Religion
Related: About this forumFrom Atheism to Catechism
By Leah LeMoine
September 27, 2012 at 12:00 am
Imagine society’s collective shock if Hillary Clinton were to join the National Rifle Association, if members of the Westboro Baptist Church were discovered frolicking at a gay bar or if Quentin Tarantino were to announce plans to make a Justin Bieber documentary.
Josh Horn’s friends were hit with a shock wave of that magnitude when Horn, then an ardent atheist, announced his resignation as president of the Secular Free Thought Society, an ASU club known for its skepticism of religion. Horn had committed the ultimate taboo and sealed his self-imposed excommunication with one act: he decided to become a Catholic.
Sowing the seeds of devotion and revolt
This wasn’t the first time Horn had radically changed his worldview. Horn, a history junior, was raised in Tempe by Southern Baptist parents so strict that as a child he had to have a “multi-hour” conversation with them pleading for permission to watch Pokémon (it was forbidden “because they evolved,” Horn says). From the ages of 3-13, he attended a private Christian school that Horn describes as fundamentalist, “denial of evolution…‘Left Behind’ series stuff,” and attended church up to three times a week. He was a model child who impressed teachers and clergy with his preternatural intelligence, his disarming command of logic and his fervent religious devotion.
Horn’s zeal began to dim when he started public high school. For the first time, he was exposed not only to non-Baptists, but to the broad spectrum of the secular world. His curiosity and desire for knowledge were piqued and he began consuming academic texts — religious, philosophical, mathematic, scientific — like a starving man at a buffet.
http://www.statepress.com/2012/09/27/from-atheism-to-catechism/
Here is an earlier interview he had given.
http://www.statepress.com/archive/node/10456
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immoderate
(20,885 posts)Not you, Horn.
--imm
rug
(82,333 posts)
mr blur
(7,753 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)gcomeau
(5,764 posts)...I'm going to make some predictions.
"basis for morality"
"got some vague feeling"
"can't explain X therefore..."
Ok, I'm going to go read it now. Be right back.
rug
(82,333 posts)gcomeau
(5,764 posts)Ok, at least he didn't involve this idiocy... that's nice. I particularly hate when I see that one.
"got some vague feeling"
“The best way I can explain it is it wasn’t just perceiving something or experiencing something, it was experiencing some particular thing in a whole new way of experiencing it,” Horn says. “And it was the fact that it was a new way that was strange, more so than the interaction with the new thing … The only word I can use for it is a mystical sense.
Bullseye! Maybe TLC will give me my own psychic reality series!
Oooh, spooky feeling. Therefore God! Want to reach through internet and slap this doofus as I'm reading this section...
"can't explain X therefore..."
“It was a whole new way of experiencing reality, to which there is no analogy in anything else that I’ve experienced, and because of that it’s very difficult to explain.”
Surprise surprise... and that was IT. Resigned his post the next day. Because he HAD A FEELING he wasn't expecting while reading a text and didn't know why. So it MUST have been that it was a Catholic text and therefore what the text was sayin was somehow *true* (why exactly?) and he should be a Catholic!
Argh... and he was president of the SKEPTICISM society? Did he ever look the word up during his tenure in that position?
Missed the "became an atheist partly because he found out his idiot fundamentalist parents were feeding him lies about the world his whole childhood" angle though. Not the worst reason to initially become one, insufficient reason to BE one though.
Silent3
(15,425 posts)I'd copy/paste an excerpt, but the text is in a two-column format that would be difficult to replicate.
At any rate, I can't say I'm all that impressed with Mr. Horn's alleged skepticism if the above litany is the kind of thing that can blow it away.
rug
(82,333 posts)In many ways it is similar to chantinmg in the East.
Regardless, that does not appear to be the sole basis for his change of opinion.
MineralMan
(146,346 posts)his beliefs, and that is being reported by a state college magazine. The earlier interview is of this young fellow as a freshman.
My memories of being 19 years old and a freshman in college are ones of being unsure of almost everything. That didn't go away for a few more years, and I'm still learning at age 67.
I guess I don't see the significance of some 20-something college student's questioning and search for meaning. Doesn't everyone do that?
Insignificant story with no real meaning in the larger picture, really.
Good job, rug. Maybe you can find a high school newspaper article to share with us next.
rug
(82,333 posts)You may consider that to be a street with a one way sign but if you do, you'd be wrong.
BTW, has anybody ever told you that dismissiveness is a sign of discomfort?
MineralMan
(146,346 posts)You know nothing about me, really, rug. You like to pretend you do, but you do not.
Yes, individual beliefs and struggles are significant, but only to the person involved. They are exemplary of nothing beyond that personal dilemma.
BTW, has anybody ever told you that constantly looking for evidence that some belief is wrong is a sign of insecurity?
rug
(82,333 posts)Did anyone ask what you thought at 19? I daresay this article is of more interest and significance than you at 19.
To answer your question, no. Do you believe anyone is doing that?
MineralMan
(146,346 posts)Sometimes it's about myself. DU is a great place. It lets me talk about just about anything. Don't you agree?
rug
(82,333 posts)Followed by an attempt to dismiss and belittle.
Yes, I do, and will, talk about a lot of things, despite what you consider worthy.
I look forward to your next thread about yourself.
MineralMan
(146,346 posts)You can always count on me.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)Indeed. In other news, collapse of house of cards suggests Everest doomed.
