I wonder why it’s such a hard thing to lose one’s religion. I know it wasn’t the easiest thing for me to do, but compared to other big decisions in my life it was sort of easy. Why was I any different than other religious people?
Is religion hard to let go of because it’s a habit?
I don’t think so. A person addicted to smoking can be shown evidence of it causing cancer and other maladies, accept it as truth and still continue smoking. On the other hand, it seems at least some religious people will just reject scientific evidence and reason altogether and continue believing without question. The difference being the smoker accepts the evidence.
Could it be tradition?
That could be. Traditions act as a sort of social identity. Not in that it identifies a society, but in that a single individual can form a personal identity based on tradition, while also feeling like a part of a larger group.
But then tradition isn’t really getting to the root of the question. I think maybe identity is the key here.
If I was to pin point a certain quality that I have that may have lead me to atheism, it would be my ability to feel comfortable in situations in which I feel alien. And I think that was a learned ability.
The first big situation was when in highschool I quit being a drummer after years of being in a metal band. I quit in order to pursue my interest in guitar. Not that big a change, but my band mates quit talking to me and I had to start a new band. Everything I knew for years had been uprooted.
Then there was the disintegration of my family. My highschool sweetheart and mother of my child had left me. This was a big one, but we were able to stay friends and we have a beautiful, intelligent, and thoughtful daughter. But again I had to change my identity. I had to feel alien again.
Also, sprinkled in there were little situations where lessons of change were learned. For example, I learned to never say that I hate a certain type of music, because history told me I would eventually come to like it. I was changing all the time. And soon I began to be so comfortable with being an alien that I hardly ever noticed.
So when I finally came to the decision that I was an atheist, it wasn’t a huge shock to my system. There was no identity crisis. I gathered the information I needed and came to a conclusion. This idea of being good at feeling alien hadn’t really occurred to me at the time, because as I said I hadn’t noticed the feeling. I hadn’t even noticed how good I got at feeling that way. Then I read an article about a study where the participants had been hooked up to a brain scanner. They were asked to think of themselves, others, and their god. When a participant would think of their self, a certain area of the brain would fire, when they thought of another person, a different part of the brain would fire as you would expect. But then, when they were asked to think about their god, the same part of the brain that fired when they thought of themselves fired up. Interesting!
I took this information and applied it to myself. Was I more willing to let go of god because god was part of my identity and I had become accustomed to changing or losing my identity? When religious people hold on so tightly to their god in the face of evidence and reason, are they really holding on to a picture of their own identity?
Obviously, the reasons for the difficulty of letting go of religion are many. Most have been discussed in many places. But I thought this might be a new spin and I’ve been rattling it around for a while. Let me know what you think.[/font]
Is religion hard to let go of because it’s a habit?
I don’t think so. A person addicted to smoking can be shown evidence of it causing cancer and other maladies, accept it as truth and still continue smoking. On the other hand, it seems at least some religious people will just reject scientific evidence and reason altogether and continue believing without question. The difference being the smoker accepts the evidence.
Could it be tradition?
That could be. Traditions act as a sort of social identity. Not in that it identifies a society, but in that a single individual can form a personal identity based on tradition, while also feeling like a part of a larger group.
But then tradition isn’t really getting to the root of the question. I think maybe identity is the key here.
If I was to pin point a certain quality that I have that may have lead me to atheism, it would be my ability to feel comfortable in situations in which I feel alien. And I think that was a learned ability.
The first big situation was when in highschool I quit being a drummer after years of being in a metal band. I quit in order to pursue my interest in guitar. Not that big a change, but my band mates quit talking to me and I had to start a new band. Everything I knew for years had been uprooted.
Then there was the disintegration of my family. My highschool sweetheart and mother of my child had left me. This was a big one, but we were able to stay friends and we have a beautiful, intelligent, and thoughtful daughter. But again I had to change my identity. I had to feel alien again.
Also, sprinkled in there were little situations where lessons of change were learned. For example, I learned to never say that I hate a certain type of music, because history told me I would eventually come to like it. I was changing all the time. And soon I began to be so comfortable with being an alien that I hardly ever noticed.
So when I finally came to the decision that I was an atheist, it wasn’t a huge shock to my system. There was no identity crisis. I gathered the information I needed and came to a conclusion. This idea of being good at feeling alien hadn’t really occurred to me at the time, because as I said I hadn’t noticed the feeling. I hadn’t even noticed how good I got at feeling that way. Then I read an article about a study where the participants had been hooked up to a brain scanner. They were asked to think of themselves, others, and their god. When a participant would think of their self, a certain area of the brain would fire, when they thought of another person, a different part of the brain would fire as you would expect. But then, when they were asked to think about their god, the same part of the brain that fired when they thought of themselves fired up. Interesting!
I took this information and applied it to myself. Was I more willing to let go of god because god was part of my identity and I had become accustomed to changing or losing my identity? When religious people hold on so tightly to their god in the face of evidence and reason, are they really holding on to a picture of their own identity?
Obviously, the reasons for the difficulty of letting go of religion are many. Most have been discussed in many places. But I thought this might be a new spin and I’ve been rattling it around for a while. Let me know what you think.[/font]
