Agnostics / Atheists Only

Great Debates
41

Catholic. Only recently became an atheist when I found out that the profound religious experience I had years ago was a glitch across my brain. (So, ordinary people can hallucinate and shit… What’s your problem?)

My mother is a dogmatic blind faith Catholic. My father’s an atheist who always taught me to think for myself, but respect the tenets of religion. He always says there’s nothing wrong with religion per se, except for the organisations that run it.

Of course, the main detriment of the Catholic church is it’s whole Guilt/sex thing. Excellent reason for anyone to be an atheist, I think.

42

I’m what you’d call a ‘soft’ atheist, but I was raised Congregationalist. I started having doubts when I was thirteen, but I didn’t self-identify as an atheist until a couple of years later.

43

went to catholic grammar school and highschool. had my 1st original religious thought in 2nd or 3rd grade. was looking at a picture in the catachism book. there was a persons profile in the lower left corner looking towar the upper right corner. there was a cloud there with rays of light coming out and this supposedly represented God. in the center larger than anything else was a cross and there were lines like telephone wires extending from the profile to God. this supposedly represented the priest enabeling an individual to communicate with God. i sat there a long time staring at that picture. i finally thought “these people are lying to me.”

decided i was agnostic at 12 after getting hooked on sci-fi at 9.

maybe it’s your karma, you learned too much in previous lives. LOL!

see:
http://www.near-death.com/origen.html
http://www.childpastlives.org/oldsouls.htm

Dal Timgar

44

i was made to go to a baptist church fron approximately 6 to 13 years old. Once i got to be more than ten years old, i ws starting to question and dislike the church. I did not understand why all of the things i enjoyed were going to send me to hell. Was told not to wear shorts, jeans, or a swimsuit, because you were making people want to look at you and thus draw one another into sin. WTF? Want to watch cartoons, afterschool or on Saturday morning? that was tantamount to worshiping the tv, and that equaled idol worship. those are two of the loonier example provided by the baptist church i went to. So when i went to the regular sermons, i fell asleep, i read the hymnal, i even skipped the sermon! I would go and walk around the neighborhood, instead of being preached at.

I quit going by !3, and only go for the occasional wedding, and funeral service.

Now one of the sunday school bus drivers is after us to go back to their church, and i am pissed. The man came to our house and visitationed* us to see if we would go back. I managed to shut him up for a few seconds by pointing out that freedom of religion also included freedom from religion. I did not see him this weekend, because it is all i can do to keep from beating him up when he comes over.

*visitationed? i would only consider it a visit if the guy did not aggravate me so much. thus i consider it a visitation.

45

I was raised 50 feet from our Parish church, 25 feet from our “Rectory”(Priests residence); I was an “Alter Boy”, went to Catholic Grammar and High Schools, experienced Jesuit teaching as well as the Christian Brother sect. I had daily exposure in/out of school to Nuns, Brothers, and Priests.

I grew up in a Catholic “neighborhood” in Philadelphia. When I grew up, I thought you were either Catholic or “Public”! I didn’t know anything else until I was in High School!

I recently found a paper I filled out in 6th grade. It was a fill-in-the-blank questionaire. One question reads: “This Parish is__________”

My response was “…not ready for big problems”.

That was the start. After that, I went on to become a person who questioned everything, and some of the things that hold up very poorly to questions are religion and god.

Being an atheist is one thing. Going through a Catholic high school as an open atheist is something on another level.

Hitting and beating teenagers in my high school was common and EXPECTED. I was booted out of “Religion” class numerous times, sometimes LITERALLY, so being an atheist was a test of faith (??? Can that be?).

Why go to a Catholic School? Was still a god education, and a beating is better than a stabbing that my parents feared in Public Schools.

I have an utter bitterness for the aggravation that Catholicism has caused me. Somethings are so inate in people from their upbringing that it’s disgusting. My wife cannot enjoy anything, especially a day off, because anything fun or interesting (especially independent thought) automatically triggers guilty feelings. That, my friends, is the price she pays for her Catholic upbringing.

