You think you guys can help me out with a paper (of all religions/non-religion)?

[Annik]

I started my first day of classes today and I only had one today: Psychology of Religion. Now, the content of the class (for right now) is irrelevant, but I need help with something. I'm supposed to write a paper on my subjective experiences with religion growing up. I'm also supposed to interview my parents to get their points of view to be considered when writing the essay. The problem is that I can't have a civil discourse with my parents about religion. They don't like that I'm an atheist and I'm convinced my father thinks it's a 'phase'.

Here's where I need the help. I was wondering if you guys would like to share some of your experiences with religion and how it shaped you growing up. This paper isn't due until mid-October and I haven't read the sections of the book that will help me to write this essay (We get into that section after the first test), but I wanted to ask for your input and permissions first thing. If anyone is okay with this, I might PM them with some occasional frequency about the subject once I get closer to the due date (probably the beginning of Oct.).

Non-religious upbringing stories are just as important to me and my paper, so I'd love it if everyone shared.

If you don't feel comfortable posting it, my PM box is always open. If you don't feel comfortable sharing anything, that's fine, too. No pressure.




Thanks, guys.
-Annik

[cratehorus]

I think a great subject to write about, for a psychology of religion class, would be "Cargo Cults" or airplane worship. And how it relates to the major world religions and how it differs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7RA4UnEuQ0&NR=1

A cargo cult is a religious practice that has appeared in many traditional pre-industrial tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures. The cults focus on obtaining the material wealth (the "cargo") of the advanced culture through magic and religious rituals and practices. Cult members believe that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors. Cargo cults developed primarily in remote parts of New Guinea and other Melanesian and Micronesian societies in the southwest Pacific Ocean, beginning with the first significant arrivals of Westerners in the 19th century. Similar behaviors have, however, also appeared elsewhere in the world.

Cargo cult activity in the Pacific region increased significantly during and immediately after World War II, when the residents of these regions observed the Japanese and American combatants bringing in large amounts of matériel.

[ib.me.ub]

Basically raised with no religious experiences, or very few. Both my parents apparently beleive in god, but never forced it upon me. I was taught to have strong moral conviction in basic 'what is right' and 'what is wrong' terms.

I think we all know what is right and what is wrong.

Honesty was a big thing for me when I was younger, somethimes to my detriment, as I would receive punishment. I suppose I never learnt, or chose to lie about things!!! But i suppose we all learn eventually.

[Angrboda]

I'm also supposed to interview my parents to get their points of view to be considered when writing the essay. The problem is that I can't have a civil discourse with my parents about religion. They don't like that I'm an atheist and I'm convinced my father thinks it's a 'phase'.

Perhaps you could ask them to write out their responses to a short list of questions. (Unbiased ones.) Or if you and they live near a church they still attend, ask the pastor to assist/referee.

Here's where I need the help. I was wondering if you guys would like to share some of your experiences with religion and how it shaped you growing up.

I don't know that I can help much, though I'm at your service if I can.

My growing up stories are complicated by the fact that early on, I developed severe delusions. While they're not strictly religious, my growing up stories are plagued by there being two sets of them. The one, the side I showed to the world, and didn't include the crazy elements (I had paranoid delusions, and this was my way of avoiding detection). The other reaches deep into my madness, in which God and I were on first name basis, and he was clearly my second, yet I owed him for favors given. Somewhere between my early childhood and adolescence, the 'sane' track lost the religious, Christian elements it had. I don't know how or when I lost my faith, but by my early teens, it wasn't there. I always believed that my parents didn't love me, and that after my sisters were born, four years before me, my arrival was greeted as a mistake. I don't think this was the signal event, but once my sisters were confirmed, my mother lost all interest in church and my religious education. Needless to say, I saw this as simply one more example of how I didn't matter to them. If God hadn't been completely gone by then, he was fading quickly. The ice had already frozen by my mid-teens. In the middle of a screaming match with my mother, I made it plain. She told me to go to hell, and I retorted that she could go to hell herself, but that I didn't believe in any of that "God shit."

And so it went, and high school came. I was an extremely shy and retiring person, but strangely enormously popular. I can't count the number of cliques that counted me as one of their own, from jocks to dirts to brains and everything in between. I managed by being witty and weird, using enigmatic presentations to hide my anxiety and insecurity. And I nearly flunked out of high school, as I started having regular depressions my second year. So my final year I had to pour myself into my studies to make up the ground lost the year before or I wouldn't graduate. One of the classes I loved best of my entire high school experience was a class in Asian history. When we came to discussion of China, the teacher read some selections from the Tao Te Ching. After class, I asked him if I could look at the book. I don't recall what initially sparked my curiosity, but he offered to loan it to me, and I accepted. That night, I went home and read it cover to cover, completely absorbed by it. Everything in it struck deep chords in me. Things that I had felt, but had not words for, suddenly had words. I became a Taoist that night.

