A pilgrim’s progress

(This is first part of what I predict might become a two part account into my non-religious upbringing. It’s not a “de-conversion” story as such, more an exploration of my exposure and experience of religion. It’s probably very, very boring so read it at your peril.)

I’ve read a number of de-conversion (and non-conversion) stories recently from some fellow atheists, all of them interesting, some more than a little saddening, and for some inexplicable reason I have this nagging feeling that I’ve missed out on something.

Of course, this feeling is nothing more than me wanting to have something that somebody else has (a sin! a sin!) because — rationally — I have no desire to undergo the emotional turmoil that a world-view conversion seems to, almost without exception, engender. Neither do I want to try to pretend to believe in something, and most certainly not without good reason. But I do feel on occasion that I’ve missed out on some kind of party, where everyone else had an interesting time and came back with a goody-bag of reality, but I wasn’t invited.

In the vein of perhaps explaining my own story with regards to religiousness (or the lack thereof) to those who might be interested, I also feel that this might help me understand my own rationale for thinking how I do. This is also part of a self-directed therapy regimen (on the basis of clinical advice and emotional support) but the reasons for this may become clearer in time.

To start with, I’ll state the obvious: I was, as was every other person in the history of this planet, born an atheist.

While this says absolutely nothing about anything, and certainly no more in a practical sense than it does in a philosophical one, it does seem to set the tone for my early childhood.

Neither of my parents were religious, and their marriage was a completely civil affair. Apparently they didn’t see it necessary to involve any extraneous third parties or make grovelling noises about it. When I was born a year or so later, they continued this trend by failing to have me baptised, despite the protestations of my great-grandmother¹, but my parents did however take the time to bathe me, in the traditional manner, with soap: a bizarre ritual that I continue to follow to this day.

My first personal encounter with established religion came when I was about three or four years old. My mother, for reasons that she cannot today explain, decided to take me to the local “Sunday school” in the village in which we lived. I have the sneaking suspicion that she wanted me out of her hair for a short while, but she can’t or won’t confirm this. This anecdote is based on the vague recollections of my mother. I only have a fleeting memory of a room and am therefore not a reliable source, so the following account is hers.

This initial encounter with religion didn’t go well, or so I’m told. At the end of my first (and, as it happens, last) Sunday school session, when my mother came to collect me from the clutches of the ‘teacher’, it is alleged that it was asked of my mother that she wasn’t to bring me again: I was asked not to return. The reason? Apparently, I asked (quote) too many awkward questions.

Me again. Now, I’m no expert on the employment criteria of the church, but to have a Sunday school teacher, who I must assume has at least some grounding in christian apologetics, was made to feel uncomfortable by an infant? Colour me incredulous, but am I to assume that I was some kind of Humean Wunderkind or Nietzschean prodigy? Truly, the mind boggles.

At this point, religion wasn’t an issue for me. I didn’t believe, but I don’t think I would have called myself a considered atheist either: I was still, for the most part, ignorant of the various religions’ extraordinary claims. An understanding of these would come later.

In the intervening years, I developed a very keen interest in “science”, and as with a number of my peers, this was tempered with a large dose of kookery. From the age of five I was a subscriber of The Unexplained and related titles, and devoured anything I could find about UFOs, Sai Baba, black madonnas, the Loch Ness monster, ESP, Peruvian pyramids, the shroud of Turin and all manner of “unexplained” and “paranormal” topics. I had it bad. Some of these things I wished were real, some I really didn’t give a fig for. I had something of a faint hope that some of these were true, but it seemed clear to me that I would be unlikely to ever experience any of them personally, so for the main part they were interesting and exciting to read about, but not particularly believable.

Then I found Erich von Däniken when I was about seven, and I absolutely loved his explanations of ancient astronauts. I traced the Nazca outlines onto large sheets of paper, as carefully as I was able, and laid them on the garden patio in the futile hope that one of these astronauts would see it and come and say “hi”. Or perhaps that someone might say nice monkey. Of course, people like James Randi weren’t too far behind, but I was curious and just saw him as a bit of a spoilsport. I know much better now.

Of course, the astronauts never came, so I thought that I’d find out more about where these people were supposed to come from—the stars. Of course, this could lead to only one thing, I developed an interest in the universe, and this is where my appreciation of science proper came from.

