What did you completely misunderstand about your initial religion?

[bignickel]

I was curious how many others besides myself misunderstood or misinterpreted some aspect of the religion they were raised in.

Somehow, when I was a youngun, I thought: good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. That was the message I somehow took away from church, religion class studies, etc. I was flabbergasted years later when I found out that some people believed that non-Xtians went to hell, but some actually believed xtian-sect-I-don't-belong-to-members are all going to hell too.

And when I found out that some people believed that you would escape hell solely based on 'faith' and accepting "Jesus Christ as your lord and savior", my jaw dropped. I couldn't understand how anyone could accept such weirdness. I think it's the way my brain is wired: I remember and understand things if they're close to the way that I would write or create them, had I been tasked with such a job. When I hear things that are completely counter-intuitive to me, I have a hard time understanding them, or remembering them.

Anyone else realize that they misunderstood something in their religion's teachings?

(another thing I messed up with that odd thing Catholics do with their hands: touching their forehead, then mouth, then... something. When we covered this in religion class, I was busy reading pirate adventures or Hardy Boys, and as a result, I had to fake it for years later)

[ksbluesfan]

Being a Catholic, I didn't understand the whole transubstantiation thing. When a classmate told me about it, I thought he was joking.

"No, really, it's still bread".

[bignickel]

Oh gosh yes, transubstantiation. I remember that from religion class in H.S. "It's the actual body of Christ, transformed by a miracle." "So, if I put this under a microscope, I'll see blood and tissue."
...
"uh, no."

(this conversation never actually took place; but more bizarre ones involving Galileo and Hell did)

[Complexity]

Why I was being raised in it.

[bellonax]

I was raised a Moonie and was completely under the impression that evolution was believed to be true by all members (god merely having started it then chosen humans to have a soul).

Two weeks ago (some eight years after I left that church) I discovered that we didn't believe that at all and that Reverend Moon had actually financed some guy to disprove evolution and show that god did it all.

Boy, was that a surprise.

[Radrook]

I was given the impression by my sincere but unfortunately misguided Bible teacher, Samuel Coleman, that true Christians are almost perfect in conduct. Only slowly did it painfully dawn on me via personal experiences and observations that this had been a gross exaggerating and that my expectations had been totally unrealistic. In short, I had become a faithful dedicated believer of my own illusion, an illusion systematically encouraged via constant tutor misinformation. A quick spiritual debilitation followed which was viewed and responded to by limited humans in a limited human way which further confirmed that I had been duped.

[roger]

That it was actually batpoop insane.

Honestly, nothing too much. I was schooled endlessly by nuns. There was little chance of being confused about some aspect of Catholic doctrine. When they got on about how the Trinity is one I realized they were on the pipe.

[Radrook]

That it was actually batpoop insane.

Agreed! Both in relation to teaching it and to believing such a teaching.

[aggle-rithm]

The meaning of "Made in his own image".

I swore that this meant God looked like a man, with arms and legs and a head. When I was eleven I was told in no uncertain terms that this was not true. I was probably told what it DID meant, but I was so embarrassed about being wrong for so many years that I didn't hear what was said.

(Of course, it probably WAS true, when the words were first written...)

[madurobob]

Original Sin.

I didn't really misunderstand the concept, but I could never quite understand how anyone could come up with such a concept based on what our sunday school teachers read to us from the bible.

I remember asking my rather devout mother who told me, much to my surprise, "don't worry about that, its not real". Down the slippery slope I went.

[Beerina]

I have no doubt Original Sin came about because of this reasonable supposition: "Hey, what about person X who did nothing wrong?"

"I doubt such a person exists."

"But they could, and if they did, they wouldn't go to Hell, regardless of whether they believed in Jesus or not."

"But they can't possibly exist."

"Why? If they can't possibly exist, then God must be doing something that forces everyone to commit at least one evil deed. And if that's the case, how can he hold them responsible?"


"Uhhhhhhh, well. See, they can't exist because, even if they did nothing wrong, they still, uhhhh, inherited Adam and Eve's original sin. Yeah, that's the ticket! So they still go to Hell!"


