The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #100473   Message #2017276
Posted By: Scoville
05-Apr-07 - 10:50 AM
Thread Name: BS: Have you changed your religious views?
Subject: RE: BS: Have you changed your religious views?
I would say "focused" rather than "changed". We've [my family] never been particularly religious. I actually learned a lot bouncing ideas off of other people online in blogs.

We still go to meeting for social reasons and because we're all teaching First Day School, but if anyone asked, we're a bunch of atheists. However, we're atheists that like kids and are willing to put a lot of time into them, even if we only see them one day a week.

I have no problem at all accepting that some things just happen and don't feel any need to ascribe them to any form of divine intervention. I don't believe in "karma" or "retribution" in a supernatural sense, although I think that if you're an asshole, people won't be inclined to help you out when you finally need it the way they might if you help them in their turn. Thus, what goes around does come around, but it's pretty logical. I think nature is amazing but I don't see why I should translate that into the idea that something bigger was in control.

* * * * *

And as far as the educational system goes, I didn't learn a damned thing until my last two years of high school, and then only a little. Everything else I learned, I learned at home. School was just to keep the authorities happy. College was better (although I still learned more from my peers than my professors, but in some ways I think that ought to be the point). Library school is an absolute crock. Nothing there I couldn't learn better with an apprenticeship. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole if I didn't have to have a stupid piece of paper to stay in the job market.