I often challenge holders of mythical religious beliefs as to the true basis for their beliefs, trying to get them to see that the foundation for them is the childhood indoctrination, the cultural conditioning, to which they were subject. I have recognized that I also have a similar history, which led to a lingering magical thinking¹¹, with vestiges even to this day, and to very long period of intense devotion to, and immersion [NPI¹] in, a subset of that, a variation of a major religious ideology. This morning, I realized that my current faith, confidence in human effort, whether scientifically or socially or spiritually, was also founded during that time.
My first home was in the home of my paternal grandparents, in North Palm Springs, California. My grandmother was quite religious, for a long time a Southern Baptist, but, later in life, Pentecostal. I do not remember any brain washing at that time, as my first memories I can access are from the age of three, after having moved three times prior, my Father being a soldier in the U.S. Army.
I am sure, though, that the cultural pervasiveness of god-belief was soaking in to my modeling of reality, because of considerations I had when I was nine or ten years of age. Authoritative books on some subject were often called, “the bible of …”; there were warnings of “god” watching, and such-like. I was also introduced to magical thinking, in fairy tales, and through fascinating shows on television. Those also brought exposure to human effort in Science, and projections of what humanity could accomplish. At times when I did not have access to these views of reality and possibility, I read cartoon magazines, “comic” books, so much so, that I was an advanced reader as a child, always at the top of my class in that skill, and reading books written for adults by the age of seven. Isaac Asimov was my favorite author at that time, and, really, my lifetime favorite, though I hadn’t read anything by him for decades.
I’ll not continue any detailed biography, discussing how all those models of reality played out, in this, but, in brief, in my later childhood and youth, I had fits and starts in religion. In my later youth, I was preparing for a career in Science and/or Technology, but had as a major pastime fantasy role-playing games. In my young adulthood, I considered, and experimented in … “alternative” spirituality, and prepared to go find physical evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, most notably a rumored pyramid along the 30th parallel, not far off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. Soon after that, I took that plunge into ecstatic religion. Eventually, I saw the falseness in that, and finally learned how to apply critical thinking generally, and not just against beliefs contrary to my own. That leaves me as a Weak Agnostic, Strong Atheist, Materialist/Naturalist Monist, Nihilist Humanist.
1. I’ll follow this with a post on the categories of actions, humanistic, magical-thinking, and theistic.
2. No pun intended.
Changelog:
2018-10-19 Added link.
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