skylights
i love
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2010
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So there's this idea that an apostate is more atheist because they have the experience of rejecting an ideology. This is not self-evident. There needs to be some serious arguments to validate the idea that rejecting one ideology makes your freer than not having it. I think of Ayn Rand, who fiercely rejected the ideology of the Soviets, and in doing so moved into a totally blind acceptance of a different ideology. I grant that an apostate may have more experience with applying critical thought to their world view than a born atheist, but in the conversation I've had with apostates it seems like some part of them still clings to religion in a way that I've not found lifelong atheists to do. One area where is pretty consistently comes up is arguing that god does not matter, that is, even god's existence is not fundamentally important and would not satisfy the toughest questions. I find life long atheists usually agree with this, while apostates usually do not.
This is a really good point.
I went to Catholic school, and we had a joke that Catholic school creates more atheists and agnostics than any other institution.
But the truth is, most previous Catholics still have some kind of attachment to the religion. Either we still say a prayer once in a while, or we still like sitting in an empty church once in a while, or we still like the smell of the overwhelming incense they used when we were children, or we find Protestants particularly annoying. I think old religions die hard. Belief sets connect with us at some emotional memory level that I think is extremely difficult to disconnect from.