationist friend from high school at the 20-year reunion, and things were amicable enough. I’m a geologist now, and guess what he is – an accountant. No science for him.
James Stuby
United States
QFT
I love this.
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That’s the best, most succint explanation of that phenomenon that I’ve ever read. Perfect.
When I was a kid, back when the Civil Rights movement was starting to make some progress, my Mom said something that stuck with me. She wondered how many Einsteins and Beethovens spent their lives with no education, working in the fields because that was the only job they were allowed. To this day, the waste of human potential in situations like that appalls me (how many Marie Curies live under a veil in Saudi Arabia?)
When you mentioned your friend, I got to thinking how many potentially great scientists spend their lives doing accounting because they can’t face reality. Not the same situation, though, because your accountant friend did have a choice. Of course we can’t discount the possibility that he actually prefered accounting over a science field, but taking the whole group of kids who are being lied to every day about the nature of reality, it makes you wonder what we are losing.
Thankfully many of them manage to break free and go on to do what they really want to do–including accounting, if that is what they want. But they start off with such a disadvantage.
True, to be a creationist you have to assume that science (with its “assumptions”), which works well enough to fly planes and to run the internet, suddenly no longer works for geology and biology. For some it’s just biology.
And that magic works, not in general, but in your dogma-prescribed manner.
Glen Davidson
Marie Curie? Seriously? Sigh.
@3 (otrame),
I didn’t get around to asking my friend when I saw him recently if he “liked” accounting, but I do have to wonder. He really was into science, and even took some biology in college (a fundamentalist college though – he might as well have learned genetics from Ken Ham), and even said it was “hard.” I think he was referring to anatomy though, and creationists do in fact agree with non-creationists on what to call a femur or aorta, and anatomy would be equally “hard” no matter what your beliefs about it are. Still I think he steered away from science for the reasons you suspect, that he just couldn’t face it.
@4 (Glen Davidson),
To expand on the “assumptions” idea, the one that gets hotly debated is “uniformitarianism” or the assumption that processes observed to take place at a rate today took place at the same rate in the past, at least until you have better data that show otherwise. I contend that this is the assumption that assumes the least.
You mentioned cultural relativism—I find it interesting how commonly the path from ignorance to enlightenment makes a stop at cultural relativism.
A while back I saw a BBC program (on atheistmediablog) where guests were arguing over whether certain sharia law practices should be tolerated or not (I think? May have simply been burkas or other less malign Islamic custom…)—which I found incredulous! I can’t imagine many people accepting that argument applied to slavery, and I was surprised no one brought it up as an obvious comparison. (Or child labor, women suffrage, civil rights, etc..)
A friend sent me this “analysis” of my essay by a christian:
Pretty funny!
James Stuby
Great, great essay. I’ll let other people, more eloquent than me, comment on the more important parts and just say:good call on Permanent Waves. Only 100 more years!
The “analysis” was very amusing, also. Thanks for sharing.
I’m a creationist and I have no problem accepting the geological record. I think what you mean is that fundamentalist Christians who believe the Bible is infallible have no answer for the geologic record.
James, I didn’t see a strong argument for atheism here — or any argument for that matter. It seems to me that the only belief systems you really considered were fundamentalist Christianity and atheism and you choose the best of the two but didn’t really consider any other options.
intelligentdesigner #11
So you’re either (probably) an Old Earth Creationist or (less likely) a Theistic Evolutionist.
Since most creationists are Young Earth Creationists, it’s not unreasonable to discuss them rather than fringe creationists like you.
Of course you wouldn’t see an argument for atheism. James was giving a narrative, not a philosophical argument. But you knew that already.
So which belief systems should he have considered? Catholicism? Mormonism? Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915? Baha’i? Rastaferianism? Pastaferianism? How are any of these better than atheism?
Was with you, James, until you mentioned Rush but I am a forgiving non-deity; so cheers on you.
Tis Himself,
I would not choose any denomination or religion. I don’t think its possible for us to understand what God is so choosing or suggesting a religion is not something I would do. Also I prefer not to have my thoughts restricted by an idealogy and atheism is very restricting and impossible to defend intellectually. However, it is fun and beneficial to belong to a fellowship and that fellowship might be a church, Toast Masters, a belly dancers community or an atheist blog. For that reason, I wouldn’t necessarily try to persuade someone against their belief system. However, I might try an nibble away at a portion of that system if I felt that is was harmful.
Also its not like I am a fringe creationist. There are lots a people like me that can’t apply a name that accurately describes their belief system. I usually tell people I am a deist but that is hardly accurate.
By the way, what would you say is the difference between a theistic evolutionist and an old earth creationist? Is it possible that I could be both?