Religion comes in variety of styles
By Donna Wong
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
An atheist and a traditional religious adherent are just two
people who call loving life by a different name, said a student
sitting in Kerckhoff patio one morning.
Melissa Martinez, a first-year business/economics student,
believes atheism and religiosity are two facets of living life.
Non-practitioners of religion, agnostics and atheists are
members of UCLA’s campus population who found a reason to distance
themselves from or reject traditional religion.
Although UCLA has its share of active Jewish, Buddhist and
Catholic followers among others, there appear to be many people
choosing merely to reject traditional religion, students say.
But despite what the trend may look like at UCLA Â in the
United States, roughly 80 percent of the population are members of
a religion, and 90 percent believe in a god or gods, said Mary
Wolmack, a religious anthropology professor.
As for the other 10 to 20 percent that may seem numerous at
UCLA, some have never thought about God and religion in relation to
their life, or they just reject aspects of traditional religion
because of philosophy.
But one reason UCLA may appear to tip the scales in religious
skepticism is because the college years identify a period of time
when students experiment and doubt what they used to take for
granted.
"This is the self-questioning time of your life. So (religious
skepticism) would be more prevalent than anything," Martinez
said.
There are three main types of people who reject some facet of
traditional religion: atheists, agnostics and
non-practitioners.
Atheism  the belief there is no God or higher being Â
is the exact opposite of a religious adherent.
However un-alike, some would still consider atheism a religion
in itself because just as others passionately believe in the
existence of a God, atheists deeply believe in the lack of one.
And just like a religious adherent, atheists have already
questioned and thought about their belief system in relation to
their life, Wolmack said.
Some would say the atheist makes the true non-religious person
the agnostic, who believes it is impossible to know if God exists
and does not validate either side at all, Wolmack added.
Other students are non-practitioners  those who identify
with a religion but don’t actively participate in it  say
that their reason for not practicing is that certain religions are
not addressing their needs, or the needs of the times.
"(Catholicism) is such an antiquated religion. It doesn’t live
up to social change," said Colette O’Donnell, a first-year pre-med
student. "Just the lifestyle it imposes on people is very
restrictive."
But some believe that their religion does live up to their needs
in every way.
"I think it does address our most important need because it
addresses our need to be right with God," Huey Dang, a third-year
biochemistry student said about Christianity.
Regardless of spiritual needs, many still believe that the duty
of religion is to address the issues affecting today’s people.
"(Religion) has to correspond with modern times, and it’s not
doing that now," Martinez said. "But I think in the future it
will."
Despite religious skepticism, the actual trend may be in
becoming a believer, not a non-believer.
With more than four-fifths of the U.S.’s population as believers
in a religion or God, there doesn’t appear to be a drastic tip in
the scales in the near future, Wolmack said.
In fact, it may be possible to say that there presently is an
increase in adherents to traditional religion.
With many predicting the apocalypse  the end of the world
 for the year 2000, more people may have become religious as
a result, Wolmack added.
Although many only consider the fundamental disparity between
the religious adherent and the atheist, some believe that everyone
thinks very much the same. And that there really is no true
atheist.
"Even though there are people who say they don’t believe in God,
the atheist still loves life, and love touches everything," said
Stephen Legaspi, a second year philosophy student. "We all love the
same things, we just gave them different names."
"Searching for God is like searching for happiness, some people
just don’t believe in it by the normal standards everybody else
believes in," Martinez said.