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Question 9

Were you raised in an atheist family or did you become an atheist on your own?

• My family was very definitely entrenched in their religion. Mom's side of the family were like "soap opera" families around the holidays, who gather around the Christmas tree singing hymns and yadda yadda yadda and who try to make it such a sentimental, "warm and squishy" occasion so that you never want to leave it behind, while dad's side were the type to consider such customs as remnants of a pagan culture - some of them refused to use Christmas trees and gift exchanges, while others used them, but only because it was "tradition", feeling guilty for it all the while because of the custom's "true, evil" origins. Our own family had a tree and gave gifts, and we always got together with mom's side of the family for those warm, squishy moments around the buffet carving up a turkey or a ham. I have a lot of good memories of such religious occasions around our house. A couple of things "happened" to me, however, to get me to questioning the church and its motives, and the bible itself.

  The primary reason my questioning began was that I am gay, and have known it since I was 4. Oh, I didn't know I fell under the label of "gay" or "homosexual", but I *did* know that I got crushes on other boys. When I learned what it meant to be this way, and what my family's religion had to say about it, I turned into a depressed, apathetic child because I thought I was such an "evil" person, and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't change. I already had Attention Deficit Disorder, and was reeling from the inner turbulence and chaos people's attitudes towards such a child at the time could produce (This was when no one knew of such a disorder and simply called you "lazy" or "stupid" or "irresponsible"). Realizing that I was a "Sodomite" destined to burn just made my inner turmoil that much worse. I thought that maybe on some level I didn't *want* to change or something, but that was patently untrue - I *DID* want to change. Desperately. So, from the time I found out what "gay" was, and that the label applied to me (I was about 8 or so at the time), until the time I finally stopped worrying about it at around 19 or 20, I was miserable in my emotional self-flagellation and self-denial. Self-esteem and self-worth were non-existent for me, and my social life suffered immeasurably for it. I had few friends, and out of self-hatred I would end up sabotaging the few relationships I did manage to form. I'd tried everything I could to change my sexual feelings - prayer, fasting, begging God, denying that I was really that way... Everything. And with every failure, I became that much more convinced that I was that much more evil and "bad" for not being able to change something I didn't choose to be in the first place.

  I had sort of an "epiphany" when I was around 8 years old, almost like a religious experience, which told me, "The only ultimate truth is that there *is* no 'ultimate truth'", something which, if I'd accepted it at the time, would have freed me from the confines of religious oppression I'd been raised in. But I just sort of "ignored" it, and went on wallowing in mine and my family's misery.

  This went on for years. Meanwhile, there was an aunt with which I had a very close and special relationship - we both had a gift for playing music by ear, and she had been my Sunday School teacher for years. We could talk about things in ways me and my parents couldn't, and that was special. She died in 1986, when I was just about to turn 15. I viewed her death as a "test" from God, and reaffirmed my faith and re-dedicated my life to the Lord. What made it worse was that she died on the day I tried my first dose of speed in school - the first illegal drug I'd ever taken. I was absolutely convinced that, despite the fact that she'd had leukemia for 11 years and had been dying slowly for months, "God" had taken her on that day to "punish" me for that heinous act. The amount of *guilt* this religion had dumped on me was enormous, and it's amazing I didn't reach wit's end much sooner.

  But finally, one day when I was around 17, I guess I just "snapped". Not in the sense that I had a nervous break down or anything, but I just finally became sick of all the guilt and horribly negative feelings Christianity kept *dumping* on me over and over and over again. At this point, I went into a kind of "emotional void" phase - like my emotional systems were in "shock" of some sort, and they simply stopped functioning. I was blank, emotionless, probably in response to the excruciating buildup of pain and guilt in my life, both from being gay, and from being helplessly "lazy, irresponsible and careless". Maybe it actually was a kind of "nervous breakdown", I don't know, but it was one of the most peaceful and beneficent periods in my life. With such emotional detachment, I was able to begin taking an honest, objective look at my life, at the religion I'd been brought up in, and at my family.

