Childhood

My parents grew up in England in the 1930s/1940s to typically working class families. Religion was still woven into the fabric of everyday life, but skepticism had grown following the two world wars. Fortunately, neither saw fit to indoctrinate me into a Christian belief system, although I went through the usual baptism and primary school education that included all the usual Christian stories, prayers songs etc. I was younger than many of my school friends when the truth about Father Christmas became apparent, and perhaps this helped to awaken a nascent skepticism.

At about 9/10 years of age the local library provided an excellent source of mythology and folk tales from around the world. Not only did I get to read the obligatory tales of Roman/Greek gods, but also the Norse, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Chinese, Japanese and many more. It wasn't too difficult to see common threads, similar stories and themes, even at a relatively early age. Unconsciously I was already an atheist.

At Grammar school we had specific Religious Education classes, but to be honest religion was an irrelevance. I did quite well in the tests and exams but it held no interest for me. During my teens was probably the first time that I'd really reflected on my own attitude to religion, and properly considered myself an atheist.

Religion continued to be an irrelevance for many years to come. My interest in science and many sporting involvements quite honestly left little time to consider religion, philosophy or even politics. One Saturday morning when I was about 18/19 I was getting ready for a cricket match when a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on the door, and I had an experience which has stayed clear in my mind ever since. The older JW asked me to look around and wonder at the works of god. Now ordinarily I'd have just said no thanks and closed the door, but I had over an hour to spare so decided to have a dialogue. Having started a civil conversation the younger JW decided to go and knock on other doors leaving his more experienced colleague to deal with me. Surprisingly the older JW asked me if god wasn't the cause where did everything come from? Big mistake... I'd just been reading an interesting theory about the oscillating universe, probably by Asimov, and he made the mistake of letting me try to explain it! Time flew by as he asked questions and I successfully answered and slowly but surely sucked him into this new world view! Of all the people who've knocked on my door over the years since, none has ever displayed the open minded nature that he did. Occasionally he'd try to revert to questions about god and I'd deflect him into a more scientific avenue, I was starting to really enjoy this! Sadly all good things must come to and end and his younger counterpart returned and displayed the all too common characteristics of the recently indoctrinated, particularly the continual parroting of their texts without regard to what went before. I ended our dialogue by offering to continue at some future date, but he never returned.

Love Bites?

The next appearance of religion in my life was not to be until my early twenties, when I met a remarkable woman and fell hopelessly head over heels, before realising that religion was an integral part of her life. For the first time in my life here was someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, but religion was a genuine obstacle. It wasn't difficult to realise that there was little point in trying to change her views, and my hopes that we could agree to disagree were quickly disabused. As religion had been largely an irrelevance in my life I accepted her challenge to try it and see if her assertion that I'd come to know the 'truth' would pan out. By then I so wanted our relationship to work out that I truly hoped that she was right. Sadly she was later to claim that the reason I didn't find her truth was that I wanted it for the wrong reasons!

For the first time I really read the bible and attended church and mixed with her Christian friends, but, although they mainly seemed like nice people, the promised revelation(s) were never forthcoming. Strangely the real final straw was a conversation where she questioned evolution and the age of the earth, totally unexpected as she was a teacher and it had genuinely never occurred to me that a teacher could hold such views. She suggested that I talk with a church leader who knew more about such things than her, and I duly did, but it had the opposite effect to what she'd hoped. Her church leader displayed a woeful ignorance of evolution and science, and I was stunned that my girlfriend considered him an expert. Both of us really wanted the relationship to work, but the realisation that I could never believe the way she wanted meant that in many ways we trod water for many months until the inevitable breakup.

It was only really that breakup that awakened me to the impact of religion on my life. Previously I'd never considered the preferential treatment of religion in our society, nor the way that the religious try to pressure others into either following their beliefs or giving them undue respect. I'd read about Galileo and the Inquisition, but hadn't realised just how the long arm of the religious continued to oppress others into current times, guess I'd bought the myth of the enlightenment and the era of science and rationality. Back then there was no Internet and most resources to study religion and religious texts were controlled by the various churches, so study of religion was time consuming and quite frankly I had other things to do with my life. Dismissing, ignoring and forgetting the crackpot beliefs was easy, my feelings for a remarkable woman another matter.

More Recently?

One good did come of my failed relationship, and that was my examination of belief, a word I now try to avoid using on my own behalf. All my views and opinions are held on the basis of an evaluation of the probabilities involved. I may not always get the specific probabilities right but adopting a probability model allows me to change them in the light of new data, and reduce the likelihood of having an emotional attachment to any specific idea. Once again religion became an irrelevance in my life.

In the early days of the Internet I migrated my bulletin board activity and became a real advocate, both in my work and private life. It was the Iran/Iraq war that first got me to use the Internet to investigate the Qur'an and attempt to understand the conflict between Sunni and Shia. It seems that all the major religions inevitably see the fragmentation so well understood in the Christian/Western world. It was only after retirement that I started to use the Internet to more fully explore the religions of the world, primarily to better understand those who follow them, but also as an adjunct to my childhood interest in mythology. The more I read the more confirmed I became in my atheism and now even lean towards anti-theism.

The various terrorist threats have become popular fodder for the press, and the dangers of religious fanaticism have become all the clearer to many people all over the world. However, the more insidious threats come from the supposed moderates who outwardly deny their fanatics but take few if any steps to excise them. Without the mass of moderates the message of the extremists would fall on deaf ears and they would receive no support, moral or financial to sustain them. Without moderates the fanatics would have no pool of willing recruits. It's not the fanatics who manage to undermine the teaching of science in schools around the world. It's not the fanatics who manage to get laws passed that favour religious establishments and claim our tax to support them.

It's a common cry among the religious that they are now being persecuted, when the reality is that the rest of us have woken up to the unwarranted privileges they've been given for far too long, and now seek to enact a more equal world. Despite my non acceptance of any of the theist doctrines, I am happy to let others believe whatever they want, as long as they don't seek to impose any part of it on others, nor seek any special privilege not accorded to others. In the same way that they seek the freedom to preach in their religious buildings about the foolishness and sinfulness of non belief and how we're going to hell, then the rest of us expect the same freedom to highlight their contradictions, hypocrisy, and even ridicule their dafter beliefs.