I received my first practical astronomy book and telescope at age seven or eight, followed by a countless number of science-for-kids books, a toy (but working) microscope, rocks and crystals from my grandmother (I loved the mottled layered pattern of Tiger’s eye), I collected skin or shell samples for as many creatures as I could, leaves and grasses and seeds, all compartmentalised in a few partitioned sample boxes, and I analysed them and drew them with as much clarity as I could muster given the limited magnification of the microscope’s lenses. I looked up at the night sky with my telescope, learning the constellations and names of the stars (the red supergiant Betelgeuse in Orion is still my favourite), how to identify the Pole Star, etc.

I don’t think I can ever thank my parents enough for their patient and generous support of and for my terminally-curious childhood.

By the age of eleven, I’d familiarised myself or been exposed to enough science, as well as religion and other quackery to know that I was definitely an atheist (I’d been made aware of the word from an encyclopædia at some point — a library card was an invaluable gift to a curious child): I didn’t believe their claims, and I saw no reason to do so — the evidence just wasn’t good enough. Religion certainly wasn’t the only thing that had fallen by the wayside: Von Däniken had joined that scrapheap along with Sai Baba, Nessie and spoon-bending trickster Uri Geller.

I was certainly a little crushed that some of the things that I’d hope for couldn’t be shown to be true, but I’d learned so much more and there were other, new wonders to explore, and these wonders were things that I could experience.

I was now an enthusiastic amateur scientist and junior sceptic: religion, and all the other pseudo-quackery, claimed everything but demonstrated and explained nothing.

When I was twelve, I was sent to a boarding school in the UK. This school, which has the moniker of a ‘hospital’—ostensibly founded as a charitable endeavour in the 1600s to provide an education to the local urchins—was a veritable hive of anglican pretensions. Not only was the head-teacher a rector² of the local church, but we also had a full-blown honest-to-golly vicar (with a dog collar and all the other clerical accoutrements) on-site. For those spiritual emergencies we students might have had, presumably. More on him later.

The first episode connected to that school was actually before I started attending it, and was the time when my mother and I (aged eleven) were filling in the details on the enrolment application form. We were sitting on the floor in our living room going over the individual questions that the school required answered, the usual stuff: name, birthday, extra-curricular interests. One of the questions, not surprising for a (little did I know at the time) churchy school, was enquiring as to my religion.

My mother, perhaps with a little more cultural awareness than I at the time, entered “CofE” (church of England – anglican – bog standard non-descript almost-non-religion). I, knowing that I wasn’t a member of the CofE, voiced the opinion that she should enter “none”. I wasn’t particularly insistent upon this, although it did bother me greatly that it wasn’t the truth, but it was left as CofE, and I was accepted into that years’ intake.

Years later, when I was discussing this episode with my mother, I made more apparent as to my slight displeasure with having my “religion” recorded as “CofE”, when “none” or “n/a” would have been more appropriate. She, not giving a hoot for religion one way or the other, didn’t realise that I had taken it as an issue, and apologised. In all fairness, I hadn’t really taken it as an issue, I was just uncomfortable about a) deceiving the school as to my lack of religion, intentionally or no, and b) being labelled so when it wasn’t appropriate, and by appropriate, I mean true.

Now, this isn’t anything like Dawkins‘ ideas of labelling children — under any other circumstances (save a passport application or other official stationery of the state) my mother wouldn’t have applied any label to me, but within traditional British (and perhaps more specifically English) culture, if you’re not something else—something specific—it’s almost presumed that you’re CofE (or CofS in Scotland). Of course, all this shows is that religion has become so embedded within our culture that it has almost diluted to the point where it has no distinguishing features whatsoever.

Back to school: in my first year of attendance at that school, I was exposed to the usual state-sanctioned CofE school religiosity — vague christian “worship” as part of the school assembly, almost pointless religious education lessons, vapid exaltations of an idea that most people didn’t share, you get the idea.

In addition, being a boarding school, we were also expected to take part in christian services every Sunday, alternating weekly between the local service in the “Great Hall” and enforced attendance at the local church where the headteacher was also a beshirted officiant.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have anything particularly against these things, I simply considered them a tremendous waste of my time — there were plenty of other things that I would have been much happier, and productive, doing. But, for some reason that I still don’t grasp to this day, the state and the school thought that my attendance at these functions was necessary. And, oh, were they so fantastically dull.

