Lack of belief in God - your backgrounds?

In My Humble Opinion
61

This is an interesting subject. I realize by writing this that my feelings run stronger and deeper than I had expected.

I was raised Reform Jewish. I went to shul every week until my bar mitzvah. I was not thrilled about reciting lengthy prayers in a language I did not understand. Extracting legalistic lessons from the same set of old testament myths was not a great way to spend a Sunday morning.

But at the end of the day, I did not want to live my life constantly compromising between Jewish law and my own inclinations. This kind dialectic did not make me happy then, nor would it now. I felt deeply uncomfortable identifying with a community whose foundation myth is one of slavery and victimization. Despite what the Passover Haggadah says, I was not a slave in Egypt, nor was I liberated by God’s outstretched arm.

I am the “Wicked Child” of the Seder, who asks “What did God ever do for me?” According to the Seder, I should be reprimanded for my lack of faith, because were I in Egypt, God would have not led me forth to freedom.

Actually, since I am a first-born, I might have just been killed. If I had to choose between living in 3000 BC as a Jew or an Egyptian, I wouldn’t think twice about it.

God, quite honestly, did not have a lot to do with my leaving the Jewish faith. Nor did I leave in one fell swoop. I stopped going to temple and stopped making an effort to join my family in shul for the high holy days. Years later, when I went to the bar mitzvah of a son of a close family friend, I realized it had been nearly a decade since I had set foot in shul and I felt like a stranger.

I much prefer forms of spirituality that are meant to serve the believer, not religions that subject the worshipper to the divine. I have little personal use for the Abrahamic faiths.

62

Right. Leave your brother out of the equation.

Is THAT what we were? Geez, I was even BAPTIZED there, and that never sunk in.

Huh.

Currently an atheist as well. Not as militant about it, but firmly set in my ‘beliefs’. Sister is more of an agnostic now, I think.

63

I’m an atheist, as are both of my parents. Needless to say, I did not have any sort of religious upbringing. I’ve never been in a church while a service was being held (I have been in many–cathedrals have some lovely and fascinating architecture–but I don’t go for the mystical aspect).

“Raised as an atheist” isn’t what I’d term it, though. Religion was not discussed. It wasn’t something to be accepted or denied, it was simply a non-entity.

As for my parent’s parents (I hesitate to call them my grandparents as I’ve never had anything to do with them), my mother’s were sort of non-practicing generic Christian and my father’s were as well until they neared death and got all born-again. Even then, what exactly they were remained rather undefined and their tenets notoriously unstable and flavour-of-the-month.

64

I’m more agnostic than athiest - I hope you don’t mind me answering.

My folks taught belief in God but did not go to church. I became “born-again” sometime in high school. I went through alternating periods of belief and non-belief. At some time I became disillusioned with much of what was taught by the various christian sects I had attended and eventually settled into a belief in a god, without acknowledging that any one religion knows him/her. The little that I have read about Buddhism makes me think that I have some afinity for their beliefs.

65

Wow, I thought this thread had died (mustn’t have checked the email responses bit??).
Yes, ofcourse I’ve sung the national anthem (the NZ one only since age of 12) but it didn’t register as anything when really young and then just something that some people believed as I got older.

66

I’m a third generation heathen. Non-religious household, no religious education. My parents always said they’d be supportive if me or my sister wanted to become religious (and indeed, my sister later converted to Christianity in her teens, though I think she’s kinda lapsed, now.), but it never appealed to me. So, I’m an atheist.

67

Born into a Catholic family. My mother made me go to church sometimes until I was about 10. We were never overly religious, and she left it up to me, basically. I beleived on my own until I was about 15.

Now I suppose I’d call myself an atheist. I don’t think there’s a god, but I also can’t honestly argue there isn’t. If one day it became totally evident that God did exist, I wouldn’t deny his existence, but I still wouldn’t worship it.

68

That’s one problem I have with Christianity - why would any athiest not start to believe if faced with strong evidence!

69

I was baptized Roman Catholic, went to mass EVERY Sunday until I was 16 years old. I went to Catholic grade school. Did ALL the ‘Catholic Stuff’ you had to do, in order to be a ‘good Catholic.’

