In continuation of my previous post, I would like to draw your attention to your perceived ability to express and discuss your nonreligiousness in relation to your own cultural background.
Before I initiated this blog, I did an exploratory round of interviews with nonreligious individuals in three European countries: Belgium, Greece, and Norway. Part of the process was asking my interviewees of how comfortable they feel discussing their nonreligious views with their family, friends, and acquaintances. Needless to say, these initial results varied and were largely dependent on the general religiousness of their cultural backgrounds.
For example, my Greek interviewees were more likely to describe this as a difficult and complicated issue to discuss, due to Greece still being a very religious country. However, that was much less the case with my interviewees from Belgium, and even less the case when doing my interviews in Norway (with the exception of some individuals that had grown up in the Norwegian ‘Bible Belt’).
So, for this post, I would like to ask from you to reflect on your cultural background and answer the following questions:
- How comfortable do you feel discussing your nonreligiousness with your family, friends, and acquaintances? Do you feel that your cultural background plays a role in that (lack of) comfort?
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t hesitate to clearly state my opinions and justify them with arguments to other people if the topic comes up, be that family, friends, partner or acquaintances. Comfort is not a significant issue for me because I don’t hold the position that we should refrain from challenging ideas for the sake of comfort, or to avoid conflict. Nothing is immune to criticism and sitire and no idea or belief is immune to challenge or questioning. It is how we differentiate better ideas from worse and how we ultimately progress. So yes I feel pretty comfortable talking about these things, but even if I didn’t I doubt that would stop me.
To answer the cultural background question, I think my comfort mainly stems from my personality type which is debater: https://www.16personalities.com/entp-personality
So I guess any environmental factor that has contributed to my character development has also played a role in the comfort in discussions. But if you’re asking the question in the sense of “would you feel less comfortable in a more religious place?” the answer is no as long as the other person is willing to have a rational discourse and is not on a quest to purge infidels or something.
I have made conversations about religion many times with friends and familly and I feel pretty comfortable to discuss such matters as long the people I am talking with are friends and familly. I avoid such conversations with other people I know because it can cause some social problems. And that’s where cultural backround comes. As I metioned in “Discussing (non)religion (1)” living in a country where the vast majority of people are christians an living in a small community saying publicly you don’t believe in god could lead to some social consequences such as people avoiding you, or talk behind your back, or even losing clients in a job etc.
I’m comfortable discussing religion as long as I don’t feel physically unsafe, but it’s not a topic I find interesting. I don’t think culture have much to do with it, it seems to be more a case of being willing to accept eventual consequences.