Atheism Inherits the Religion from Which It Emerged

I am a CATHOLIC atheist. I am one in a DIFFERENT, SPECIFIC WAY than, for example, an Orthodox or Buddhist atheist. Among self-deceiving, „so-called” atheists, the core logical framework of their original religion remains in their thinking. They are unable to notice this within themselves. I constantly and repeatedly demonstrate it in similar groups. I am afraid that I may be formulating a law.

Remarks; Sławomir Majda

Mrs. Ewa, thank you for this definition; it is profound and very wise. There are differences and similarities between various religions that appear to be contradictory. For example, homosexuality and hidden deviations in the Catholic Church are accepted in Buddhism. Leaving such an environment, influenced by homosexuals acting as religious teachers, may be very similar in both Buddhism and Christianity. Buddhism is a cult, as Buddhists themselves explain to me, of Siddhartha as a person because he was a master of psychology. That is why they pray to him. Jesus became a living god because it was convenient for him. Each of these religions carries different beliefs among what we may call parishioners and worshippers. One leaves Catholicism and other religions differently when entering so-called atheism. Another example is Christianity, which removed the Second Commandment of the Decalogue prohibiting idolatry, something unthinkable in Judaism.

An interesting observation is the claim that a person leaving a religion never leaves it completely. They cease to believe in God, gods, revelation, or life after death, yet they retain the mode of thinking shaped by the religious culture in which they grew up. In this view, atheism would not be a homogeneous phenomenon but rather a collection of different forms of unbelief that still bear traces of their religious roots.

One may then speak of a “Catholic atheist,” an “Orthodox atheist,” a “Jewish atheist,” a “Buddhist atheist,” or a “Muslim atheist.” This is not about religious faith but about deeply rooted patterns of interpreting reality. A person may reject theology yet continue to organize the world according to categories inherited from their original tradition.

A Catholic atheist may not believe in God but may still think in terms of guilt, forgiveness, sin, redemption, sacrifice, meaningful suffering, or moral obligation toward the weak. Even if they reject religious language, their psychological interpretive structure may remain Catholic.

An Orthodox atheist may retain a stronger tendency toward communal, symbolic, mystical, or liturgical thinking. They may reject God yet still perceive the world more as a mystery than as a mechanism. Even their unbelief may be colored by sensitivities inherited from Orthodoxy.

A Jewish atheist may still view reality through the prism of tradition, law, discussion, textual interpretation, and historical memory. They may not recognize the divine origin of the Torah, yet preserve methods of argumentation and reasoning developed through generations of Judaism.

A Buddhist atheist may reject metaphysical elements while continuing to perceive life through the lens of suffering, attachment, mental practice, self-improvement, and work on consciousness. They may live in trances of suffering. Their atheism will have a different flavor than that of a person raised within the Christian tradition. The vows once made to Amitabha or the Medicine Buddha never cease to remain active.

In this sense, atheism may resemble a native language. A person may learn many other languages, but certain structures of thought remain connected to the first language through which they learned to describe the world. Religion may perform a similar function. Even after rejecting it, deeply encoded interpretive patterns remain.

This hypothesis becomes especially interesting when a person considers themselves completely free from religious influence. It may be that the hardest elements of a worldview to notice are precisely those adopted very early and which have become transparent. They are no longer perceived as beliefs but as self-evident truths.

From this perspective, many atheists may unconsciously preserve the logical core of their original religion. This is not about retaining dogmas but about retaining ways of reasoning. A Catholic may stop believing in God yet continue to think in moral categories characteristic of Catholicism. A former Buddhist may stop believing in karma but continue interpreting life through the prism of psychological work on consciousness. A former Marxist may reject Marxism yet still divide the world into oppressing and oppressed groups.

One may therefore propose the hypothesis that people abandon their religion less completely than they imagine. More often, they replace its content than its structure. They change the answers but preserve the way questions are asked. They reject sacred texts yet retain the logic by which those texts were interpreted. They cease believing in God but do not necessarily stop thinking through the tools that religion spent years constructing within their psyche.

If this observation is accurate, then atheism would not constitute the opposite of religion but rather one of the possible forms of its continued existence. Not as faith, but as a hidden structure for interpreting the world. In that case, the term “Catholic atheist” would not be a paradox but a description of a person who has rejected Catholic theology while retaining a significant part of the Catholic way of understanding reality.

At the same time, it is worth noting that this is a philosophical and psychological hypothesis, not an established law. One can find numerous examples of people who indeed retain many features of their original tradition, but also examples of those who pass through many systems of belief during their lives and develop entirely new ways of interpreting the world. Therefore, rather than speaking of an inevitable law, it may be more appropriate to speak of a strong tendency: religions often leave marks far deeper than declared belief or unbelief itself.

Opublikowano: 04/06/2026
Autor: Sławomir Majda
Kateogrie: Religions, priests, sects, idolatry, vows.

Komentarze