dA, that’s an incredible story. Thanks for sharing 😀 You’re life is much more interesting than mine.

I was raised in a simple Evangelical Lutheran household where my father thought communion was “creepy” and my mother went because they served coffee and cookies afterward. I went through a phase where I tried out a different religion a month, but I eventually realized that I didn’t believe in any of them, I just liked studying different cultures and beliefs.

Thanks 🙂 Culture fascinates me, especially religion. I’m past my religious fan club phase, but I still like to learn, even if I don’t practice.

I don’t like the controlling nature of organized religions, especially the prolific Abrahamic ones. I have trouble wrapping my head around some aspects of faith, specifically how people can accept scriptural literalism and hand-me-down doctrine while decrying perpetrators of genocide rather than divorcing themselves from the passages that inspired the acts. Why do Christians educated in the history of the Church continue to accept the booklist Constantine chose rather than also reading rediscovered texts like the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Thomas, or even the Infancy Gospels?

None of that confusion and dislike of what religion can be used for (arguably what organized religion is for) prevents me from appreciating the beauty of religious texts, though, or even from appreciating how those of faith approach their lives. For example, I find the prose of the Qu’ran to be beautiful, specifically the how multiple meanings can be found within a single passage. Churches have a special place in my heart; they are open, lovingly (and ably) constructed structures filled with light and music. I find the way Odinists completely disregard mortality and free will in favor of a lackadaisical, “it is what it is,” approach to how shitty life can be very refreshing.

I’m ignostic, really. I don’t think anyone has sufficient evidence for the existence of divinity, even personal divinity, and if the qualities of divine beings are to be used as experimental parameters I find the question, “Is there a God, or Gods?” to be untestable on our end, anyway. But I don’t understand my fellow atheists (and even anti-theists) dislike of religious people, though. I don’t understand the theistic, and I think people do stupid (and often dangerous) things because of faith, but that doesn’t mean I dislike the religious, it means I dislike religion and what some religious people do (indoctrinating children, for an on-topic example; there’s a reason the majority of the theistic profess the same beliefs as their parents).

Actually, I find my parents to be much more interesting than I am. They didn’t fight dictators, but they fought “the Man” in the sixties and seventies, even though they now dress like upper middle class suburbanites. They worked in the poetry collection at the University at Buffalo at the time, and had to deal with tear gas, salt shot, and batons on their way to, and at, work. Oh, the stories they tell.