  Unfortunately, I had no one to talk to through this questioning period - the Internet wasn't available to me then, and I wasn't sure how my only friend at the time (Yes, I only had 1 friend) would have taken such blatant questioning of things I thought he considered "ultimate truths" (I found out later he was going through a similar "questioning" phase, and came to conclusions similar to mine). My family certainly wouldn't have taken questioning of their beliefs very well (My mom flew into enough hysterics when she caught my sister sharing a joint with my cousin - the "sin" of disbelief and questioning is unquestionably more serious in their eyes because with doing drugs, you can be forgiven, but if you disbelieve, you can't be "saved"). So I had to go it alone. But I managed, examining my attitudes, the Bible, everything, not with the intent of proving my religion "wrong", but so that I could see if there was really a *reason* for all this horrible negativity I'd experienced with Christianity, to see what the truth was whether I "liked" the truth I found or not. I'd have been willing to keep suffering if I found it was necessary for salvation. However, taking a few good looks at the Bible, I began realizing that it wasn't the "truth" I'd thought it was.

  I still believed in a "god", and that god was all-loving and all that, but I decided that the Christian God could not possibly be the true god. Reading about Gideon, Job and various other "battles" such as Jericho, I realized no god in its right mind would actually do these things, that the god of the Bible was invented by primitive barbarians to justify their primitive behavior. So I took on a rather pantheistic perspective for awhile, and tried all sorts of other religions and philosophies. During this time, I became a much more relaxed and likable person, and started making friends much more easily. I went from having only 1 signature in my yearbook in 9th grade, to not having enough room for friends to sign it by the time I graduated - it was wonderful! :-)

  Modern witchcraft, including religions/philosophies such as Wicca, were the most appealing and beneficent to me through this search, and I was eventually able to begin reconnecting with my emotional self and to deal with the pain, depression and anger given to me by Christianity. Of course, it's an on-going process - I'm now 25, and still have only scratched the surface of all the hurt (A hurt "God" never even *once* tried to soothe in any way, shape or form, despite my willingness to submit to his "divine will" - I'd have even been willing to suffer through it if I could have found just cause for doing so) - but at least now, I *can* deal with it. I'm *allowed* to deal with it, I don't have to suppress it because "suffering is good" or "God is not to be questioned" or any such nonsense.

  Eventually, my examination of religious and philosophical matters became much more thorough, in-depth and objective, and through simply educating myself, I decided that either there was no god, or if there was, it/they either played no part in our lives, or simply didn't care *what* we believed or did. After all, people of all religious and philosophical persuasions receive "confirmation" for their beliefs of one sort of another, and *if* such confirmation is from a "higher source" rather than from their own minds, then this "higher source" is just going along with whatever we decide. So, my reasoning went, I might as well behave as if there is no god anyway.

  It's only been recently, however, that I've decided that most human conceptualizations and descriptions of a "god/dess" aren't likely to exist, and as a result consider myself a strong atheist in regards to most gods. For this perspective, I owe thanks to the alt.atheism forum.

  And you know what? With each successive loss of "connection" with any type of "god" concept, I didn't end up going out and raping, stealing, murdering or violating others in any fashion. In fact, I consider myself a much kinder, sincere and more "moral" person than I was before, certainly more so than many today who label themselves as "Christians". But with my history, I do understand them, and what makes them that way, and find it very hard to place blame squarely on their shoulders. Sure, the more dreadful theists are responsible inasmuch as they willingly submit to blindness, servitude and intellectual death (through denial of their own reasoning facilities), but on the whole, most people probably do not *want* to be "bad" or "rude" or "mean" - it just happens that their philosophies and beliefs give them no other choice, and they don't see it as *being* "bad", "rude" or "mean".