And that was that. Or so they thought.

"But doesn't that still mean God is forcing them to be evil, and thus be in need of salvation?"


"Ahh, go watch TV now. There's cookies and millk in the fridge."

[PrincessIneffabelle]

Ideas I had about my childhood religion that turned out to be misunderstandings (mostly on the part of whomever was teaching me these things):

Satan was the serpent mentioned in the Garden of Eden.
Satan is a red, horned, pointy-tailed demon with a pitchfork and a goatee.
Heaven is up in the sky and Hell is deep in the Earth.
Good people go to Heaven, bad people go to Hell -- and that this happens upon death.
The streets of Heaven are paved with gold and the gates are made of pearl.
Adam and Eve were white and had navels.
Jesus was white, too. Heck, so was Mary, with blonde hair and blue eyes in addition to her alabaster skin. The only one of the holy family who looked even vaguely middle-eastern was Joseph.
Jesus was crucified through his palms.
Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.
The Holy Ghost looks like a traditional Halloween ghost. (this was not taught to me, it's just the image that sprung to my mind)
God is an old, bearded, white-haired gigantic man-like being who wears robes and sits on a golden throne.
Pretty standard fare for mainstream Protestant teachings in the American Midwest of the 1970s.

[Tanstaafl]

Somehow, when I was a youngun, I thought: good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. That was the message I somehow took away from church, religion class studies, etc. I was flabbergasted years later when I found out that some people believed that non-Xtians went to hell, but some actually believed xtian-sect-I-don't-belong-to-members are all going to hell too.


I was raised Methodist and experienced pretty much the same thing. I don't think anyone even mentioned hell in church that I heard until I was grown. But I suppose that's because I tuned most of it out.

In my 20s I heard "the rest of the story" and thought, wait, I'm supposed to believe that?

[Irony]

I somehow managed to miss out on the whole Trinity thing. I though Jesus was the son of God, not the son of God who actually is God, only not exactly the same, only he really is exactly the same, then you throw some other guy into the mix just to do it.

... I still don't get it.

[skeptical]

When I was about 12, I decided to actually read some of the Bible free lance style and not just the passages in my church.

I started reading Genesis and got to the part about Cain's wife and I said, "wait a minute, where did his wife come from?" So, I asked my Mom and she got this bewildered look and said, "hmm, I don't know, ask the preacher". That was when it hit me, "adults don't read the Bible". That is my earliest memory of beginning to understand that most people follow religions more or less blindly.

See, I thought there were _reasons_ why we were going to a certain church. Turned out it was just inertia.

[Tanstaafl]

Wait, is your name Ellie Arroway?

[Lisa Simpson]

*Adam and Eve were white and had navels.

*Jesus was white, too. Heck, so was Mary, with blonde hair and blue eyes in addition to her alabaster skin. The only one of the holy family who looked even vaguely middle-eastern was Joseph.

Pretty standard fare for mainstream Protestant teachings in the American Midwest of the 1970s.

Sounds exactly like my Protestant church (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Church_in_America) in the Western US in the 1970's.

[a_unique_person]

That it was actually batpoop insane.

Honestly, nothing too much. I was schooled endlessly by nuns. There was little chance of being confused about some aspect of Catholic doctrine. When they got on about how the Trinity is one I realized they were on the pipe.

Don't get me started on the nuns. Looking back, I am sure that most of them had become mentally deranged from trying to live such an insane life. We had one nun who regularly lost her temper and beat grade three kids up.

As for the topic, that would take too long to answer all the details, but one of the worst things about was that even when I decided I was an atheist and not a Catholic any more, I was still stuck in that Catholic way of thinking, that is, in absolutes, that there is a clear right and wrong, good and bad. Because that leads you to think that everything that you were taught is bad, is actually good, and everything that is good is bad. Good way to screw up your life even when you are trying to unscrew your life from the insanity of actually trying to live as a good Catholic.

Which brings me on to the next point. I completely misunderstood that trying to believe everything they taught you, and trying to live according to those beliefs, will drive any rational person insane. (Ref, nuns).

