Poll, How did you become Athiest/Theist?

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I am curious about how the religious AS folks on this board became Theists. So I made a poll AS ONLY VOTE PLEASE, NO NT'S. Any belief in supernatural beings just please just vote as religious. (wiccan, Flying Spagetti Monster, etc.) Thanks
I am not looking for a religious debate on this thread, but if you converted from Athiesm to Theism of your own choosing, what was the reason, event etc that changed your view

I was brought up in a secular family but was taught in christian schools. So throughout most of primary school I believed in god and jesus, I wasn't super religious but I did go along with what I was taught. I turned atheist when I was about 10-ish because I realised just how far-fetched god was. I don't think I could ever believe in god again, it makes no sense to me.

I was brought up with non practising Christian parents but Christianity was pushed hard at school so I was loosely speaking a Christian. However my first doubts arose due to contradictory information. In science class when I was around 11 years old we were taught about evolution and how mankind evolved from an ape like ancestor and in the very next class (religious education) we were taught that mankind is descended from Adam and Eve. It was then I realised that someone was feeding me BS! Both couldn't be correct. Further investigations of my own made me realise that evolution had the strongest elements of truth and were backed up by ongoing discoveries, whereas Christianity was essentially a mixture of legends and mythology. It was at this time I effectively turned away from Christianity and became atheist.

Born atheist, never changed. Parents both mildly spiritual people who wanted me to make my own mind up

If one is brought up Jewish for several years of childhood it is difficult to stop being Jewish (i.e. thinking as a Jew does). One can become less observant though. Once a Jew always a Jew. It is a matter of meme imprinting.

ruveyn

I have a non-religious family, but live in a socially conservative little village where there are pretty much at least 1-2 Churches of different denominations every mile. I remember feeling odd when I was a Cub Scout/Boy Scout about how much more I heard about religions, faith, and the Christian God/Jesus, but I never really put much stock into it even when some of my peers attempted converting me to Christianity (the irony here that I eventually opened their minds to reason and are now Agnostic at least).

I'm fortunate that I never had some kind of intrusive "background check" to see if I was religious, because not subscribing to a faith is grounds for termination of Boy Scouts membershp, and I actually overall enjoyed my time within that organization to an extent.

I read a book on Darwin's theory of evolution at quite an early age, probably when I was 7 or 8 years old. I thought it made more sense than the story that we descended from Adam and Eve. Other children in the same class me were shocked when I told them that Adam and Eve was a "fairy tale", though it did lead to the teacher inviting someone who worked at the "Cradle of Mankind" to come and present evolution to the class.

I simply read more books. All sorts of books, for years and years. While it's true that my parents are not hardcore religious or even practicing Christians (much), I did grow up in a very backwards corner of Europe where religion and superstition still go strong. Luckily, some light penetrated at just the right times in my life in the form of books.

The Catholic Church knew what it was doing in the Middle Ages.

I don't know if I believe in the existence of god or if I want to become agnostic and leave the question open.
So I can't take part in the poll.

I'm agnostic.

Most of the people who have raised me have been religious (some of them pretty hardcore), although largely they have all been of different religions. I have participated in ceremonies and other things either because they made me or it's just a cultural thing.

I can't get away from every and all religious things because most of the time, no matter where you go it will be ingrained in the culture to some extent.

Last edited by Kjas on 21 May 2012, 8:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have a good friend who is Jewish but he argues that it is a Cultural identity as well as a Religion. He does not practice the religion but still considers himself Jewish. I tend to agree with him on the culture view

heehee yep I am an Eagle Scout myself... My dad also was a scoutmaster for 30 years (same troop) and just retired from scouting last year. He just went along with the live and let live view. I am going to get off on a tangent here but it pisses me off when Theists talk negatively of Atheists. My Dad has been a positive role model and guide for more boys and young men's lives that he has influenced thru scouting that most Theists in this country. He is the only Dad I know that stayed in any scout troop after his son left it. If you saw all the awards and gifts of appreciation and comments at Eagle Court of Honors (probably over 100 eagles under his watchful eye) that were said for him you would be humbled... Actions speak louder than words PS my mom thinks my Dad is AS too or at least has a lot of the traits...