Now, I’m Pagan.

Go figure. :dubious:

70

My mom’s mom was a student at one of those hardass Catholic schools you used to hear about, with the severe nuns who whacked you with rulers and such. As an adult she abandoned the Church but she still appreciates some of the artwork and hymns and such. Mom’s dad was some sort of Christian, I don’t remember offhand though. So Mom and her siblings were raised knowing about Catholic traditions and rituals, but not actually in the Church. Since then, Mom has been into all kinds of New Agey stuff and Native American beliefs, and Gramma has followed suit to some extent.

My dad’s family is Seventh Day Adventist. Gramma and Grampa were very devout and would sometimes drag me off to church, which I always hated because it meant missing the Saturday morning cartoons. (It seems there are hardly any Saturday morning cartoons anymore, and they all suck.) I was bored out of my skull, and would amuse myself by making paper airplanes out of the tithe slips or sneaking Hot Wheels in to race around the pew. Eventually they stopped bothering. :smiley: Dad was never religious, never even talked about it, but lately he’s been in declining health and he suddenly has taken an interest in the Bible in a big way. It’s frankly been weirding me out.

My stepfather was Scottish and followed his family’s ancient beliefs, alongside Native American beliefs. He came from a line of men who had children in old age; his grandfather migrated to Canada in colonial days and married an Ojibway woman. Stepdad got involved with AIM in the 70s, and ran a place called Native American Arts and Culture in San Francisco. He talked a lot about his combined faiths, and we had lots of meals outside when he did the Celtic High Holidays and full moon ceremonies. His sort of pagan, polytheist/animist beliefs made more sense to me than the rigid patriarchal stuff of mainstream Western religions.

Growing up, I quickly concluded that Christianity was a bunch of crap, helped along by my mom’s side. But I used to believe there was something greater out there, again influence from Mom and Stepdad. In high school she got into Eckankar, and I did briefly as well. (After reading some negative stuff about it here, I did some research. While they do share some roots with Scientology, they’re nowhere near as bad.) I also got involved with a Christian group of high school aged students that some of my friends were in. I still didn’t believe in Jesus, but it was a cool group and the pastor was genuinely kind and good - and funny. I stopped going when he moved away and the string of replacements got more fundamentalist.

As an adult though, I’ve felt any sort of belief in the divine wane away. Some part of me still thinks there may be something else beyond the merely physical, but the more I read about this world and universe the less I believe. I’ve always had a strong interest in science, particularly astronomy and computers, and I find the concept of a divine force that is ultimately unknowable by human minds to be abhorrent. I know that I, personally, will never understand the true nature of the universe, but I think that in principle humanity as a whole can acheive this goal.

So, mark me up as an agnostic, leaning towards atheist.

71

Me grandparents were:

Shinto
Jehovah Witness
Shingon Buddhist
Catholic(lapsed)

Thus my parents and us don’t go to Church but we kind of believe in God but not specifically the God of the Christians or the Buddhists.

72

I was raised in the Lutheran church…kind of…My brother, sister, and I went to Sunday School and went to catechism class, etc, but my parents rarely went.

When I moved to Nevada and got married, I went to a Lutheran church for a while…well until recently…I guess that would be 17 years.

But, I just got so sick of the hypocrisy. I realized that so much of what we do in mainstream Christian religions has little to do with Christ’s teachings. My church was so cliquey and some of the women there remind me of the girls who wouldn’t talk to me in high school.

Christianity as a belief system just doesn’t work for me. I hear all these people say they have a personal relationship with Jesus and I wonder how that can be. I have never felt that he was guiding my life. I love the idea that we should love each other and not judge each other and I try to live that way, but Jesus is just one of the great philosophers and I’ve become interested in what other philosophers have to say.

And I agree that religion is a way of controlling people. I don’t like it when so-called Christians tell people, “Believe like me or you’re going to hell.” That worked on me for a long time, but then I realized people who say that don’t know any better than I do what happens when you die. And I’m not going to hell just because some ignorant person says I am.

Currently, my daughter and I aren’t going to church. I take a yoga class on Sunday morning and that suits me just fine.