[Empress]

Actually, I think I had all my church's teachings down pat:

1. White males are superior to women and minorities.
2. Only Mormons know the truth
3. Polygamy was a necessity in the early church, b/c of the higher ratio of women to men
4. Amerinds were descendents of Jews
5. There were several layers to heaven, and if you made it into the top-most layer of the top-most layer (top of the Celestial Kingdom) you became a Heavenly Father/Mother in your own right.
6. Genesis was literally correct, and evolution was a crock.

Knew it all; believed it all. Until I was 11 or so...

[Dr H]

I was curious how many others besides myself misunderstood or misinterpreted some aspect of the religion they were raised in.

Misunderstood? Most of it, starting with where Cain and Abel got their wives.

Mostly I wondered at the significance of the difference between the Catholic bible and the Protestant bible. But the difference -- which I still don't fully understand -- consists of the addition of seven apocryphal books to the Protestant canon, to form the Catholic canon (Tobias; Judith; Wisdom of Solomon; Ecclesiasticus; Baruch; and Macabees 1 & 2). These books were apparently so important that they made all the difference between one having a "real" bible and bing a "true" Christian, and having a "false" bible and not being a "real" Christian. I saw kids punished for having a non-Catholic bible.

And yet in all the years I spent attending church and catechism class, I can not recall a single instance of a priest or nun ever quoting, reading from, or even mentioning any
of these seven books.


Misinterpreted? I dare say that much of it came to me already pre-misinterpreted. I, too, did my time with the nuns, who made up all manner of fabulous twists and tweaks to the catechism that I'm sure would have amused and/or horrified the Pope himself, had he ever sat in on a class.

Probably the most significant for me was this one: we were told that Catholicism was the One True religion, and that we must NEVER, on Pain of Death, EVER set foot inside a non-Catholic church. If we did, the Lord would surely strike us DEAD on the spot!
This was said in reference to "other children" who might not be Catholics, and who might try to entice us into their churches, and so on to the ways of the Devil. We were NEVER to listen to these children, even if they were otherwise our close friends. HOWEVER... it was OK for us to try to pursuade them to come to our church.

At age 11 I put this to the test one never-to-be-forgotten day, when a Lutheran friend of mine told me that his church had a pipe organ. As a musician from a musical family, I of course wanted to see a real pipe organ (our church had an electronic organ), so I went with him after school one afternoon to see the organ. I was seriously worried when I found out that to get to the organ loft we would have to go in through the church. I was actually shaking when we crossed the threshold, waiting for the lightning bolt to smite me.

Long story short, I didn't get zapped, we saw the organ, and the church didn't seem all
that different from my church, except it didn't reek of incense. And I never really trusted anything the nuns told me after that.

Oh yeah, one other occurs to me: as a child I never really understood the difference between "pray to" and "worship". For the benefit of those who escaped a Catholic upbringing: Catholics have many saints which are venerated, but not worshiped.
It was drilled into our heads from Day One that while it was OK to pray to the Blessed Virgin, or St. Anthony, or whomever, we didn't worship them, we only worshiped God (whom, however, we also prayed to). Quite bewildering, since the overt activities seemed to be pretty much the same in both cases.

This reminiscing brings back some strange memories. I wish I had tape recorded some of the nuns' lectures. When I relate their content now, a lot of people think I'm making it up.
<shudder>

[Empress]

At age 11 I put this to the test one never-to-be-forgotten day, when a Lutheran friend of mine told me that his church had a pipe organ. As a musician from a musical family, I of course wanted to see a real pipe organ (our church had an electronic organ), so I went with him after school one afternoon to see the organ. I was seriously worried when I found out that to get to the organ loft we would have to go in through the church. I was actually shaking when we crossed the threshold, waiting for the lightning bolt to smite me.


And my family wonders why I find religion so sickening. What a miserable situation for a child to be in. My sympathies, Doc.

[Blackwell]

Oh gosh yes, transubstantiation. I remember that from religion class in H.S. "It's the actual body of Christ, transformed by a miracle." "So, if I put this under a microscope, I'll see blood and tissue."
...
"uh, no."

