Are you and your IB class religious?

[MariusIBDP]

I saw a question in IBS "Would you raise your children religiously?" and I was surprised it was 50/50. Whole my class are atheists, there is not a single religious person(few might believe in God, but not in religion) and I always thought it was a common thing between IBeers.

This is way I created this poll, to make clear - what are most of IBeers religious beliefs? Please, not only answer the question, but elaborate your and your classes view with a post.

[Award Winning Boss]

The majority of my philosophy class are religious and I'm an atheist. It's interesting and extremely annoying in some debates

However, philosophy of religion shall be interesting

I'll add, the only reason why it can be annoying is because a lot of people tend to shy away from debate and pointless insults with is just stupid. From both sides of the pond that is.

Edited April 12, 2012 by Award Winning Boss

[Wykked Wytch]

I'm from a very liberal Jewish household, but I am personally an atheist. As for most of my classmates, it is unclear what religion they belong to because it's generally seen as a personal matter. I've never had anyone try to convert me, and it typically only comes up in conversation as a side note. The only exceptions are people who wear crosses around their necks (though it's hard to tell if it's for religious or fashion purposes), and Muslim girls who wear hijab.

[Where Love Died Laughing]

I'm an atheist and the majority of my class are atheists. Most of us are baptized Christian Orthodox, but that's mostly because they baptized us when we were 1 and we didn't have much of a say in it. I think the majority of my class celebrates religious holidays, but religious holidays here just mean eating lots and lots of food. (: The one student who is religious (though she isn't fanatic about her faith) is a Catholic.

[Summer Glau]

I go to a Catholic school, so the majority of people are Catholic but there are also quite a few Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, etc. It's not really a big deal because we rarely talk about religion in everyday conversation anyways.

As for myself I was raised as a Catholic but I'm not very religious.

[The Economist]

I think you should edit your poll. The first section suggests that you're either an atheist or a religious person. It doesn't mean that some people who, let's say, are apathetic are atheists. There is a huge difference between the two. I'd suggest you add a third section named "other" probably.

[spereira14]

In my country a whole lot of the population si Catholic, and being in an IB school, most of are of the upper-middle class, so yes, most of us are Catholics, though as the years progress I've been noticing that fewer people keep on being religious, but if you ask around, I think everyone will answer Catholic. There are some people at my school who follow other religions, but other schools in the area are purely catholic. I don't think being religious affects our lessons, it's just that some may be more harsh while debating towards their own point of view; others, such as me, like to keep an open mind.

[thewingedgiraffe]

Interesting question. Most of my classmates are Christian, in variations other than Roman Catholic. I'm Roman Catholic. Religion doesn't come up that much in class, but people were a bit touchy in TOK when my teacher asked about how we "know" aspects of religion.

Spereira14, I think it's very interesting that you say fewer of your classmates are identifying as religious. Do you think that is caused by IB, being adolescent and questioning things, or something else?

I feel like everybody at my school is very open-minded and respectful. If you're not Christian or are Catholic, that's just fine. I think that that's sort of an IB thing: a conscious effort to not be prejudiced or close-minded.

[Sandwich]

I also think the poll needs editing. I'm not religious but I'm not an atheist either. Either one of those is a very strong statement about the unknown (and in my opinion, imaginary). For instance I'm not a member of the Anti-Unicorn Front - or any other type of group where the fundamental statement is belief in the non-existence of something. If nothing else, to be so is to be wasting your time. I don't need to declare any lack of faith in the existence of unicorns, god or ten armed dwarf men. I can just tell you that I find each as likely as each other.

My school had a lot of quite diverse religions represented but weirdly only christians chose to take the IB. Only 3 of them that I know of took religion seriously, all foreign students who'd come to board. The rest of us were either atheist/don't care (myself) or kinda christian in that way where you've been born one and so probably consider yourself one but personally don't do anything like go to church, read the bible or really put much effort in.

None of the muslims, hindus, buddhist etc. people did the IB.

We never discussed religion in TOK really but on the occasions it did come up, possibly because all 3 religious people were in the other group, the person who got most enthusiastic about it was actually just the TOK teacher. Nobody else much cared: TOK was for sleeping and religion was for people who weren't us. To be honest I think discussing religion in light of TOK is a dead end anyway. Religion isn't knowledge, it's 'faith'. So it doesn't fit into the TOK diagram at all because you don't use any of the ways of knowing, you just decide that you know it of your own accord and that's that. Attempts to discuss how religion is obtained almost purely on Language (that people have told you and raised you that way), despite being factually obvious, is usually in my experience refuted by most religious people who feel that it undermines them (probably because language is considered unreliable at the best of times in basically every other sphere of life) and that a second layer of 'personal faith' has replaced simply believing to be true whatever people around you said. When somebody tells you that they know something through their personal faith - then IMO whatever, good for them, but you can't be expected to talk about TOK with them because they have elected to ignore TOK and objective knowledge/truth in favour of basically telling you that they'll believe whatever the hell they want and THAT is why what they believe is true.

