FINDING MY RELIGION: Julia Sweeney talks about how she became an atheist

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 8/15/5 | David Ian Miller

[SmithL]

[RedBeaconNY]

Atheism is not a religion, it is the lack of religion.

[madprof98]

Are you teaching your daughter about religion? How are you handling that?

Well, at school they say the pledge of allegiance, and that's actually been pretty upsetting to me because you have to say "under God." So I told her to say "under laws." [laughs]. And she said, "No, mom, you have to say under God in order to be nice." Her feeling is she doesn't want to stick out, right? She wants to do what everyone else is doing.

They never should have let that kid out of China. Given the spread of Christianity there, she would have been in a much more wholesome environment.

[nickcarraway]

I'm glad they are admitting it is a religion. It is a religion. Why should one religion be allowed to oppose itself on society with a free pass?

[RedBeaconNY]

For the purpose of a political classification, I suppose it could loosely be called a religion. They actively believe that everything in Christianity et al. is false- but that's the extent of it.

[nmh]

Another perturbed liberal forcing her beliefs on someone else. It is LIBERALS who have NO tolerance or concern for others. Thank God, I'll never be a liberal and my belief in Him gets stronger EVERY day.

[snarks_when_bored]

Chris and Pat

[Dark Skies]

Atheism. Hmmm.

It is hard enough to prove an ordinary little "negative."

What incredible stupidity and arrogance to presume a "cosmic negative" and then bet your life and your eternity on it!

[nickcarraway]

I guess her readin comprehension isn't too sharp- Jesus didn't turn anyone into pigs. The pigs were possessed by demons that had possessed a person. Maybe she was thinking of Circe.

[stocksthatgoup]

But here [in L.A.] you're not defined socially by your religious views.
Except if you believe in God....Then You Are A DOLT!

[dighton]

You know, like Jesus was angry a lot. When he turned all those people into pigs and made them run off a mountain, it was so hateful, not just to people but to pigs. I felt upset for the pigs!

.
“The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what’s been taught and what’s been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn’t know existed. Take yesterday. He seemed to be doing very well. He’d learned large bits of the catechism by heart, and the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. Then I asked him as usual if there was anything troubling him, and he looked at me in a crafty way and said, ‘Look, Father, I don’t think you’re being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I’m going to join your Church, but you’re holding too much back.’ I asked what he meant, and he said: ‘I’ve had a long talk with a Catholic -- a very pious, well-educated one, and I’ve learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that’s the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I’ll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d’you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone’s name on it, they get sent to hell. I don’t say there mayn’t be a good reason for all this,’ he said, ‘but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself.’”

“What can the poor man have meant?” said Lady Marchmain.

“You see he’s a long way from the Church yet,” said Father Mowbray.

“But who can he have been talking to? Did he dream it all? Cordelia, what’s the matter?”

“What a chump! Oh, Mummy, what a glorious chump!”

“Cordelia, it was you.”

“Oh, Mummy, who could have dreamed he’d swallow it? I told him such a lot of things. About the sacred monkeys in the Vatican — all kinds of things.”

.
-- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited.

[Grampa Dave]

Her religion is the darkside of lesbianism.

http://www.culturevulture.net/Theater8/LettingGoofGod.htm

archives

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Letting Go of God
Julia Sweeney

Los Angeles
Hudson Backstage Theatre
October 9, 2004 - May 29, 2005





Our review of an earlier monologue in this series


It's Pat!: My Life Exposed
(1992), Julia Sweeney



Julia Sweeney Movies



14k Ruby Heart Pendant


Monologues run the risk of being tiresome examinations of the actor/creator’s navel. Spaulding Grey’s spectacular exercises in the English language, observation, and insight were at the same time torturously, neurotically, and narcissistically focused. Contrast that with Julia Sweeney’s refreshing Letting Go of God. Sweeney began her writing of Letting Go by presenting her story to the Skeptics Society at Cal Tech. It is the intellectual journey of a complex, curious and open mind, told with humor, but not trivialized. While neither confession nor apology, nor total rejection of the potential of religion, it is the charting of her transubstantiation from rigorously observant Catholic child to still a grappling atheistic adult--a conversion she describes as being more shocking to her family and home town than had she come out of the closet and announced she was a lesbian.

[mmercier]

http://clublet.com/c/c/why?PascalsWager

[escapefromboston]

Oh well Pat was a pretty funny sketch.

[little jeremiah]

Thanks - looks like one for one or t'other ping list.

(Been seriously overwhelmed lately - hope to ping tonight.)

[Antioch]

Was it difficult for you to come out as a nonbeliever? when you became so bored with your existence that you began broadcasting your leftist stupidity to complete strangers?

[franky]

Pray for her. May the Holy Spirit enlighten her heart. May she repent of her sins and may the Blessed Mother pray for her on Our Mother's day of Assumption.

[sassbox]

That caught my eye as well. She doesn't come across as a terribly educated person in this interview. It seems like all her beefs with Catholicism could've been answered if she had made the effort to learn a little more about the faith and why we believe the things we do. But she didn't. It makes me wonder if she has some other motivation for abandoning religion, and she just isn't mentioning it. A disturbing number of folks I know who are atheist, agnostic, or non-religious seem to be motivated mainly out of guilt, especially over sexual matters. They just can't stand knowing they are accountable to God, so they'd rather give up belief in God than give up those precious orgasms. And people say religion is a crutch!

I'm surprised her play about becoming an atheist is attracting any attention at all. Really, how shocking is it that a left coast actress is an atheist? Seems like it would be the norm these days. Isn't this whole bash-organized-religion song and dance getting old?

[kosta50]

"I said God is this idea of a big man who lives up in the clouds and he created everything."

This says it all about her own evolutionary failure.