Pretty much raised indifferently with regards to religion. My mom is Mennonite and my dad was Anglican - I think they decided to just let us kids decide for ourselves which direction we waned to go, and we all chose non-religious.
Raised very religiously, Presbyterian. My parents still are. However, Presbyterians are certainly not anti-science, and in fact I went to a technically Presbyterian college for undergrad (Agnes Scott) from which I received a fine education.
Raised religiously. Attended private, religious schools. Carbon dating was a lie propagated by atheists to trick people into believing the earth was billions of years old instead of the truth, that it was only 6000 years old.
Only stupid people thought we came from monkeys and those who did were on a one way path to hell. The earth didn’t matter, who cares about pollution and destruction of the rain forest? The only thing that mattered was Saving Sinners.
Every single thing in the bible was true, Jonah, Noah, loaves and fishes…all literally true.
Raised Catholic but I attended public schools. I did however have to attend CCD classes until 7th grade.
I remember the nun who taught us in 2nd grade that Adam and Eve and Noah’s Ark were just stories and not necessarily true, as were other things in the Bible. :eek:
This would have been around 1970. I have no idea how she managed to keep her job or if she even did.
Raised atheist, but indifferently. It isn’t like we all sat around the lounge on Sunday nights listening as Dad lectured us on the non-existence of Gods. Religion was absent from our house rather than present in a negative form.
Raised religiously, grew up believing in the supernatural (ghosts and all that) and even had a membership with MUFON in my teen years.
Read a book by Michael Shermer which introduced me to rational skepticism and it was a few years before I took up the atheist gauntlet.
Raised Catholic. And not just church on Sunday Catholic. Every Sunday plus “get up at 5:00 on every feast day so that we can squeeze in 6:00 Mass before school” Catholic.
Raised Baptist, parochial schools and Dad was a deacon in the church and all that fun stuff.
In general, we trotted out our religion (Jewish) for the holidays, but didn’t bother going to synagogue regularly. When we reached our teens, our parents dragged us to Friday night services, but it was too late.
Ditto. I’d never even learned they were supposed to be in conflict until seventh grade, when my [del]biology[/del]life science teacher had to explain that her teaching about evolution said nothing either way about the existence of God (to assuage students’ parents who would apparently get into a tizzy otherwise).
Anyways, I voted that I was raised religiously, because, well I was. Church has always been an important part of my life.
Exactly my upbringing as well. My father was fond of the occasional religion-mocking joke, but otherwise it never came up.
Father: “What’s this?” stretching out to alternately gnash his teeth against his outstretched palms.
Me: “I dunno. What?”
Father: “Jesus biting his nails.”
I was raised with the “cram the Bible down her throat” approach. Christian school, church all the time, etc.
I’m 38 now and still trying to deal with the animosity I feel toward religion.
Raised sort of religious. Methodist, actually, which tends not to do anything in a firm or dogmatic manner. My mom forced us to go to church almost every week and made us say the Lord’s Prayer nightly for awhile and got horribly upset if we said God’s name in vain, but we never said grace before meals, never had any sort of belief structure forced on us, and did everything kind of half-heartedly. It was mostly going through the motions. And it was all from my mom. I have no idea what my dad believes. He never went to church with us except on Christmas Eve and I think he might be either agnostic or an atheist.
My brother turned out atheist with Buddhist leanings. My mom has quit going to the Methodist church and now swings Unitarian. I went through a brief phase (1.5 years) of trying to be more hard-core Christian and couldn’t keep it up. I definitely believe in God now, but I don’t know exactly what to do with that.
It was a bit of a mix. My mother never spoke of anything religious, although she had some witch friend make her up some amulets she kept in a drawer. I don’t think they worked because she had a rather unlucky life.
I spent most of my time with the grandparents while my mom worked, up until I was fourteen. My grandmother was a Jesus Loves You mild Methodist who lived in a way that seemed peaceful and reverent. My grandfather seldom went to church but he told me once that the world was created in six days, so I assume he believed in what he went reluctantly to church to worship. There was fire and brimstone in his heart and he chose to believe the parts about the women keeping silent and knowing their place.
I lived with that and went to my grandmother’s church. We said grace at meals on holidays, but never any other time. I don’t know what was up with that. On my own I developed a love for all things religion and went through a slightly fundamentalist spell. This was years before coming to this board. It was learning as much as I could about my religion that made me atheist.
But you voted “raised atheist” but I’m pretty much the same but voted “raised indifferent”. I think this OP needed more definition. To me, you wouldn’t be “raised atheist” unless your parents actively promoted atheism.
Well, my folks certainly weren’t indifferent themselves. They were doctrinaire Marxists, regarded religious faith with mild contempt and would have been a little disturbed if I had taken a religious bent. And as I said the religious came in for some mild, off-handed mocking from time to time.
But yes, they didn’t actively promote atheism so much as took it as a default and religion wasn’t really paid any lip service. I suppose you might say they “promoted” atheism in a more unconscious and subtle way. The thing is I was always aware of my parent’s atheism and that it was not the norm. How, why and when I picked up on it I’m not sure, but it was early. When I went through my brief “praying phase” it was in second grade under the influence of a devout Catholic babysitter and I was aware then that my parents would not approve - I prayed on the sly. Actually maybe it was said babysitter that introduced the concept to me, as she was shocked I didn’t at least pray, let alone go to church.
But as I can’t even remotely regard my folks as actually being completely indifferent on the matter, I’d still consider myself as being raised atheist.
Cradle Catholic, went to public school/CCD. I’m still a devout Catholic, but I love my heathen friends. ;)
Thirteen years in parochial school (Roman Catholic). It made me into the devout atheist I am today.
Kind of a combination of religiously and indifferently. My mom and stepmother went through a couple spates of religious effort (for several years we were Jehovah’s Witnesses but that fizzled when I was 13 or so and realized I was an atheist). The rest of the time it was somewhat indifferent.
I’m sure my extended family would say they believe in god but they’re the good type of religious people: they keep it to themselves. I have no idea how they’d categorize themselves and if they went to church ever I didn’t know about it.
On the other hand, “science” was not something I was ever taught at home. I learned that from my good teachers Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke.
Forced to go to church and Sunday school. Hated every minute of it. Now my mother ignores that my brother and I are unbelievers when we are around… although if I could be saved by religious emails, I guess I’d be in line for heaven.