Sorry, back on topic I am enjoying your responses to this thread thus far... keep em' coming.

None of the above.

My family were not exactly 'Religious' although my mother is a Christian (not sure about my father) I wasn't raised Christian and I had my own beliefs from a very early age - it wasn't until my teens that I discovered my faith was that of Paganism, I was lucky enough to live very close to a BTW Wiccan coven who trained me and although I left before initiation their path influenced me a lot.

At college I studied Philosophy and Religious Studies it was then when during a lecture my tutor mentioned Don Cupitt who is a founding father of the Sea Of Faith Movement, my lecturer described his philosophy as 'Christian-Atheism' which had me interested and after reading much of his work I assimilated Sea Of Faith into my own belief and started referring to myself as Pagan-Atheist.

Interesting, I got this of wiki... its like a humanist church. His description of "real God" is cool.


[i]SoF is most closely associated with the non-realist approach to religion. This refers to the belief that God has no "real", objective, or empirical existence, independent of human language and culture; God is "real" in the sense that He is a potent symbol, metaphor or projection, but He has no objective existence outside and beyond the practice of religion. Non-realism therefore entails a rejection of all supernaturalism, including concepts such as miracles, the afterlife, and the agency of spirits.

Cupitt wrote, "God is the sum of our values, representing to us their ideal unity, their claims upon us and their creative power".[1] Cupitt calls this "a voluntarist interpretation of faith: a fully demythologized version of Christianity". It entails the claim that even after we have given up the idea that religious beliefs can be grounded in anything beyond the human realm, religion can still be believed and practised in new ways.

My father wasn't too religious, but was a decent man. My mother was Roman Catholic and so I was baptized and raised Catholic as a child. I was kicked out of a Catholic elementary school in third grade because I asked too many questions and refused to accept their dogma on faith without evidence. It didn't help that I had severe sensory and social issues but nobody knew what to make of me or what to do with me. This was in the late 1960s, decades before Aspergers was much known about in the U.S.A.

I cannot find any organized religion that is believable to me. Perhaps all religions express the same truth, deep down, but such truths are inexpressible in language and because of this are misunderstood by many who confuse the symbol for the reality, the map for the territory, etc. Of all established belief systems, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism make the most sense to me, and I see them all teaching the same basic core message.

I can even clearly see traces of the same message in Christianity, although heavily diluted and polluted by cultural artifacts. As I see it, Jesus teaches Buddhism, but the followers of Jesus misunderstood and worshiped the messenger instead of actually getting the point of what he is trying to teach them. I used to have more respect for Christianity than I do now, but the past couple decades I have grown more and more disillusioned with Christianity as a source of truth or goodness. It was written by and for people of a different time and place, whose world view was very ignorant.

Too many Christians get too hung up on the details and insist on taking the Bible literally even when such an interpretation is clearly falsified by the evidence of the physical world. I don't think God would lie to us in his creation or try to trick us when supposedly our eternal souls are at stake if we make the wrong decision. For example, if evolution IS NOT true that would make God an evil prankster to plant so much evidence of so many different types that all point to the same reality.

Put yourself in my shoes for a moment. What if you were to meet someone who claimed they could tell you what you need to please God and so on, but then out of nowhere they try to tell you that the earth is really flat and it is a great conspiracy by evil atheist scientists to say otherwise? Why should I trust anything they say on spiritual matters when they are so clearly and demonstrably wrong on something that has so much physical evidence of so many different types clearly showing it happens? Frankly, the anti-evolution b.s. is the main reason I have little faith in Christianity anymore. If the fundamentalist Biblical literalists are right, then God is a liar and shouldn't be worshiped because of that. I am either a member of all religions, or none, but I do consider myself strongly spiritual.

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 22 May 2012, 1:38 am, edited 5 times in total.

The 20th century philosopher Alan Watts said much the same thing, that if one comes from a family of practicing Jews one uses certain mannerisms, patterns of speech, of thought, etc. that make one recognizable as a Jew even if one doesn't go to synagogue. He brought this up in a discussion on Hinduism, where he said Hinduism like Judaism is as much a culture as it is a religion. Buddhism is in a sense Hinduism "stripped for export" because it is difficult to export a culture.