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I was nine years old when I became an atheist. Here's what happened. I realise that I might be committing social suicide here since so may Soylentils have faith. I am not criticising you or trying to undermine your beliefs. I understand that all minds work differently. This is about the one I was born with and stuck with until I die.
First, I'd like to tell you about my home life. I'm Scottish with Boomer parents. My Dad comes from the part of Scotland where the Free Church of Scotland and various factions reign supreme. My Mum comes from a place where "Catholics" and "Protestants" were always at war (sometimes to the death on Saturday afternoons at football matches). Both were lucky enough to benefit from the social mobility offered to Working Class (I hate class-ism) people after the Second World War and both got good educations, becoming well-paid professionals and they now enjoy a comfortable retirement. They didn't fritter.
My parents, Dad especially, was keen for me to be well-informed and to use my own brain to develop my own world view. Mum was keen for me not to be stuck in the prejudices and ignorance of previous generations. We deliberately left the areas with the bigotry. Dad was keen to explain to me about all people the world over being exactly the same inside despite their skin colours. We had a picture atlas we used to read and it had explanations. Mum wanted me to understand about sexism and religious bigotry too.
The Scottish state education system had (and probably still has) a legal obligation to educate pupils in the ways of the Church of Scotland (unless they're not Christian...) and it was the responsibility of all teachers. This is what is absurd about living in a country with an Established religion. In England, of course, it's the Church of England. They're different education systems but the Union imposes its religions on the populace. Yes, it has been watered down and you're allowed to be different. The short story is that all schools have regular assemblies, which are gatherings of large groups of pupils where they are addressed by members of school staff or religious leaders from local churches on moral, ethical or social issues. There may be prayers said and hymns or secular songs sung.
I have some vivid memories of being a child. When the world is new to you, it's mysterious. I remember thinking about the stuff things are made of. Air is different to water, which is different to wood, which is different to metal and rocks and so on. What's magical is the stuff that people are made of. It lives. So do animals and plants. Where do they come from? You can't (or couldn't) make an animal or a plant. I used to wonder if you could. Plants and animals come from their parents. They came from somewhere. There were these stories that they told us about someone creating them from nothing. Who created the someone? He just is.
When I was nine years old and it was coming up to Easter, our teacher was explaining the story of the Resurrection from the Bible. We were all sitting around dutifully listening. This teacher was a young woman who could be quite strict with us and she was quite intelligent.
I'm one of these awkward people who usually doesn't just believe things because my brain tends to think about things. I'm always trying to figure out how things work, or how they might work, and whether I could make one myself. We used to watch David Attenborough as a family and I learned about Evolution and Natural Selection.
So Jesus gets crucified and dies. They put the corpse in a cave and roll a huge boulder in the mouth of the cave. Apparently this boulder was so big that no one would be able to move it (in direct contradiction to what was just said). I think Archimedes (who my Dad had told be about) might have disagreed too. Three days or so later, Jesus's friends go to the cave and see that the boulder has been moved and that the cave is empty!
Here's where it falls apart. The teacher said that Jesus came back to life and He/God moved the boulder away and that Jesus went to Heaven. Then Jesus reappeared and spoke to his friends assuring them that He wasn't dead and that he had eternal life in Heaven with God and they'd have that too (subject to terms and conditions).
I put up my hand and asked, "How do they know someone else didn't move the boulder when they weren't there?"
The teacher suddenly became very angry. "It was too heavy for anyone to move. It must have been God." End of discussion.
At that point, a penny dropped. These were myths. You weren't supposed to take them literally. They were written to make some sort of point. There are other religions with other stories.
We all had to write something giving thanks for things and the teacher would pick one to be read out at the Easter assembly. Having been rebuked by the teacher, I was feeling ashamed and embarrassed, and what I wrote wasn't up to my usual standard of punctuation and grammar. It thanked all the people in society who take care of us, the sick and so on. I was completely surprised when it was read out at the assembly! It didn't mention God or Jesus once, only human beings who help.
