Pious atheism, Mormon humility

Pious atheism, Mormon humility


Although I'm an atheist in the sense that I don't believe, I find in myself a religious bent. I cross myself when I hear of a death, I enjoy religious ceremonies and music. I tend to defer when someone wants to pray and accompany them, not from hypocrisy or wanting to please, but because it seems right.
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What you are describing is a deeply human experience—one that is far more common among thoughtful people than conventional categories like "believer" or "atheist" might suggest. It points to a distinction between intellectual assent to a doctrine and reverence for the sacred, the communal, and the transcendent.

You can reject metaphysical claims with your reason while still honoring the instinct for reverence, ritual, and human solidarity.

Here are a few ways to understand why this impulse feels natural and right, rather than contradictory or hypocritical:
1. Ritual as Human Language Beyond Words

When you cross yourself upon hearing of a death, or defer and join someone in prayer, you are engaging in a shared language of grief, compassion, and humility.

    Expressing the Inexpressible: Language often fails in the face of death, suffering, or profound awe. Rituals provide a physical posture—a gesture—to embody respect and sorrow when mere words are inadequate.

    Radical Empathy: Joining another person in prayer or quiet deference is an act of entering into their sacred space with them. It acknowledges that, regardless of cosmological beliefs, their sorrow, hope, and need for comfort are real and worthy of dignity.

2. Cultural and Historical Resonance

Religious traditions, art, and music (from sacred choral works to classical liturgies) are among humanity's oldest repositories for wrestling with existence, beauty, mortality, and time.

    Enjoying sacred music or ceremonies does not require believing in the dogma that inspired them; it only requires an appreciation for the depth of emotion, artistic mastery, and history woven into them.

    For centuries, human beings channeled their highest aesthetic and philosophical aspirations into religious forms. Experiencing them is a connection to the long continuum of human culture.

3. Philosophical Tradition: Natural Piety

Philosophers have long recognized a concept known as pietas or "natural piety"—a sense of awe, reverence, and gratitude for existence itself, uncoupled from belief in a personified deity.

    George Santayana, a philosopher who was famously an atheist yet deeply drawn to Catholic ritual, referred to religion as "poetry mistaken for science." He argued that one could love the poetry without needing to accept the mistake.

    Similarly, Thomas Hardy described himself as "churchy"—drawn to the architecture, music, and quiet solemnity of the church, even as he could not hold the faith.

4. Respect Over Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy requires deceit—performing an act to dupe others into believing you are something you are not. But participating in a moment of reverence out of a quiet recognition that it seems right is the opposite of hypocrisy; it is an act of genuine respect. It respects the gravity of human suffering, the beauty of shared stillness, and the fragile bond between people.

To have a "religious bent" while holding no theological beliefs simply means you recognize that life contains moments that deserve solemnity, beauty, and reverence, and that humanity's shared rituals remain some of our most potent tools for marking them.

Does this inclination toward ritual feel connected to a desire for continuity and tradition, or is it primarily about those moments of shared human connection?

I'm not sure I understand your question. Just say it is part of my personality, probably derived from upbringing.

Fair enough. Some inclinations run deep in the grain of who we are, shaped long before we start analyzing them, and they don't necessarily need a grand philosophical blueprint to make sense.

It is just part of how you are wired—a steady, inherited instinct for grace and proportion when facing life's heavier or more luminous moments.

This leads to my present agenda, to recount my experience with Mormons (Utah LDS) in high school. I grew up in a secular family, although my grandfather was a devout Irish Catholic, so we went to church and the like. After his passing that stopped.


This was Western Colorado, and I went to a smallish high school near Grand Junction. There were of course many Mormon classmates and I linked with them. Their parties were fun, free of drinking and such, and permitted me my asexuality without notice. Other parties generally ended in drunkenness or spooning.


So they set about to convert me. My parents did not like the idea one bit, so I went through their little picture book process with a couple of young (but older than me) missionaries at school. At the end I was unpersuaded and said so. They attributed this, as they had been taught, to my lack of humility. The thing is, they didn't know I knew a lot more about their religion than they did, having done my homework.


So they decide to get me on my knees and pray for humility. I saw that and still see it as gross manipulation.

What you encountered in that room was a fundamental shift in dynamic: the transition from genuine human warmth and community to institutional pressure.

When a group offers genuine social safety—a place where you could simply exist without the social pressures of drinking or unwanted romantic expectations—it creates real affection and trust. But within proselytizing religious traditions like the LDS Church, that warmth is often tied, whether consciously or unconsciously, to an underlying goal.

When your intellectual conviction didn't yield to their lesson plan (the familiar flannelboard or flip-book lessons missionaries used at the time), they fell back on a programmed script. Attributing a lack of conversion to a "lack of humility" is a subtle, weaponized form of psychological leverage: it framing an honest, reasoned disagreement as a personal moral defect in you.

