How old were you when you realized you didn't believe in god?

[Typicallucas]

I was 12. I made the realization as I typed it into a chat box on a local BBS, late at night, when I was asked if I believe in god.

I wrote "No, I don't believe in god."

That was the start of all this... (I'm making large circles around my chest-area with my pointer finger)

It was also the first time I defiantly refused to believe was my elders told me to.

[ProdigalGuru]

There is still time to change your mind.

The Lord loves and forgives you.

[paximperium]

There is still time to change your mind. Why would I want to believe in a fantasy?

The Lord loves and forgives you.
No. Your god is an evil tyrant.

[paximperium]

Back to the OP. I was pretty irreligious with vague "god-beliefs" more akin to Deism until I was in my early twenties. Then it just faded away. I grew out of it.

[Cainkane1]

12

[M.R.B.]

<7. In school, my first teacher was some kind of born again christian. She insisted on reading from some "children's bible", I remember. She also spoke about her personal beliefs one day when asked by another kid, and I found the whole idea ludicrous. That's the earliest I can remember. I knew about mythologies before that, I was just not really aware people still believed in them. Religion was never mentioned at home.

[icerat]

Hmmm .... I was confirmed in the Catholic Church when I was 12, and I recall at the time I knew I was lying and I was only doing it to make a little old lady happy.

So sometime before then!

[zooloo]

About 11.

It was a stupid answer in RE (Religious class in UK) and I realise I'd never even thought about it.

Once I noticed religion existed I didn't believe it.

[dlorde]

I grew up in a Roman Catholic home, went to Roman Catholic primary school & secondary school (run by Benedictine priests). I quite liked some of the romantic parts - the liturgical mystery of Latin services, and the choirs, I disliked most of the rest because it seemed mostly pointless chores and taboos. I never really thought about whether I actually believed in God, I just followed instructions unless I could avoid it. By the time I started thinking about it, I realised that, apart from the rituals I had to attend (mass), religion had no significant impact on me at all - people from other religions and atheists seemed no different (well, perhaps they were a bit more relaxed about life), and there were no signs of God or the supernatural to be seen, and it all seemed a bit of a waste of time, unless you liked the dressing up and the social side. I don't think I ever really consciously 'believed' in God, any more than I believed in Santa Claus - I just followed along with the family and school. As soon as those pressures relaxed, and I moved into my mid-teens, it all became history. When I went to university and met people of all religions and races, I realised what a narrow and restricted social environment I'd grown up in.

I think many people just carry on with the religious observances they learned from their parents from sheer force of habit, and don't think too deeply about what it all means. That certainly seemed true for many of the Catholics I knew.

[DC]

9 years when i remember correctly.
when my mom told my my grandmother died, but she has a better life now as she is with God now.
then i started to question that guy up there and realized its fiction. My mother wasnt really convincing, as she didnt belive in god either but thought it would be more easy for me to learn about my grandmothers death that way.

[volatile]

21. For my sins.

[Cayvmann]

Hmmm .... I was confirmed in the Catholic Church when I was 12, and I recall at the time I knew I was lying and I was only doing it to make a little old lady happy.

So sometime before then!

My experience is very similar. I've probably been more culturally a Catholic, my whole life, than a true believer. I used to pray as a kid and it never paid off. Watched my mom cry and pray, to no avail for many years.

I'll say I was pretty young when I really started questioning, probably younger than 12, but it has only been recently that I've admitted it to myself, that I wasn't just questioning, but I had my answer......

[slingblade]

There is still time to change your mind.


Yes, there's always time for stupid.

[Cainkane1]

There is still time to change your mind.

The Lord loves and forgives you.
Lets be nice to this guy. He means well.

[paximperium]

Lets be nice to this guy. He means well.
Reading some of his other posts, I don't believe so.

[DC]

There is still time to change your mind.

The Lord loves and forgives you.

the same Lord that is letting little kids starve while fat preachers spread the lords gospels?

[slingblade]

Lets be nice to this guy. He means well.

Then he'd better learn right quick there are some people who have been hurt by that "philosophy," who don't take kindly to it, and who have no problem saying so. It's a cruel old world.

As to the OP, I was over 30 when I began to have serious doubts, and over 40 when I chucked the lot.

[Meadmaker]

22

[maddog]

Started doubting young, yet figured that had to be something to it. How could 80+% of the world be wrong? Kept following all the proscribed paths, kept working at it, kept studying...