The services in the Great Hall were, for the most part, no different to the usual school assembly, although of perhaps double the duration. With proper padded chairs it wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as sitting on the moulded plastic in use within the dining hall where the workaday assemblies took place, but it was equally as pointless. I sang the vaguest of hymns if I felt like it (more often I didn’t – intentionally leaving my hymn book within my bunk area as an excuse to fail to participate – woe betide anyone that sat next to a teacher without a hymn book!) but I was one of those that consistently failed to bow my head and recite the magical incantations and admit to my excessive wretchedness, nor follow through with the mumbled “amen”.

There were others like me: we would give each other ambiguous smiles and discreet nods over the sea of shorn hair, and glance at the stage front and centre in the vain hope that one of the teachers or visiting religiousites saw us and give us a stern glassy-eyed looking-at. In some sense, it was a rather thrilling to be seen to be bucking the system by those in “authority”: we were there under protest and we wanted them to know it.

One of the thing that bugged me at the time was that the church we had to go to was so incredibly dreary. Very, very occasionally, we would have a sermon or whatever from someone with a modicum of charisma and entertainment value, but far more often than not they were led by the local vicar, who had the most gently grating and irksome voice. One of the kids that I shared a dorm with when I first arrived at the school, I learned, was a catholic. At the time, I had very little idea about the difference between one christian sect or another (and, to a lesser or greater degree, I still don’t) but he described the services that he went to as being far more interesting and entertaining that those we were subjected to. When they sang, they seemingly did the whole “joyful worship” thing, not the tediously dull-as-dishwater droning that I usually had to endure. I was almost jealous, as it sounded far more entertaining. Almost. I would at least have been more appreciative of even slightly more interesting services, even though I was forced to partake.

This went on for about 6 years in total, holidays at home excepted. However, at some point in the 6th year (I was aged either seventeen or eighteen at this point – don’t recall exactly) I decided that I didn’t want to play the passive de facto anglican one week. I remember that it was raining quite heavily that Sunday, and I chose to skip the obligatory visit to the local church, instead remaining within my room to read a book (Stranger in a Strange Land if that explains anything).

Little did I know that, while we were usually away being preached at, a teacher would wander through the boarding house, checking rooms and dormitories for wayward students. And thus I was caught. To this day, I’m still surprised at the force of anger that the teacher (who also happened to be the house master) had for me for simply not going to a church. I guess that his own excuse for non-attendance was that he was playing policeman for church truants.

Caught red-handed, I confessed: I didn’t believe in their, or any, gods, and I didn’t see the point in going to church.

This confession seemed to generate a whole new level of rage in my captor: bordering, I’m quite sure, on apoplexy. While it was quite frightening to see a rather large bearded grown man (I’m quite short, and was even shorter at the time and, as was the custom, beardless) reminiscent of an unfit Geoff Capes frothing at the mouth, some part of me was secretly amused that I was capable of reducing him to a such a frenzy by doing nothing at all. I didn’t like the man and thought him a poor teacher and an even poorer rôle model, so I had very few qualms about being disobedient of that particular injunction. He was one of those people that enjoyed his power over us, his captive charges, a little too much, if you catch my meaning.

We had a little “discussion”, and after a short while I ended up calling him by his surname, spitting it at him in a rather hostile fashion (we were required to call teachers “sir” or “miss” as appropriate). This threw him into whole new depths of lividity, and he blustered You will call me ’sir’, boy!. As quick as a flash, even if I am proud to say so myself, I retorted ‘Sir’ is a sign of respect, and I have no repect for you! This drove him absolutely crazy, but I’m still pleased with this riposte to this day. :-)

He then decided that he’s had enough of a gobby kid, and dragged me to one of the other boarding houses, the one where the preacher-in-residence resided, to let me wait for his return from the weekly indoctrination session, and to subject me to summary judgement.

Thankfully I had my relatively new digital watch with me, which helped me while away what would have been a rather boring half-hour stand in a corridor with a sweaty, seething pseudo-pedagogue.

Eventually the vicar turned up, effusing what I can only imagine to be the vapour of a resplendent hour basking in the glory of his god. Or something. Anyway, he was all smiles and winks, until he saw my nemesis’s countenance. Instantly, the smiles dropped, and furtive eyebrow action became the order of the day. What is it with faith-heads and eyebrows? Are they issued the bushiest ones around when they don their dog (or should that read “god”?) collars?

