RE: What planted the seed?
April 3, 2012 at 5:27 am
(This post was last modified: April 3, 2012 at 5:41 am by Norfolk And Chance.)
(April 3, 2012 at 4:20 am)pgrimes15 Wrote: Asking "What planted the seed?" is assuming that there was a theism into which it can be planted. Like Mediamogul I have never been a godbotherer because it was never indocrinated into me as a child. I did however have an experience that changed my atheism from something that was in the background and not a major part of my thinking, into something that assumed more importance in my life. When I moved town a few years ago, my children were at junior school (ages 6 and 8). The nearest school to my new house was a Catholic primary school. Upon inquiry I was told in no uncertain terms that the school governors would not consider my children because they had not been christened. The knowledge that my local and national tax paid to build and run this school but my children were denied access because they hadn't had the beads rattled over them made my blood boil. From that moment on I became much more active about secularism. Incidently, my children went to a very good school a little further away.
(Just for info, in the UK, religious groups are allowed to run state schools. The state pays for the construction and running of it i.e. teachers salaries, building maintenance etc. but the board of governors, comprising the vicar/priest, church elders etc. retain the power to choose which children are accepted. Naturally they mostly select those from their own church or, if there are suffficient places, perhaps children of members of another denomination - but no children of atheists unless they are desperate to fill the rolls. A common practice in the UK is for "pretend Christians" to attend their local church for the purpose of getting in with the vicar and their children into the local church school. These state financed religious schools are mostly either Church of England Anglican or Roman Catholic, but there are a handful of Muslim/Hindu ones.)
Regards
Grimesy
I actually thought that catholic schools were church funded. It's pretty outrageous that the government is funding religious schools.
(April 2, 2012 at 7:43 pm)Phil Wrote: But we are all born atheists until we are taught religion. So wouldn't the answer be birth?
No because you are not born an atheist OR theist. You aren't anything.
To be an atheist, there needs to be theism for you to not believe in. But you need to know of theism and the god concept to be able to not accept it. This is not possible at birth.
Atheism begins at the point you are aware that people believe in god, and that you yourself disbelieve it.
You are currently experiencing a lucky and very brief window of awareness, sandwiched in between two periods of timeless and utter nothingness. So why not make the most of it, and stop wasting your life away trying to convince other people that there is something else? The reality is obvious.
