How timely; I just had an argument about this very issue yesterday with my family.
Their view, I kid you not, is that I rejected religion because I must have “taken a class in college” that was anti-Christian. That really pisses me off. Like I have to take a class to figure out that it’s a stupid idea to believe some guy packed every single animal in the world into a big wooden boat. My sister thinks it’s because I had a bad experience with other churchgoers.
The truth is far more mundane. I just grew out of it, that’s all.
I think I only formally renounced all religion and spirituality as a young adult. The root cause, for me, was probably simple intellectual development. As I aged my thinking became clearer, and the likelihood of there being any kind of ‘higher power’ - for me - rapidly diminished.
That said, I never had very many solidly consistent religious views to start with; they were more along the lines of vague wishy-washy notions of karma and hidden spiritual entities and-so-on-and-so-forth. My parents were also atheist, so there was no real explaining for me to do.
In my late twenties it was authors/speakers such as Hitchens and Dawkins who really spurred me to enthusiastically reject religion and all premises made by religious arguments.
Babies might not be born with any particular religion, but it seems very likely that we are born with a strong predisposition towards religion. Presumably, this evolved as a means of holding tribes together.
My parents don’t know, although I think they suspect. Outside of my wife and closest friends, I’m a “closet” atheist.
I imagine they’d assume academia made me an atheist. Actually, it was the shittiness of Christian churches and parishioners that started me on the path. The seed of doubt in my mind was sowed by the Church itself. I don’t think my parents would able to swallow that bit of reality.
I didn’t reject the idea of god until later, but I left Christianity because I moved rather high up in the administration of my church, and seeing the business side of it destroyed the illusion that anyone there cared about doing the Lord’s work. It’s like what they say about seeing sausage being made, I suppose.
I am not even sure whether my dad’s family ever identified me as an unbeliever. I just kept off the topic, reacted indifferently to their rituals, and they left me alone. I chose not to bring it up with my dad because I thought it might disturb him, so we never tracked that ground and as far as I could tell, he went to his grave thinking I was good with jebus.
I mean, I could not care less about a phantom Og fiction, why should I let a non-entity make my life uncomfortable by being needlessly confrontational? I detest proselytutes, I am surely not going to become one.
To me, it seems one aspect of human intelligence is the ability to extrapolate from data, and religions come from a mis-application of that, imagination, and a predisposition to blame something besides us for misfortune.
My roots are probably my grandfather, who almost certainly was an atheist, though in those days you never mentioned it. He never saw the inside of a temple, and when one of his daughters married a Catholic he was fine with it because the guy was a Dodgers fan, which was what was really important if you lived in Brooklyn.
My parents were hardly religious. I went to Hebrew School pretty much only so I could have a big bar mitzvah and let my father invite people. He hung around the temple getting involved in things, and only went to services on High Holy Days.
I think I am genetically atheist.
There’s a lot of evidence that atheism or at least deep agnosticism takes root at 12-13 in many individuals. Sometimes it’s attributed to something they heard, saw or read, but I think it has more to do with them being just old enough that being made aware of the option makes them latch onto it. It may be that some stage in intellectual development opens the door to making this level or type of choice, and while some make deeper commitments to their family’s faith, others see through the charade of religion and choose the alternate road.
A lot of what-ifs, but I think if you were to take a broad poll, most atheists choose that road, to one degree or another, right in that narrow band of age. Something more universal than individual experiences must be driving it.
Ditto. Born with a genetic anomaly - missing the god gene. Family is ethnically jewish as far back as we can reasonably tell. Raised with high holiday traditions but the bits with faith in god never stuck to me. Interesting that they did stick to my brother, who is 9 years my junior. <shrug>
The individual starts to realize his or her parents can be flat-out wrong about stuff around this age, too. I remember this was the age when I realized my parents could unintentionally give me bad advice (I think this was when I stopped asking them for homework help). It was also when I learned that they could have opinions that were diametrically opposed to mine and that I could actually be “right”, though I think this sunk in closer to 14.
Even though I didn’t realize how fragile my connection to Christianity was until I was in my 20s, I do think the doubt took root in my early adolescent days. I’d always hated church, but the hatred started to blossom full-force around 12 or 13. This was when I was expected to start “talking the talk” as a Christian and not just show up for the punch and cookies. I remember seeing the other kids get into it and I’d think to myself, “Are they just really good actors or are they actually believing this craziness!?”