About 40, came to a "conclusion" and gave it up. In quotes "conclusion" because, well, I'm still open to it, if there is new evidence to consider.

[Foster Zygote]

I don't know if I can pin an exact age. The doubts began in my mid teens and by my early twenties I no longer believed.

[eGadfly]

I was young. I wanted to believe, but just couldn't. I was probably around 5th grade.. about the same time I realized Santa didn't exist (or, more accurately, told he didn't exist). I never fully bought into the god thing - the older I got, the more convinced I was that it was all a farce.

[CaptainHair]

I still believe. I have seen nothing that would cause me to change that.

My faith and my family are what get me through the day.

[Darat]

Page 56 of this thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=125220), no god could allow such cruelty.

[Cainkane1]

I still believe. I have seen nothing that would cause me to change that.

My faith and my family are what get me through the day.
Do you have empiracle evidence for your beliefs? Do you have faith in something you can't sense with your five senses? If so why? Answered prayers? What?

I personally will never believe in God. There is no evidence for him but if God does exist and if he is like the bible says he is then I'd probably hate him if he did.

[Morrigan]

Between 3 or 5 years old.

Edit: that's not entirely accurate. I don't think I ever believed, truly. I vaguely remember my grandmother telling me about "the good Lord", and later asked my father, "Dad, where is God?" and he just chuckled and said, "He's.... everywhere.". I scrunched up my face and said, "that's impossible!".

[Autolite]

There is still time to change your mind.

The Lord loves and forgives you.

This is true! Just close your eyes and click your heels together three times while repeating:

"There really is a god"...

"There really is a god".... :D

[madurobob]

I was young. I wanted to believe, but just couldn't. I was probably around 5th grade.. about the same time I realized Santa didn't exist (or, more accurately, told he didn't exist). I never fully bought into the god thing - the older I got, the more convinced I was that it was all a farce.

Me too. I can never remember a time when I honestly believed. I always felt I was supposed to believe, and I tried hard to believe up through my teens. But, there came a point where I decided it was simply not worth it to intentionally deceive myself and those around me.

[Autolite]

Lets be nice to this guy. He means well.

Perhaps, but I think that theists really don't understand how terribly insulting it is to suggest to Atheists that they need to believe. It might reduce some of the animosity between theists and Atheists if theists realized that proselytizing to an Atheist is like calling someone an idiot straight to their face...

[icerat]

Me too. I can never remember a time when I honestly believed. I always felt I was supposed to believe, and I tried hard to believe up through my teens. But, there came a point where I decided it was simply not worth it to intentionally deceive myself and those around me.

This I think most accurately describes me too. As long as I can remember it never made sense to me, so I probably never "believed". I sat on the fence as an agnostic for a long time as it is reasonable to argue it's impossible to prove there's no god - but I finally admitted to myself that was a coward's exit.

[joobz]

I was ~6-7ish when I believed that god didn't actually punish people for things beyond thier control (unlike what was being taught).

I was ~14-15ish when I believed that the devil was a made up concept used by people to excuse their bad behavior.

I was ~20ish when I believed that god was real but it didn't matter what way you worshipped him/her.... As long as you were "good"....


I was 30ish when I started to reevaluate my unpracticed thoughts on god.

Now, I hover in non-belief. It's weird because I honestly wish to believe, but don't.

[quarky]

I believe in a pointless, cruel and silly god.

Its fun!

[Autolite]

Originally Posted by madurobob
Me too. I can never remember a time when I honestly believed. I always felt I was supposed to believe, and I tried hard to believe up through my teens. But, there came a point where I decided it was simply not worth it to intentionally deceive myself and those around me.

This I think most accurately describes me too. As long as I can remember it never made sense to me, so I probably never "believed". I sat on the fence as an agnostic for a long time as it is reasonable to argue it's impossible to prove there's no god - but I finally admitted to myself that was a coward's exit.

Ditto...

[Sun Countess]

I grew up without religion, but became aware of god and religion practiced by others around me. Reading the bible about age 10/11 didn't help Yahweh's cause, as I stumbled on the story of Abraham and Isaac in my first reading. It really clashed with the whole "God is Love" message I was being told.

It was also around that age that we studied some Roman mythology in school and kids would laugh at the silly beliefs. "How could they not know there was only ONE God? People were so stupid back then! Ha ha!" To me, there was just no difference in the "stupidity."