It’s sad, because having my own ideas, and questioning things comes so naturally to me, yet others can’t think independently. They have “learned” not just the “facts” of their religion, but the “mood” of it as well. “Faith” does not encourage thinking and reasoning; two very human features. “Faith is a human killer”. That could be a atheist sig line.

Jesus was solemn and sad. That’s the tone that has been set. Not experiencing the full benefits of reasoning, thinking and emotions is very un-human, if you will.

I am an atheist, and the catalyst was the stupidity of the Catholic church. Once I learned to question the religion, questioning god was the next natural step.
Faith IS a human killer…figuratively and literally.

46

I am an atheist who had Catholicism shoved down her throat for the first 17 years of her life.

All though childhood I questioned the stories of the Buy Bull, only to be told that I would go to some mythical hell if I didn’t believe them.

It took years for me to get rid of the guilt trips imposed on me by the Catholic church. I no longer fear being sent to some man-made hell merely for masturbating and enjoying sex.

As far as I’m concerned, forced religion is the worst form of child abuse & should be outlawed.

47

For being less than a half percent of America’s population, there sure are a lot of us that congregate on the SDMB! But skepticism and curiosity are kind of the nature of the Straight Dope.

I was raised Methodist, like a few on this board. I guess I was lucky…for the most part, the Methodist church is pretty liberal (at least mine was). Baptized at about 9 mos. I had perfect attendance in Sunday School through sixth grade – by the time I hit high school, I finally got the courage to stop attending completely. By then, I’d been exposed to so much church teaching that I knew I didn’t care for any of it. After a short period of religious fervor in second grade, I knew religion wasn’t for me.

However, one of my best friends is a devout Catholic, and my boyfriend is a candidate for the ministry and will enter seminary next year. I’ve learned that not all religious people are intolerant and pushy, and in fact, I have atheist friends who are terribly intolerant of others’ religions. You’ve just got to know how to choose 'em, I guess.

Of course, I do know a few intolerant people…

But I’m perfectly happy believing that there is(are) no (G/g)od(s). (Aren’t parentheses fun?). I’m just not sure how I might go about raising the children of a minister and an atheist! I guess you’ve got to cross such bridges when you get there.

(By the way…this really isn’t turning into much of a debate, is it?)

48

Athiest and proud of it. I was raised technically as a Buddhist, though my family never really made a big deal about it.

I also distinctively remember first hearing about the Bible when I was five or six years old, and my immediate response was, “How can anyone know it’s authentic? Maybe Moses just wandered off somewhere, scribbled a bunch of stuff he made up, and said God wrote it?” Yeah, my details were off, but that skepticism was there very early… :slight_smile:

49

I am from Mississippi. I was raised a Southern Methodist. I went to that church every other weekend.

On alternate weekends, I would go to my dad’s house. Depending on who he was married to at the time, we would go to Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, and non-denominational churches. So I guess I wasn’t really raised a Southern Methodist…more like a Heinz 57-ist.

So, now I’m agnostic. I think there were three turning points for me. When I was in first grade, the most popular boy in school (he was a Southern Baptist) told me that I was going to hell because I wasn’t saved. Then, when we went to Catholic church, I was not allowed to take communion since I wasn’t technically Catholic (this one really hurt my feelings). Last, I met my husband. He was frank about his religious beliefs, being a former preacher’s kid. Which means, naturally, that he is agnostic. He gave me the courage to step back and think about what I really believed and not to be afraid of what my redneck hometown thought of me. That was the hardest part, actually, since everyone goes to church in Mississippi. I think it’s a law.

Oh yeah, and there’s that whole college thing. Western Civ I and II really opened my eyes.

I don’t feel let down by my church experiences. I met a lot of wonderful people there who genuinely cared for me. Back in the 1970’s, Mississippi was still all small town so the mamaws and pappaws knew my whole family and gave me gum and candy and piggy-back rides after church, and then we’d go eat at Picadilly.

Maybe I shouldn’t admit that.

50

Actually, some estimates range from 6% (Gallup) to 12% (American Atheists).