I suppose it’s worth mentioning my sister knows about my non-faith; she’s in the same boat, and we commiserate from time to time. Both of us keep it pretty quiet, but I think we share the shame reasons why we dropped faith, starting with the same disappointment with the Church and its numerous lies, and moving on from there.
My experience has been that it is very much an intellectual exercise. I see things that I believe are obvious logical shortcomings in the explanations for an intelligent and benevolent God. On the other hand, I see ample evidence for a sadistic God. But that’s beside the point.
I think part of it is the natural outcome of naive realism. The person says, “I believe X, and I am a normal, rational person, so all normal and rational people must also believe X.”
Second, the idea that atheists must have suffered some personal tragedy that made them curse and reject God is a very common trope in fiction. Almost all “Hollywood Atheists” are like this… the author won’t bother mentioning the character’s religion unless it is relevant to the plot, and relating atheism to some horrible tragedy is the most dramatic way of doing so. This is especially true in fiction aimed at Christian audiences. From their point of view, belief is natural and obvious, and it is not possible that anyone could be exposed to their arguments and still choose to reject faith for intellectual reasons. Christian fiction is designed to reinforce these ideas.
I’ve also seen the notion of “rebellion” discussed before. Again, they presume that faith is natural and obvious, and refuse to acknowledge that an intelligent adult human being could possibly arrive at a conclusion other than their own. Therefore, anyone who claims to be an atheist is some kind of “troll” who is just screwing with them and will come to their senses when they finally “grow up.”
We just don’t discuss it. But if pressed, they think it’s because I 'm gay, and I’m reacting to the right-wing homophobes. Or once we all have same-sex marriage, I’ll go back to being religious again. Very, very far from the truth. I’m an atheist simply because I don’t see a reason to believe in a god. It really has nothing to do with being gay.
That’s interesting about the 12 - 13 age group. I wasn’t going to contribute to this thread, as I was raised atheist, so there’s never been any speculation from my family as to why I’m atheist. But then I realised that at 12 - 13 I got quite interested in religions. I did a lot of reading, and I attended a couple of (different) services with friends, one of which had my mother worried that I’d get dragged into some sort of religious cult.
I’m still atheist. None of the stuff I read seemed at all plausible, and some of it was very objectionable. But I did have that ‘exploring, questioning, trying it on for size’ phase at that age
At least my sister in law thinks its because of our former pastor that I’m an atheist. I assured her its not. They just can’t comprehend that I see zero evidence for any supernatural entity.
Another 12 year old atheist here – well, not 12 anymore, but you get my meaning. (Still at 6.99 like Novelty Bobble, but happy enough to call it full atheism for this thread).
Parents were culturally Protestant (I don’t think either of them really believed strongly), and I attended Sunday School as a kid. I don’t ever recall truly believing, but do remember some arguments with Sunday School teachers and concluding around 12 that none of it made much sense… and that Ark thing was completely out of the question.
I’ve always remained interested very in mythology and religion – in the same way that one can enjoy any fantasy fiction without having to believe in wizards – and tend to think agent detection is at the root of the human predisposition to religion.
'Course round here not being religious is no big thing.
I went to Sunday school and my parents went to church (United Church of Canada) when I was a kid, but it’s pretty obvious in hindsight that they were just going through the motions; it was easy to “persuade” them that I didn’t want to go on any given Sunday (I never even got in trouble for stealing the quarter out of the offering envelope).
After childhood I didn’t attend any church until I grew up. My sister suggested trying to join a church Young Adults group to help me socialize more after I recovered from a suicide attempt. I was welcomed and attended the group for a couple of months, moved out to Edmonton, joined a similar one out here and after a year or two started attending the church.
I started having ethical qualms a few years ago about “living a lie”. Had a meeting with the senior minister and told her I am atheist. She didn’t mind. She has made some comments since then which make me suspect she was discretely checking whether my beliefs have changed. I made it clear they hadn’t and she still does mind.
So, I am United Church of Canada by allegiance and atheist by belief. My brother and sister are happy that I am socializing more, and I know my parents would feel the same if they were still around.
My grandmother blames herself for “letting” me read “all those witch books” when I was a kid. She specifically mentioned The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, which I read over and over again.