As I'm now in my 40s, I'm honestly at a point where I don't understand how anyone can possibly believe in the god of the bible past young adulthood. I do understand men in particular using those "beliefs" to promote their own hatreds and intolerances, or people who need the crutch of religion in their lives, but I really don't understand anyone with a rational mind thinking there's anything real to it. How are the modern beliefs different than the old ones? How can someone dismiss every other god belief as being born of ignorance or man, and consider their own to be born of divine truth and inspiration?

[Autolite]

As I'm now in my 40s, I'm honestly at a point where I don't understand how anyone can possibly believe in the god of the bible past young adulthood. I do understand men in particular using those "beliefs" to promote their own hatreds and intolerances, or people who need the crutch of religion in their lives, but I really don't understand anyone with a rational mind thinking there's anything real to it. How are the modern beliefs different than the old ones? How can someone dismiss every other god belief as being born of ignorance or man, and consider their own to be born of divine truth and inspiration?

I've struggled with this also. The 'best' answer that I can come up with is that religious belief is emotion driven. People's thought processes are influenced by both emotion and logic, but to widely varying degrees.

Emotion and logic are often at odds with each other. People who are heavily influenced by emotional thought are religious. People who are heavily influenced by logical thought are non-religious.

With some people, their emotion will override their logic, and with others their logic will override their emotion. This analogy is what helps me to understand why otherwise seemingly rational people are religious...

[Undesired Walrus]

I never really gave it any serious thought one way or the other, I just lived a tradition, basically. In other words, I never thought 'Hey, there must be a God because..' and came to a conclusion which led me to the church. I prayed at night, went to confession, but only in the same way one doesn't walk under a ladder. It was tradition, nothing more, nothing less. I was never confirmed though, so perhaps I couldn't have been too commited to it.

I don't really think I've ever believed in God (But I never had the thought 'I don't believe'), I just believed in belief.

[I Ratant]

40... years ago.

[bobcarp]

There is still time to change your mind.


There is still time to change YOUR mind too.

But that's kind of the point. The existance of god(s) is in people's minds.

[Mark6]

I was raised an atheist -- or rather, agnostic. I don't think my parents ever talked about god -- to them it was simply a non-topic. About age of 16 I tried to figure out that maybe there is something to religion. After about two years I came to conclusion that Judeo-Christian god is either a contradiction or an abomination, and either way deserves no worship. After that I was a practicing pagan for 4-5 years until coming to conclusion that this too is a woo.

[Beerina]

Logic is the servant of emotion, not the other way around.


It's easy to use (what you believe is) logic to justify the emotional investment and emotional certitude you have in a position (the feeling certainty is an emotion.) The reverse is not true: it's hard for logic to induce the emotions to support the logical position.

Try the "bowling ball on a rope" Mr. Science type experiment where you pull such a ball back to your nose and let it go. You know, logically, it cannot swing back and hit you in the nose since it will have lost some energy. But it's almost impossible, especially on the first try, to not flinch without a will of iron -- and that will is just suppressing a ferocious desire to flinch in any case.


Beliefs, i.e. emotional certainties, derive from the associational nature of the brain. It is an observer that evolved in a world where two things that happen close in time or space usually are related. So presume a causal link.

The emotional belief is strong.

Propose some other link, which was not observed, and especially one that contradicts accepted links, and you meet with resistance to change.


This also explains why people will adopt a position readily when they observe working it in/by/for others, but will resist when preached at directly.

[godless dave]

6, but I had a relapse into deism when I was 16-17.

[slingblade]

Lets be nice to this guy. He means well.

I now agree with Paximperium, having also read a few other posts of the guru's. I sincerely doubt he means well, on many subjects.

[Aepervius]

Never. As far as I remember , from my deepest memory, it (various god concepts) never made any sense whatsoever.

[PixyMisa]

12. Until age 10 I was a default atheist; I didn't believe, but I hadn't really thought about it. At age 10 I realised that if this God stuff was true, it was important, and I became a Christian. At age 12 I got an adult library card...

[Geezer]

I can't actually recall ever beliving in a christian god but for awhile I did entertain the notion that the possiblity of a god/gods could exist, still do on occasion so I guess that technically I wander between atheisism(sp?) and agnosticism(sp?)
My parents were never into religion, the Jehovas witnesses hasn't visited my parents nor me since the 70's I guess we are on the list of eternally doomed.

