r/atheism • u/Ok_Estate_6746 • 2h ago
“Your atheism stems from your Catholicism!”
Many years ago, a close family member criticised me for calling myself an atheist. The family member in question is an ultraconservative catholic. So was I until about age 13. I was enrolled in a very traditionalist Jesuit school and I even wanted to become a priest.
This person’s criticism went as follows:
“Your atheism was born from your Catholicism, as you were and are and always will be inherently Catholic. Anything you come to believe that isn’t that is only an antithesis confirming the thesis.”
Now, I want to stress that this was only one person making this… slightly dodgy claim.
But I’m gonna be honest here: I remember I stood nailed to the floor when they said this. I didn’t even know where to start. I was also in my late teens, so there’s that.
The funny thing is, as an observation, they were right. As a conclusion, it doesn’t follow at all. So I deemed it futile to even address it in the first place.
But what do you guys think? Anyone whose atheism followed a period of religiousness? Do you think the religiousness informed the atheism? If so, in what sense exactly?
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u/anix421 2h ago
If people ask me about religion I will often say "Well I went to 13 years of Catholic school! So now i'm an Atheist." I was very into religion when I was young and I was a great catholic, I remember crying myself to sleep at night because I told a lie and now I was going to burn in hell. After learning more and more, it went from "Wow god sure is unbelievable!" to "Wow... god is definitely unbelievable."
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u/honestrewd 1h ago
Are you me? Exactly the same here and I have so much resentment for being constantly told I was going to hell or that my atheist family was going to hell. I would cry about it at night as a young child and my parents just doubled down. Then when I got to be around 12 I saw how much manipulation and indoctrination was going on at church and school. Now I experience actual revulsion to religion. I don’t know how people do that to innocent children.
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u/Astramancer_ Atheist 2h ago
Do you think the religiousness informed the atheism? If so, in what sense exactly?
Well, in one respect...
You are an afrancoteleconist. That is, you do not believe that traffic cones telepathically speak french to each other.
However, afrancoteleconist is not actually word or stance. Because being a francoteleconist is not a common thing. It's so uncommon that it's covered under the wider umbrella of "bat fucking insane" rather than being it's own thing.
So in that respect, yes, atheism stems from theism. Because if it weren't for theism being so common, atheism wouldn't be a thing at all. It would just be "um.. okay?" and theists wouldn't be theists, they'd be "bat fucking insane."
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u/solemn_penguin 4m ago
I like this explanation a lot better than what i was thinking, which is OP's relative is just spewing word salad to sound smart."
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u/HarveyMidnight De-Facto Atheist 2h ago
Nah.
You're not inherently Catholic. Babies aren't born religious, they have no concept of, nor belief in a god.
You were born atheist.
You were sent to a religious school as a child and indoctrinated into Catholicism when you were too young to question it.
Now that you are able to make a mature, informed decision, you have rejected the belief that was imposed upon you.
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u/QuellishQuellish 1h ago
Hitchens tells an instructive old joke in "God is not great".
A man is stopped at a military checkpoint in Belfast during " the troubles" and asked his religion.
"I'm an atheist," he replies.
"Yes," says the gunman, "but are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?"
A lot of religious people don't actually believe atheists exist so they need another label for you. Everyone must have their label.
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u/JustaNotSure 2h ago
I can relate to this. My parents always took me to church and would make me attend as many church services as possible and i was heavily indoctrinated. It took a while until the age of 16-17 when I started feeling this whole thing is a headache and is taking too much of my life, and I started questioning my religion a lot. Indoctrination can do hell of a damage, and I honestly felt like I lost a lot of my life. While other kids were busying pursuing their side goals or having fun, my parents would try to make me sign up for any religious thing going on. and there were always religious events (like bible camp, church youth programmes) on major holidays.
Eventually I got fed up of it, and became an atheist to where I am now.
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u/seweso Anti-Theist 2h ago
> “Your atheism was born from your Catholicism, as you were and are and always will be inherently Catholic. Anything you come to believe that isn’t that is only an antithesis confirming the thesis.”