He bade us enter his study/office/flat and, after a brief and hushed conversation with my interloper, we were alone. In stern yet not overbearing tones, he questioned me as to our conversation, for which I didn’t disagree with any of the major details. He further enquired as to my attitude to church in general, for which I gave him the most honest answers I could. It was during this conversation that I in turn began to ask him a question, but I used the title “Mr”. With something approaching déjà vu, I saw the red-mist rising behind his eyes: I have my own title, “reverend”, and you will use it! he blurted, obviously displeased at this example of freethinking.

While not being one-hundred percent familiar with the idea of reverence, especially with respect to religiosity, I had no difficulty in rejecting this notion outright: Well, you’re not very ‘reverend’ to me! I was compelled to respond, which he most certainly didn’t appreciate as much as I did.

Two for two: I was on a roll that day.

Needless to say, this affair was raised to a higher authority: one of the deputy headmasters who, thankfully, wasn’t particularly religious himself. I received a matter-of-fact but gentle talking-to about showing due respect and following the school rules, but otherwise survived unscathed. My reputation, though, suffered as a result and I was, for the rest of my time at that school, given short shrift by those teachers who were the most religious and, as it happens, the most authoritarian. Fancy that.

After that, and for my limited time at that school, I went to the church and other services as required, but I refused to pay even lip service to the idea of standing and sitting when it was deemed proper—I simply sat, and thought of other things. This garnered me a whole slew of dirty looks from teachers, visiting preachers and some of the more faithful among my peers, but by that time I had become as antagonistic to the religionistas as they had to me.

It’s a shame that, nowadays, people of that age can themselves (i.e. without parental consent) opt out of enforced partaking in religious services or collective “worship”. Not that it’s a shame for the kids today; it’s a shame that the culture we live in didn’t allow me the same courtesy then, less than 20 years ago. But we have moved on, and I am glad for that small concession.

After I left school to attend university here in Edinburgh, I had no exposure to any kind of religiosity whatsoever, except my final summer in Germany in 1991.

Germany’s a strange place: at once it’s highly culturally religious (even more so than the UK) but it’s also very practically secular. But they do have some strange laws (or perhaps bylaws), some of which busy themselves with what one can and cannot do on a Sunday.

We lived in a suburb of one of the medium-sized towns to the north of the country, which comprised of estates of rows of semi-detached houses littered with the odd block of flats. These were quite community-driven areas and one could find small shops and other suburban concerns interspersed liberally throughout. At any one location, one was almost guaranteed to be within earshot of the bells of at least one church.

On Sundays, one couldn’t hang out laundry to dry, mow the lawn or wash the car, couldn’t have a barbecue or do anything that might make even a moderate amount of noise. If children were in the garden, they were expected to play quietly and with decorum in tacit reverence. If you could hear music in your own garden, it was too loud. I can only presume that this was some throwback to archaic christian sabbath laws.

However, the paradoxical (or may I say hypocritical) issue was that, even though one couldn’t do anything to make any noise, one could guarantee that church bells would be ringing out their peals within earshot. And this wouldn’t just be for ten or fifteen minutes in the morning: this would be for a good hour from 10am, and then at regular intervals throughout the day. To this day, I can’t stand the shrill ring of church bells.

One could also set one’s watch by them too (these being ever-efficient Germans, after all) so perhaps it wasn’t all bad. At least I’m usually on time when arranging to meet someone.

It was this same summer that I had my only ever exposure to door-to-door proselytisers. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to like the cut of my jib, and hastily retreated from the doorstep as I opened the door, almost without saying a word. Even today, I still have no idea why they so quickly absconded, although I suspect that it may have been a language issue (I answered the door in my usual English: German visitors were few and far between). If so, and they were some flavour of christian, then their god really had fucked up with that whole tower of Babel thing. And by “exposure”, I don’t mean to suggest that I’d received them while naked. :-)

This take me up until about 1991. As you can see, I didn’t suffer at the hands of religionists, and wasn’t subjected to massive amounts of brainwashing or propaganda. But I thought that someone might benefit from reading an explanation of a non-religious upbringing, and that it might offer some insight.

I plan to write about the latter sixteen or so years in another post, although I don’t have a clear plan to do so at this point. If you found this interesting, drop me a comment and it might spur me on to conclude this yarn of godfreeness.

1. who I recently discovered was quite the catholic, her living room—which I only vaguely remember in the context of large tins of biscuits—was supposedly adorned with a large, garish and probably ostentatious portrait of some pontiff or other [↩]
2. deacon, pastor, whatever—their private club names don’t concern me [↩]

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