51

Hey! Other countries are represented here too :stuck_out_tongue: But I agree with your point. People who are interested in learning, a quality that most Straight Dopers share, often have a hard time a set of broad assumption without any credible proof. It’s not surprising that intelligent people often have a hard time with organized religion.
I was raised Catholic at from age two until before confirmation. The grandparents (both sides) influenced my parents and eventually convinced them that my newborn sister and I should be introduced to the church. I can remember being skeptical of certain church practices and doctrines at a young age (9 or 10), but I never questioned the existence of God until I was older. We stopped going church when I was 11 and both sets grandparents were very blatant in their attempts to get us to “rejoin the flock” shudder

I attended Catholic schools and when the confirmation section of religion class began, my mother put her foot down. I was not going to be confirmed.

I didn’t think much about faith or religion until I was about 16. My best friend from the age of 6 was flirting with a fundamentalist church thanks to a new 28 year old “friend” he had made. I couldn’t stand the hypocrisy so we stopped seeing each other much and grew fairly distant. After a few long discussions after about a month or two, I decided that I couldn’t stand him or his new found “truth.” I was angry and bitter towards the religion that turned a fun loving, outgoing, good friend into a bible banging, introverted fundie. I was no longer content to be apathetic about my religious beliefs. I did a lot of thinking and reading.

My mother was fairly interested in my conflict, being a woman who once had religious issues to decide for herself (artifacts of her upbringing). In a fit of midlife crisis, because of an overwhelming need to resolve her religious “issues”, she actually went back to university and got a Bachelor of Religious Studies. She was more than happy to talk to me and dispel the fundie propaganda, I disagreed with but hard a time arguing against with my friend. My mother had settled on a position of agnosticism while doing her degree. I agreed with her position.

It wasn’t until I did more of my own reading and observation that I concluded that there was no reason to assume anything existed that controlled life on earth. The more simple assumption of nothing controlling the universe made much more sense. Looking at my beliefs scientifically made me an atheist.

Now I’m in first year university, (finally have time to post these long messages and not just lurk and read, now that finals are over), and many people haven’t quite made the jump yet. There have been a few good arguments in my dorm about the existence of god and there are few atheists to make our case. The SDMB is a great resource for this type of discussion.

52

Huh. That sounds awfully high, but then again, Gallup polls are usually pretty accurate. For the record, I got about .3% of USA population from http://www.adherents.com

Either way, we’re definitely not in the majority. I’m sure all can agree on that.

53

Noting happened to you. You are just a bit smarter than the believers. Not to say beltevers are dumb, were just smarter. I dont feel that any one religion is more prone to pushing people away to athiesm. When silly people who need to believe in something dont relate to thier born-faith, they just try out others… silly².

And I love how you wrote “why I cant just believe”. Put emphasis on the word cant. Your right, you cant, and you never will. Neither will I, or all of the other Ath’s. No matter how much you say you believe in God, you still wont on the inside. And if you dont believe it with your “heart” God would know wouldnt he? Therefore by religious law you and I are condemded to hell right? After all god made us athiest’s too right?

Hope that thought was clear. Again, if I say I belive in god, I still will not. God will see through my lie and send me to hell. Therfore, God made me with Hell as my final destination. Fuck you God.
This board claims a smart clientelle (and I agree, Im always impressed with the posting here)
and…

Ever notice how many atheists are on this MB? :slight_smile:

54

I was raised as a Methodist, but attended a Southern Baptist Church for a while because it was within walking distance and the bus schedule didn’t coordinate with the Methodist services. Also exposed to neighbors who were !SAVED! by Billy Graham & started an afterschool activities group for the kidlets on our block, a Church of Christ grandmother, and a holy roller church next door to said grandmother, which loudly provided glossolalia and other entertainments for us through the open doors on late Sunday nights. (Also the possibility of police summoned to enforce noise restrictions.)

