How you were raised vs. your current beliefs...

Post Reply New Topic

What do you do when you figure out you resonate with other beliefs than how you were raised, but how you were raised you were raised where you were taught there was only one way and deviating from that way leads to a bad afterlife???

I bought a book that explains different religions, and I found my current beliefs seem to be a wierd mix of possible Buddism, Scientific/Evolutionary teaching with a little Neopagan... But I was raised Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian.

The thing is I literally grew up that if I changed my beliefs, I'd go to Hell. If I believed in Evolution, Hell, but now I'm fascinated with it. meditation and mindfulness, not Christian. Etc...

My therapist told me I'm an adult, I can choose my own path, but this not how I was raised at all. It's causing several issues...

I mean I'm not trying to bash all Christians and I don't wanna be accused of this, but I still have people pressure me to believe in one way, Hell and stuff like that.

Sure, you were raised one way, but... do you believe in Hell? in case you don't, it shouldn't be that much of a threat.

part of growing up is learning that our parents and the community we grew up in weren't the chosen people who got everything right, but just as flawed and confused as everyone else.
Your therapist put it in a positive way: you're an adult, you're free to chose.
I'd put it in a more troubling, existentialist way: you're human, you're asked to chose *something*, whether or not you asked for it.

Luckily I was raised secularly, religion played no part in my life at all. Nothing has changed.
I wasn't raised particularly politically, and though we share some but not all values, my parent and I don't vote the same at all - when we even do.

I was raised Pentecostal, but I am now Lutheran.

However, I have researched the works of liberation theologists and more progressive versions of Christianity. I am also influenced by Mordechai Kaplan and reconstructionist Judaism.

I think a lot of the Bible is metaphorical, and that God is a personification of nature. I also think that modern science is fully compatible with the Abrahamic religions.

I was raised in a conservative household with Christian values. I was able to deprogram myself by watching comedic deconstructions of BS viewpoints.

Example: Mom made me sit through Passion of the Christ. I went through a short phase of anti-Semitism. One episode of South Park later and I vowed never again to allow my mind to be filled with toxic ideas.

Live in a conservative Muslim majority country, raised by atheist/ materialistic (in a religious sense) non- religious parents, my beliefs are all over the place but i definitely believe in one God, Heaven and Hell.

I am coming from Roman catholic background. Mom was religious more than dad, but I cannot say that any of them were devoted Christians. It was more like a tradition than spiritual thing. One of my grandmothers was really religious, though, even though that in hindsight, she was an awful, hateful and toxic person who was dragging everyone down. Well, she's still technically alive, but do have Alzheimer's which made her easier to bear with, surprisingly.

When it comes to my experiences, I've been very religious back when I was 14-16 years old. This was a time when I started to have serious issues with not being able to stop my brain running at highest gear all the time. I was constantly in state of intense thinking about several things at once. Nature of universe, god and so one were some of the subjects. I've read the Bible multiple times, then read many works of people who were studying and interpreting the Bible.

At the same time, though, I was consuming insane amounts of other texts, ranging from scientific studies about insects, to "Capital" by Marx. This lead me to apply logic and scientific method, evaluating everything in my life with those. Religion was one of things. I've started to think more critically about all of this stuff and one day came to a conclusion that believing something without a proof is an insult to rational mind. So, analysing my faith and things I've believed in, over time I came to a conclusion: this is BS. I rejected faith and religion entirely. This felt like breaking chains that dragged me down. I've stopped worrying about hell, stopped longing for heaven - focused on what's real, here and now. It was like surfacing and taking a deep breath after a dive. Liberating.

These days I am not only an atheist, but also antitheist. Came to a conclusion that existence of beliefs and religion is a negative thing for whole humanity as species, even though they may make lives of some better. One sentence written by Hitchens describes this stance much better than anything I can come up with:

I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.

In case I am wrong and it turns out that there is some god(s)/higher power etc. then judging by an observable evidence, these must be amoral entities/forces and worth contempt, not devotion to.

My mother is Jewish. My father was Catholic (he's deceased).

Religion wasn't very important----but they both believed in God.

They don't really care all that much that I don't believe in God.

I came from a Roman Catholic household or so that's how it is. Thankfully not a strict one.