73

Agnostic…

I was brought up Anglican. Grandson of an Anglican Reverend. My father was treasurer of our church. We attended Church every Sunday, except during the Summer (for some reason). I was baptized, confirmed and even put in some time as an altar boy. I know my parents would have been happy if I ended becoming a Reverend.
Once my younger sister and I had both been confirmed, our parents gave us the option of whether or not we wanted to continue our churchin’ up. Both of us decided we would prefer to sleep in on Sundays. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I acutally put some serious thought into what I actually believed and became Agnostic.

The strange thing was that after my sister and I stopped attending Church, so did my parents. My Mom still expressed a “Christian” opinion about things, but my Dad never mentioned Religion. I found out years after he had passed away, that he was supposed to go into the Church himself (his father was the Reverend), but joined the RCAF during WWII, saw action, and lost his faith… yet he still “made” my sister and I attend Church and was active in the parish. Just goes to show you… you never know nuthin’

74

I was raised Episcopalian, and although I believe in god it isn’t quite the Christian God of the OP.

To me, the properties of matter/energy and time that produce self-aware creatures from a pre-hydrogen singularity are god enough for me. The possibility of life that is embedded in the “fundamental forces of nature” is god, thank you very much. This god is woven into the fabric of existence and in that way surrounds us, is in us, and communicates with us. But the mythology of the Bible trivializes this, to me, profoundly beautiful experience of god.

As a child, later an altar boy, I absorbed the creed through repetition but eventually had to check it against my internal interpreter:

“I believe in one God…” **check **
“…the Father Almighty…” um, yes, in a manner of speaking
“…maker of Heaven and Earth,…” exactly, yes
“…and above all things, visible and invisible.” sure
“And in One Lord, Jesus Christ…” **huh? **
“…the only begotten Son of God…” what am I, chopped liver?
“…born of the Virgin Mary…” oh, come on.
“…begotten, not made…” ???
“…being of one substance with the Father…” yes, like the rest of us

and so on.

My father died in a motorcycle accident on the way to seminary class when I was three. My grandfather, his dad, had been a “good listening skills” missionary on a Ute Indian reservation and participated in many tribal rituals. He was wonderfully esoteric in his application of Christian thought and heavily influenced me.

So I had plenty of input. But Christianity as a whole just didn’t stick for me.

75

My parents were raised religious but never continued it after they had moved out of their parents’ houses. We had a pretty nuteral home life, they never put atheist or religious beliefs in my brother and me so we pretty much formed our own. I think my mom and dad are still Christians, just sort of low key, while my brother is agnostic and I’m atheist.

76

My mom was raised LDS (Mormon), my dad Methodist. My parents got divorced when I was 4-years-old, and we (my brother and I ) spent most of our time with my mom. She never instilled any religion in us, and aside from trying to merely educate us, we never saw much of the bible. However, we spent a great deal of time with her family, who are 99.9% LDS, so we were still influenced by the church, though not really in a religious sense. It’s the only way I can explain why I grew up so damn sheltered. Freakin’ Utah.

Growing up where I did, I was aware of God because of my friends and family, and I’d often ask my mom what religion we were. When she said we weren’t apart of one, it confused and frustrated me. My brother was never as curious. I called myself Christian when I was in grade school, but it was mostly my way of fitting in. I remember a friend of mine telling me that I was Mormon because my mom was (technically, yes she was). Eventually I figured out my friend was wrong, but at the time it made me feel better. I’m actually surprised I never joined the church when I was in early grade school, I totally would have if anyone ever offered. Considering where I lived and my extended family…I’m surprised nobody did. My mom probably had a hand in that.

Growing up, I never saw my dad as a religious man. I figured he believed in God, but he never talked about religion at all. In the last five years or so however, he’s been all about God and Jesus. I don’t know where it came from. He thinks I’m an atheist, and it upsets him - but he won’t talk to me about it.

I’m an agnostic, my brother’s an atheist.

77

Bit of a long story here -

My paternal grandfather was a minister in the Churches of Christ - very conservative. No evolution for us, thank you! So of course my dad and aunts and uncles went to church every Sunday of their lives until they left home. When my dad was 19 he created an uproar by telling my grandfather he no longer wanted to attend his church, that he disagreed with what that denomination was all about.

