Yes. I tried to be. Interacted with lots of people who “felt” and “spoke with” God and never personally heard or felt anything despite begging and pleading. I was led to think something was wrong with me because I couldn’t.
Read about 6 versions of the Bible including a very early hand-made one in Saudi Arabia that was recovered from one of the churches that were destroyed during the Crusades. It still had reincarnation in it for normal people and not just Jesus.
Read the Gnostic Bible, other removed texts, and dead sea scrolls once they were translated.
Interacted with many other religions while I travelled finding they all believed just as or more strongly than everyone back home and also “felt” and were “spoken to” by God and wouldn’t you know it, God told each and every of them that they were right. Funny how God does that.
Became completely non-religious, but very interested in the study of it and how people interacted with it.
During this time, my mother became a pastor. I came home and had one talk with her and she broke down in tears and asked me to never speak about religion with her again because I knew more than her and had nearly destroyed her faith in about 20 minutes. She told me that if she ever lost it, she’s kill herself. Afterwards, she chose God over her kids every time.
I didn’t speak to her much for about 22 years. She died of cancer last year, but it was religion that took my mother from me long before that.
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No, but my parents insisted on visiting church when I was little. I barfed at a priest after eucharist (it was very hot and their shitty wine just didn’t sit well with me), after that incident I never returned there.
I mean, I cannot remember how past me has felt about it, but as a child I always went to church ( Christian family ) because my parents made me. Was more of a tradition than anything else, to me. Never had any bad experiences in any church I ever attended, but never felt a spark, as far as I can remember. No connection to any higher being other than man itself.
Same.
A tough one to answer.
I was brought up as a Jehovah’s witness, but I remember as far back as being 6 years old and thinking ‘this isn’t for me, I’ll leave when I’m old enough’; which is exactly what I did, so I don’t think so?That must have been a tricky upbringing
I don’t begrudge it.
As a cis white male my upbringing has helped me understand the plight of trans people. I was told I was something that I wasn’t, and any mere mention that I might not be what they’d decided I should be, would result in conversations about what’s wrong with me, and visits with elders who would help me pray the sin away, how to spot the devil at work, all that stuff.
Whilst what trans people go through is far more severe; it was a slight yet valuable insight for my otherwise privileged existence as to what oppression looks and feels like.
So if I had to miss out on a few Christmas’ and birthdays to avoid ending up the other side a lot of cis whites tend to end up (which seems to be straight up fascism for some fucking reason), then I’m happy to have gone through it.
I get that
We went to an Anglican church. I was 6-7 and asked where is the god person. I was told you have to believe. I said I will believe when I see it. Never went back. Parents stopped then too, my dad was only an obligatory follower. My mom I found out later was to say the least not impressed with religion. I remain the same over 50 years later.
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Eh … no. Raised lightly Catholic. We went to church on Sundays, none of it made any sense to me, and my parents never talked about it. I never really bought it. I skipped a grade early on, so when all the other kids were seven and I was six, and the class was doing all sorts of magical “getting ready for First Communion” shit, the teacher (an old Sister), made sure to point out every day that I wouldn’t be participating.
Six year old me had a real strong sense of justice, and I knew that was wholly unfair, not to mention unkind, calling me out as “different” every single day. The contradiction between that and an “all-loving god” was obvious.
It’s difficult to say what was just conforming or if there was at any point genuine belief in the child form of me.
I remember that as a small child I was already confused. I kept asking question like how genesis and the big bang fit together, and how we could know god was listening to any prayers, how it could be true that someone dead was not dead afterwards etc. My parents are religious in a passive European way, but they are okay with playing god of the gaps, so they never lied about the world to me for the benefit of religion.
I did have my first communion event at the age of 8 or 9. I don’t think there was any choice by me involved. The ceremony was terribly and embarrassing as hell. But it was just something that we did.
Then came the religious classes that happened after normal classes in secondary school (starting grade 7, age 12) once a week. I remember we had to fill out a worksheet on the topic of the period between the protagonist rising from the dead and ascending and how he visited people in between. One question at the end asked if we believed in this account. I wrote something with a childlike sense of diplomacy. Something like I believed in god but not that a dead person can come back to life as reported here. Nobody ever said anything about that to me though.
Not too long after my mother allowed me to withdraw from the rest of those classes, recognising they were fairly pointless, and not even well done for their goal. A few years later, I think when I was 14 or so, we were invited to begin the “road to our confirmation”, which meant attending church a certain number of times and maybe helping out with church activities. I never participated, it was clear to me at this time that I simply wasn’t buying any of it.
Around 16 or so I started calling myself an atheist, having become aware of that term. Only at the age of 20 did I finally do the paperwork for formally leaving the catholic church so those child fuckers and their defenders wouldn’t get any taxes from me.
Overall I’m leaning to “no”
Not really. Growing up we always went to church on Sundays because it was my mom who was religious. But to me, I was just going through the motions of routine. Go to church at 9, grocery shopping at 10, go home for family lunch. What I was looking forward to was the occasional eating out for lunch instead of going home immediately.
I had the perfect environment for indoctrination with a monoculture conservative town before the internet, a mother who co-founded her own Baptist church attended every sunday, summer bible camps, voluntold extras like feeding homeless via Mustard Seed, or doing bottle drives for youth groups which I also attended on some weekends.
Never believed at any point. Did keep an open mind to Abrahamic faiths until I was 16 years old when I stopped hiding my atheism and had learned enough to reject any lingering fears of being mistaken. I never learned anything that swayed me towards theism at any point. I’m one of those troublemakers who read the bible on my own with a critical eye and took my notes to the libraries and the internet once it was more accessible especially once I had my own computer and early cable internet in 2004 from paper route money.
Key things in my opinion:
Despite their active faith, my parents weren’t helicopter generally besides a few hang-ups. Small town I was out and about on my own with my bicycle most days outside of school to roam the town and river valley entirely unsupervised. I loved building (snow)forts in the woods…and going to the library by myself as a child.
I’m naturally reclusive so I didn’t feel social pressures to conform as strongly. I hung out and still do hang out with social outcasts who usually made efforts to befriend me first.
Didn’t believe adults at face value even single digit years old, not even my parents.
Natural born critical thinking ability that only sharpened over time.
Parents didn’t monitor my personal computer once I bought my own.
A fun memory from when I was 8 years old: Public school assembly first of the new school year. Principal leads a Christian prayer and then everyone sings the national anthem. My new class has a girl who doesn’t stand up for prayer. Every single other person in the school assembly of hundreds is standing. I decide to sit down next to her and she smiles at me. The adults don’t react outwardly (and never snitched to my parents clearly) so I stay seated from then on. The new girl decides to draw on my back with her fingers and we become friends briefly until she moves away next year :(
No.
Religion goes in hansld with dogma. I have a serious conflict with imposition.
In an orthodox fashion, you can fit me under the category “atheist” but I prefer “laic”. It is not about if I believe in gods or superior being but that the entire notion is completely irrelevant to me, in my daily life and world view.
I do, however, like to think and often come to the conclusion that I have a fair dose of misticism or spirituality in how I lead my life. I like to think there is a human dimension where we are all equal, where we are able to understand and emphatize with each other and where we transcend our bloated egos and connect with each other on a deeper level.
It may not exist but I feel better when I try to find it and get glimps of it.
Not really. My mom and step dad were Bahí for a big part of my childhood and I think that the teachings are really nice and I liked the community but I can’t say I ever actually belived it. We ended up no longs continuing after we moved.
