Inspired by this thread on reasons for believing or not believing:
I remembered being quite perplexed by the essay topics we could choose from in a paper I did years ago at uni. There was not one I could answer because they all assumed that I had belief or some kind of religious education at some stage of my life. My parents are athiest, so as a child I never went to church, heard of God (in fact), prayed etc. I never had anything to stop belief in because it was never there.
So it got me wondering how many people come from a total athiest upbringing and how many went to church as kids either regularly or at Christmas and Easter and then decided not to believe?
My mom was raised Catholic and my dad a Lutheran, but both of them stopped attending church after a while and they never instilled me or my sister with religious or spiritual teaching. The only times we went to church were for a few large family gatherings.
Dad was athiest/agnostic, mom was lapsed Catholic (since re-lapsed), neither ever tried to install any religious belief in me one way or the other. I never saw a use for it personally, so I ended up an atheist by default.
Catholic, but I don’t use that line Martin Sheen goes around retailing: “I don’t believe in God, and Mary is His mother.”
I don’t deny that the 1960’s Liberal Catholicism of my childhood contributed to my ethics; but I’m not an atheist because I’m mad at God or because I’m too lazy to worship God. The fact is that I’ve come to believe, ultimately, in Nothing, much more palpably so as I’ve gotten older. However, this is subtly yet significantly different from not believing in anything.
As if what I believe matters. Too bad Eve isn’t here much these days, she’s such a swell atheist. Her ancestry is Jewish so her atheism has moxie, while mine just has doughy communion wafer lavered to its soft palete.
Raised Episcopal, but Dad was a “fallen” Christian Scientist, having seen his own dad suffer and die needlessly at age 53. So there was definitely a mixed message: Mom took us to the service and Dad stayed downstairs in the Fellowship Hall and served cookies after the service.
When we moved to the South in high school, my sister and I joined Disciples of Christ.
None of it made any difference… I was agnostic in high school and became a militant atheist in college. That was 30 years ago and I’m still a militant atheist.
Mom, now in her 70’s is now an atheist too, although she’s certainly more genteel about it than I am…
I never saw my father enter a church. My mother seemed to think the rest of us ought to go to church, and she started out United, but found the people to be off-putting and switched to Anglican. I went there because my mom said I had to. We didn’t go all the time, but we did go. However, there has never been a time when I believed in god, so I’m not a lapsed anything. I didn’t start out with any christianity to lose.
My mom’s family is hard core Irish Catholic, but she stopped attending church when she moved out of her parents’ house.
My dad’s family is are communist, atheist Jews.*
They raised me with zero religious instruction. I hesitate to say they raised me to be atheist, because it seems too strong a word. Religion was pretty much not discussed, except when my mom told me stuff about growing up Catholic. It was totally weird to me that she could recite all these creeds and prayers and such.
The only religious event I have ever attended with my parents was my grandpa’s funeral mass.
For various reasons, I became more interested in my Jewish heritage when I was in high school and college, and now consider myself a Reform Jew. However, I will admit that I don’t actually have any particular faith in god or religion; it’s the cultural and communal aspects that appeal to me.
*When my parents were invited to a friend’s house for Shabbat dinner, my dad emailed me for advice on Jewish customs!
I’m a former Baptist youth minister, now atheist. Like others who have posted, I didn’t become an atheist because I’m angry at Gawd, or anything of the like. I just reached a point where I simply couldn’t believe in Christianity anymore, much like I cannot believe in Santa Claus. After that, I also came to the point where I couldn’t believe in any kind of diety at all. My family is still vastly Christian.
Escaped Catholic from a hardcore catholic family (thanks Kayla, that is my family to a T) who is now some mush of an Agnostic Humantistic Darwinist Hippie New Agey buddist.
That’s a bit wordy and too involved for the average attention span of a microsecond.
I just tell people I’m a Marxist: Whatever it is, I’m against it.
Kayla, I think it’s a riot your dad had to email you about rituals.
When I was asked to do a reading at my catholic cousins wedding about 10 years ago, I hadn’t been inside a church since my own wedding and hadn’t done a reading at all in my life that I could recall without some kind of electric shock treatment.
I’m sitting there with my holier than thou Mr. Perfect when he was a kid choir/altar boy brother ( his wife between us) and I realized I didn’t know when to go up to do my reading. I just blanked out. Hey, I was wearing control top pantyhose, gimme a break.
“hey, John.” I whispered. “When do I go up?”
“Maybe if you went to church once in a while you’d know.”