Fair enough Given the privileged state of religion as exempt from intellectual examination and the taboo on discussion for fear of undermining people/meeting the impenetrable wall of beliefs-do-not-need-to-make-sense-and-that's-why-they-are-beliefs-so-shut-the-hell-up-ignorant-peasant, I shall walk away quietly and leave people to indeed believe whatever the hell they want...

[krakaton]

Most of my school believes in the existence of a higher power, but few are religious. Most of them are into all that new-agey crap with universal consciousness and a shared god - tripe like that.

Personally, I'm not exactly an atheist because it's quite possible that a deity does exist. It's more the concept of a god that I hate. Even if empirical evidence for the existence of god were given to me today, I would still hate god's bloody guts for letting all those children starve. If god doesn't exist, well then **** religion too, because it's the cause of most of the world's problems.

[Jyrgen]

The great majority belongs to a church, but I doubt they all believe. It's more of a sociocultural thing around here, I think. I identify as an agnostic or an atheist myself.

[Emmi]

I live in the southern United States which is very religious, so most of my class is indeed religious. I, however, am not a religious person so I don't really care. My parents are Christians, but religion was never forced upon me nor my siblings and they're not like super-hardcore Christians, as in they don't really go to church, read the Bible, etc. I think they were both Catholics as they were growing up actually, but neither are anymore since my mom disagrees with a lot of the aspects of Catholicism and I don't know about my dad.

My class consists of about 70% Christians (all types), 10% Hindus, 10% agnostics/atheists, 8% that don't really care about religion, 1% Jewish, and this one ultra-pro Catholic girl that no one really likes and preaches Jesus all day long and attacks you if you aren't religious. But there are varying levels of religiousness, some just believe in a God and that's about it and others are deeply religious.

[marauder7]

You shold add "agnostic" or "I have a religion, but i am not a religious person" to the first category. I think none of the categories define me because I am not very religious but I am not an atheist.

I am catholic but I rarely go to church.

Many people in my class are like me. There are also some who go to church every sunday. However all of them can talk about religion openly and the religious people don't try to impose their religion on others.

There are a few atheists in my IB class. There is no one from a religion that is not Catholicism.

[thehaikubandit]

Most of my school believes in the existence of a higher power, but few are religious. Most of them are into all that new-agey crap with universal consciousness and a shared god - tripe like that.

And why exactly is the "new-agey crap" less valid than other religions? Especially seeing as the majority of it is often based on Celtic/ancient religions, meaning it is more old-agey than new.

[cookiedoughlove]

The majority of my class are religious (70%) which is quite high! And are all Christians

Edited May 7, 2012 by cookiedoughlove

[funny10sport]

I go to a catholic school so the majority of my classmates are catholic or practice the catholic faith however there are some of my classmates who are agnostic. I am Chrsitian Baptist which is different though. As far as I know, none of my classmates practice other religions such as Islam, Hindouism, Buddhism etc.

As of TOK class, we haven't touched on religion yet.

[Dew]

I love the debate on religion. I grew up a catholic, turned to Islam through a friend but found some bits that did not correlate with my ideology. Thought about Atheism but it doesn't work for me so atm I am a Theist who has no set religion.

[Sofi315]

I am agnostic. My mom is super Christian and my dad was raised Catholic but he does not follow any religion. When I was like 5 or 6 years old I used to go to church with my mom but then, I don't know why, we stopped going. At home we rarely talked about religion, so the few things I knew about it was because of my school (a Catholic school). Then I started to question religion and decided I was agnostic. Two years ago my mom started going to church again and she is now super, super Christian, so I avoid talking about religion with her.

The majority of my classmates (like 28 out of 33) were baptized in the Catholic religion, but some of them are now Agnositc or atheists, others belive in God but not in religion, and some others are still Catholics. Fortunately no one is super religious and we all respect each other's beliefs. I think we only discussed religion once in TOK and we analysed the errors in the reasoning of an anti-evolution Christian extremist.

[Ezak]

It's hard to say for sure how much of my class that would say that they are religious, as I don't really know what most people believe or talk about it with them that much. I would call myself an atheist, but some of you would probably see me as an agnostic, but to me it's all the same. Most of my friends are too atheist, and according to me experiences in my class, the ones that talk and engage in debate the most are the ones that are least likely to be religious. You could almost say that most of us think the idea of an intervening god to be pretty ridicolous.

But then again, this is sweden, home of the god- less.

[Eizhowa]

In my school none of the IBers were religious in an extreme or pushy manner (unlike some other people I have gone to school with) and I really liked that. I didn't know which religion mosty belonged too, or if they didn't have one at all. I know some just followed the customs as a part of their cultural heritage, not because they believed in any religion.