B.) Mild religious. Church attendance, maybe some Sunday School, but religion wasn’t a large part of your upbringing. Outside of Church relgion was rarely discussed and was more something done out of tradition rather than any deep spiritual commitment.
I.) You do not have a strong attitude towards religion in general, even though you find the claims of most religions impossible to believe. You may be opposed to aspects of some religious beliefs–creationism taught as science, for example–but you don’t beleive that means you have to be opposed to religion in general. You find religion factually wrong, but it doesn’t bother you. There are some aspects of religion you admire, maybe art, or charity.
None of those. My parents were agnostic and didn’t care about religion… I was a bible-thumping religious fanatic from 6th grade through about 11th grade.
Now, I’m an agnostic (read: atheist) Zen Buddhist and my Mom’s a devout Christian.
Allll righty then!
Question 1: A. Not idealogically atheist, just no presence of religion in my upbringing.
**Question 2: ** 2, with the caveat that nobody’s belief should ever be forced upon another.
Also, I think that people with sincere and authentic religious belief are rare, and they tend to be the least dogmatic or militant, mostly seeing it as an answer to the unanswerable questions all us mortals face. Those people I have no problem with and, indeed, think do the world good. It’s the dogmatists that are the problem. However, religion by its very nature encourages dogmatism, while secularism encourages skepticism.
A1
I must mention that I actually went to christian high school, but that was for the sports education. I remember that most of my religious classmates were ok people; they didn’t judge me for not believing, and I didn’t judge them for standing in front of class every now and then confessing their relationship to He Who Must Not Be Mentioned. But, just like any “normal” class, you would find nutcases, and there were a couple of them in my class too, but they were weird to everyonel as well. So in my opinion you can go ahead and believe all you want, as long as we get along.
B. Church of England Primary School. Didn’t survive really reading the Bible and then learning to think for myself though.
And certainly II.
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C. Raised Catholic.
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II.
Becoming an athiest was a long process that started when I just didn’t want to go church anymore, and began skipping. When I got to college I was exposed to a bunch of things I’d never really been able to experience before, and did some looking around. Eventually I started researching on my own, really reading the bible and what other people had written about it. Read a lot of religious stuff, and slowly began to realize how absurb it all sounded. Started reading athiest stuff, and realized how well it clicked and how it explained a lot of the religious stuff I had read and couldn’t figure out.
My mom had been really unhappy with me not going to church, and always bugged me to go, using the usual religious arguments. My finally confronting her with being an athiest started a year long war of words. It eventually settled down to her asking me if I was going to to mass on Easter or Christmas every year.
A few years back, my brother moved and got involved in this mega-church and suddenly became uberreligious. For a few months I got to hear all about how I was going to hell, etc. I think my parents talked him into cooling off a bit. I still get to hear it from him and his wife anytime theyre around. Theyve told me that they dont want me saying antireligious stuff around their kids, but at the same time have no problem saying antiathiest stuff in front of both me and them. There are people in my extended family I wont tell about my atheism, because I know they would blow a gasket.
I’m glad I was able to pull myself away from the Catholic church and finally see things clearly, but I’ve gone through some really stupid shit because of it.
I’m a B-I mostly, with some elements of II (for one thing, I “feel that any irrational belief system is ultimately pernicious”, particularly including paranormal beliefs).
I was raised Roman Catholic, but I had an awakening of skepticism towards religion in 5’th or 6’th grade (at a Catholic elementary school), when some kind of roving, fire & brimstone-preaching monsignor from elsewhere told us exactly how long (so many hours, so many days, so many months, years, etc) we’d have to stay in Purgatory to cleanse our souls for each and every sin. He gave out the exact duration as if he were reading from a catalog!
Surprisingly, I was the only one in my class to figure out there was something theologically dubious about this monsignor’s purported knowledge. Reading Scripture isn’t stressed in Roman Catholicism but, even with my lack of familiarity with them, I knew there was no such list anywhere in the canon. So I, incredulously, asked aloud: “How does he know?”
Sister Mary Abusador looked quite stricken before she struck me for such impudence. But I learned my lesson well: even monsignors (and by extension, anyone related to the Church) can sell or make shit up for their own purposes. That day, a religious skeptic was born.
Curiously (but laudably), the teacher of comparative religions and the history of religion at my Catholic high school guided me further still. He skipped past no ugly chapter in Church history and was as critical towards Catholicism as he was toward any other religion. I sat at his feet and grew ever more doubtful.
I am extremely grateful for my Catholic education! I doubt I’d become as skeptical as I have without it.
B, I
(though in reality I occupy the vast middle ground between I and II - I’m nott erribly comfortable with either, but I definitely lean more toward I than II)
Q1. A mix of C and D. My mother is/was D, my father C. I went to a Catholic school where the amount of fundie dogma would depend on which nun you got to teach you. Since I did sciences for A-levels I was lucky and got the tolerant types for the last few years.
Q2. 2, although I usually pretend to be more tolerant, as long as I am not getting preached at.
C
1.9999999999999999 until it reaches 2.
A 1, though trending A 2
Somewhere between C and D. I was raised Mormon but my father did not attend church regularly. My mother was and still is very much a practicing Mormon.
1