Never believed. I was raised in a very secular humanist household. Dad was Catholic as a kid and grew disillusioned with it before college. Mom was vehemently opposed to all organized religion, due to some event in her past about which details have always been rather sketchy. I’ve been to a few church services out of curiosity, but I always leave thinking that it is a very nice community to which I do not, and never will, belong.
I have been known to anthropomorphize the universe to the point of commenting on its sense of humor, but I’m aware I’m doing it, and that it is essentially a literary device for the purposes of comedy.
My family has never been that religious. My parents thought it was important that we went to church and did CCD through confirmation. I was never forced to go after that. And I never did. I guess at some point I believed but then it just started to sound silly.
I voted: “I’m a theist, and am the opposite - I used to be an atheist.”
Though my journey is slightly more complicated. I used to be a Muslim, became an atheist in college, and then became a Christian when I was 29. I believed in God when I was a kid, but my family wasn’t all that into going to mosque every Friday and we did pray at home, but only really once a day (my mother would do it a bit more often, but usually not all 5). It was, and is to some extent, more of a cultural Islam. Though as my parents have gotten older, they have gotten more active in their faith (or maybe it was due to their oldest son going over to the Christian side, which was definitely a family rift…)
Just to contradict what I posted earlier: the first time I heard the word “synagogue,” I burst out laughing. I was two or three. So I don’t know what that implies.
Specifically, I was agnostic as far back as I can remember - not a believer but not a non-believer either.
I gave religions and spirituality a chance, and would have become a believer if I’d experienced anything believable. But I never did experience anything that wasn’t better explained by wishful thinking and superstition. So, eventually, I reached the conclusion that it’s all bollocks, and that I had therefore become an Atheist.
Yeah pretty much that for me too. I remember putting a crucifix on my windowsill to keep out ghosts / aliens / bigfoot / whatever (:smack:). So yeah it was like a tooth fairy type ritual that I never really thought about.
I actually went to Catholic school but until I was about 10-11 thought all the stories of miracles were obviously myths and legends that you weren’t supposed to take seriously.
I had to tick “I’m an atheist and want another option” because my parents are deists. Specifically, they believe in god, but think god does not intervene, or care, about human affairs.
I’m an atheist (well, theological noncognitivist but for this poll, it’ll do), but as a kid I had the generic beard-in-the-sky vaguely Anglican Christian God belief that most Anglo-Commonwealth types no doubt have as a default setting. Then I was into the Goddess for a couple years. Then that stopped around 19, 20? Before I left uni, at any rate.
I’m an atheist who has tried several religions, but just never found the faith to believe in a god, goddess, Jesus, whatever. I’m now a semi-practicing Buddhist.
Atheist son of atheist parents, but I did go through a brief period of quiet bedtime prayer under the influence of a semi-devout babysitter when I was very young. My parents never knew and I clearly remember it being a base-covering maneuver on my part as I wasn’t sure what to believe. Lasted regularly for only a few months, but I kept at it irregularly for a few years in an ever-declining fashion when something stressful was happening, before finally shrugging and abandoning even the pretense.
I was raised fundamentalist, evangelical Christian. Baptized in a river. Anti-evolution movies, anti-rock-n-roll movies, the Bible is the literal historical truth, and all. (Not charismatic, though.)
I believed it all, most definitely. The edifice that was my faith started to crumble away my senior year in high school, with one last gasp at trying to believe, in my late 20s.
Atheist now, in the sense of “I just can’t believe it” rather than “I’m certain there is no god.” I’m not certain. But it seems damn unlikely.
I really believed as a kid, raised by my mother to be protestant christian (my dad never said anything either way, and skipped church). I didn’t believe in evolution, and I was taught that non christians suffered eternal torment after death, if they heard of Jesus and didn’t convert. Even christians suffered eternal torment, if they died before asking forgiveness for their latest sins.
Once I learned about other religions, and made the connection that mythologies used to be religions, I realized the probability of being born into the correct religion was very small. It was a small leap from there to realize that all were wrong, not just most of them. I guess I was 13 or so.
I was dragged to church a few times when small.
By the forth grade I was telling my classmates that I was an Atheist.
Never once in my life have I given serious credence to the possibility of a supreme being.
I’m an agnostic. I was raised in the church and believed up through my early teens. I then went through a period of hard atheism and now, I just don’t know. I guess I would characterize my current state as something like: “Whatever is out there, it probably doesn’t resemble the traditional teachings of the church all that much,” coupled with a strong streak of secular humanism as a daily way of living.
I remember telling others I was an atheist when I was 7 or 8 - I went to a Jewish pre-school, and attended Torah school for a brief period, but my parents were nonreligious and just doing it for the cultural aspect. Now I’m more of an agnostic, but I can’t remember any time in my life when I actually believed in God.
At the same time, I don’t think people come religiously hardwired. Any newborn can be an Evangelical Christian or a hardcore atheist. Past a certain age it can be very hard to change beliefs, which is where Pascal’s Wager fails, but if you start young enough, children will absorb anything. My parents always told me that I could believe whatever I wanted to, and they’d accept it. I think that presenting children with options and allowing them to choose for themselves it the best way to go about it. Of course, you could make the argument that if everyone treated their children this way, we’d end up with a lot more nonbelievers, but that’s a different discussion . . .
I’m a non-smoker and a non-believer. If suddenly the rest of the world would do the same it would be weeks before I’d notice, because in the absence of people doing/talking about these things, I have no reason to think about them.
I remember in kinder garten that kids talked to me about god, but I told them I had a telescope and studied the sky thoroughly, and never observed any deities.
Not entirely sure if my mother was an atheist or agnostic, but she never wanted to talk about religion.
:mad: :rolleyes: :eek: 