Atheists and Religious Tribalism
It’s funny, but even though I’m not a believer, I still retain a degree of affection for my former faith. I’m not alone in this, Irish comedian Dara O’Briain shares my feelings. From a recent stand-up tour:
I’m not a religious man. I don’t even believe in God. But still Catholic.
Maybe I’m wrong to do this. Well, actually I don’t think that there’s a maybe in there. But I genuinely hold no dislike for it. I enjoyed my upbringing, which was only moderately religious, and the local religious community that we worshipped with.
I didn’t de-convert as much as I simply realised that I didn’t believe and probably never really had. Like many people, I didn’t have a bad experience realising that Father Christmas (probably) wasn’t real, and it felt exactly the same to realise that God (probably) doesn’t exist.
My feelings are a little like the converse of the famous quote from The Godfather, except that it’s “if you mess with my family, you mess with me”, and my family are my ex-co-religionists.
But, religious tribalism is one of the really, really bad things about religion. Arbitrarily splitting people into Us and Them is not good for society, and I think, deeply unhealthy. So I should probably get over it.
I wonder if, with the space of time, my religious tribalism will decrease. Since only the older generations of my family are now religious, perhaps once they die I will no longer feel a sense of belonging. That would be a little sad, I do like belonging, and I do like them. But it would probably be better not to think tribally.
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While it’s appropriate to recognize the dangers of tribalism, I don’t see anything wrong in continuing to hold some affection for your former faith community. They are a community, a collection of flesh and blood people with whom you’ve had relationships. Your relationships are currently based on shared memories rather than currently shared beliefs. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think you can retain a connection with the community and still avoid the pitfalls of tribalism.
You’re right that you don’t need to be tribal about affection for a former faith - it’s one of those things that easy to do though.
There’s no good reason why I don’t hold them to the same standards as all other religious group, but the fact remains that I don’t. It’s abstractly more than just the people that I know in this group, it extends to the people that I don’t know personally - I’m more inclined to feel a connection, even though, logically speaking there isn’t really one there.
Oddly enough, I was a deist until about a year ago, and have only met a handful of Catholics (I live deep in the South), but — I have this strange urge to respect Catholicism. I think I just like the drama of the art.
It certainly has it’s finer moments. And certainly as the largest and longest lived organisation you have to give it some respect.
I guess I was always an atheist.
My family went to church regularly and send me to these little classes they had for the kids too.. I thought they were just more Winnie the Pooh stories like my mother read to me.
Somewhere around seven or eight while sitting in a pew with the family, I suddenly realized that guy up front was serious - he really meant what he was saying.
Scared the hell out of me. Literally. Scared the “gods” out of me too. On the way out I asked my Dad if I was right - if the minister really did believe this. My father said, “Well, probably” or something like that. I then asked “Do you believe it”? and my father hesitated and said “No..”. I then said something like “I’m not doing this any more!”
My two older sisters piped in “If he won’t go to church we’re not going either!” and that was the end of our church going..
My father told me later that he brought us because his mother felt we should go - though she wasn’t much of a believer either; she just liked the music and the feeling of companionship..