[Fireshadow]

I can't say I've ever "believed". I toyed with belief, but I felt more of a connection with the gods and goddesses of Greek myth than with the Judeo-Christian god (I can remember praying to them when I was younger, but I never addressed Jehovah in that manner--he was just too far removed from my worldview). When I was a pagan, the approach we all took was that any "gods" we invoked were mere representations, mental images--all our will and ability to affect the world around us was from within, with no unnecessary frills such as god to give us strength. Of course, since then I've dismissed much of the ritual that we participated in as being as empty and meaningless of those rituals of the churches, and have left those behind as well. The power of God is an illusion--all strength comes from within ourselves, and how we interact with the world around us (and how that world reacts to us). Any ability to change ourselves does not rely on meaningless phrases written down in a book (be it the Bible, the Qu'ran, the Bhagavad-Gita, or a Wiccan book of spells)--it comes from our choices to change our minds, find our feet...live our lives.

[Jorghnassen]

Somewhere between 15 and 17...

[kbm99]

Lets be nice to this guy. He means well.

Right, because another Kurious Kathy is just what we need around here.

[kbm99]

Oh, and as to the OP - I struggled with the question for years, between the ages of 16 and 22 or so. I went through a fairly devout phase in the middle of all that before settling on my current point of view - I don't believe in god any more than I believe in Santa.

[Tanstaafl]

I also always harbored doubts, but I was 30-ish before I admitted to myself that I really didn't believe.

I'm a late bloomer.

[UndercoverElephant]

I was 6 when I decided I didn't believe in God. Then I had a rethink when I was 33. Now I'd say God is beyond the categories of existence and non-existence.

[paximperium]

I was 6 when I decided I didn't believe in God. Then I had a rethink when I was 33. Now I'd say God is beyond the categories of existence and non-existence.
What is your criteria to determine existence and non-existence?

[PrincessIneffabelle]

I was in my late 20s. I'm still not sure if my time as a theist was a waste or not.

[godless dave]

Now I'd say God is beyond the categories of existence and non-existence.

Do you really think that's a meaningful statement?

[sackett]

9? 10? Somewhere in there. God knows (I sure don't) how I could have entertained any religious beliefs even at that age, being brought up 100% secular, with a pinch of scoffing by my father. I suppose it was the atmosphere of conventional piety back then; I inhaled because I thought everybody did. Shows how much I knew, eh?

Although I can remember my primary sensation when exposed, at about age 5, to my only experience of Sunday school: embarassment. I wondered uncomfortably if Jesus went to the bathroom. I needed to go, and it irked me not to be able to.

Why was I in Sunday school even once? Dunno. Probably my parents wanted my brother and me out of the house for an hour.

[Giraffe107]

When I was 7. I was saying a prayer, and then realised how silly it all was and stopped believing then and there.

[AgeGap]

Around 7 or 8 and I was brought up as a Catholic.
A lot of my time in school was spent learning about Jesus, praying, learning about God, singing hymns, saying the rosary and going to mass. Multiply my experience by the thousands of people who have passed through the school and it must come out at millennia of missed time that could have been better used actually educating children.

[lionking]

I don't think that I ever really believed, but went through the whole catholic thing, First Communion, Confirmation, Altar Boy etc.

The big rebellion, though, was when I was one of only two students in the first year of High School who refused to go to weekly confession.

[proudnonbbeliever]

6 years old.

I found out our churches pastor was having an affair with half the women in the church, it led me to question the truth of what I knew, and began my antitheism as well

[lionking]

6 years old.

I found out our churches pastor was having an affair with half the women in the church, it led me to question the truth of what I knew, and began my antitheism as well
You knew what an affair was at 6? Cooooooool.;)

[UndercoverElephant]

What is your criteria to determine existence and non-existence?

In general terms, I'm not sure. If we are talking about God in particular then I'd say it was because claiming that God exists implies that God is some sort of object and that whatever God is, it isn't any sort of object or thing. This view is, of course, not shared by most theists.

[UndercoverElephant]

Do you really think that's a meaningful statement?

It's about as meaningful as any statement about God could be. My position on God is that of the negative theologians - I don't think we can say anything positive and meaningful about God. All we can say is what God isn't.: God neither exists nor doesn't exist.