“Oh, that’s a farking christian attitude, huh.” I shot back a little loud. (Very monty pythonesque moment.)
The pew behind us, my cousins & an uncle, were all chuckling.
Grew up in the Methodist church. My parents are both believers but they never hammered anything in to me. I think having never been indoctrinated made all the difference. Never said my prayers or read the Bible or anything.
It’s probably all for the best. Religion doesn’t bother me all that much (usually), but it ain’t for me. I find it personally distasteful.
Religion was never a big thing in my family. I had very religious friends growing up and went to church with them once in a while, but nothing ever stuck. I couldnt tell you a bible story if my life depended on it.
Today I am not religious, not for a matter of not believing but I just think that it is kind of presumptuous for one religion to think that they have it all figured out and all of the other religions in the world are wrong. I just don’t think anyone does know, or ever can know what is really going on so why not just believe on your own terms.
While I was growing up, my mom was a crazy fundamentalist Christian. In our church, they spoke in tongues, cast out demons, believed that D&D is from the devil, the works. I moved away from my mom when I was 15 and went to live with my dad. He didn’t force me to go to church any longer, and I simply found my own beliefs. I wasn’t mad at God; you have to believe it something to be mad at it. I just found that the universe made a lot more sense if you took out the old white guy in the sky out of the equation.
The funny thing about my mom is that she found a man who she fell in love with but wouldn’t marry her, so he moved in, and she stopped attending church. Apparently, she believed enough to subject her kids to torture on a bi-weekly basis, but not enough to put off living with a man. Apparently, horniness trumps faith. However, they’ve since married and so I sense that she’ll start in on her holy rolling again soon.
I was Baptized Roman Catholic but my age 8 I thought the church was dumb and violated it own teachings consistently.
Warning to religious parents: don’t let your kids see Godspell, they may see the hypocrisy of the churches.
I am not an atheist, just agnostic. I don’t know enough to not believe in God, but I know enough not to believe in the major established churches. (Of course I could be wrong, but I don’t think so)
Irish Catholic Dad + Italian Catholic Mom = Cradle Catholic Misnomer
I attended a Catholic grade school, Catholic high school, and Catholic college. My father has been a church organist/liturgist since before he met my mother, so I grew up hearing (and eventually participating in) liturgical and dogmatic discussions, and with various priests coming over for dinner every now and then. When I say I grew up Catholic, I grew up Catholic.
I started struggling with my faith as an undergrad, left and returned to the Church before I graduated, and around 1998 I was finally able to separate the Church from God and realized that I’m agnostic. Unlike many former Catholics, I was never struck by a “gee, this is dumb” moment; I never came to look down on either religion or the Church, and I still miss things about both. If it were possible to be Catholic without faith, that would be me. I used to joke to my best friend that I was going to start a new religion called “Agnostolic.”
I was loosely raised a Catholic: mass on the big holidays and an occasional Sunday, CCD classes on Thursdays after school, infrequent prayers before bed/meals, etc. My mother was the believer, my father was an atheist (said so on his dog tags), and didn’t care much either way so long as I learned to be a good person.
Got as far as my first confession (2nd grade?) and first eucharist (4th grade?) but was already lobbying my mother hard to not make me go anymore.
As a pre-teen, the summer camp my parents shipped me off to each day to keep me out of their hair was, interestingly, strictly Judaic. I can still remember the prayer we had to learn phonetically that was spoken before lunch each day.
When I outgrew that one (it was just for pre-teens), my parents sent me to a Christian summer camp. By that time I was working out that the whole god thing wasn’t for me, and once I realized that at 13 I could stump the adult counselors with simple questions of logic vs. faith, I reasoned myself out of religion altogether.
I was brought up Lutheran (Rocky Mountain Synod, not the fundamentalist Missouri Synod) and was taken to Sunday school and church every Sunday I wasn’t demonstrably sick. I believed wholeheartedly in God and Christianity and I was confirmed Lutheran. When I was about 16 or so, it became much more important to me to sleep in on Sundays than to go to church, so I quit going, but I didn’t quit believing.
My mother was a very quiet, discreet kind of Christian of the stereotypically WASPy sort. She felt we should go to church and believe in God, but I always got the impression she thought it would be tacky to discuss religion (or money or sex, but I digress). I was never exposed to scary fundamentalism or closed-minded, doctrinaire teachings. I probably could have lived with it (albeit as a Methodist after I married) for the rest of my life, had I not had what I think of as my conversion experience.
