I’ve just started reading Alom Shaha’s The Young Atheist’s Handbook, and it’s wonderful. Gripping, moving, funny, thoughtful – all the good things.
In the introduction he talks about “things in primary school which made me suspect that I had gotten a raw deal in having been born Muslim.” Other kids didn’t have to go to a religious building after school; they didn’t have to fret about being “good Christians”; their lives didn’t revolve around religion – plus Jesus sounded like a lovely man.
I couldn’t even read ‘our’ holy book because it was written in Arabic and, according to our local imam, all it seemed to say was that we should be really, really scared of Allah and that anyone who was not a Muslim was going to burn in the fires of hell for eternity. [p 13]
Not an attractive takeaway for a child, or for anyone.
There was a lot of Christmas stuff at school, and it was fun –
…a general having of the kind of fun that Muslims never seemed to have. The Ayatollah Khomeini once wrote, ‘Allah did not create man so that he could have fun’, and at times it felt to me like this was the dominant theme of Islam – the forbidding of fun. [p 13]
In chapter 2 he mentions being brought up, like many children,
with the notion that there is an invisible, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful supernatural being who would reward me if I was ‘good’ and punish me if I was ‘bad’. There was surely a period in my childhood where I believed this… [p 45]
I love that ‘surely’, because it’s something I puzzle over, too. I can’t remember ever really believing it, so I have to suspect I didn’t. I think if I had ever really believed it, it would have been a big enough thing that I would remember it. Instead I remember things like Howdy Doody and Clarabelle.
Makes one wonder what Khomeini was like as a child. It is difficult to conceive that he had a childhood.
Maybe he had a madrassa, instead. That would do away with any childhood.
I certainly remember believing it. I can’t imagine ever forgetting it. Horrible oppressive stifling feeling, weighing every action against how angry it will make god. The immense guilt every time time you do something “wrong” (wrong being an arbitrary term that could apply to almost anything, depending on which pastor or teacher or deacon was evaluating your behavior at that moment). As the son of “good Christians”, I would like to assure Alom that the grass was no greener on our side of the fence.
Ah – that’s exactly what I mean. I would remember that! I do remember hating the externals – church etc. Meanwhile the whole god thing just didn’t stick. It also didn’t attract – not even a little bit.
Religion. Screwing up people since .. who knows?
Islam, one of the very worst of all religions.
Not unique,
But taking hatred and misogyny and general excrement-up-ed-ness
To the very ~nth degree.
(Is that correct usage of the ~ tilde thingummy? Hope so, hope yu’all know what I mean and get the gist if not.)
There is certainly nothing attractive about it. The sick thing about being raised that way, is that you aren’t allowed to know there is any other way to think. That was all there was, we went to church, christian schools, missions trips bringing “The Word to the heathens”, I gave “my testimony” in churches around the province to get donations for my parents missionary work. I ate, slept and breathed religion.
Its the reason that I became a vocal Gnu Atheist when I finally got free, even though it meant that my family would no longer speak to me. I saw the abuse heaped on the children of “good christians” firsthand, I know how much damage it causes. No one should ever have to grow up that way. Religion poisons everything, Hitch was absolutely right. So-called moderate christianity is no exception, in its way it is every bit as bad as fundamentalist islam.
Sorry, went off on a bit of a rant there, I’ll shut up now. Just when I see something like “they didn’t have to fret about being “good Christians”; their lives didn’t revolve around religion – plus Jesus sounded like a lovely man.” I can’t help but want to correct a few misunderstandings. There is nothing lovely about it.
@ Dave #6
I don’t think for a second that Shaha is actually saying anything in support of xtianity here – he’s recounting what it felt like to him as a school-age child in predominantly-C-of-E England. There are huge numbers of schools in England (many in Scotland too, don’t know about Wales and this is probably very different in Northern Ireland) where xtianity is relatively mild stuff – all about being nice; having tea with the vicar (if you live in a posh neighbourhood) or refraining from shoplifting or tagging (if you live in an inner city). OK I’m being a bit facetious there, but essentially you get a lot of nicey-nicey xtianity; all nativity plays with fluffy angels, and no fire and brimstone or guilt trips. It’s also pretty rare here for a family to do the whole all-church-all-the-time plus mission trips thing here – not saying it never happens, but it’s unusual. A child in the UK typically has no idea that the hellfire Southern Baptist stuff I read about in the US even exists. Yes there are other flavours of bullshit here too, but they’re less common.