I'm perhaps not the ideal candidate for Taoism, being both cold and intellectual, in a faith that emphasizes compassion and near anti-intellectual mysticism, but I've never been tempted in the least to choose another path. After flunking out of college, I moved to the big city, Minneapolis. I don't recall the dates, but there was a period of 12-13 years in which I considered myself apostatic. Not so much disbelieving as being puzzled by something I didn't feel could be reconciled with my understanding of Taoism. After 12 or so years pondering the matter, I hit upon a way to patch things up by drawing on parts of Buddhism and parts of Sun Tzu. I'm not sure in hindsight whether my solution was valid, or whether I had just wanted it so badly that I let myself believe it was. You might have noticed that I have not talked about my Hinduism. Part of that is intentional. I'm very insecure about my Hinduism, and parts of it intersect with my madness in ways I'm not willing to share. But what I can share is that my Hinduism began in college. At first, it was just recognizing something essential in poetry and art, something that spoke to a part of me that needed to be acknowledged. Perhaps it's simply my split between being cold as ice and being rageful and uncontrolled. Perhaps it's something more complex. As time went on, and I learned more about the goddess, the more it struck me as something essentially right, just as my Taoism had, but also wholly other. An other that I had been missing. Looking back on things, I think I might have settled my conflict with the Tao by acknowledging the goddess, but at the time, that path wasn't open to me. It's only been recently I've been even minimally open with others about my Hinduism. And there is much I don't know. I feel so ignorant. Perhaps I am reaching back in time to that shy high schooler. Or perhaps I'm just looking for a poetic way to end this.

Maybe I should just end it thus.

[Annik]

Thank you for your very thoughtful response. This should help me a lot. As for asking my parent's pastor... Well, they don't really have one right now. I appreciate the suggestion. I'm lucky to have a professor who is sensitive to these issues and understands my predicament. :3

[kılıç_mehmet]

What exactly are you going to ask people?
I might be of help, but I'm not sure how interesting my story could be.

[Faith No More]

Do you want more stories, Annik?

[Angrboda]

Looking back on my previous post, an element of my story that I didn't mention may be of interest to you. Partly because my atheist groups like to read books about the psychology of religion, and part because I have a life long interest in understanding the mind, I've read a good bit about certain theories concerning the psychology of religion this past year. Part of that is spurred by my interest in the mind, but part is that I just love religion in all its dimensions, although metaphysically I am a materialist. But I enjoy learning about and exploring other religions purely for its own sake. I'm currently meeting regularly or intermittently with groups devoted to channeled entities, a group of psychics, mediums, and healers, a heathen bible study group, a "secular bible study group" (a mix of theists & nontheists), and a Buddhist book club. The Buddhist group is motivated by my interest in certain intersections between my own theories of mind and Buddhist doctrine, and while I tell myself that I'm in some of these groups as an observer only, a sort of cultural anthropologist, that would be asserting a degree of detachment that is untrue. Not that I'm willing to give up the mantle of materialism, but I find myself at home in groups with diverse religious or metaphysical views.

Anyway, I promised an interesting bit, and have yet to deliver. As noted, I'm currently learning about Buddhism. However, this is not my first encounter with Buddhism in a deep way. I have "flirted with" Buddhism several times in the past. To say I flirted is an understatement. I drank the Kool-aid. Several times in my life, I went whole hog into becoming a Buddhist. But each time it lasted only a few weeks. Having lived with a mental illness for a long time, I've learned the skill of "self monitoring" which one uses to detect changes in one's thinking to assess whether there are symptoms that need to be treated or watched. As a consequence, I'm a pretty good witness to my own state of mind. And each time that my latest fling with Buddhism had ended, it was clear that my thinking had been abnormal. During those several weeks of conversion, things Buddhist and religious things in general took on a heightened importance for me. An importance that just vanished like a bubble bursting at the end. It was clear in hindsight that my religiosity had been the result of an altered state of mind, some errant brain chemistry that eventually righted itself. I've never considered those episodes to have anything to say about my normal religious experience, but perhaps I should. (If it weren't for that SEP field around my own beliefs. Not coincidentally, that tendency to find meaning in otherwise random data, which was part of those episodes, is called 'apophenia'.)