I was similarly sceptical about other things. My Mum tried heroically to keep my wavering belief in Santa Claus going until I was old enough that I wouldn't spill the beans to my credulous peers or younger children and spoil their Christmases. She informed me that Santa takes a helicopter when it's a Christmas without snow. Our house had gas central heating, so no chimney. There was a tiny gas flue. How does he fit in that? He carries a skeleton key nowadays for houses with central heating.
In my teenage years, there were all sorts of media scare stories about heavy metal. I was drawn to it and I very much enjoyed it. I worried about this devil worship stuff. People accused me of being a smelly, gay junkie who worships the devil and eats babies. None of the stuff I listened to was anything like that (OK, so Dave Mustaine was a junkie but he got off it). It was socially and politically aware, and also quite scathing of religious charlatans like TV Evangelists. Plus the music was brilliant. It was an outlet for my teenage angst and frustrations. I lerned to play the bass.
Scotland is odd in that people aren't overtly religious. It's a private matter. England is similar but not identical. The USA is very different. God is talked about in every day life quite openly, and many take the existence of a God quite literally and without much question. In the USA there is a feedback loop positively reinforcing belief in the deity in public life. We don't have that here.
When the Internet came along and discourse became more global, I didn't understand the implications of this. When you say to many Americans that you're an atheist, they think that means that you know there's a God (the Christian one) but you choose not to "believe in" it, to follow it. That's not what I mean by it.
When I say I am an atheist, I mean that I do not believe that there exist(s) gods or a god for me to believe in or to follow. The world exists as a result of natural processes. Some thinking over the years has further strengthened this view. That's for another day.
As I mentioned to someone before, it turns out my mind aligns closely with these people: https://humanists.uk/about/
One last point: it appears to run in the family. I had a grandmother who lived to a ripe old age. She was born months before the outbreak of the First World War. She had a Humanist funeral this century.
Update/Meta: I think this is the last journal entry I'll leave open to AC. We once again have a situation where over half of the comments are the same old complaints about the moderation system (including flagging), site policies and rules and abuse of certain people, which wastes their time and probably raises their blood pressure. If you don't like it here, find a different web site or start your own. No one forces you to look at SoylentNews.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Saturday October 25 2025, @04:34PM (8 children)
Although it is not the best Trek film, Star Trek V does give a little bit of food for thought. I mentioned where someone applies the name "God" as being a matter of semantics.
The usual human concept of God seems to be primarily about power. This may be a reflection of the hierarchies of power in most human social structures. We are taught to fear and obey the wishes of those more powerful than us and to seek favor in order to receive mercy and possibly assistance. So for some I guess belief in God comes down to whether or not you believe in a being with the power to create and destroy entire universes. It's certaintly logically conceivable. I am not sure it sounds great though.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday October 25 2025, @05:28PM (5 children)
I've never watched that all the way through. I have the box set of the first six movies. I'll have to make time!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday October 25 2025, @05:53PM (1 child)
Slingshot round the sun... I'll get me coat!
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2025, @09:26PM
I think that's Star Trek IV
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday October 25 2025, @06:12PM (1 child)
Yeah, my box set of all TNG seasons is still sitting there gathering cobwebs. I would have watched them by now but my partner agreed to watch them with me, but I am beginning to wonder how much I was being humored. We were working our way through TOS first but haven't watched it in ages and she fell asleep during Arena which I think is an awesome episode, so maybe better to go it alone. She really likes Fascape and Stargate SG1 though, and I think the SG1 stories are really, really similar to Star Trek TOS actually.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26 2025, @05:16AM
I could understand falling asleep during some of the worst episodes of the third season. But how does one fall asleep during good TOS like Arena? Even if Arena is overrated as some people say, it's still good TOS.
Even a lot of "bad" episodes in season three have interesting ideas or could have been rewritten to be better. Turnabout Intruder is considered garbage, right? But even that story could have been fixed, especially if it was actually written as a finale.
What is Janice Lester was portrayed more favorably as being justified in her anger about not being allowed to be a Starfleet captain, but the lesson was that becoming consumed with envy and hatred prevented her from making real change? What if Kirk actually agreed that Starfleet's policy was wrong, and that he wanted it to change?