I think Dave may be more the exception than the rule. IANApsych, but AFAIK we very typically remember past beliefs as being closer to current beliefs than they actually were. People going through divorces saying ‘I don’t think I ever really loved you’ are mostly doing the same thing. And people who switch political parties also tend to think their past beliefs were more moderate (read: closer to their current beliefs) than they actually were.
Keeping a journal mitigates this somewhat. It’ll be very interesting to see whether the current internet generation avoids some of the self-delusion we old fogies experience, due to the prevalence of saved-for-eternity-on-the-internet video. It will also be interesting to see whether avoiding this self-delusion is healthy…or not. It may psychologically stressful to consider too many of one’s own 180-degree switches; our rose-colored glasses may be a good thing. Deep down inside, do I really, really really need to know what an idiot 1980s eric was?
@ opposablethumbs
Seeing as my Dad came over from England when he was 18 and my mom’s folks immigrated from the UK shortly before they started having kids, its safe to say that all my “hellfire Southern Baptist stuff” upbringing has roots in Jolly Ol’ England. I’ve got plenty of family on your side of the pond who sound exactly like my folks. If you are near London or Lincoln, I’d be happy to inflict them on you for emphasis. And I don’t recall mentioning the US anywhere, I’m a Canuck. The bullshit is everywhere, and the truly nasty stuff is in your backyard just as much as it is in mine.
I never said you were a USanian, Dave! I just used “hellfire Southern Baptist stuff” as an example of some of the nastiest flavour I happen to have heard of – never said it was “yours”!
Of course there is nasty stuff here too – why on earth would I want to claim otherwise? Just that it’s not the typical experience that most kids are likely to have come across in school, which is what we were referring to wrt Shaha’s book. (especially 30-odd years ago. Yes of course there were some schools teaching the nasty stuff then – and sadly there are more of them now, not less – but yer typical CoE school sells the “nice” flavour of bullshit, which is presumably what Shaha encountered as a child.) And I’m very sorry you’ve had to endure that kind of shit from family.I totally agree that nobody should have to grow up that way.
I know thumbs, I claimed the “hellfire Southern Baptist stuff” as mine to make the point that that stuff isn’t limited to southern baptists, that nastiest flavour comes from everywhere.
And my point is that there is no “nice” stuff. Alom sees christianity as nice relative to islam. And you see the C of E as nice relative to the baptists. And Canadians in general see their evangelicals as nicer than the TV fundamentalists in the states. And it all misses the point that NONE of it is nice!
Its the idea that “this nice mild-as-milk version isn’t so bad relatively” which needs to be rooted out. The C of E vicar is exactly the same problem as Ayatollah Khomeini, because they spring from the same root. If you want to tackle the problem in the order of magnitude, then yes the Ayatollah is capable of harm on a grander scale than the vicar, but they both ultimately push the same hatred and bigotry. The fact that the vicar does it quietly, one home at a time, over a cup of tea doesn’t do him any credit as far as I’m concerned.
In a way it’s the occasional one who manages to be a decent human being in spite of everything that I wonder at the most – why on earth don’t they take one more step and drop the bullshit altogether?
While I can see the appeal a gay-friendly church, for example, has as at least “better” than a hellfire one, it just pisses me off that they won’t utterly repudiate the church altogether. They give the bigots a veneer of legitimacy, of normalcy, that they should not have.
Dave no no no, Alom isn’t saying Christianity is nice compared to Islam, at least not that I know of and certainly not in that chapter. As thumbs said, he’s describing his sense of it as a child. He’s not making a general claim about Xianity there.
He’s not doing an Ayaan Hirsi Ali here.