(this conversation never actually took place; but more bizarre ones involving Galileo and Hell did)

I also had a problem with transubstantiation. I still remember sitting in church as a child, trying to figure out how many wafers you could make out of one man. I think I came to the conclusion that you'd have trouble supplying wafers to just one Sunday morning mass.

[Meadmaker]

Mostly I wondered at the significance of the difference between the Catholic bible and the Protestant bible. But the difference -- which I still don't fully understand -- consists of the addition of seven apocryphal books to the Protestant canon, to form the Catholic canon (Tobias; Judith; Wisdom of Solomon; Ecclesiasticus; Baruch; and Macabees 1 & 2).

HERETIC! The difference consists of SUBTRACTING seven books from the TRUE Bible to form the HERETIC's Bible. Burn on the stake! And then in Hell!


Oh...uh...sorry. Couldn't resist. (And there are also bits of Daniel and Esther found in the Catholic version, but not in the Protestant or Jewish versions.)


Thinking about the question from the OP, the amazing thing to me is that, actually, I couldn't think of anything. I really understood Catholicism, and bought into it. Oh, sure, as a teenager or child I might have wondered about transsubstantiation, but I figured it out. If I cared to, I could explain it pretty well today. Original sin? Yeah, made sense.

The one thing that kind of fits the description is the Catholic interpretation of scripture, and it was that doctrine that toppled the whole house of cards for me. I had thought that Catholic teaching was that scripture was perfect, but that it required the Church to interpret it. Again, that made sense to me. Then, when debating a thorny theological dilemma based on scriptural interpretation in the Book of Ecclesiastes, I was amazed to read in the introduction to the book in my Catholic Bible (quoting from memory) "The Book of Ecclesiastes, like all of the old testament, is theologically imperfect."

There it was, in black and white. The Church teaching was that the Bible was not merely non-literal, and not merely difficult to interpret, and not even incomplete. The Catholic church teaching is that parts of the Bible are wrong.

That was too much for me. It started a series of questions for me which transformed me from devout Catholic to atheist. From the time I read those words in my Bible, to the time I declared myself an atheist, about three weeks had passed. Also, all those weird doctrines that made perfect sense a few weeks before, like virgin births and transubstantiation, and the Trinity, and three kinds of baptism and priestly celibacy and blah, blah, blah, seemed pretty goofy.

Looking back, I could probably read the exact wording of the introduction and it probably wouldn't seem quite so extreme as it did then. However, at the time, the possibility that the Bible might just be wrong was too much to take. Then, having decided that the Church didn't teach something I thought it taught, I was suddenly willing to question something about it and I looked with a more objective mind and said, "Ya know, this could all be just a bunch of hooey."

[streamlet]

It's not exactly a misunderstanding, but there was a nun involved:

Back when I was just a trickle I was briefly in catholic school. On the first day the nun in charge of religion started talking about the trinity and how it was totally incomprehensible how three beings could be one. I raised my hand and said, "Well I understand it."

I'm a writer and even in my trickle days I understood how it felt to be several characters at the same time while I was writing them in a scene. The idea that imagination =/= same way god does it never crossed my mind. It just seemed soooo obvious I was surprised that anyone didn't have a brain full of :alien::zombie::vulcan::gromit::sailormoo:ninja:

I still remember the verbal floundering of the poor nun before she dismissed my attempt at explanation. :D

[a_unique_person]

In reference to the topic, that god actually gave a damn about anything or anyone.

[a_unique_person]

That was too much for me. It started a series of questions for me which transformed me from devout Catholic to atheist. From the time I read those words in my Bible, to the time I declared myself an atheist, about three weeks had passed. Also, all those weird doctrines that made perfect sense a few weeks before, like virgin births and transubstantiation, and the Trinity, and three kinds of baptism and priestly celibacy and blah, blah, blah, seemed pretty goofy.


It's amazing how quickly and easily all those years of indoctrination fall apart once you question them.

