But that book, Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, Gunter Grass's Tin Drum, and Heller's Catch-22 all made lasting impressions on me. It was I think that all of them let me know that my developing awareness that the modern world was a lunatic asylum run by buffoons, clowns, and gangsters was not wrong.

I have read them all, and at about the same point in my life that I read "Stranger". I probably still have them on my bookshelves and just have to dig them out and dust them off. They will probably be just as yellowed as this book it---yellowed to the point of calling the pages brown with age. It is rather exciting to learn something about yourself and your long-lost thought process.

So are you saying that you were always an atheist? Or do you just not know how your awareness surfaced?

My parents were atheists. We were always free to choose our own path, but no religion was forced down our throats. I don't think my mom was ever religious, but my dad was raised catholic. By the end of WWII he had decided that there obviously wasn't a god, and that was that.

I had a sister who was 9 years older than I was, and she started to go to church with her friends. She asked my mom if she could take me and my younger sister to Sunday School, so that is how I got indoctrinated. I went to church until high school, as well as going to Bible camp and retreats. In high school, I started to go to other churches with friends sometimes, but had quit going to church on a regular basis. I think the only reason I went with friends is because the Catholic church started to have midnight mass with guitars. But I was not taking any of it seriously by then.

My mom was raised in the Methodist church but didn't ever go. My father was raised Catholic and I have no idea why he walked away from it, or when. It was early on, before they were married. I always wondered if my father would ever get the guilt that is pounded into them, but at the end, he refused to allow a priest in to his hospital room...so his atheism held to the end. I never expected my mother to have a guilt trip, and she didn't.

Y'know they made a pretty good film out of that....tho' you can imagine how disturbing it is.

The library in Winston-Salem was gonna show "The Tim Drum" to an elementary school group because they read it was a film about a little boy who got a tin drum as a present!
I woulda loved to be a fly on the wall when.....


Anyway, I think someone at the library who, actually read books, told them what it was really about before they did.

While I had long suspected most of what I learned in Church and in Catholic School was a load of bullshit, the part where Yossarian goes off on Lieutenant Schiesskopf's wife removed all shadow of a doubt:

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border: 1px solid black; border-radius:0.46em; box-shadow: 3px 3px 3px black"]"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued. … "There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?

I noticed when I was like 4 that Santa had the same handwriting as Mommy.

I cannot remember ever taking religion seriously. I was a little sissy book worm who liked classical music when I was a kid... and therefore, naturally, a pariah. So being ostracized was never a concern as I already was. This is why I think most people get caught up in religion, fear of being ostracized somehow, and then it's hard to leave that soft warm and fuzzy place where lots of people all believe the same stuff and think alike.

I loved Greek and Norse mythology in elementary school (thank you Edith Hamilton) and the Christian stuff was just too much like it to not think it was mythology too.

I remember reading Mary Renault's "The King Must Die" in like the 4th or 5th grade. It was great! No magic there.

and went to Catholic school through the sixth grade. Even though I had been an Atheist for awhile then, I appreciated that it was a good education and the school I went to taught evolution, science, etc. They did not really push that hard on the religion and we were even encouraged to ask questions about it.

My Atheism was tied to deciding I no longer believed in Santa Claus, or other mythical beings. This was around age 6. I kept it from my parents until my early teens. My attendance at church was out of respect for my parents beliefs, not a confirmation of mine.

I would think that someone raised in the church would not get an awareness so early. I never classified God with Santa Claus at that point. It took a lot longer. I bow to you.

went to Catholic school. I guess they inadvertently made questioners out of us.

I worked with an Evangelical Christian once and used to say that Catholic school is where they train Atheists. He may have been right about that to some degree.

social-climbing agenda. While we dressed up and went to church on Sundays, there was no talk of church at home. When I became a teenager, I discovered a set of books in my school library. Each one was small and there were probably a dozen or more. Each little book was on a particular religion. I read them all. Then I decided that they can't all be right, but they certainly could all be wrong. It took a while, but I then discovered the word "atheist" which described my conclusions. So atheist I am.

I was at a place where I was searching for what was right for me, and I started to study all the religions that I didn't know anything about. At some point, you have to realize that they can't all be right even though each one declares itself to be the right one. I figured if I was going to be condemned anyways if I got it wrong---and the odds were good that I would get it wrong, I might as well call them all bunk.

I had always had my doubts and questions that just couldn't be answered. But I thought that was just the way it was, and that I needed to learn to accept the non-answers the church (Lutheran - ELCA) gave.

Then I was reading a SciFi or Fantasy novel, somewhere in high school I think, in which one of the characters was relating their impression of human religions, and specifically Christianity. I just remember being so captivated by that passage - it had really put all the jumbled feelings and questions I had in my brain into a series of printed words that perfectly expressed what I had been thinking. My "wow" moment.

Thank you for this thread, I had forgotten about that moment. Like I said, wish I could remember the exact book, but now I do remember the feeling.

It wasn't until I hit the place in "Stranger" where they were discussing all the stupid things in the Bible. Then it hit me. I remember going to the Bible and reading those stories---the full story and not just the Sunday School parts. I now realize that this was the beginning of the end of all my belief in God. If I had never re-read this book, I would not have realized it.

I probably would have come to the same conclusion about religion at some point, since sooner or later I would have ran into the pathetic parts of the Bible stories. But I now remember that this was the first time that I was exposed to them.

For 20 years prior to reading it I considered myself agnostic/not religious/not giving a shit, but after reading the first couple pages of "The God Delusion" I thought, "Yep, that's describing me. I guess I'm an atheist." In fact, after reading the first few pages I set the book down and never finished it, because I saw no need to.

