Your upbringing sounds like a close parallel to my own. Raised in a home where the catholic faith was the only real faith. I never did jump on that bandwagon.

In truth there could most certainly be some creator out there, even though logical thought and evidence to date indicates otherwise. In the event there does happen to be some cosmic Big Brother out there he either doesn’t care or fell asleep at his post.

Though I would like to say this, religion is important in our society because of the devastating effects it has on any possibility of peaceful co-existence. I guess you could say it’s a sort of grand inquisition we are struggling to survive through, only now we have far more than “one” inquisitor bent on making everyone a believer or a casualty.

Personally, I feel everyone is entitled to believe whatever it is that floats their boat, as long as they don’t expect it to float everyone else’s too.

I, too, was raised within the Catholic faith, and went to parochial school for first and second grade. The experience led me to steal a line from a stand-up comedian many years ago: “I was raised Catholic. Like most Catholics, when I grew up, I quit.”

My partner is a woman of Christian faith, and occasionally (mostly playfully) refers to me as a $(GOD)-less heathen. I think she thinks I’m an atheist, but I’m not, since the known Universe does not preclude having a creator. I’m not atheist, I’m not agnostic, I’m not Catholic, I’m not Christian, I’m not Jewish, I’m not Muslim, I’m not Hindu, I’m not Bhuddist, I’m not Taoist.

I simply don’t care.

It’s manifestly unimportant. Petitions and entreaties to $(GOD) have never worked. If $(GOD) exists, s/he clearly doesn’t give a crap about me or this planet.

I imagine I might have some sympathy with Taoism or Bhuddism, were I to spend the time and energy learning about it. But, frankly, I have enough to worry about trying to meet deadlines and keep code running and keeping food on the table to bother with such things.

The only context in which religion is important is when the Inquisition comes knocking at your door. But that’s not about religion, that’s about fealty, which reveals the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the Inquisitor, and leaves me no more inclined to cleave to any kind of faith.

You say, “…you can’t make someone a believer (or an unbeliever) through logical argument.” I would differ with that statement, because I am an example of someone who came out of religion pretty much entirely because of the logical arguments of non-believers. I also think that your self-dialectics played much the same role in pointing out the moral contradictions inherent in your childhood religion.

But before someone can “jump out of the system,” (as we did) they must have a mind that is permeable to reason; only then can they “suspend belief” enough to allow their perspective to change. If a person has decided to live in a dream despite the absurdities and surrealities it presents, there really is nothing that can penetrate. In these cases, the best that be accomplished by people with a more “enlightened” world view is to contain the damage and try to prevent its spread to other impressionable people. But I think that people so deeply indoctrinated are rare, and many ministers will admit (privately) that they too have doubts about the reality of their religion’s metaphysics— this no doubt tempers their rhetoric.