Now I’m hungry for Chicken Feet Soup.
I should maybe have disqualified myself from answering because I’m sort of an atheist Christian. In other words, I make some sort of (unsuccessful) effort to follow what Jesus taught, minus the God stuff.
After confirmation, religion was optional - and dead (around 12). Those folks were wack.
I only step in church for mandatory weddings. Funeral are out. I’m working on not being present for mine.
Never had an epiphany, just lots of little things over a period of time had me realizing the world makes far more sense if you leave God out of the equation.
From ages 11-16, still was sitting in the church pew passing the communion plate since I wasn’t able to partake until I was baptized. There was a bit of pressure for me to get baptized since my older and younger brothers did so at ages 12 and 13. That day never came for me though, just stuck to my guns, never embraced the faith concept at all, and still have contempt for it even today at age 60.
Atheist arguments I found were more compelling; while theistic arguments of pretty much any kind always relying on falsehoods, fallacious reasoning, and wishful thinking.
Part of the gradual realization, for me, was that the smarter clergy avoid mentioning the contentious parts. I’m not talking about them avoiding arguments, though they may do that; I mean that they completely omit teaching the stupidest parts of the religion they belong to.
I don’t remember the exact age and i certainly didn’t know the meaning of atheist back then, but it was in the single digits. Once I figured out Santa wasn’t real it kinda just followed from there.
My level of belief wavered between “not much” and “some” when I was a kid. But the final nails in the coffin were probably (a) reading the Bible story about the kids who got eaten by a bear for insulting a bald guy and (b) a Roman history class in first year of university, where the similarities between Christianity and other mystery religions of the time was pointed out.
I was only brought up in the most vaguely Christian household. I wasn’t christened, neither was my brother, and we didn’t go to church. However, Mum would always describe herself and us kids as Christian (I think Dad considers the whole topic to be not worth the brain space), and registered us as Christian at school, which was nominally Church of England, like most English primary schools.
I don’t remember every really buying it, but I remember starting to argue with classmates, saying it was all a bunch of nonsense, at age 10. I also tried to persuade my mother to stop registering me as Christian at school, not to get out of the daily prayer and occasional church involvement (I didn’t mind that, especially the hymns), but just because it wasn’t true. I wasn’t a Christian.
This resulted in arguments as to why I didn’t believe. Inconsistency and lack of evidence were the main points I remember. Incidentally, I won. After several months, Mum said she’d realised she was just going on about it out of habit and when she really thought about it it didn’t make sense. She’s now a quite vocal atheist.
While living under my parents’ house (17 and under), I was a believer of God and Jesus. I didn’t really care about the other stuff, like being “saved” and sweating over who was going to hell. I prayed dutifully, but only because no one had bothered to teach me other ways to deal with worries and anxieties. My parents weren’t the best listeners, so naturally I would turn to Jesus when times were rough.
But I had doubts which I kept to myself.
In my early 20s, I started allowing myself to ask the question “What if there is no God?” The idea didn’t frighten or upset me…but I knew it was something to keep under wraps. As if to compensate, I started reading the Bible. I would choose random churches to visit. But I stopped with my ritual nightly prayer. I began to roll my eyes (inwardly) at all the religious nonsense my parents traded in and started questioning them more pointedly. I still claimed to believe, but the little faith I had was full of doubt.
In my mid to late 20s, I went from believing in Jesus and Christian God to ditching Jesus and believing in a universal spirit type of God. I attended Quaker meetings and UU services for a year as a last ditch effort to recultivate my faith in something. But it was not meant to be and I finally let go of God-Lite by the time I was 30.
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I had my doubts all along, never feeling the “warming of the heart” that others seamed to enjoy at Church. When I was in Sunday School preparing for confirmation and was tasked with reading some of the OT any doubt faded away. I had several talks with the pastor about this and he agreed that going through conformation to be kind to my mother was the best bet as he couldn’t help rectify any of the issues that I brought to him.
My father was probably best described as a deist which did open a door to follow my conscious. IMHO it would have only been due to selfish social reasons for me to continue in the church after high school and that didn’t seem very respectful to those who were believers.
Or at least the rest of us need them to have a decent religion. The same people will murder if that’s what their religious leaders tell them God wants.
That’s just crazy talk. When has that ever happened?
snerk
I’m not sure I count as I was raised “Christian.” By that I mean that when we went to church it was a Christian church. But I only remember going to church about 6-7 times when I was young.
One branch of the family was full blown Christian with two uncles who were clergy, one a chaplain in the army. We only saw them once or twice a year though, Christmas and Thanksgiving sort of thing.
But I never knew Christian dogma really, other than what you might pick up from TV. Religion was never a topic of conversation and I don’t remember ever even saying grace at meals.
So I never really was religious, but I have been an Atheist since the 4th grade. Probably earlier but that was the year that a kid in my class asked me if I believed in god. I told them I believed in nature. Not the right answer, apparently, as my sister, two years ahead of me, had heard about the exchange by the end of the day. If I remember correctly there was a brief bout of “oh, yeah religion” from the folks. But that only lasted a couple of weeks.
Maybe I was never Christian? The thing is, my parents took me to church on Sundays. But I was big on fairy tales, and I also was taught greek mythology when I was 6 (it was actual school material and we covered it fairly extensively). Together these two revealed to me that “mythology” is actually religions that are just not the dominant one anymore, and “mythology” was basically the same as “fairy tales” in terms of whether they actually happened. So I went to church and all, but everything spoken there I understood to be fairy tale metaphors. None of this really happened, it was just a way for people to explain stuff, make themselves feel better, and enforce morality/laws. I don’t think I even realized people took it seriously until I was older - maybe somewhere in my late teens when the internet revealed to me evangelists. So I sort of had a reverse revelation that Christianity, seriously and with a capital C, actually existed to some people.
Having a decent religion? A few times, but you’ve got to be careful; them things tend to take over all available mindspace if you let them.