[paximperium]

In general terms, I'm not sure. If we are talking about God in particular then I'd say it was because claiming that God exists implies that God is some sort of object and that whatever God is, it isn't any sort of object or thing. This view is, of course, not shared by most theists.
So you've defined existance into incoherence?

[paximperium]

It's about as meaningful as any statement about God could be. My position on God is that of the negative theologians - I don't think we can say anything positive and meaningful about God. All we can say is what God isn't.: God neither exists nor doesn't exist.
You've just made the word existance non-descriptive, non-communicative and completely useless.

[UndercoverElephant]

So you've defined existance into incoherence?

Have I?

[UndercoverElephant]

You've just made the word existance non-descriptive, non-communicative and completely useless.

I suspect it is actually the word "God" that I've done that to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_theology

[Tapio]

28

[quarky]

No ironic theists here?

How about pro-wrestling fans then?

[SomeGuy]

I can't actually recall ever beliving in a christian god but for awhile I did entertain the notion that the possiblity of a god/gods could exist, still do on occasion so I guess that technically I wander between atheisism(sp?) and agnosticism(sp?)
My parents were never into religion, the Jehovas witnesses hasn't visited my parents nor me since the 70's I guess we are on the list of eternally doomed.

This is pretty much how I feel.

Noone I knew was much into religion at all, went through a little spell of being really interested in religion (in general, including christianity, hinduism, budhism, mythology and leprechauns and goblins) at age 15-17 or so. During that time I've had a few spells of entertaining the notion there might be a possibility of the existence of a god/gods.

Not since.

I would be what most here would call a strong atheist. Though I really don't like the term "atheist", it feels weird defining myself by something I don't believe in and it feels arbitrary to choose theism out of all the stuff I don't believe in.

[paximperium]

No ironic theists here?

How about pro-wrestling fans then?
Pro-wrestling is like religion. Big buff and violent of the outside but just an act and empty showboating when you get down to it.

[Fireshadow]

No ironic theists here?

How about pro-wrestling fans then?

I think I was much older when I realized that wrestling was choreographed than I was when I realized that "god" was a figment. I can appreciate religious services as art, I suppose--but the showmanship involved in religion just strikes me as too fake. There are similarities--neither wrestling nor religion are at the core what their outward appearance would have you believe. The difference, though, is that wrestlers are aware that they are projecting a false face to the world--whereas, in my view, many theists don't realize the hypocracy of their stances.

I look at wrestling for what it is--an athletic soap-opera, that, especially now in the era of "sports entertainment" acknowledges that it is just another show (I mean, the WWE has hired Freddie Prinze Jr as a writer, ffs).

Religion needs the masses to believe, in much the same way that wrestling does--the difference is that religion won't even admit to itself that it is all surface, all show.

[fuelair]

6 or early 7. Never got any evidence requiring a change.

[I Ratant]

I don't think that I ever really believed, but went through the whole catholic thing, First Communion, Confirmation, Altar Boy etc.

The big rebellion, though, was when I was one of only two students in the first year of High School who refused to go to weekly confession.
.
Hey!
I did that too!
The chaplain's assistant teaching religion demanded each of us go to confession during class.
I went to the priest and asked if I had to go to confession if I didn't want to, and he said I didn't.
I don't recall if that was the first step towards liberation, but it was one of them.

[godless dave]

It's about as meaningful as any statement about God could be. My position on God is that of the negative theologians - I don't think we can say anything positive and meaningful about God. All we can say is what God isn't.: God neither exists nor doesn't exist.


And how is saying something "neither exists nor doesn't exist" in any way meaningful? It seems to me like one of those grammatically correct but meaningless sentences, like "colorless green ideas sleep furiously".

[godless dave]

Pro-wrestling is like religion. Big buff and violent of the outside but just an act and empty showboating when you get down to it.

I think there's actually a serious point here. In my experience, many pro-wrestling fans know it's "fake", that it's an athletic performance, not an athletic competition. Knowing this, it's still fun for them to watch pro-wrestling. They sort of pretend it's a real competition while simultaneously knowing it isn't.

I've also talked to "believers" who approach religion the same way. They feel they get something out of pretending to believe even though they don't actually believe. And they admit this, but only sometimes, and they don't seem to see the category distinction between themselves and believers who really do believe it.

