My Religious History

I figured the question of my religious history will have to be answered at some point, so why not start now?

I was raised Catholic.  Up until I was about 12, I went to mass every Sunday and every religious holiday without fail.  I was so devoutly religious as a child, that I believed a Sunday school teacher who said that Mary had visited her once, prayed to be the next "virgin mother," and was extremely disgusted with my brother when he decided that he was atheist (I was 8 at the time, he was 12). 

So what changed?

Well, my family was extremely scientific anyway, and my parents raised me to think.  My mother has a PhD in Differential Equations, and my dad has a PhD in Statistical Forestry.  We talked about everything, and I learned a lot about how to interact with other people and various other things from advice they gave my brother at the dinner table, well before I ever encountered the necessity for knowing. 

So when I entered 8th grade world history, and we started at THE VERY BEGINNING -4.4 billion years ago -, I started to wonder why the bible didn't begin that way too.  This was just a beginning, though, because I did not really reach that moment where things changed until my 9th grade biology class, where the facts of evolution paired with this history sort of started to scream at me. 

It was essentially really close to that moment where I learned Santa Claus wasn't real.  Just because one of them wasn't real, meant that all the rest like the easter bunny, the tooth fairy, etc., also weren't real.  So when I learned that the beginning of the bible was completely false, I began to wonder about the credibility of the rest of the book.  A little research and some thinking, and it became completely evident that the book wasn't absolutely true, and thus, believing in the being it proclaimed to be real did not really make any sense. 

I pretty much still did a lot of research on the topic and paid attention to news, but it wasn't until the shooting here at Virginia Tech where I decided I needed to really thoroughly examine my views.  I was stunned and worthless as a person for a couple months afterwards, but once I got past that stage of my life I started to develop my knowledge and interest in secularism, humanism, and freethought, and so here I am, president of the Freethinkers at Virginia Tech, and writing a blog. 

How Can I be a Conservative Atheist?

You may be feeling a little confused about the title of my blog (Maybe even as confused a G.W. Bush here).  How the hell does someone be an atheist and a conservative AT THE SAME TIME!?!??!  Well, that is an excellent question!  To explain it, I will define atheism and conservatism respectively. 

Atheist is literally a - theism, meaning anti-theism, or the lack of belief in a god.  This may seem relatively self-explanatory, but it really isn't.  We typically categorize atheim into two types. These are big A atheism and little a atheism.  Big A atheism asserts:

• that atheism is 100% correct
• the world would be better if everyone agreed with that
• atheists should actively attempt to deconvert people, for the greater good of the world

 Little a atheism is the lighter version, and consists of the following basic ideas:

•  acknowledgement that they may not be correct, but are still assertive in their opinion that there is no god (without this assertion they would be agnostic)
• while other religions are wrong they are not necessarily a bad thing
• no active deconversion movement is necessary

I would categorize myself as a little a atheist.  While I do not think an active deconversion movement is useful, since people who would become real atheists or agnostics must reach that conclusion by serious contemplation and though, I think that it is extremely important that an active skeptic community be around in order to help people who have reached that level of thought but have nowhere to turn to.  I will explain this more thoroughly in later posts, but I do not want to stray too far from the present topic. 

Now, conservatism is not what most Americans seem to attribute it to be.  When I claim that I am a conservative, I mean entirely by the standards of government size.  Conservatism has more to do with the size of government than religious views.  Religious views are simply a tool for politicians to attract people who do not necessarily think deeply enough into the workings of government to understand real conservatism.  

I do not believe that socialism or collectivist systems have been show to be effective economically or for quality of life.  This includes government health care, which has been shown to be less effective than the current (although flawed) American health care system, because of (among other reasons) longer waiting times, fewer cancer survivors, and less comprehensive options for treatment.  Since the red scare, the word "socialist" has been a bad word.  I'm not sure I really agree with that.  Though the Obama Administration and Democrat-run congress pretend that their policies are not socialist because of this fear (The government is nationalizing companies among other things - that's socialism), they really are.   There are also lots of other bad ideas or fears that came out of the red scare which I will also discuss in detail at a later point in time. 

So I hope I described well enough exactly how I can be a conservative atheist.  I know most people I encounter in my life seem to be quite shocked by this, but these are my views and I will not pretend to be anyone else. 

I think that it is really important that people understand that just because they belong to a specific group of people does not mean that they have to agree with all of those people on all topics (or even most topics), or even that they need to be part of a certain political party.    Just because you are black does not mean you have to be a democrat.  Just because you are religious does not mean you have to be a republican.  I encourage people to choose a party based on, not specific elements of their platforms, but rather the general goal of the party which leads to those specific elements.

Also, since this is my first post, I want to emphasize that all posts on this blog are entirely my opinion, and that I acknowledge that I may be wrong and hope that people will correct me in those cases.  I hope you enjoy the read!