  FWIW, that's pretty much my story. BTW - is someone >"collecting" the answers to these questions or something? I'm just wandering what the purpose of the questions are. Whatever that may be, they do seem to be an excellent way to get "atheist-oriented" conversations going, and I'm glad whoever thought of them did. :-) Thanks! :-) (Avender #88)

• Until about the age of eight, I would say I was raised in an agnostic family. Suddenly, my parents found it necessary that my brother and I become "Christian". Being a very meticulous couple, they looked for a religion that fit the bible the best. Sadly, they picked the SDA. Vegetarians, church on Saturday the whole thing was kinda surreal. Communion had of grape juice instead of wine. My brother decided it was crap about one year into it (he would have been 10), I was right behind him when I turned 10. Both of us had read the Bible by this time and were a little unnerved. Of course leaving was not as easy as it sounds for a couple of kids who knew better than their parents.

  My mother soon left when she figured out how anti-Catholic they were (she was raised Catholic) and the anti-woman sentiment played a part in her eventual return to normality. It was quite a while later that my dad left, as he discovered that most of their semi-science was crap.

  I would think that it was a combination of being raised agnostic, and being forced to go to church that eventually turned me into an atheist. It did take two more readings of the Bible when I got older to understand that "hey, that isn't quite the way things work" on a scientific level. I guess the kicker was this news group. I mean, without this place, I never would have remembered the "can't prove a negative" from my phil-151 class. (Paul MacDonald #537)

• I was brought up in a Catholic family, with a father who takes the "using the name of the lord in vain" thing a little too seriously by saying gawd", and a mother who was shocked at my sister's decision to not have her son circumcised or baptized because, "You have to bring him up as something..." But really, they never pressured us into their beliefs. If you didn't want to go to church, you didn't have to (in fact, after years of disagreeing with nearly everything the Vatican said, they don't go to church anymore). Religion was never discussed in our house, and now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think we even owned a bible. I became an atheist on my own, but I think my parents actually helped by realizing it was up to their kids to figure things out by themselves instead of telling us "this is the truth and you must believe it." (Rob~ #754)

• I was raised in a non-religious Jewish family. There was no bible in the house, and only important holidays were observed - Passover and Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah was sort of skimmed over and Chanukah was for kids. My mother was the one who did the observing with my father sort of going along for the ride. I became an atheist at the age of 12 when it struck me that there were too many rotten things in the world for an existing god not to have done something about. Since it didn't do anything to help those who really needed its help, it didn't exist. Something that evil couldn't exist. As I got older, this belief deepened with knowledge. My family, except for my father, didn't know I was an atheist. Dad refused to accept it, so he simply ignored it or said that it was phase I was going through just to be difficult. But, aside from family gatherings on various occasions, religion was never forced on me. (Michelle Malkin #1)

• My family attended church every Sunday and, during Lent, Wednesday evenings, too. My father was in the choir, but never talked to me about his beliefs. My mother prayed over everything -- meals, car trips, illnesses, accidents -- with, of course, a special prayer for each circumstance. She always carried little soft-back books of prayers for different occasions in her purse and would whip one out and read with moving lips given the slightest opportunity.

  I attended Sunday School and church from as far back as I can remember. I joined "Girls Friendly", a church club for junior high and high school girls to discuss religion and learn proper domestic skills such as sewing, cooking, and deferring to men. What I resented most during my childhood, was that I was not allowed to play, talk on the telephone, watch television or even read a book on Sunday. I was required to spend all day with my family, usually going to my elder married brother's house and sitting, dressed up in my go-to-church clothes for the entire day.

  Given this background, my mother was appalled when I started questioning doctrines which made no sense to me such as the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus. She told me that I really didn't hold those thoughts. I ultimately moved out of my parents' home when I was eighteen for various reasons. I maintained surreptitious contact with my father, but did not have any communication with my mother for many years. I, unfortunately and inevitably, married a man who was more controlling and more abusive than my mother and converted to Catholicism on his insistence.