[linusrichard]

Probably 10 or 12 when I went agnostic or maybe deist. Probably 15 or 16 when I went atheist. I remember telling my mom when I was 16 or 17, so it must have been before then. She didn't believe me. Dysfunction is low in my family, I'm happy to say, but when it manifests, it does so in cheery denial. She wouldn't believe I was an atheist (I didn't say "atheist"; I just said I don't believe in God or any god or gods or anything like that), and I eventually gave up, and she probably still doesn't believe I'm an atheist, and that's going to have to be okay.

[Dr H]

I was 12. I made the realization as I typed it into a chat box on a local BBS, late at night, when I was asked if I believe in god.

I wrote "No, I don't believe in god."

That was the start of all this... (I'm making large circles around my chest-area with my pointer finger)

It was also the first time I defiantly refused to believe was my elders told me to.

Thanks to a whacky nun I had for "religious instruction" I remember having doubts as far back as age 8. By 12 I didn't really believe anymore, but living in a Catholic family I didn't realize that non-belief was an option, so I continued to look for ways to believe. At 13 I read the Bible for the first time, from cover to cover, and that pretty much wiped out any remaining pretense to belief that I had hung onto.

I didn't actually come out and publicly admit my atheism until my frist year in college, though, at age 18. I have never regretted doing so.

[Paul W]

From around five(ish) to early teens I simultaneously held contradictory beliefs in evolution on one hand and creationism on the other. Each was equally valid, and I could switch between them, as the situation demanded. On the beach at Lyme Regis, evolution was obviously valid. In church, creationism was.

Gradually – it was not a sudden event – religion stopped making sense.

When I stopped going to church had a defined point: when I left home at 18 and went to university, I stopped going to church.

These days I am a “four-wheeler”. People go in four wheels in a pram to be baptised; in a car to be married; in a hearse to be buried. I go along with them.

It might be dishonest, but it makes life less stressful.

[Soapy Sam]

Couldn't put an absolute date on it, but between 5 and 7.
I have no memory of ever believing. By the time I was old enough to decide what I thought, I was already a non believer. It was all to do with the Santa Revelation, I reckon.

[Vic Vega]

I can't remember back to a time where I ever really believed in anything supernatural. I do have vague memories of praying when I was a child (maybe 7 or 8), but I also remember thinking that it probably wasn't going to work.

By the time I was a teenager, I was sure I'd need some hard evidence before I could belive in god. I'm 40 and still waiting.

How about pro-wrestling fans then?

Given a choice between being a pro wrestling fan and a being a theist... Well, I'd have to think about that one.

[vIQleS]

30

And I am never telling my mother - she's a True Believer (tm) and I don't want her to panic about me going to hell. :D

I was a pretty hard-core fundy. YEC and so forth... I liked science and logic, but I'd only ever heard it from the fundy side. When I came here (via Penn and Teller) in 2005 I started aguing with and, more importantly, listening to you lot. (completely ruined it for me :-P)

Took me about a year to go from Fundy YEC to Deist to Atheist.

[MattusMaximus]

I had my suspicions around the age of 12 or 13. By the time I was 16 I had decided that the notion of a traditional Abrahamic god was silly. My skepticism of religion & faith continued from there, though it wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I started to think of myself as an atheist. I am 37 now.

[quarky]

I think I was much older when I realized that wrestling was choreographed than I was when I realized that "god" was a figment. I can appreciate religious services as art, I suppose--but the showmanship involved in religion just strikes me as too fake. There are similarities--neither wrestling nor religion are at the core what their outward appearance would have you believe. The difference, though, is that wrestlers are aware that they are projecting a false face to the world--whereas, in my view, many theists don't realize the hypocracy of their stances.

I look at wrestling for what it is--an athletic soap-opera, that, especially now in the era of "sports entertainment" acknowledges that it is just another show (I mean, the WWE has hired Freddie Prinze Jr as a writer, ffs).

Religion needs the masses to believe, in much the same way that wrestling does--the difference is that religion won't even admit to itself that it is all surface, all show.



So, religion is like a really, really nasty bad-guy wrestler, because it won't even admit to itself that its fake. Which is a positive trait for a pro-wrestler...to be nastier than the others; sleazier.

Its about the costumes, either way. I'd like to believe that god is a pro-wrestler, because the religious outfits had stupid hats.
Good and evil in the squared circle. Theism survives on a perverse thread this way, and I can answer yes when quizzed by the fundamentalists that surround me. They hate a damn atheist.