If this was a finale for that era, there could have been an interesting way to connect it with the TOS movie era. At the end of the five year mission, Kirk gets promoted to admiral and accepts a post on Earth to become Chief of Starfleet Operations. Spock doesn't really desire to command a starship, so perhaps he wants to remain as science officer. Although Relics shows that Scotty did eventually command a starship, it's obvious he really wants to be chief engineer. As a conclusion to the episode, Starfleet command wants the new commanding officer to have experience on a Constitution class ship, and many of the other ships in that class were destroyed before completing their five year missions. If Spock and Scotty aren't going to take over, Kirk might recommend the officer who was fourth in command on his ship and is familiar with all the divisions on the ship. Kirk would insist that the officer's experience and familiarity with all the ship's divisions makes them most qualified to assume command. Starfleet command eventually concedes that Kirk is right, the existing policies are unjust, and that change is long overdue. Therefore, Starfleet promotes this officer, then gives this officer command of the Enterprise. And that officer is Nyota Uhura.
If written as a proper finale at the end of the five year mission, that would actually work pretty well. The TV network executives of the era wouldn't like it, but since TOS was getting cancelled anyway, why not?
For all the very justified criticism of Turnabout Intruder, most of the story could remain intact, and these changes would make it a pretty damn good story. I think a lot of third season stories are like this, where a few changes could make a bad story into a really good one. There are a few third season episodes that truly are dull, but not too many. And Arena? That's a really good story from a better season of TOS.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26 2025, @04:56AM (1 child)
You have still not answered the question: what does God need with a starship?
By the way, when you think about it, it's a really profound question. If God is omnipotent, then why does God need us to do anything at all? You're God, don't you know? And can't you spread your wisdom and perform your works by yourself without any of us?
Here's a very interesting review of the movie, with a lot of detail about why Star Trek V might actually be the most thought-provoking of any of the films: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/examining-the-political-themes-of-star-trek-v-the-final-frontier/ [denofgeek.com]. Sure, Star Trek II is considered the best of the TOS-era films. I'd go so far as to say that Nicholas Meyer might be just as important as Michael Piller for why the franchise didn't end in the 1980s. But Star Trek II doesn't contain the deep philosophical ideas in Star Trek V.
The basic idea is that Sybok is intended to represent very charismatic televangelists who claim to understand God but are actually con artists. What if the being on the other side of the Great Barrier was actually God, as was the original idea for the film? Or what if William Shatner's idea was used in the film, and that being was actually Satan? Either one would have been very provocative, but making that being actually be Satan would have been a particularly blunt take on the overall premise of the film. The message would literally be that those televangelists actually worship Satan, and that would have been a controversial message. Ultimately, that was toned down, but there are still a lot of very interesting ideas in the film, and the article also examines it as an allegory for the "War on Terror" that's been going on for a quarter of a century.
Defending Star Trek V isn't as contrarian as people might thing, either. Steve Shives is unabashedly an atheist, and even he defended Star Trek V as not being as bad as people think [youtube.com], though he doesn't consider it a good film. He points out that it has a compelling villain, really does a great job showing the friendship between the crew members of the Enterprise that grows in the films before it, and that Shatner the director somehow managed to prevent Shatner the actor from completely overacting everything.
I don't think it's a bad film. It's weaker than the three films before it, and I insist that Star Trek III is criminally underrated. Star Trek VI is the real finale for the TOS era. All Good Things is considered the gold standard for classic Trek finales, but STVI is every bit as good of a finale for the TOS cast. Star Trek V is certainly weaker than the films around it, but it has some really interesting ideas that are much deeper than even your comment gives the film credit for. I don't blame anyone who doesn't want to watch a 44 minute video, but the Den of Geek article is definitely worth reading.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26 2025, @06:17AM
I'll never forgive the director of Star Trek V for doing my boy, Sulu, dirty like that. The fact that it shit on most of the crew sans Kirk boggled my mind until I learned who that was.