  To make a long story short (too late), I put myself through college despite objections from my husband, became a mother of two and persisted in questioning my religious beliefs. The priests were sure that if I just studied more catechism, it would all make sense to me. It didn't. Eventually, I stopped attending church, divorced my husband, acknowledged that I was an atheist and found happiness; but that's another story. 8-) (Liz Huth #658)

• I was raised an atheist. It didn't make much sense until my 15th year when friends asked me to go to a midnight church ceremony. It felt very strange being in a place full of slient people with just one guy talking about how bad we were and how some guy that lived thousands of years ago died for us. I seem to remember thinking "Who the hell asked him to?" People nodded and prayed with rapt attention. To me they seemed terrified. When it was over my friends asked me what I thought, I said it was great. I never had plans to ever attend again, it just gave me the creeps. When I think about it now, 30 years later, it was the first moment of keeping my "secret" to myself and entering another life of slient discretion/hypocrisy. Not any more. I will never be a doormat to christian robots again. I can't wait for someone with magic underwear to ring my doorbell. Thank you, internet, for setting me free. (Steve Knight #855 and proud of it) Life is good.

• I was raised in a religious family - Or at least my mother was and is religious (Lutheran, if you want to know), she took us to church once in a while, prayed with each of us before bed, and made sure we joined some religious girl-scouts - I just never believed in any of it, that's all. At the same age where I begun to divide things in what's real and what's just make belief (as all children do at some age), the bible simply landed in the "make belief" pile, alongside with Thor, Odin, Elves and other fairy tales because it was obvious to me that it belonged there - As a sort of moralising fairy tale (though I obviously didn't have those words in my vocabulary at the time), and I took it for granted that other people would know it was make belief, too - With them being adults and all - Imagine my surprise when I found out that some people actually believe in that thing! I don't know when my mother realise that I don't believe, but one christmas, when I was about 8 years old, my brother, my sister and I simply agreed that we didn't want to go to church, as we normally do on christmas. My grandmother was AFAIK deeply offended and though that my mother should make us go anyway - but my mother insisted on respecting our decision, because she did and does feel very strongly that it should be a free and personal choice, if one wants to go to church or not. She's strongly against making anyone go, if they don't want to. Despite being very religious, she's also being a very openminded, tolerant and wonderful person and I respect her fully. (Nikitta #1759)

  I was raised a xian, but it never set well with me. As I got older, I decided the only intelligent thing to do was to make an informed decision (as opposed to just blindly accepting the family religion), so I began years of research into all matters religious, studying many different religions along the way. During this time I still considered myself a xian.

  Eventually I rejected all religions outright (including xianity) and just considered myself a generic theist. Once I did this, my family (mostly my mother and two brothers) started trying to "bring me back to xianity" and after a few years of arguing and (poor) debating via telephone and e-mail, I began to have doubts about the validity of theism too, which lead me to investigate atheism.

  After just a few months of regular visits to alt.atheism, I finally shed the last remnants of my theistic garb and became a free thinking atheist. Even though by doing so I became somewhat of an outcast from my own family, I have never regretted it for even a nano-second. ("Fish" -David B. Trout- #623)

• I was raised Jewish, but the emphasis was always more cultural than religious. No one ever tried to pound faith into my head, but no one ever told me *not* to believe, either. I know I did entertain some unfocused belief in god at age 7, since that was when I met my first atheist. I still remember how surprised I was that someone could have no religious affiliation or belief, at all. Can't say exactly when after that I stopped believing, myself, since it never involved any sort of anti-epiphany or anything, but as I recall, by Junior High the whole idea of god seemed pretty primitive.

  I suppose I had it easier than a lot of people here. I grew up in an affluent and well-educated area and religion was never considered to be a big deal by any of my friends, family or neighbors. Creationism was considered simply a curiosity of the Neanderthals in the Bible Belt and socializing centered far more around the malls than any houses of worship. In fact, the intolerance for my lack of belief ( and my skepticism in general ) that I've run into, has occured mainly in the years since I went out into the working world...and since I've gotten on-line...Which I guess explains how I wound up here. ;-) (Alikhat #757)

• My family was strong Lutheran, although both of my parents are scientists so I was raised to believe in christianity but to think like a scientist. As a child I was very active in the church until one day I jokingly asked my parents how they would feel if I became a Buddhist. Both of my parents got very upset which made me start thinking about the whole thing. Since then I have converted almost my whole family to either atheism or deism. (Justin Laue #244)

• I was raised in a family of "softball" theists--Or as a philosophy professor once dubbed such people, "McChristians"--and came became an athiest on my own, as a result, coincidently, of wanting to learn more about my "faith." I spent a lot of time reading not only the Bible itself, but also about its origins and the parallels between its stories and those of neighboring cultures. In the end, the evidence for the "truth" of the Bible turned out to be no greater or less than the proof for the validity of the myths of the Greeks, Romans, Norse, etc. And, much as I would like to believe in Thor, Aphrodite, Neptune, and co. ;) it just makes more logical sense that they're all just stories people made up to explain the things around them that they couldn't understand. (Maynard, #828, and damn proud of it!)

