I didn't grow up with religion, to me, it's kind of a foreign concept. It's not something that I think about another person being, so sometimes I am surprised to find out someone is religious. I'm curious how other non believers experience their non belief.
My family was a "Christmas/Easter" sort of group but, for some reason, they decided to force me to go to Sunday school at the local Southern Baptist church. It took about two years before I could stand up and refuse! Even as a young teen, I knew this was BULL!
Yes, I was an altar boy! I grew up in a heavily ethnic Eastern European, Italian, Irish community, almost 100% Catholic, there was little choice. Ironically, the absurdity of the Catholic confession ritual and a course in biblical exogesis at my Jesuit university pushed me to a better intellectual place. Deep down, I never believed any of the fairly tales, but the local social structure was only available to me if I pretended I did. My kids had a choice, and they turned their backs on formal religion on their own. My son attended, with his friends, services at a Buddhist temple, a Mormon temple, megachurches, Baptist Church, and even some Catholic services. I asked him what he found out. He told me the Buddhists had the best food. B-)
Yes, I was raised by catholic parents. Both sides of the family were pretty devout when I was growing up.
My family called themselves Xians. We didn't talk of god much. I stopped believing when I was around 10-years-old.
A long, painful process was required for me to make a break with religion. Though, I will say I have not been into Christianity since I was 12, courtesy of southern fried hypocrisy.
I was taught that there was a god at an early age and this teaching set me up for a life of vulnerability to religious ideas. It wasn't until my 54th year that I realized that the Biblical account of the flood could not have happened and I subsequently realized none of it was true. Well I can't live my life over but I can enjoy a life based on truth and science now!
Yes and no. Parents never went to church but the family kept bibles in the house, said god can see what you do and you will be judged blah blah blah. Had a friend who invited me to church a few times as a young kid, I went to play with the other kids more than anything. Sunday school sucked but never really thought much of it back then. Then I realized it was all bullshit once I took a religion course in college, full blown non believer now for sure.
Yes but it wasn't super evangelical as I went to tons of churches. But I'm as athiest as the rest.
I grew up in a reformed Jewish household. Meaning that the religious aspects were minimal. It was more of a cultural or ethnic thing. From the time I was two or three I questioned everything in life. (Whatever my parents told me not to do whether was cross the street or anything else I had to try even at that young age).
I was sent off to Sunday school and Hebrew school and questioned it all until I finally pissed off the rabbi by the age of 9.
In first grade I refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance because the words under God were in it. Obviously my non- belief was firmly in place by then.
The one good thing about Judaism, is that as a religion we are taught to discuss debates and question. That is why there are so many secular Jews because we are taught to think about it, not to just accept it.