[Bikewer]

Almost everything; it was in Latin, after all. I suppose the idea was immersion; as a young child starting Catholic grade school in the 50s, we went to church daily. I had not a clue as to what was going on, and none was given at that age.
We dutifully marched to school, sat, stood, or knelt as occasion demanded, and tried to puzzle out what the priest was saying.
Eventually, I realized that the missal had English as well as Latin, and there was likely a correspondence between the two. (no one told me this...)

We didn't begin to get any formal instruction till later.

[bignickel]

I think we got a lot of good responses in this thread thus far. If children are such 'empty vessels', it's odd that so much got garbled in the translation.

By the by, the idea that I was asking about is: years after your childhood, you find out that your church, or your religious groups, has some ideas startlingly different than what you learned, or what you understood. "My Catholic Church teaches that?!"

My jaw dropped, years after I fell away from the church, when I found out that the Church's position on m-turbation was that it was a sin. This activity that 90% of men do, and X% of women do, was an evil act? Either they told us this when I was younger, and I ignored it, or they just skipped it (and, mind you, I went through 12 years of Catholic education).

[Pato2747]

Thank God, I've been raised in a family of atheists. (Pun intended)

[Blackwell]

I think we got a lot of good responses in this thread thus far. If children are such 'empty vessels', it's odd that so much got garbled in the translation.

By the by, the idea that I was asking about is: years after your childhood, you find out that your church, or your religious groups, has some ideas startlingly different than what you learned, or what you understood. "My Catholic Church teaches that?!"

My jaw dropped, years after I fell away from the church, when I found out that the Church's position on m-turbation was that it was a sin. This activity that 90% of men do, and X% of women do, was an evil act? Either they told us this when I was younger, and I ignored it, or they just skipped it (and, mind you, I went through 12 years of Catholic education).

When I was 12 or 13, the religious education class I was enrolled in was discussing confession. We were handed a photocopied list of "suggested sins," or something -- things that we should be confessing that we might not realize were sins. On this list was "impure thoughts/acts." This was VERY distressing to an impressionable young teen who was experiencing "impure thoughts/acts" of a ... um ... singular nature on a nearly nightly basis. To think that I had to actually confess this -- face to face, to another human being -- or I was going to go to hell was enough to give me a mini nervous breakdown.

[Dr H]

It's not exactly a misunderstanding, but there was a nun involved:

Back when I was just a trickle I was briefly in catholic school. On the first day the nun in charge of religion started talking about the trinity and how it was totally incomprehensible how three beings could be one. I raised my hand and said, "Well I understand it."

I'm a writer and even in my trickle days I understood how it felt to be several characters at the same time while I was writing them in a scene. The idea that imagination =/= same way god does it never crossed my mind. It just seemed soooo obvious I was surprised that anyone didn't have a brain full of :alien::zombie::vulcan::gromit::sailormoo:ninja:

I still remember the verbal floundering of the poor nun before she dismissed my attempt at explanation. :D

Most of the nuns I grew up with would have whacked you with a ruler...

[Meadmaker]

It's amazing how quickly and easily all those years of indoctrination fall apart once you question them.

Indeed. When I discuss religion with believers these days, I try to keep that in mind. All it really takes is to get them to question their beliefs. Assuming that they are anywhere near real, Bible believing, sorts, they just can't hold up, but what many fail to realize is that when only viewed from within, it makes perfect sense.

[a_unique_person]

Most of the nuns I grew up with would have whacked you with a ruler...

Huh, your nuns were pansies.

[articulett]

I was Catholic and we had our infallible pope...
My best friend was Mormon and had an infallible prophet...

I wondered-- if all of our collective ETERNITIES were at stake, why the hell aren't scientists and stuff doing tests to find out who the real infallible guy was??!!

(I didn't realize at that time there were lots of "infallible guys"... it turns out that most of them are--or so they believe.) :p

[soylent]

Thankfully I was just subjected to a smattering of weak-sauce woo which seemed lame even as a kid.

Newspaper-grade astrology.

Bizzare notions about random events. E.g. if you win some cash on a lottery ticket there's no use purchasing a new ticket for the money because you'll almost never win anything. Yeah, that's true, but this was exactly the case for the first lottery ticket, so if you're making that argument why then would you ever purchase a lottery ticket?