My mom was the daughter of Russian immigrants. I don’t know about my biological grandfather or my later grandfather, but my grandmother was quite devoted to her faith, with the Russian Orthodox icons in the house, although I don’t think she attended church. However my mom was not taught anything about her Russian cultural heritage: she was not taught to speak Russian, she knew nothing about the Russian Orthodox faith and so on.

My parents were married in some kind of non-denominational church. They knew they wanted their kids to have a Protestant upbringing but they weren’t particular which church, so I went to a Methodist Sunday school until we moved when I was eight, and then my younger brother and I went to a Lutheran Church of America Sunday school. I really liked that church and considered myself a Lutheran for years, even though I have never been baptized or gone through confirmation and taken communion. I was quite “religious” from about age eight to age 12 – I used to say grace by myself at the dinner table, I used to actually get down on my knees beside the bed at bedtime and say my prayers. Then suddenly when I was 12 I stopped going because…I was 12, I guess, and suddenly it was boring to me. My mom didn’t want me to stop going, but my parents were never more than “Christmas and Easter” churchgoers, if that, so she couldn’t tell me anything. And I was 12.

Fast-forward to college, where I suddenly decided that, darn it, I was going to find a Bible study and figure out whether I was a Lutheran or something else and get baptized and all that and find a church and go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life. I read the entire Bible and I started going to a campus Bible study group (there are a thousand of 'em) and…the more I read and talked, the more it started to fall apart for me. And I was disappointed, because I wanted to find a place to belong, but it wasn’t working…

And then in 1989, that plane crashed outside of Sioux City, Iowa. I subscribed to Life magazine at the time and they had a cover story profiling the survivors and the aftermath. And I read this article and at some point it occurred to me to wonder:

“What if there isn’t any God?”

:eek:

…And I went around in a continued nervous state of :eek: for about a week afterward. Seriously. What if there isn’t any God? Meaning there never was any God; we just made Him up to explain where we go when we die and to reassure ourselves that evil people are punished and good people are rewarded and that life actually means something. Think of all the millions of people who have ever existed, most of them living in a state of poverty, ignorance, and suffering, hauling themselves through the years with the faith that all you have to do is be good and be patient, and someday your troubles will be over and you will know everlasting peace and happiness; that life is really just a dress rehearsal, an audition for eternal Paradise.

If we’re the only creatures on Earth that know that we’re going to die, that we thrash out our little threescore and ten and then all the people we’ve loved, all the books we’ve read and all the movies we’ve seen, all the experiences we’ve had in our lives are then irrevocably winked out forever, that good people suffer and bad people get away with it, wouldn’t you want to believe that there is something more?

Anyway, that’s how I came to be an atheist.

78

My mom comes from a Roman Catholic family, but is herself more of an agnostic. My dad comes from a Mormon family, and he’s apostate or excommunicated or whatever it is Mormons do to those who reject the church. My parents wanted to expose the siblings and me to religious thought, but not much in the way of organized religion, so they took us to Unitarian services for a while as kids.

I had a period of time in college when I was a Presbyterian, but now I’m very agnostic.

79

Raised Methodist. My parents went took me to church every Sunday when I was very young, but when we moved out of our original hometown it tapered off until it was very rare. I don’t think I’ve been inside a church except for funerals and weddings in twenty years. My sister goes to church for social reasons, but she doesn’t believe.

80

My mother was raised as a Baptist and my father as a Methodist who, as far as I could tell, never voluntarily went to chuch. I am what you could call indifferent.

I went to Methodist Sunday school early on and it was there that I decided that organized religion was valueless for me. I even remember how it came about. We were going through the plagues of Egypt. The gist of my view is that I was told that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he wouldn’t let the Israelites go. Because God hardened Pharaoh’s heart

That tore it. I wanted nothing to do with a philosophy that would contenance such a monsterous injustice, and I still don’t.

I have no idea of the reason our universe exists, but I’m confident that the organized religions are no closer to the answer than am I and that they are operating on an illusion that comforts most of its adherents.