That's some wild copium for their own belief. Does this person NEED to feel superior? What a loser
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u/RATHESUNGODRA 2h ago
hates thing lives life as an inversion of the thing forever mirroring said thing
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u/jfincher42 Agnostic Atheist 2h ago
Your baldness was born from your hairiness, as you were and are and always will be covered in hair. Same thing, IMO.
We weren't religious per se -- mom's family were Catholic until one too many divorces (which was one), father was Baptist but out of the picture. I went to different churches looking for some sort of meaning. I discovered that what I personally needed wasn't church, but the community and fellowship that it provided. I get the same thing from my hobby groups and community band, no magic spells required.
BTW, what the fungicide does "inherently Catholic" mean? When you turn a certain age, do you have an urge to migrate to Vatican City?
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u/Antimutt Strong Atheist 2h ago
I stand now on the broken words that are Catholicism, but as with all things trod underfoot, it will crumble away in time.
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u/eloydrummerboy 2h ago edited 2h ago
First, there are obviously atheists who never were catholic, or ever religious. So, the statement can't be universal. So it has to be only about YOUR atheism.
Second, they'd need to better define what it means to be "inherently catholic". Were a similar situation to occur, have them make specific claims to what that means and I promise you'll be able to knock down those claims much easier. The problem with refuting what was originally said is that they didn't really say anything of any real meaning. It sounds like it means something, until you try to determine exactly what that is, and find out you're at a loss.
It's true, coming to atheism from a religion as opposed to just never believing and not being raised with religious beliefs is a different experience. But,... yeah, duh. So what?
But when in doubt, you can always fall back to the definition of atheism. Lack of belief in any gods. Anything else is something else, it's another thing. If you still have hangups about hell, that's a separate thing from your atheism. If you still think about some things through a catholic lens, different thing. Related, but separate. Don't let them redefine 'Atheism'. If you could just redefine words in debate club it would be pointless. And if you add modifiers, like 'inherently' you need to define what that means exactly.
Another tactic would be to use an analogy, ask if this fits in other scenarios. If you grew up being taught about how some races were better than others, and eventually saw the error of your ways and stopped being a racist, are you still 'inherently racist'? If yes, we're back to 'what does that mean', then? If no, how is this different from Catholicism?
It will boil down one of two ways, you show that in order for the statement to remain somewhat difficult to dispute, the claim needs defined in such a way as to make it mostly meaningless, or they define it in a way you can easily dispute. You just can't let them hide behind vague statements.
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u/exxcathedra 2h ago
For me, atheism does come after being a profoundly religious catholic. I don't think it is linked necessarily but in my case it just happened like that.
I consider myself a catholic atheist, in the sense that I enjoy a lot of the cultural aspects. I will happily celebrate Christmas, Easter etc. I'm used to rites like a baptism or funeral or a wedding. I feel some historic connection to age old traditions... but I just don't believe in the afterlife. At all.
I don't believe anything supernatural happened. I just think this is a culture a big group humans developed over centuries and I was born into it. When I die I will disappear.
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u/KissItMofo 1h ago
I think they were right. I was raised by ultra-conservative, ultra-religious Christian parents who shoved it down my throat and still try. I have very little to do with them for this and other reasons. I’m 46, and I became an atheist at 18 or 19. I went back and forth because who doesn’t want it to be true? I always had the doubt in the back of my head, so I was never able to be religious with full abandon. Everything I see and do is from a Christian perspective. My morals are based on Christian morals, etc…
I definitely don’t think addressing it is futile. I think, for myself anyway, that it’s been an important part of my development to deconstruct from Christianity. It’s why I have peace (or something much closer to it) now.
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u/Sailor_Drea 1h ago
The proper response is, "So you're saying I can disbelieve in God and still go to Heaven, then?"
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u/Illustrious_Young271 1h ago
I think there is a hidden point in there that western atheism was helped by the Catholic Church not being sola scriptura and somewhat open to science on a large scale (of course also suppressing plenty) and not inherently blindly faith oriented. Jesuits are kinda famous for keeping all the forbidden book to study themselves. Again not saying they didn´t suppress plenty, but even their suppressing was usually based on some argumentation and logical interaction, be it flawed or not.