Some superstitious notion about not mention the fact that you're having good luck. I can't count the number of times I've had this kind of discussion with my mother: "I repaired my head phones, they seem to be working fine so far", "sshhh, don't say that", "No! Not this again. There's no evil headphone genie who listens in on my conversations and spitefully goes and busts up my head phones if I mention that they're fixed. What I say doesn't matter. It won't...", "Yeah, whatever. <change topic>".

An unwillingness to ever consider eating or using something after its best before date; up to that magical date it's fine, then it reaches some kind of strange boundry and is suddenly bad and repulsive.

[Darth Rotor]

What did you completely misunderstand about your initial religion?
I was most upset when I found out that nobody worshipped my initials, including me.

But YHWH? He got all the worship.

Seemed a bit unfair, at the time.

[Complexity]

I was raised as a Methodist.

I think one of the stranger moments I had was when I realized that I didn't really know what Methodists believed that distinguished them from, say, the other protestant denominations, and that I didn't think any of the other Methodists knew it, either.

[Scazon]

There does seem to be quite a few Catholic Atheists here! My problems were quite often down to the language used. or example, in the absence of anything approaching sex education, I had it worked out that the womb was something normally spotty that contained fruit... "The one spotless womb wherein Jesus was laid", "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb..."

Even at the age of 11, we had a hushed conversation about the older (14 year old) sister of one boy, who was pregnant... how could God have sent her a baby? Surely he KNEW she wasn't married!

The soul was something sort of torso- sized, shapped like the sole of a shoe, that got black spots on it when you sinned, and was shining white after confession, at least after the Stations of the Cross race that you got for a penance.

As for "loving pelican"....

When my little sister was due, and my older brother was collecting for the missions, he got given a picture of a bouncing black baby... but when she arrived, he was most disappointed that she was an ordinary pink one. I think his loss of faith dates from that day.

[Beerina]

I still don't know if, when you die, you're raised up and judged immediately, and sent to Heaven or Hell, or if you just stay dead until the end days, when "the seas give up their dead and the zombies claw their way from their graves", and we all go stand before the Lord in one big honkin' party, and wait as the list of names and destinations is read.

Wait, well, quite a long time actually. 70 billion people at one name per four seconds is almost 9,000 years. That's presuming a light beam shoots out to identify the person being spoke of, separated from the 30,000 other people with exactly the same name, to speed things up rather than list identifying era and geography, state, lat/long, or polar coordinates of birth.

[Moose]

I was never inflicted with Catholic Dragon Nuns, thank the FSM, but there were four things I misunderstood about my initial religion:

1) Transubstantiation. It wasn't until well after college that I learned that Catholic doctrine insists that the transformation of the host and wine during communion aren't symbolic at all, but literal, and that by implication I'd been practicing ritual cannibalism.

2) The Trinity. It had always struck me odd that Baptists insist upon worshiping Jesus as God, when the commandment is adamant [paraphrased]: "Worship as you like, but do not place anybody above Me unless your insurance is up to date and you sprung for the 'Acts of God' clause." On the opposite tack, I found it strange that Catholics pray to Jesus so that he might intercede with God when they're considered the same person.

3) That I wasn't wrong for having realized from my very first rational thoughts that organized religion was indistinguishable from a systematic and world-spanning abuse of the "Appeal to Authority" fallacy as a means to keep themselves in power and scratch. (I was a precocious kid.)

4) That my government guaranteed my right to not be their captive audience.

[Moose]

I still don't know if, when you die, you're raised up and judged immediately, and sent to Heaven or Hell, or if you just stay dead until the end days,

It seems to depend on whether or not "your" sect preaches the Rapture.

Catholics are a bit vague on this point, it's not something that's emphasized heavily, but they do teach that Jesus was subjected to (and by implication failed) the Judgement, then spent three days in Hell before the Resurrection. This would seem to imply that either the queue is pretty short, or Jesus got preferential treatment. One could argue either way, I guess.

