LESSON 1_READING FOR ASSIGNMENT #2

LOSING RELIGION: AGNOSTICISM AND ATHEISM IN YOUNG PERSONS

(For the Philippine Psychiatric Association)
Bishop Ambo David
Thank you for inviting me today to share some thoughts on the topic: “Losing One’s Religion:
Agnosticism and Atheism in the Young Persons”. Allow me to start by familiarizing you with the
typical lines in a dialogue between a priest like myself and young persons, especially young
professionals, who declare that they have turned either into agnostics or atheists. Very often it’s their
devout Catholic parents who persuade them to make an appointment with a priest, perhaps hoping
that we could still get their children to go back to Church. Usually, they’d start by politely saying in
all candor, “Father, I’m doing this to please my mother. But to be honest with you, I wish she’d give
up trying to persuade me to return to Church. I’ve lost my faith already.” Then I ask: “What do you
mean?” The typical answer would be, “I’ve stopped going to Church since several years ago already.
I’ve no intention of going back, even if my mother keeps warning me that I might go to hell for it. I
also don’t intend to practice any other kind of religion. Let’s just say I’ve outgrown it. She can’t scare
me anymore with hellfire or the wrath of angry god. I’ve decided to just try to live a meaningful life,
do what I believe I should do as a human being who’s trying to be good.”

For my part, my usual line would be “Maybe you mean you’ve lost religion, not faith.” And the reaction
would be,”What’s the difference?” And I’d proceed to explain, “Religion is probably something that
was imposed on you, something you did not choose. And so now you choose to get out of it because
you don’t find it meaningful anymore. That makes sense.” And what about faith? “Faith is something
that cannot be imposed on anybody. It’s a choice. You can’t call it faith if you did not choose it freely.
As we understand it in Christian tradition, faith is a human response to God. How will you respond if
you did not perceive, first of all, that somebody is talking to you? Faith usually begins with an
awakening to a personal God, and to the idea that your life is a gift, that you are not a mere accident
in this world. There is someone who willed your birth, someone who created the world, you, and the
rest of humankind and creation, with a purpose. And you realize that you achieve that purpose
somehow when you strive to grow into a dignified human being, when you learn to love and develop
a sense of meaning in life. Isn’t that precisely what you are looking for now? Could it be that you’re
losing your religion precisely because you’re discovering your faith? You mentioned about ‘trying to
live a meaningful life, do what you believe you should do as a human being, and about trying to be
good.’ That is what faith is mostly about. And when you call it Christian faith, it means you’re trying
to learn how to be a good human being, following the path of Jesus Christ. Faith is about following a
way of life, a spirituality. For Jesus Christ, that way of life is about living life “on earth as it is in
heaven”, by learning to love unconditionally. Meaning—it is not enough to care for those related to
you, or those who love you back. What matters is to learn to accept, respect, love, and live with every
fellow human being in this world unconditionally, no matter what their race, social status or religion
might be. That is why we qualify it as a Catholic faith—meaning, universal or inclusive. It is founded
on the belief that salvation (or wellbeing, in plain language) is for everybody, not just for a select few.
That every human being is a child of God, that God is about intending what is good—not just for a few
but for all, not just for fellow human beings but for all fellow creatures as well. Christianity believes
that God is love, and that the most godless people are not necessarily those without religion but those
who are without love.”

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From experience, when I say things this way, I am able to generate some bit of interest in young
people to listen. Something like, “Ok, now you’re talking.” Or, “How come they never taught me that?”
And my usual answer is, “Maybe you were still too young for it.” Or “Maybe you’re beginning to
outgrow religion precisely to discover your faith.” I usually explain to them that religion is a belief
system or structure that is meant precisely to nurture one’s faith. Unfortunately, in some instances,
it can also serve the opposite effect, such as when people pass on a belief system in its naive or
immature form. Some people, for instance, can get stuck to the notion of a punishing God (meaning,
he rewards only the good), or even a whimsical God (meaning, he punishes people for no reason
whatsoever, including the innocent). All throughout history, people have always had an issue with
the issue of the suffering of the innocent—why would such things happen, if there is God? And then
they begin to react to the seeming futility, or even the hypocrisy of trying to be good at all. I think of
this as a kind of adolescent stage in the growth of the human spirit.

