(March 14, 2020 at 10:51 am)Dundee Wrote: Atheists may have a Protestant grandfather or a Catholic Grandmother etc.
It may be interesting to talk about our background a bit.
I was raised completely without religion.
We were in a small town that had a church on every corner, but this was before the Moral Majority, and before the Repubs rallied Christians against abortion as a way to trick poor people into voting for them -- in my time it was still considered impolite to talk about other people's religion. (See Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter With Kansas for the story of how this change occurred.)
As soon I was out of high school I fled, and went to places where I could study art and art history. (Chicago, NYC, London, etc.) In those circles no one admitted to devotion beyond a sort of mild family tradition, and atheism was typical.
Eventually, though, if you want to understand art, you have to study the theology behind it. So I was lucky enough to begin learning about religion from its best advocates in history, not the people in the corner church or televangelists.
Because of this, I think I have a different view of religion from most people here.
