Click all that apply.
Feel free to tell us which options you chose and discuss or expound below.
No polls are perfect, and I’m trying not poll for any specific religion, or theocratic philosophy. Sorry in advance if I’ve missed an obvious option.
NOTE: This is apart from religion, whereas someone may go to church (even regularly), yet not necessarily believe in the tenents of the faith.
FWIW, I consider myself agnostic, but I voted “I generally believe in the faith I was brought up in”, merely so I wouldn’t have to keep clicking “See poll results”. But really, I can’t say I hold much faith, if at all. The only thing keeping me from being all-out atheist, is there’s no evidence either way. But faith is just not a natural, default state for me, and when it comes to matters of nature and reality; when the jury’s out – the jury’s out. However, I do love to wax philosophic about the possibility of the existence of a creator though, however, those are for other threads in other fora.
I find some of the poll options confusing. The question asks where my faith comes from, but then the second through fourth options ask questions about the current status of my faith.
Example: Should I select option 2 if my current faith happens to be in the local majority, or only if I selected my faith because it is the local majority?
Yes, select option 2 if it fits either or only one of those cases.
(remember, this is a multi-option poll… so anything that applies)
Fair enough; thanks!
Could have used a “I used to hold faith, but no longer do.” option.
I was Catholic in grade school (even became an altar boy).
In high school I was a Baptist.
In my late teens & early 20’s I was a non-domination, middle of the road, gay, New Agey Christian.
Mid 20’s - angry agnostic.
Late 20’s to the present - atheist of varying degrees of anger.*
There are days that I would gladly burn down every church, temple, mosque and so called holy places and then salt the ground as a waring to all future generations, then I have my first cup of coffee and I don’t care so much about it any more.:p:D
@Foggy. I had thought about it, but for obvious reasons, this is more an inquiry about those with faith, than those who never had it or lost it, etc. 
I was brought up without faith and still have no faith, but there’s no option for that. I would think that’s a fairly common thing? Maybe not in the US though…
I wouldn’t say that. But maybe I should have specified this is a poll for those who either always had faith, or have found it and never lost it?
Oh, I understand, I just get tired of nearly always having to choose “other”:p. I seem to be one of those out liars:D I keep hearing about.
No criticism was meant by me BTW.
I generally rejected the faith I was brought up with, and my beliefs have gradually evolved due to contemplation, education, and insight into the beliefs/faith I currently hold.
I’m a bit confused how to vote, so I’ll just try to explain my beliefs. I was raised Episcopalian and held fairly strongly to those tenets until I was in my early twenties. At that point, from exposure to other Christians who hold different views, other faiths and spiritualities, my own thoughts, and some divine interactions, I have changed my views considerably. I still consider myself a Christian, but a lot of the beliefs I hold now would be considered heretical by some, including one of my parents. So I can’t really say that I generally believe what I was brought up with, but I can’t really say I’ve rejected it or changed faiths.
Ah, sorry!
Other. I used to believe and now I don’t.
I picked 1, 2, 3 and 5. I was raised in a Christian home and eventually chose that path for myself.
I grew up Jewish. I don’t think I ever believed in it. I celebrated the holidays, but also celebrated Christian holidays if it meant time off from school. When I went to synagogue, I never thought anything about it was anything to believe, any more than Alice in Wonderland was something to believe in: they were just stories.
I chose options 4 and 8. To spare myself excess typing, I’ll merely repost the explanation from this thread.
I was raised in an atheist household. My father was a militant non-believer, my mother less so and she later converted to Christianity when I was about fifteen. I grew up without any religion and in my preteen years I easily picked up all my father’s viewpoints. (We also subscribed to The Nation, and reading it was doubtlessly formative for me.) By the time I started college I was firmly established in the idea that I belonged to a small elite that was better than everyone else on account of being more rational, more intelligent, more intellectual, more open-minded, and so forth.
I spent four years at college and in the time all my professors came from that same eilte that I considered myself to be in, as did the administrators and the leaders of various student activist groups. After four years of watching and listening to these people, I was forced to the conclusion that these people were not quite as intellectually and morally superior as I had initally thought. The famous hate-crime hoax by professor Kerri Dunn is just one of many examples of bad behavior I witnessed. Yet despite rejecting some parts of the philosophy I was brought up with, I was still quite sure in my atheism. During my summers I often traveled to rural Wyoming, where I met some people from ‘the other side’: Christian, very conservative, poor, and generally everything I’d been raised to hate. I was forced to acknowledge that they were not bad people and indeed were extremely generous and kind-hearted.
Fast forward to graduate school. I started noticing more and more flaws in the worldview that I was brought up with. At the same time, at first via the internet, I came in touch with some Christian communities and began to read books and magazines from a perspective different from my own for the first time. The more I heard and read, the more I was forced to realize that I agreed with a great deal of it. To give one example, a big issue while I was growing up was sex and violence in the media and kids being overexposed to it. I was brought up to assume that there couldn’t really be anything harmful from watching TV or movies or listening to music. However, upon considering the issue it seemed almost impossible to not conclude that many TV shows, movies, and music acts were actually morally degenerate, vulgar, and flatly stupid. So by this time I was agreeing with the Christian perspective on more and more issues, but I was, of course, still too rational and intellectual to believe in god or anything else that was simply known to be non-existent.
Then, in my third year of grad school I began to read Christian apologetics and other serious works. It didn’t take long for them to turn all my intellectual certainties around, and when I looked back on all the reasons I supposedly had for rejecting Christianity they seemed entirely unconvincing. Then I began to pray and God answered my prayers, and I joined a church and met a minister who could answer the ‘big questions’ that I had better than anyone else I’d ever met, and the Holy Spirit began to speak to me once I was willing to listen. And, well, if I were to list everything that God has done in my life I’d never get around to finishing this post and actually posting it.
Thanks for the participation and posts everyone. I think the data is sort of interesting. I do see a stronger correlation between holding onto the faith your were raised in or were exposed to.
However, I didn’t expect such a strong switching from one theology to another. Very interesting.
Keep em coming. I find these stories interesting, as I myself was raised fundamental/Pentecostal Christian, so I had quite an exposure to a whole 'nuther world that I’ve had to try to reconcile with the world as I saw it, innately. It’s been a hell of a journey, so it’s interesting to hear stories that go the other way.
I was raised Christian but when I was 16 began studying pagan religions. I adopted an eclectic version of what would most closely be associated with Wicca and maintain that now.
This does not compute.