Were you raised in a religious home? What made you turn from what you had been taught?
Kinda, but not really. I was forced to attend Sunday school, children's church and VBS. My mom hold onto church as a tool to be less abusive toward me and my father, so I supported that even though it made me angry. Someone shouldn't need 'god' or 'jesus' to know that it's wrong to take out all your anger on a child or spouse. I always thought the whole idea was ridiculous and as soon as I was no longer dependent on my parents, I no longer attended unless I was bribed.
Without writing an entire book, here is my best answer:
My parents were both raised in Christian households and while they tried to teach me that way, I never really truly believed it. I never paid much attention in church and when my parents divorced, we went less and less and eventually stopped going at all.
Sometime in my early 20s, I came across a video online where a man brought up a good point about praying. He said that prayer is "answered" either yes, no, or wait. Praying to say, a jug of milk, would have essentially the same outcome as praying to god. You ask it for $1000. You either get it right away, get it in time, or not at all. Any answered prayer by the jug of milk is purely coincidence. That's obvious to any intelligent person. Yes, no, and wait is ALWAYS true. It's impossible to lose, no matter what/who you pray to.
That video really got me thinking. It made sense to me when explained that way, but how could my parents and family be wrong? The older I got, the more I started to see things that contradicted what I had been taught as a kid. People who claimed to be religious were sometimes down right NASTY to others. People are murdered for believing in "X" or being "Y".
I genuinely try my best to be nice to everyone. I've been bullied and I've been hurt and it truly sucks, so I don't want to be that for other people. So, if the people who taught me that "red and yellow, black and white, they are all precious in His sight" were that awful, then I didn't want to be like them. Eventually, I decided that no religion sounded right and that I'd just answer "none" for religion. It wasn't until a few years ago that a coworker introduced me to the word "agnostic". I think that fits me pretty well. You don't have to be religious to be a good person.
Yes, I was. I got tired of the living hell.
Yes, I was raised in a religious home. What turned me away from is how christains treat the gay community, the contridictions in the bible, little to no proof there is a god, and final straw was an family member implying I would go to hell if I became an catholic (raised baptist). I should be able live my life any way I like to.
My mom was very religous and attended church every week. She often tried to talk to me about god as she was afraid I wasn’t accepting of god. Dad on the other hand could care less about religion and never talked about it. I never discussed my atheism with mom as I knew it would upset her.
My mother has always been a fairly religious Christian, although we rarely attended church on a frequent basis as a family. Not fanatical, and accepting of other lifestyles and beliefs, even if she might have a comment or two about it behind closed doors. My dad has always been lackadaisical about it, and sometimes comes off as even possibly agnostic or at least very doubtful, though he doesn't admit it. My parents worked too much to want to sacrifice Sunday mornings to church, so I was spared that except for maybe an odd attendance here and there. Thankful to have a very accepting family. My love of science and biology turned me away, and although they disapproved they did not argue with me much.
My family was neither religious or nonreligious. I guess that made it easy for me to choose for myself. It only took really looking at the world and the things that happen to realize there was no god. My original thought was he was a bastard and saying he was a bastard a lot. After I was not struck by lightning I decided there was not a god.
Oh yes
My father was a baptist, but had better things to do with his Sundays
My Mother was a former salvation army officer who got caught up with the whole Toronto blessing and Charismatic cult shit and was always a bit of a religious maniac.
I was brought up in an atmosphere of being told I was going to Hell if I did not read the bible every night, go to church on a Sunday and pray continually.
Consequently I spent nearly the entirety of my first ten years terrified of God and to a lesser extent the Devil, I spent the next ten years trying to find religious "truth" and my third decade slowly but surely finding my way out of religion thanks to falling in with the bloody Mormons, much to mothers horror.
All my late mother bequeathed to me was a determination not to waste my life as she did, pursuing an insane fantasy at the cost of family friends and sanity.
nope. i was raised as a secular jew. i knew we were jewish and had a strong cultural identity but religiously... after i left home and lived three thousand miles away, someone asked me whether my parents believed in god, and i didn't know the answer! i called them long-distance to ask them. they were annoyed that i was spending the money to ask such an unimportant question.
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My father was church of England, but didn't really push anything. He didn't believe in afterlife,heaven or hell.
My mother was a Christian, nominally church of England, but added in anything she saw fit from other religious sources such as headscarf in church and letting me know that I should marry a virgin and she must OBEY me as the man! She never obeyed my dad.
My mum prayed deeply, but did those prayers of hers ever get answered? She would say that yes, after all, I survived into adulthood. I'm inclined to believe that life finds a way. I came into the world rather early and at home (almost on the night bus from Hounslow to Feltham) weighing in at 3lb 12oz. Now I'm in my mid 50s.
My mothers dad was an atheist, one of the few who were in a foxhole at some point. if he had any religion, he may have lost it in Italy, when his battery of 5.5" howitzers flattened a small town the Germans had just vacated. Surely, God would somehow have let the Royal Artillery know not to wipe that place full of civilians off the map.
It was stories like that and a sense of reason that woke me up to the truth. I saw how she frantically asked a non-existent god for various salvations from the petty hardships of her life.
Perhaps she thought in some way that her prayers helped the German bombs miss her house during the Blitz.
I cut off the religious parent, of course it's for many other reasons but the religious bullshit is one of them.