theism

Because of reasons (for which expression I hat-tip ThirdCat, via Deborah), I last night read the entire comments thread to Emma‘s recent post at PA. The thread had expanded from the three or so pages it was when I last read it to forty-one pages, or 800+ posts, also because of reasons.

As I read one writer‘s extended explication of her Catholic faith within the context of the thread I thought about my friends of a variety of denominations and indeed religions, and how, for so many of them, their religion is inseparable, and in many ways a product of, the culture in which they grew up. While I don’t presume to make qualitative evaluations of the nature of different people’s belief, this kind of context strikes me as potentially different from the experience of the elective convert (in which term I include people who have converted from one denomination of a religion to another). In some circumstances, therefore, a personal atheism can strengthen familial bonds–or indeed weaken them–in a cultural as well as ontological manner, just as faith can. (I’ve written about my atheism in this regard before, and don’t intend to rehearse these arguments again here.)

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