• I was raised in a fairly confused household, Mother was started out a Catholic but left when a priest told her that she was illegitimate as her parents had married in a civil ceremony not a religious one. She and Dad met at a Baptist church that they both went to because it had a good youth group and an indoor pool, Something rare in those days I guess. They didn't buy much of the religious stuff tho, apparently., I wasn't baptized til I was nearly 4, I remember it, and then it was Dutch Reformed.. I have no idea why they picked that one.. Later I was sent to a Methodist Sunday School as it was up the road and close enough to walk. Except for a brief time when I was 'saved' long enough to win a bible, none of it made a lot of sense to me. Then I read the bible, and totally decided it was ridiculous. These days family funerals and weddings and what not are done in the local Unitarian Church - the one where Horatio Alger preached before he made his fortune. Except for my brother who married a Jewish woman and has converted. My nephew bar-mitvah'd this year, and that was an experience. His passage was on the flood, I could hardly contain myself, but I did. It's still ridiculous. (Suzane Watkinson #62)

• I was a Christian for 40 years--a fact of which I am now thoroughly ashamed.

  I did it all: twice a week to church, hypocricy, looking down on people who were not Christians, voting republican, proselyting, reading the bible, refusing to use my intelligence, the whole bit as a mainline protestant.. All of those things that make Christians an abomination today.

  I became an atheist when I realized that the bible stories, that were taught in the sermons, were the actual doctrine, not just stories for children. I began to wonder about the contradictions and utter rubbish that were to revered in the bible. The church scene was no longer attractive. The sermons were given by scientific illiterates. The fellowship was strained and hollow. It was like a breath of fresh air to be free from stale religious doctrine.

  It was not until I began to post to alt.atheism six years ago that I became a hardcore atheist--astounded by the depths of religious bigotry and ignorance, displayed so naively by the fundies who were driven to post in alt.atheism.

  I was shocked how effectively religious brainwashing could turn intelligent human beings into senseless robots consumed by their own delusions. The shock remains today.

  I was an atheist when I arrived at alt.atheism. I know now that I am beyond the reach of any future religious experience, because of the intellectual devastation I have seen in fundy behavior. For this I am grateful to alt.atheism and all of the atheists who defend this newsgroup. (Clothaire #1392)

• I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian. I began to wonder about whether or not Christianity was true, or whether or not God existed, when I was about 20 years old. That just happens to be when I started going to college. During my first year of college, my curiousity was sparked in a way that it never was before (I was *very* lazy in high school). I began to read as much about science and philosophy as I could, and it wasn't long before I rejected theism outright. (Darwin #1985)

• I was raised as a Lutheran. My parents were quite serious about their beliefs and we attended church and Sunday school regularly. Years later, I started questioning these beliefs and went through a time of apathy and agnosticism enroute to becoming a complete non-believer. I didn't have any atheist friends or influences, it just came about as the result of trying to reconcile my religious training & indoctrination with the rational thinking I had learned over the years. I now realize that all of this was BS based on myth and superstition. (Woden)

• > On my own. My family was quite religious. My dad was Protestant (Lutheran) and my mom Catholic. My father eventually converted to Catholicism. I attended Catholic schools all the way through the first year of college.

  I don't know when I first started doubting, but as far back as I remember I always had some questions about religion. The answers that the priests and nuns gave just never added up. I began to investigate the subject on my own. By the time I was about 15, I was an agnostic. In my junior year in college, I became an atheist. I haven't looked back since. (John Hachmann #1782)