Santa Claus would make a good god, but he's busy.
Some lost hippies found god in Eric Clapton for awhile.
Pretending to believe is good enough for now, should any of you lost souls want to come back into the fold.

[Delvo]

I don't think I ever believed...I can't say I've ever "believed".I don't think that I ever really believedI've noticed in several threads here before that JREF members tend to have stories about finally turning away from religion after having first been religious for years, which makes me unusual because I never had a religion in the first place. (I grew up going to a private Lutheran school and church, but just never could take the religious stuff at all seriously all along.) But what's an even more interesting pattern is in these quotes above: even the other JREF stories I've now seen on this subject that even come close to mine still aren't as simple and acute about it; they're phrased as "I don't think" and "I can't say". (In other words, I really am a freak here!...?)

The big rebellion, though, was when I was one of only two students in the first year of High School who refused to go to weekly confession.My Lutheran school had a tradition at the end of 8th grade called "Confirmation" in which the students were supposed to, as it sounds, "confirm" their dedication to the religion and declare their intention to stick with it as adults. I left that school before that time came, but I've wondered a few times since then how I would have handled it. As I am now, I'd probably just tell the teachers & principal that I had no religion and no intention of going through a ceremony in which I was expected to lie about it, and then just finish the last bit of the final year at that school and quietly disappear. But I suspect that, the way I was at that age, I would have wanted to actually go to the ceremony just so I could put my rejection of the religion on display in a setting that the authority figures and audience would be sure to find shocking... and that's why my parents would have warned the teachers & principal about me ahead of time and kept me out of the ceremony so I could just finish the last bit of the final year at that school and quietly disappear. :D

[oldhat]

I was raised in a secular family. My parents were both atheists. God and religion were just things neither were interested in, and as a corollary they never spoke about atheism either. The only "religious" holiday we celebrated was Christmas with the tree and everything but my parents couched it in terms of it being an American holidays and its importance being about having family over and eating dinner together, like Thanksgiving and Independence Day. Secular through and through.

I guess I've always been an atheist.

[KingMerv00]

16-17

[godless dave]

I prayed at night, went to confession, but only in the same way one doesn't walk under a ladder. It was tradition, nothing more, nothing less.

I found this really interesting, because I wasn't raised not to walk under ladders or with any other superstitious traditions. I remember my father being critical of superstition on one occasion when I was pretty young. I had opened an umbrella indoors and he mentioned that my grandmother (I don't know which one) would have been upset. He made it clear he considered such beliefs nonsense.

[straitjacket]

I never really thought about it until I asked my parent why we never went to church. That prompted them to find one and take me and my brother. As soon as I was being taught the bible stories in Sunday school I figured out that the Christian God probably was just as real as the Greek Gods I learned about in the third and fourth grades. So the short answerer is 9.

[SmartyPants]

23-24. I grew up going to church, went voluntarily to church groups during my high school and undergraduate years, and trailed off around my Jr/Sr year of college. Not long after, I became a confirmed atheist. I haven't stepped foot in a church since, except for weddings, but I am quite curious about attending a UU church. I still sometimes yearn for the fellowship, which I don't think is really all that odd since I consider myself a humanist more than anything.

[proudnonbbeliever]

You knew what an affair was at 6? Cooooooool.;)

not really, my dad had multiple affairs from before i came along, my parents split when i was 12.

Thats how i knew what they were and how bad they can be to the families, based on the cr@p i experienced.

[devnull]

I dont have any memory of ever believing. We used to say the lord's prayer in primary school (until it was outlawed when I was in year 2 or 3) but it was only ever a bunch of words I had to remember. My father is nontheist (he thinks theists and us atheists are all as crazy as each other, because we bother to even think about this nonsense at all:)) and my mother was only ever COE to the degree that when she was asked she would say "COE".

I remember joining the "Boy's Brigade" when I was 9 or 10, and being repulsed by the religious overtones. I remember tagging along to a friend's church once when I was around the same age, and I came out thinking what a bunch of fakes they all were.

I guess I was never told to believe when I was young, so I didnt. I might have avoided most of the BS at school because a) my father was probably well known for being nonreligious and b) he was well known for not taking any crap, and probably would have stormed down to the school had someone attempted to fill my head with nonsense.

