I’ve never really engaged with other atheists online before, other than occasionally on Twitter. I’ve always been an atheist and at no point got close to being a believer, so the anecdotes of people who dumped their religion fascinates me because I missed that stage.
Here in the UK I attended a primary school up until about the age of 12 where we frequently sang religious hymns and prayers in morning assembly. I don’t recall ever partaking. I’d silently stand there feeling like an idiot while watching everyone around me mumble, close their eyes and bow their heads. To the teacher’s credit they noticed this but never gave me a scolding.
Following that was secondary school. The only religious activity there was RE, so called Religious Education. The teacher used it more as an indoctrination and talked about God like it was fact. When I asked how we know God exists she compared it with gas flowing in pipes and how we just trust on faith that the gas is there. I was amazed by this analogy and pointed out it’s trivial to prove the gas is there. I was then told to leave the class, which I quietly did. I wish I’d have had the mind to storm down to the headmasters office to complain but I was passively quiet back then.
My view of religion is that it’s a dictatorship, mass docile conformity, patently false and morally bankrupt. Nothing during my school years or since has ever remotely changed my opinion about this and I’m fascinated how otherwise intelligent people get sucked into it. That’s my primary reason for lurking on this forum, to discover more on religion from a sociological and physiological angle.
Cheers, Ant
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