That does make sense. I have not read that book, and had never heard of Dawkins before joining A&A. Sagan was as close as I had gotten to atheist books. I am not sure that I could have put the book down and never finished it, but I guess it depends on those first few pages. If it feels like you could have written it yourself, why bother.

I also always considered myself agnostic/not religious, but I will admit that it was just a cop out for me. I was afraid to use the "A" word.

because I said that I was not familiar with Dawkins. At least I know that I'm not alone and do not have my head buried under a rock like what was implied. It's either that or we may have been keeping each other company under said rock.

when I first showed up here with my ignorance of atheism and the major players. But I learned fast.....I did start to read more atheist books and got familiar with it. Although it is not necessary to know anything about the atheists who are at the forefront to be an atheist, it does help to know more about it. I have learned a lot here. As long as you are respectful here, and read more than post so you can learn, I think you will be ok.

There is something to be said for getting out from under that rock. But we weren't that far under the rock if we were able to think through the bullshit enough to realize that religion was just a myth....without help from Dawkins. That has to say something.

And this thread prompted me to think about it. After thinking about it for a good long while, I'm still stuck at: "Damned if I know."

I do know my (mostly) church-going parents helped, if completely inadvertently.

My father did construction work, often away from home. He was always bringing home Weird Books from the boarding houses/trailer parks where he stayed on the road.

Once he brought home "The Great Quotations" by George Seldes. That was my introduction to people like Robert Ingersoll and Denis Diderot ("Humanity will only be free when the last king is strangled with the guts of the last priest.&quot

At the time, I thought Jesus must have surely struck these people dead.

My mother helped me find out that wasn't the case. She worked at a college snack bar and often took her to work with me when I was a kid.

Which meant I could sneak into the college library. Where I was able to confirm that many Enemies of Jesus had lived long and happy lives.

The librarians were very tolerant and generally left me alone to read whatever I wanted, as long as I kept quiet. They sort of adopted me and one even taught me the Dewey Decimal System.

Jebus! When a highlight of your childhood was learning the Dewey Decimal System, you KNOW you're one of the most boring people in the universe...

I never expected to find the source of my atheism. It just happened. I just assumed it was a gradual thing, but it really did have an "ah ha" moment that I had just forgotten about.

I wouldn't be surprised that those strange tracts you read may have had something to do with it though. The people who grew up in atheist homes probably would not have thought about it as much and may have just become atheists by default. But when you were raised in a church-going home, you just assume that what you are being taught is truth until something happens to shake that belief. Something has to do it, whether it is questions that no one can answer to your satisfaction or some book that opens your eyes to the hypocrisy of the "Word of God". And each of us had our own journey.

My journey seemed to start with how horrible some of God's chosen people were. And that started with Lot.

I would expect that something would have put you over the top. I am sure that you saw a lot more than most of us do while spending three years in a seminary. I only needed to be shown a few examples of the frivolous nature of God to start questioning. And there is so much that I don't even know about...mostly because I don't care to spend any more of my time on it.

But it does seem that the more we think about it, the more we find it hard to accept. It was also progressive for me, probably because I didn't want to associate with the word atheists, and mix in a little of the hard push from religions lately. I don't remember everyone going around wearing their religion on their sleeve years ago, and now it is like a badge of honor. And that turns me off and makes me more atheist, if there is such a thing.

His "Why I Am Not A Christian" jumped off the library shelf at me because of its catchy title. At that point, being about 13, I wasn't even aware of any religions besides Christianity, so I took a chance on it and was hooked. His simple phrasing makes the book very accessible. That was the one that got me started.

Russell himself called himself a Rationalist, but he would accept Agnostic in some circles and Atheist in others.

While it may be true that no one can definitively prove that there is not a God, the weight of evidence suggests to me that there should be no laws establishing any kind of religion in government. There is not nearly enough evidence to justify that.

(but I absolutely devoured Stranger in a Strange Land)

I remember seeing the book "Misquoting Jesus" at my library and I just had to read it. Of course, I was already full-blown atheist by then, but the title was irresistible. I know what you mean about not even realizing that there were other religions. That is common in most of this country, although I think it is harder today to not know there is Islam as well. I did know about Jews though, since many of my classmates in grade school were Jewish, but that seemed close enough. Jesus was a Jew.

Between working as a bookseller, and this one CSPAN book tv episode, I've learned to never trust em.

The book TV section was about a book called something like the 7 worst books for humanity(and 5 more that didn't help) and it started with a couple like The Prince, but then got into Silvia Plath and how her writing to encourage women to think of themselves as people instead of part of the family unit was destroying the whole family structure, and I realized it was conservative horse hockey. (I did finish watching it tho, I was already invested).

I am so grateful that I picked up the book "Sick Puppy" for the title alone, and was introduced to Carl Hiaasen. When I am in need of a funny book with some redeeming qualities, I pick up one of his books. But I never would have found him if the title had not screamed at me.

I am sure I can come up with a hundred titles that were intriguing but horrible books. But I can't help myself.

I think (?) I was about 6-7. My mother and father took me to the Sydney Zoo. I remember my parents meeting some friends there and we sat down by the Great Apes cage. ..or whatever they called it.
I started watching the gorillas. Their hands, legs, heads were just like ours except slightly different. They even had lines on their hands like us. They walked a lot like us. There actions were somewhat like angry confused humans.
I remember thinking "Why don't they see this" "Why are WE so special" "Did the black person come from a black ape and we from that other ape over there. (Orange Orangutan)?

I think that little trip to the zoo caused me to question everything from that point. I loved my mother and father of course, but I believed from that point on that they (and other people) could very well be wrong in their ideas about "stuff" (in my child's mind).

I can see how that could make you question everything. I am always fascinated, to this day, with primates and their resemblance to us. I never put that into thoughts of god or no god, but I understand how it could change your thinking.