Coming About to Atheism, Your Story

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Permalink Reply by Miscreant on June 5, 2010 at 8:00pm

I was pretty much an atheist born and raised. Ha.
Both of my parents are pretty much agnostic, so I actually have never gone to church routinely.

I've only been to church once in my life, and it was with a friend and his family (I pretty much just went to be polite, I was spending a weekend at their house).

For the first 13 or so years of my life I just referred to myself as 'not religious', and I didn't really care about religion. But, eventually I started getting opposed to the concept and that's when I began to identify myself as an atheist.

Permalink Reply by dani smith on June 15, 2010 at 2:53pm

i was raised southern baptist, church every sunday morning and night, and every wednesday night. everyday during revival, and bible school in the summer. we were all baptized in a lake the whole nine yards. i liked going to church when i was younger, because i loved the stories in sunday school, and all the singing. as i got older i became more awear of thing. such as we were taught that god loves everyone, and as long as you were saved you went to heaven no matter what. the only way to get to hell was to worship another god, kill yourself, or be gay. you could do anything else and still go to heaven as long as you asked for gods forgivness, and accepted jesus into your life. needless to say i realized that was bullshit, i could kill someone and go to heaven, but if i feel in love with another women i would go to hell? i also started to realize how much the church contraticted it's self, and could bend things to mean what they wanted it to mean. my dad hung himself, and at the funeral his uncle was giving a speech or whatecer i guess he is a preacher(i don't know anyone on this side of my family) and he was saying that my dad was in heaven because he had been "saved", i was like wtf if that was someone you didn't know you would say they were going to hell because that is an unforgivable sin. i"m not really sure when i stopped beliveing in god, but i have felt this way for a while now.

Permalink Reply by Kobalos on June 15, 2010 at 4:28pm

It started young, my family moved up to a strongly religious, isolated place in the Highlands of Scotland. Around 7 or 8, I started to realise I was different and went into depression with suicidal thoughts. I remember refusing to be coaxed down at primary school while sitting in a ditch long after break had ended. This happened a couple times I think and I suspect it's pretty rare at that age.

But my resentment at religion at that time was due to the fact that I just didn't like being forced to believe in something my family really never bothered about. Too young at that age to understand who I was, but picking up (from religion & society) that being anything different was 'bad', caused me to rebel. I very quickly disagreed with the concept and called myself an Atheist and got a kick in the backside for saying it at school to a guy's question.

The headmaster took us for weekly in-depth bible class, it was a time I loathed. I didn't fit in with their views and I sure didn't like the feeling of isolation they unwittingly created.

So, my journey to Atheism was very short - however my challenge in accepting who I am and believing in myself as not 'wrong' or 'bad' took a lot longer until I was around my late teens or so. The religion and society did a lot of damage that took a lot of effort to undo.

I was always helpful (over-helpful perhaps =) ) and really tried to be polite, reliable and true. In essence, I realised my 'morality' was not dictated by following religion or societies norms to the letter, but much more importantly based on being worthy to others and unholding my own reasoning of rights.

Luckily, my family also lost relgion and belief in deities around the same time and so I didn't have to fight on that front with family until more recently with my sister starting to become 'spiritual'. *sigh* At least it's not organised relgion, but still, I resist all forms of social control using irrational rules.

Now I class myself as an Anti-theist, since there have been thousands of religions and spirits made up over history that are all equally unproven. Though, I do like the FSM one. ;)

Ramen.