The book is partly a memoir, and he’s telling a story about what it was like. It’s meant to be subjective.
Yeah, sorry Ophelia, that’s my bad. I did jump to that assumption on my own. It’s a claim I hear too often, and it is pretty much guaranteed to set me off, but that’s no excuse for putting words in his mouth.
How about I just go read the book, before I do any more paraphrasing?
I remember believing in God, but in a very relaxed kind of way, as befits someone brought up by liberal Catholic parents with a pretty good fairly secular education at Catholic schools. I always found church boring, and wondered what my parents meant when they talked about ‘feeling’ different afterwards, but I believed there was a nice God and an afterlife in pretty much the same way I believed in Father Christmas.
I also remember my parents telling me God was everywhere, which I, rather literally, visualised as a life-size outline of Jesus being here, then an amount of space so much smaller than a millimetre next to that he was also here and overlapping that he was here and so on, like an infinite amount of overlapping saviours, occupying all points in space. I think by the time I came round to understanding what they meant in the more abstract universal sense I had stopped seeing any reason to believe in God at all.
eric –
we very typically remember past beliefs as being closer to current beliefs than they actually were.
I kind of assumed that, by default; that’s why I always include “that I can remember.” There is one memory that cuts the other way, which is feeling quite disconcerted at about age 15 when a friend said she didn’t believe in god. Only…I can’t for the life of me remember anything in the way of active belief, and I do think I would if there had been anything…if only because other atheists do. But also because it would have mattered, so I would remember it. I remember what kind of things mattered to me – nearly all of them very silly – and god certainly didn’t. If god stood for anything to me it was boredom. (Mind you, I do remember once making a profound argument to myself that god did exist, which was that Santa Claus was real, so why shouldn’t god be real? I remember finding this quite a clincher. What I don’t remember is being pleased about it. I suppose I much preferred Santa Claus…)
I find it fascinating that Santa always comes up. My folks never went in for the whole Santa thing. At a very young age, they made it clear to me that Santa was a fictional character. I’m sure I remember smugly telling some other kid that I could be sure my parents were telling the truth about god, because they never lied to me about Santa.
I don’t ever remember worrying that maybe the god was watching and I’d done something awful and he’d be pissed, so much…
I mean, I know this sounds boring, but honestly, I don’t think I’d done much the creator of the universe was likely to take real seriously, y’know. And I think I even figured as much at the time. I mean: I was young. I was still developing my talent for real evil, let’s face it.
More seriously, again: I do remember worrying later on about the fact that I wasn’t really buying it, and that was becoming a problem in some complicated way. I don’t think it was so much I was real worried I might be wrong… Tho’ maybe there was some of that in there…
I think it was more: I’d internalized this message that if you couldn’t believe it, there was something wrong with you. Or I was worried that might be the problem… Anglicanism, y’know… Very mainstream, and I think I’m already getting that it’s not so much whether it’s true or not… Somehow believing anyway, weird as that sounds, is nonetheless a virtue, and never mind that elsewhere in the world we’d call that ‘successfully fooling yourself’. God in this system isn’t so much a metaphor as some kind of sick Zen koan. Meditate upon that which isn’t there until you think it actually is, and there, grasshopper, you are now enlightened. Really. Trust us.
And other times I thought: bullshit. That’s just how it’s set up to browbeat you into at least faking it, at least keeping quiet about your misgivings; this is all nonsense, and I bet half the people in the church every week feel the same damned way. But I’d go ’round and ’round
But that was mostly later, in my teens.
In contrast, the earliest thing I remember–from somewhere in the single digits, I figure–is actually a lot more like Alom’s memory. We were attending this community church thing run by a Baptist minister–it was a small town–there was no Anglican church particularly close.
And I remember thinking a lot: damn, but it’s all quite the drag–Sunday School and church both–and why do I have to do this, when I’m pretty sure there’s lots of other people who don’t?