At 12 I wanted to be a missionary; at 13 I no longer believed in the divinity of Jesus and had major doubts about God. By then I’d read a lot of mythology and didn’t see much difference between it and religion, and let my folks know how I felt. This kicked off years of argument with my mother: the arrogance of my trying to find somebody who believed the way I did; how dared I try to find something better than what she, and her parents, and their parents believed; how she’d promised when I was baptized to raise me in the faith so she supposed she wouldn’t get into heaven; how could I let that raised-as-a-Catholic atheist friend of mine trample all over my innocent and unresisting mind [this was in the mid-50’s and most of the HS students were shocked at outspoken atheism]; and why didn’t I just swim to Russia with the rest of the atheists.

Got my driver’s license & joined the Unitarians to get her off my back–still an acceptable mainstream religion but less mythology for me to swallow. Moved away from the area and cheerfully dropped religion from my life. Went with a Jewish guy and when we planned to marry, I decided I could convert if it would make his parents happy. Was very surprised to discover this was where I belonged…as long as I could still be an atheist. Not a real problem, said our Reform Jewish rabbi; after all, there are officially atheist synagogues, and there’s always the chance I could change my mind. I like the traditions and the ethics, and no nonsense of needing some intermediary if one wishes to speak with the Deity. (My mother thinks I’ve cheated my kids out of Christianity, but she considers I’m at least no longer an utter pagan, and our arguments on the religion are no longer major vitriolic shouting matches. She doesn’t buy my view that she cheated me out of Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, etc… that’s different.)

It’s struck me as interesting that most other Jews-by-choice I know are former Catholics, with a fair number of former Methodists and a small scattering of other denominations; kinda neat to see how many have also gone proudly into the realms of unbelief.

55

This is starting to seem like an AA meeting…

“Hi, my name’s Paul, and I’m an athiest…”

Er, well, agnostic, in my case. Pretty much raised that way. I think my family is technically Lutheran, but I was never baptised, confirmed, or any of that. Went to public schools, too, so I learned to think for myself at an early age, else I’d never have learned -anything-.

Now I just argue with the two fundies in the cubes next to me at work. Which is the high point of my days, may I add?

56

Does a reformed atheist count? (Newbie, by the way.) I was raised Baptist. My father never showed any inclination to religion. My mother took me to church every Sunday until I was 14. At that age, she thought I should be able to decide whether to go or not. (This applied to my sister, as well.) I never felt anything in church. I was baptised at the age of 12, only because a bunch of my friends went to the alter and I was dragged along, literally. At the age of 14, I stopped going to church. I had learned to doubt by that age, and felt no reason to go to church. I wanted answers and no one could supply the answers I was looking for. At that time, I can’t say that I ever believed in God. That continued until the age of 22. I was always an agnostic and college just made me a hardcore atheist. The ‘knowledge’ I gained from college reinforced my non-belief. I used many of the arguments espoused here when debating believers.

After a particularly heated argument with my mother, for the first time in my life, I challenged god to make me believe. No way in hell it was gonna happen. I woke up the next morning about 99% as strong in my non-belief. Within, upon reflection, I’d say around 2 weeks, my non-belief was changed. Don’t get me wrong. I am not a holy roller. I still ‘sin’ more than most. I don’t pray very often. I am pretty much the same person. One thing has changed. I believe in God. I still understand all the arguments, but I feel a sense of relief in that there is an ultimate answer out there.

I apologize if this post is out of place, but I thought being a former atheist would qualify for this thread.

57

I’m an atheist/humanist, and I was raised Catholic. I seem to be in the minority in this thread, though. I have no anger towards the RCC, I don’t resent my upbringing, and I didn’t have any bad experiences that led me to where I am now. I still find beauty in many Catholic teachings and rituals. It just gradually dawned on me that I didn’t believe in the God that was supposed to be behind it all, and from there it was a short step to realizing I didn’t believe in any gods at all.

58

I’m an atheist and I was raised that way. The best part is that I get to do both Christmas and Hanukkah.

59

What exactly are the definitions of atheist and agnostic?

60

For my purposes, a definition of atheist is one who does not believe in any god or deity and holds no religious beliefs, and an agnostic is one who does not know whether there is a god or deity (and may believe there is no way to know for sure).

For more information on atheists, you may look here. For information on agnostics you may look here.

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