Since people will presumably be reading this blog to find out more about me, I may as well stick something up about my attitudes and feelings towards religion, since in my experience it’s something that people get quite het up about (way to play down the Israel / Palestine conflict, Evans).
In a nutshell, I’m not religious, but I don’t mind if other people are, particularly.
In a slightly larger nutshell . . . I was bought up in a moderately observant Church of England household, but I can’t ever remember really believing in God. My earliest memories of church are during the prayers, of esentially “daring” God to come out and show himself, if he was there. Even at that stage, I was probably about 70% convinced that there was no-one at the other end of the line. I didn’t talk to anyone about it, because I felt vaguely embarrassed, like I’d uncovered a secret that I wasn’t supposed to know.
I was 11 when I first heard the word atheist, in a Religious Education class, ironically – a lad called Tim mentioned that he was an atheist, and the teacher made him explain what that meant (not in a harsh way, to be fair). I felt genuinely relieved – it wasn’t a dirty secret, it was OK, I wasn’t weird. Since then, I’ve never made a secret of it, largely because from then I never felt I had to.
I’ve never felt persecuted for being an atheist. I’ve never felt betrayed or angry at being deceived into a religion. I don’t feel like I’m turning against anything, because I don’t feel like it’s anything that was ever really there. I don’t believe in God because I don’t feel like I need to – I can’t explain everything in my worldview, but there certainly isn’t a gap big enough to fill with a God.
I tend to get on pretty well with religious people who don’t try and shove it down your throat – which in my experience is most of them. I married one, after all. Maybe I’m lucky to live in the UK, where most people are pretty laid back about their faith; I think a very vocal minority give the majority a bad name. I can (and have) had long, respectful conversations with Christians, Sikhs, Jews, and Muslims about why we believe what we believe and why we stand where we stand.
My main failing is that can get a rant on when religion starts imposing itself onto public life, particularly education. I’ve (inadvertently) upset people when I’ve started banging on about faith schools, creationism and the like – because I feel strongly that religion doesn’t have a place in schools. I respect people having different opinions, I just sometimes fail to get that across in the heat of the argument. I can be guilty of enjoying myself a little too much if we get Mormons or Witnesses knocking at the front door (particularly if I’m hungover), but in that case I feel like they’ve gone out of their way to encourage debate. I’m not one of those people who feels the need, if someone mentions that they’re religious, to immediately go out of my way to challenge them and look for an argument – I’m always up for a debate if someone wants one, but I won’t start it. I think it’s more important to get along with people than to challenge and possibly alienate them at every opportunity.
So that’s a little bit about me. I suppose I’m putting this out there as a contrast to the angry atheist types with their traumatic growing up experiences, just to show that some people don’t define themselves by what they don’t believe, and can maybe even be quite easy-going about it 