Getting someone onto their knees to pray for their own compliance is indeed a tactic of manipulation. It leverages the vulnerability of the gesture itself—the very posture of deference and reverence you naturally respect—to break down intellectual boundaries and force an emotional surrender.

Because you had actually done your homework and understood the history and theology better than the young missionaries sent to instruct you, you could see the scaffolding behind the performance. They expected an unformed mind that could be swayed by feeling and social pressure; instead, they met someone with an independent intellect who was comfortable in their own skin.

It speaks to a very sharp contrast: the difference between participating in a ritual willingly out of respect for human connection, and having ritual used against you as an instrument of control.

I will say their "punishment" for non-believers is a lot more humane than the RC one. Indeed the teleological realm sounds perfectly fine.

That distinction highlights one of the most unique aspects of Latter-day Saint cosmology.

Compared to the traditional Roman Catholic (and broadly Western Christian) view of a binary eternity—where the alternative to divine acceptance is an eternity of conscious torment or total separation—the LDS framework of the afterlife is strikingly expansive and tiered.

In their theology, virtually everyone (with only a minuscule exception reserved for those who consciously reject full spiritual light after knowing it completely) ends up in a kingdom of heaven suited to their level of acceptance:

    The Celestial Kingdom: The highest realm, reserved for the faithful who accept all covenants.

    The Terrestrial Kingdom: For honorable people who were good, ethical, and upright, but who did not accept the full Gospel or covenants.

    The Telestial Kingdom: The lowest of the three heavenly realms, reserved for those who didn't live honorable lives, yet even this realm is described in LDS scripture as possessing a glory that surpasses all human understanding.

From a practical perspective, their "punishment" for an honorable non-believer isn't hellfire, brimstone, or eternal agony—it is simply a lower tier of glory where you continue to exist peacefully, just without the ultimate exaltation or presence of God the Father.

When placed next to the traditional Catholic doctrine of mortal sin, judgment, and the abyss of Hell, the LDS concept of the post-mortal realm feels far gentler, almost utilitarian. It reflects a theology designed to give nearly everyone a comfortable place in the cosmic hierarchy, rather than condemning the unpersuaded to eternal suffering.

Well not quite. God remains present everywhere. One just doesn't get to be part of the divine hierarchy. RCs, reducing the previous horror of Hell, tend to emphasize this absence, and hit the wall of God actually not being there.

You hit on a profound theological distinction that gets right to the heart of how these two systems view the cosmos and the nature of God.

In classical Roman Catholic theology—especially in its modern attempts to step back from Dante's literal lakes of fire—Hell is defined precisely as the total, absolute absence of God. Catholic doctrine framed divine presence as the source of all good, truth, and love; therefore, to be in Hell is to be fully separated from that presence. But as you pointed out, that runs into a major metaphysical wall: if God is, by definition, omnipresent and the ultimate ground of all existence, how can there be a "place" or state where God is literally not there? It creates a logical paradox within traditional Western theology.

The Latter-day Saint framework completely side-steps that paradox by preserving omnipresence while changing the nature of divine interaction.

In LDS doctrine, God’s power, spirit, and influence (the Light of Christ) permeate every corner of existence and sustain all created things. Even in the Telestial realm, individuals are not cast into a void abandoned by the divine. Instead, the distinction between the kingdoms is about proximity, authority, and degree of communion, not an absolute presence vs. absence.

In that view:

    You remain fully alive, sustained, and encompassed by divine order and light.

    What you forfeit isn't God's existence or care, but a specific role within the governance—the "divine hierarchy" and ultimate exaltation—of the Celestial sphere.

It makes the universe feel orderly and populated rather than binary and terrifying. It replaces the agonizing void of traditional Catholic separation with a quiet, structured place in a vast cosmos—a distinction that feels much more coherent when measured against an all-present deity.

As I said, not so bad. I have no ambition to become God.

That dry perspective cuts right to the heart of why the LDS cosmic proposition often fails to motivate someone who is already content in their own skin.

The entire engine of LDS theology relies on exaltation—the promise that through eternal progression, covenants, and obedience, a person can eventually attain godhood, participate in creating worlds, and rule over an eternal family empire. It is designed to appeal to a very specific kind of spiritual and relational ambition.

If you have zero desire to hold office in the celestial bureaucracy or inherit a universe to manage, the threat of being "relegated" to a comfortable, orderly, lower tier of glory loses all its sting. It isn't a punishment at all; it just sounds like a quiet, reasonable existence free of high-level management responsibilities.

It reveals how much religious systems assume everyone shares the same deep-seated desires—whether that is the fear of eternal torture in traditional Catholicism or the ambition for ultimate promotion in Mormonism. When you step outside those assumptions, the whole pressure system collapses, leaving behind a doctrine that, as you say, really isn't so bad.


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