The Rapture myths seem to be pretty firm on the idea that everybody gets judged on the same day. That means that the stiffs that had been waiting around get sorted, the self-righteous yanked out of their Beemers, and everybody else gets to fight out this post-apocalyptic war as (badly) described by the novel series.

[Eskarina]

Back then in religious ed, when my teacher "explained" that each day of the creation actually lasted several million years.

I didn't put it those words (I was eleven or twelve at the time), but my thoughts ran along the lines of: "WTF? We're talking about God here! You know, omniscient, omnipotent and ubiquitious. Why does he waste so much time when it could be done with a snip of the fingers?"

That was the first step on my not-very-long-and-winding-and-rocky road to atheism.

Well, that and those wacko catholics. :)

[Piscivore]

I was also brought up Methodist, and as a child was under the impression that the things that pleased god best were abject boredom, dispirited, passionless and atonal group singing, and frequent potlucks featuring greasy, non-KFC fried chicken, lots of different potato salads, and gossip.

[Marquis de Carabas]

I didn't understand why Satan was the bad guy.

[Eskarina]

duplicate

[shadron]

I still don't know if, when you die, you're raised up and judged immediately, and sent to Heaven or Hell, or if you just stay dead until the end days, when "the seas give up their dead and the zombies claw their way from their graves", and we all go stand before the Lord in one big honkin' party, and wait as the list of names and destinations is read.

Wait, well, quite a long time actually. 70 billion people at one name per four seconds is almost 9,000 years. That's presuming a light beam shoots out to identify the person being spoke of, separated from the 30,000 other people with exactly the same name, to speed things up rather than list identifying era and geography, state, lat/long, or polar coordinates of birth.

It was exactly this kind of thing that did it for me. My family didn't have any religion in the beginning (my Dad, while never talking about it, never ever approached religion or churchiness at all). I was in third grade when my Mom decided for us (except, of course, not Dad) we would all be Catholic, got us baptized and into a Catholic school. And so we did. The school was good (taught the basics right well, and our nuns were pretty strict, but were approachable, thank goodness), except for that religion class.

Unfortunately before all that, I'd already had two years of science in public school, and I don't know how they did it, but they had me asking rational questions in the third grade (if I could only have bottled that!). What do you mean "body and blood"? It most obviously wasn't. What do you mean three gods in one? Couldn't be. Oh, I sort-of walked the walk, and well-talked the talk, as a matter of fact I was rather a holier-then-thou type, I became a member of the school choir, but only because it got me an "in" with the girls. But inside I was asking what the hell the pope thought he was saying when he said at one point evolving man got a soul (glad I didn't know what I know now about the mitochondrial Eve and X-chromosonal Adam; I'd might have swallowed that.) What was all this about seeing god and going left or going right? What kind of traffic jam would that be? When in later life I read Heinlein's "Job: A Comedy of Justice" and he described the traffic problems at the rapture in Kansas City detail, I was saying to myself, "Yes! Yes - at last, someone who saw it the way I did!". Religion class was one long interior question period, as I'd learned early on not to vocalize my doubts, because no one else would listen to it. When I finally managed to get out on my own, the religion fell pretty quickly by he wayside, though I must admit that some of that was the real hate of wasting a perfectly good weekend day.

[Denver]

It is a very very common experience for people, as they turn 12 or so, or whenever they enter their personal 'age of reason', to have major problems with their up-brought religion. This makes a lot of sense, since most up until that point do not have a good understanding of what it is their religion really says. Their understanding is a child's understanding, and it now has the more mature mind examining it, and finding it lacking.

There seem to be a few reactions at that point:
1) Don't look too hard. Just go with it.
2) Realize it is a childish model, and begin an effort to reexamine the beliefs and move the understanding into a more adult model.
3) Realize it is a childish model, and dump it.

While 2 and 3 can both cause conversions to other beliefs, I think 2 is the more informed approach. While 2 and 3 can both, for example, turn christians into wiccans, or catholics into protestants, or mormons into athiests, and so on, 2 tends to create a more mature perspective and understanding of religion, while 3 seems just a cop-out or a rebellion.