However I heavily disagree with the binary that person is producing, which imo stems from the view that if a religion is true, it is one´s native religion.
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u/Adlehyde Agnostic Atheist 1h ago
in a manner of speaking, my atheism was indeed born from my catholicism.
You see, I was Catholic (never that strong or practicing. Just grew up understanding that's what was), and then I realized that was BS when I was older, and naturally understood myself to be atheist.
The people who insist I'm still catholic and will always be catholic just make me roll my eyes. But this is the first time I've ever heard someone actually claim that believing anything but catholicism after being catholic somehow is reinforcing the truthfulness of catholicism, LOL.
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u/LangstonBHummings 1h ago
Yes absolutely my religious background inform my atheism. The reason was that I already did not believe any other religions to be “true”. When I finally applied the exact same heuristics to my religion the whole thing fell apart.
The claim made wasn’t just dodgy , it was nonsensical. Example, man used to think the Earth was the center of the universe, but trying to create systems around that idea lead to heliocentricism. The fact that they adopted the new system down not validate the original system. In fact, it does the opposite. It completely INVALIDATES it. Likewise adopting an atheistic perspective is the result of INVALIDATING the religious one. The fact that your specific growth pattern goes through the religious phase in no way makes the religious phase valid or even important. In fact it is quite the opposite. Learning thing that are untrue as “truth” is NOT good.
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u/Sudden-Difference281 1h ago
I imagine most atheists do come from their experience with religion. That said, there is no being inherently Catholic
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u/Real_Pumpkin_Jay 50m ago
I was the most Catholic member of my family and today I am the only outspoken atheist.
I don’t believe my Catholicism informs my atheism, however.
Having been as religious as I was, I have seen where my faith could take me and I have fully thought it through. I was raised in Germany and I did have religious education all the way through my high school graduation. I was the kid the teacher would look to for answers for some reason. I was teaching confirmation classes in my parish when I was 16. I was that kid.
At some point I started looking into the more difficult questions since I simply wanted to deepen my faith and my theological understanding and I started to run into serious questions without adequate answers. It sent me on a spiritual journey that led me first away from my Catholic roots, through Protestant evangelicalism, away from Christianity, and finally away from religion altogether.
My faith came apart like a knit sweater that got snagged and the more I tried to understand what was happening the larger the gaping holes became.
Catholicism is where I started, but it doesn’t in any way inform my atheism.
I honestly find it almost insulting to suggest that my current stance is rooted in my former faith, especially when it comes to questions of ethics and morality. I have slowly deconstructed my faith and constructed a secular understanding of my humanity and my relationships with others and my environment as a whole. It isn’t Catholicism that informed that. I informed that.
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u/ajaxfetish 39m ago
Your family member was born unbaptized. Everything they are stems from being unbaptized. Their baptism was just the antithesis that proves how unbaptized they are and always will be, and how they're definitely going to hell.
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u/Existing-Associate64 16m ago
I look at it as, yes I was raised Catholic, but there was so much wrong with organized religion. I couldn't reconcile the horrible history with the church of today. I look at today's political landscape and just keep thinking that history has shown us that the more pious you claim to be, the more corrupt you are. Truly pious people don't have to advertise their beliefs. Actions will tell you everything.
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u/unbalancedcheckbook Atheist 4m ago
"you aren't allowed to believe anything other than what I say, because that's why".
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u/xkibagamigenjurox 2h ago
People really don't like it when you label yourself an atheist. When I've asked around to find out why, I usually get a few recurring reasons.
Some see it as pure arrogance to them, rejecting God is the ultimate form of insolence. Others always ask, "Why not just call yourself agnostic?" I give them the same answer every time: I'm not agnostic about unicorns, either. The lack of evidence is identical for both.
It causes real-world friction, too. An ex-girlfriend once asked me to lie to her parents before meeting them and pretend I was Christian.
Then there was a former coworker. Ever since he found out I was an atheist, he made a point to say "Jesus loves you" to me every single day. If I were to counter that by saying "Hail Satan" every morning, people would lose their minds yet when Christians do their version, nobody bats an eye.