As a child there's a lot of praying at school and every Sundays masses.
It gave me nothing but conclude that holy masses are but a noisy waste of time.

However, I'm still surrounded by religious cultures and myths. None of the religious stuff ever touched my core or beliefs at all.

I'm even more interested at the animistic beliefs and it's aspects, along with older cultural practices likely originated from Hindu or Buddhist practices than the current overt Christian related religious beliefs from the churches.

I don't believe in God or higher power the way like they do.
And thankfully no one forced me.


Most religions stuff I kept seeing are still just rituals of different cultures for me.

My own beliefs however?
I'm not sure. It's definitely not coming from or because of my upbringing.
In fact my upbringing 'lacks' the 'terms' and guides that could make sense of mine.

Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

I was raised Catholic, but with all sorts of other influences thrown in, as well. I grew up with friends of various Judo-Christian religions and it was encouraged in that time and space (1960s-1970s) to visit each other's churches or synagogues and talk about the faith differences. I also found my influences more in the social justice sections of the church than the conservative ones, and spent time in college then young adulthood branching out deeper into theology of various persuasions. So while I married a Catholic and taught my kids the Catholic faith tradition, I never saw it as a closed loop and never felt the level of strictness in the faith that many others raised in the church have felt. I see my church as similar to the family I grew up in; a tradition you love and honor, but not necessary emulate, crazy uncles and all.

I still myself as Catholic but the habit of attending weekly church fell quickly to the wayside while trying to raise nuero-diverse children, and I haven't managed to reacquire the habit, especially now we've been dealing with the pandemic. I still have faith, but in many ways it's pretty much "my" faith at this point; I don't think any religion holds the single answer, but there is so much history and culture in the Catholic tradition that feels important to share and understand; keep the best, chuck the rest. Pope Francis fits the moment, IMHO, and I was relieved when he took over; the previous Pope had left me seriously wondering if I could continue to connect to the church at all.

My kids ... well, my son connects to the tradition more than specific details in the theology, and my daughter ended up with too many overly conservative catechism teachers and is pretty fully turned away at this point. My inability to fully pass on the beautiful aspects of faith and religion without getting the kids tangled in some of the more negative dogma is one of my disappointments as a parent; we want to pass on the things we see as good. But both my kids are well centered and inherently good people living positive lives in this world, so maybe I did my job after all and the changes to their ways of viewing faith were inevitable.

I was raised as a Fundamentalist Christian. Around the age of 12 I realized it was all a badly constructed fairytale. I mean, Noah's ark? C'mon.

I'm now agnostic.

My parents are atheists who both came from religious backgrounds but left their respective religions.

I was sent to a very Christian primary school despite this because it had a good reputation. Unfortunately, it fell under new management and promptly went downhill. My parents attended Church for about a week or so to meet the necessary requirements to get me into that school. I was sometimes conflicted because my parents were adamant atheists but my school mocked atheists and told me Christianity was the only acceptable belief. Personally I always had my doubts but I pushed them down because I was so concerned about being a good kid. I wanted validation so badly. So I dismissed the questions I had as stupid and reasoned that they were just further proof that I was inherently broken and evil.

However, when I started high school, I was suddenly surrounded by people of varying belief systems. It made me think about how they likely believe what they believe because that's what they were taught. That we weren't so different after all. I went to an RS (religious studies) lesson where we talked about the various different theories about how the world came into existence. That lesson made me think about my beliefs. It made me question what I believed, putting shame aside for a moment. So I read up about different religions. I looked into Agnosticism. Then I looked into Atheism. I looked into the questions I had but had previously been too ashamed to ask. Then I came to the conclusion that I don't believe in God. I started identifying as an atheist, which was a little odd at first, re-evaluating everything. Now it feels odd looking back thinking that I ever used to be religious. I became an atheist when I was twelve.

While I was raised in a mainline Protestant (Lutheran) family, the opinion about homosexuality I grew up with was that it was an unnatural and Godless perversion. A big part of that was the time period that I had grown up in -the late 1960's into the 1980's - when most people had that idea. Luckily as an adult, I developed my own opinions about the subject, understanding that it was not a choice, that in a free society everyone should be able to love who they want, and that to be a real Christian one must be empathetic to the emotions and pain of others. That, and as an adult, many of my circle of friends are of the LGBTQ community.