(It does usually happen much earlier in us human beings. Some people can get stuck in this stage and
never manage to get out of it. It is such people who can wreak a havoc in society and turn almost
fanatical or even genocidal. Their adolescent reaction to an oppressive belief system can reinforce
some violent tendencies that can even be translated into political convictions or approaches to policy-
making in society.)

In his famous philosophical treatise entitled, “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, the philosopher, Friedrich
Nietzsche, describes what he calls the “metamorphosis of the human spirit” as a process that involves
three stages: camel, lion, & child. Nietzsche describes the initial stages of the development of the
human spirit as the CAMEL stage. We begin our spiritual journey like beasts of burden that are made
to carry a heavy load of traditions on our backs. We are made to believe that these are a necessity if
we are to succeed in making a long and arid desert journey. Unquestioningly, we accept the things
our parents have always presupposed as true and worthy of belief, such as their religion. At some
point, Nietzsche says, we transition into the LION stage. “Losing religion” and the tendency for young
persons to develop a semblance of agnosticism or atheism, or an inimical reaction towards
established religions and belief systems is a normal aspect of the development of the human psyche.
It is the stage which Nietzsche associates with the lion, the phase when we develop the courage to
question unquestioned presuppositions, to assert our freedom from the inherited traditions that we
have obediently carried like a heavy weight. It is during this stage when we find ourselves
deliberately making an effort to hurt people’s sensibilities about things they regard as holy or sacred,
when we get obsessed about exposing religion as nothing but a set of lies and hypocritical practices.
The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur refers to this as the stage of critical consciousness, when we
lose what he calls our “first naivete”, when we aggressively try to tear down what we used to take
hook-line-and-sinker from parents, teachers, and pastors. It is the phase when we learn to
deconstruct belief systems and use our analytical faculties as rational beings in order to distinguish
between what is factual and what is mythical. Often, religion is reduced to what is mythical. It is
during this stage that people begin to lose the infantile expressions of religiosity, hopefully in order
to discover faith. The transitioning into faith is not always automatic, however. There are those who
remain “agnostic” or “atheistic” and never transition into faith. They claim to be satisfied with basic
forms of humanism (which, to my view is also a form of faith—perhaps faith in the basic goodness of
humanity.). It may not go with a religion but it is still a kind of faith, nevertheless. These are the type
who will find allies among the more mature believers. They may no longer feel the need to debunk
religious pietism but they would consciously distance or dissociate themselves from it. They may not
feel comfortable returning to it, but they no longer mind those who practice it.

At some point, we may attain a final stage of integration which Paul Ricoeur, calls a “second naïveté”.
This represents the kind of maturation process which, for Nietzsche, accompanies the emergence of

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the playful, unburdened, and no-longer angry CHILD. The human spirit in its CHILD stage, for
Nietzsche, outgrows its violent reaction to religion and traditional belief systems. It develop what
Ignatius Loyola calls “holy indifference” to religious pluralism, because it is anchored on way of life
that puts a prime on tolerance and respect. They do not mind being with people who have belief
systems other than theirs, as long as they can still treat each other as brothers and sisters.

Despite the fact that the lion stage is a pretty stressful phase in the growth of the human psyche, its
relevance for spiritual growth remains indisputable. You see, just as we mentioned earlier, not all
religion nourishes faith. Some of it can be destructive too. After all, not all religion is really about God.
Some of it can be a sheer manifestation of people’s collective neuroses or psychoses. Yes, there can
be such a thing as a faithless, godless religion. We’re no strangers to sick expressions of religion, such
as extremism, personality cults, millennarism, fanaticism. These are the tendencies that are quickly
detected by the Lion stage.

You invited me to share how I, as a theologian, deal with young people who claim to have lost religion
and have become agnostics or atheists. Honestly I think the topic is really more of a psychological
than a theological issue. I’d be interested in your own thoughts about it, and I hope some of you can
share a little about it during the open forum. Thank you for your kind attention.