[quadraginta]

I don't think that I ever really believed, but went through the whole catholic thing, First Communion, Confirmation, Altar Boy etc.

The big rebellion, though, was when I was one of only two students in the first year of High School who refused to go to weekly confession.
(my bold above)

My experiences were very similar.

Substitute Episcopalian for Catholic. Somewhat younger as well.

An interest in mythology (thank you Bullfinch and Marvel Comics) led me into reading in comparative religion fairly young. I was subsequently invited not to return to a summer bible camp because my contributions to discussion were viewed as disruptive.

Things pretty much went downhill from there.

[Camillus]

I'd call myself a third generation atheist and I can't ever remember believing in god. My maternal grandmother was a firebrand socialist with strong views on many things (including religion and the best way to chuck rocks at the police but we'll draw a veil over that one). My mother is more relaxed but still an atheist, although one of her sisters converted to Judaism in her teens and then married an orthodox Jew. He revealed, after his mother died, that he was in fact an atheist himself (although he keeps to tradition when my aunt is around in order not to upset her too much) and is very active in the humanist movement.

My father would occasionally try and get us interested in religion and I can remember being forced to go to Sunday school as a small child, although I can also remember getting into trouble at school around the same time for refusing to pray with the other children. I think my mother's general indifference to religion and refusal to go to church probably had a big influence on me, as did my uncle's humanism, so I never felt the need to engage with religion.

[Alopex]

It is hard to answer these kind of questions but I was around 9 when I first thought of this.

The question for me was not if I belived that some obscure old guys sits in the skys somewhere and direct everything we do but Do I care? nope.

[Bikewer]

A late bloomer here... I must have been in my 20s. I was raised Catholic; elementary school and high school, so I was thoroughly inculcated. I was fond of asking knotty questions, since I read a lot of science and science fiction (Father, if there are other inhabited planets, would they be included in "Original Sin"? What if they didn't disobey God; would they still be in their own little Eden?... And so on...)

Anyway, on joining the army, I not only lost interest in religion but began to widen my reading interests and became exposed to a number of alternate viewpoints. It was finally my interest in science that made me turn to the Dark Side...
I realized that most all the authors I respected (Asimov, Gould, etc.) were atheist and this led me to more deeply research the subject.

[epeeist]

Perhaps, but I think that theists really don't understand how terribly insulting it is to suggest to Atheists that they need to believe. It might reduce some of the animosity between theists and Atheists if theists realized that proselytizing to an Atheist is like calling someone an idiot straight to their face...

ROFLMAO :D

I assume that was deliberate humour, I've been called (not in this forum, elsewhere) an idiot or worse for being a theist a number of times...

I don't disagree with your general point, but I do see a difference between e.g. proselytizing to a coworker (objectionable*) and a two-sentence statement on a board devoted to discussing skepticism etc. That is, just as a theist choosing to participate in discussion on this board has to be willing to have his or her beliefs challenged, does the converse not apply also?

*not always objectionable, e.g. I've had some coworkers with substantially different beliefs including atheism/strong agnosticism but who were interested in and genuinely willing to discuss or argue religion. That wasn't exactly proselytizing, but it was related.

[quarky]

There are other forums where religious faith is a more sane proposition. I've never been to one, but I'm certain they exist. The consensus of opinion would favor God. The internet provides a metaphor: lots of zones, equally ephemeral, and functioning independently of truth. The electrons remain true. The byte's meanings are not bound by factuality.

[Molinaro]

I have no idea how old I was. I don't recall any specific thoughts or moment of a dawning conclusion.

I am quite certain that from the moment the concept of god was first described I considered it silly and never believed it at all.

[pfeenix]

let’s see, I was….9? methinks. no offence to any R C’s out there, but catholic school kinda ruined it for me….

now, under the umbrella term of an eclectic pagan (which is kinda like the religion of religion, if that makes any sense) i believe that all religions must have gotten something right, even if it’s just the basic idea of how to teach people to be better…well, people (which, indecently is probably the most universal teaching in religions, and, oddly enough, the one that a vast majority of people seem to fail--go figure!:rolleyes:)

[quadraginta]

"eclectic pagan".


I like.

[pfeenix]

why, thank you.... though i can't take credit for term coinage

maybe you'll like this, too. this is the eclectic rede:

Nine words the Eclectic Rede attest:
Steal what works, fix what's broke, fake the rest.