I think also I have to sign myself up as one of those for whom Santa had an impact… at least insofar as my child’s mind put Jesus and Co. in the same general category as Santa Claus pretty early, somewhere in there, too. This was all stuff you were supposed to act like you believed, even though it made incredibly little sense. Talking snakes, flying reindeer, and even a four or five year old or whatever I was would naturally think: wait, what? So… this is all just ‘let’s pretend’, then, right? Except that you’re not quite supposed to let on you’re pretending, but that’s still what it is.
One thing I kinda wonder about, on that subject: that Sunday School, they had these comic book things in there–y’know, life of Jesus, the early Christians, so on…
And seriously, it was all such pulp. Comic books were the perfect medium, really. I wonder sometimes if that helped frame it properly for me, too. I mean, there’s comic books in the corner store got Superman in ’em, and I know that’s just a story, so this is, too, right?
Oh, and the other thing about Sunday School: it really made me squirm, even beyond what normal school did…
I mean normal school–real school, I probably would have qualified it as then–I actually kinda liked some of that. I was good at it, and so much of it made so much sense. I was one of those kids, y’know… Good at math, learned to read fast, so it was all pretty okay, easy enough to get through until recess, at least. At least in primary, anyway. (Elementary, the beginning of high school, okay, got somewhat less fond memories of some of that… bit of bullying in there, but, again, the academic side, I was mostly pretty okay with that.)
But anyway: contrast all that with Sunday school back in my pre-teens… That was… uncomfortable. Boring. Silly. Incredibly repetitive, I remember thinking. The lessons, again, they just didn’t seem to make a whole hell of a lot of sense. And I think I got early that there was this wink wink nudge nudge thing going on, where you don’t ask when certain things just don’t make any bloody sense, or sound just incredibly silly. So never mind how Jonah breathed inside the whale, shut up, go along, it’ll all be over with faster, y’know…
Which really didn’t help with the resentment over just whatinhell I was even doing there.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the whole thing felt incredibly fake to me. I still have a hard time believing anyone really believed, so much. Me, it all felt like some kind of participatory dinner theatre thing, except after breakfast. Let’s all act like we believe all this incredibly cartoonish weirdness for an hour and a bit, because, well, apparently we’re supposed to.
And yeah, I think also I’ve really got to read Shaha’s book. Sounds, actually, pretty much amazing.
I think also I have to sign myself up as one of those for whom Santa had an impact… at least insofar as my child’s mind put Jesus and Co. in the same general category as Santa Claus pretty early, somewhere in there, too. This was all stuff you were supposed to act like you believed, even though it made incredibly little sense. Talking snakes, flying reindeer, and even a four or five year old or whatever I was would naturally think: wait, what? So… this is all just ‘let’s pretend’, then, right? Except that you’re not quite supposed to let on you’re pretending, but that’s still what it is.
Exactly. And this was an issue with me – that’s one thing I do remember. I remember the killer argument from Santa, and I also remember later being very irritated that my elders – mother and two teenage siblings – had lied to me about it. That implies to me that I must have asked them about it – “So… this is all just ‘let’s pretend’, then, right?” – and that they kept swearing that no, it wasn’t. That was what made me so irritated – I asked, and they lied to me.
I thought that was wrong, and I still do. But the funny thing is – Dan Dennett said in his talk in Orlando that most people don’t think that’s wrong, and that he doesn’t. Having said that he decided to ask for a show of hands – and mine was almost the only hand up. (I think there was one other.) I was surprised, not least because I think Dennett talks about it in Breaking the Spell. I do think there’s a connection, and I do think it matters.
I found out a recently that a family friend who is Christian tells her daughter that Santa is “just pretend” for the very reason that the friend questioned the existence of god when she learned that Santa didn’t exist.
I thought it was interesting that she didn’t make the logical leap to not believing in god. The family is fairly religious, though, so it makes sense that she didn’t.
In my case, I’m not sure I ever believed in god, so Santa had nothing to do with that. I actually don’t remember ever believing in Santa, but I do remember pretending I did just in case he was real and because I had a younger brother and didn’t want to ruin things for him. I might have believed when I was really young (preschool/kindergarten age), but I can’t remember that far back.