Have you converted, or have you always held your current beliefs?

With options for our lurking theist friends.

had a "fling" with religion as a teenager, realized I was being a schmuck and haven't looked back.

It is so hard to cover all the bases in these polls.

I myself was somewhat promiscuous in my college years. I had a real deep crush on the Buddha, and that sort of opened me up to accepting various dieties--Like it matters whether one's a being or a superbeing. But there's always that nonsense factor. Sooner or later you wake up to that.

I wanted to believe. I was an obedient son and tried to believe what I was told. As soon as I was old enough to think for myself, the hypocrisy of organized religion could not stand up to reason.

Also raised Lutheran. Tried and tried very hard to "feel something" while going through church, Sunday School, and then confirmation. Never did.

of my life as well, except that they tried to brainwash me into being a good Southern Baptist daughter. Unfortunately, my madness lasted long enough to marry a Southern Baptist who really believed in the whole "Woman must obey man" thing, complete with "punishment" when I didn't do what he wanted. I never could really get it right, and never had enough faith.

I came to my senses and left him, becoming an agnostic around the same time. I'm now married to the most wonderful man, who happens to be an atheist as well, who would never think of hurting me like that. I'm more of an atheist now, though. I'm pretty sure there's no god. (I think that's called a "weak" atheist.)

where "religion" was equal to "Mormon." When I figured out that they didn't have any use for gay people I started doubting. Many years and much research later I became an Atheist. Luckily, I've never let religion run my life nor let it dictate what I do.

I remember as little kids playing in the street, we discussed the notion of what was reality, and what was fiction. It was the consensus among my friends that god was not real.

Even before that, I was always skeptical when I heard god stuff. I remember my parents' answer the first time I asked where babies come from, "When God sees that a man and woman love each other, he gives the mommy a baby." It just didn't have the ring of truth. It offended my sense of symmetry, although I didn't have terms for it then.

I guess I was a born atheist.

--IMM

I was raised nomially catholic and tried to go through the motions pretty much, and there were times in my life that I felt pretty strongly about the teaches of Jesus, as I understood them, but I think by most people's definition I've always been an atheist. Because I've never believed there was an old man sitting up in the sky that created the world through majic and knew everything.

But I supposed there were times I believed there was something that could be called God. But over the years as I tried to define this I realized what it came down to is that I realized God was an invention of man to help deal with and understand the world and that the closest I could come to using the label "god" would be to use that label for what we still can't describe, observe or prove through experimentation. But that would just be a literary tool and not fit any religion's idea of God.

I tried to believe....but it just didn't "take".

but I could never quite get hooked

and now I'm full-blown Atheist. Was Agnostic for a while...but I have finally come to peace knowing I am Atheist.

I awakened from the catholic faith at 16. Really tried to believe, then I bought a bible and read it...and that sealed it for me. I've never seen a collective of thoughts and ideas more disjointed and rediculous.

I was raised Lutheran (LCMS), and over time, I grew more liberal in my religious beliefs in direct proportion to the education I received about them. Confirmation classes in middle school showed me that I wasn't LCMS-Lutheran, because I thought women could be ministers and didn't believe the death penalty was moral. Theology classes in my Lutheran high school showed me that I wasn't any kind of Lutheran, because I didn't believe homosexuality was a sin and was beginning to have problems with the doctrine of hell. In college, I believed I was called to be a minister, so I started studying the Bible and Christian apologists' works heavily, and I ended up studying myself right out of theism altogether.

I've actually had members of my super-LCMS family tell me that "God made you an atheist because He didn't want you (a woman) to be a minister." I always ask why he's never stopped all the other female ministers out there, and why he didn't just stop me from wanting to be a minister in the first place instead of sending me to eternal torment. It shuts them up. :)

Got my first doubts when I was about 9, I think, when faced with the classic paradox about god and the heavy stone, and after some long reflection decided that god was just a grown up version of santa claus.

Many years later I joined a church, mostly to meet a pretty girl in the choir, and also to sing in the choir. I'd been in school chorus all my school years because Dad was the music teacher, and I missed it. I could enjoy the music and vaguely believed in something like The Force, but never did buy into the Jesus thing.

When my wife converted to Judaism I took classes with her and wound up converting as well, neatly getting out of the Jesus thing, and had the added bonus of now belonging to the religion of reason. Then I came to realize that it still depended on the unprovable concept of god. So I unconverted myself.

Now, when people ask, I say I'm a jewish atheist by choice. A convert to secular judaism.

It confuses them almost as much as it confuses me.

If I were fictionalizing it, I would make your wife the sister of the girl you chased in the church choir.

A convert to secular judaism. Okay.

Seriously. My father died before I was born, but mom agreed that I'd be raised Catholic. So she, being the good Quaker that she is, and knowing nothing about Catholicism, handed me off to the only recognizable (to her) bit of the Catholic Church she could when it was time for my indoctrination at about age 4... the Jesuits.

I had a Jesuit catechist and confessor from that day forward, even if she had to leave post to find me one. I also had a Jesuit tutor once I got to upper elementary school and Mom explained that I was being raised by a Quaker and a Baptist. (This, and the money from my grandparents, usually got the priests and nuns pretty fired up.)

I never went to Catholic school, however, since most of them were not real keen on the idea of me coming in during the middle of the school year, and we military brats have that problem. Plus, mom didn't want the difference between me and my sisters being make real obvious (we have different fathers, obviously) and she couldn't find the extra money to put my sisters in Catholic school, too. The grandparents were generous, but not THAT generous.

I was pretty devout, but it was the Jesuits that did me in. (Being a girl, I was pretty safe from the priests, and I actually respect a lot of celibate religious; it's a tough life they choose.) Jesuits are very strong on scholarship, and they taught me to think. A little too well. Once I started applying the critical thinking skills the priests had taught me to the religion, it was all down hill from there.

The other rupture happened during preparation for Confirmation, when I was arguing a point of theology with my catechist - something on a state of grace, I believe. He said something to the effect of 'You would be an honor to the faith and a most able Church Lawyer, and possibly even a Devil's Advocate, Miss _____, if only you were a boy.' He meant it as a compliment, I'm sure. That was the look on his face, anyway.

Nice blow to my girl's ego. I remember stacking my books very calmly and walking out the door saying that if the Church didn't have a place for me, then I didn't belong in the Church. It hurt, because of all of the jobs on earth at the time, the two that appealed most to me were a) astronaut and b) Devil's Advocate. (The DA is the person who argued against the beatification and canonization of candidates for sainthood. This is the person - always a priest - who investigates and looks for physical reasons for miracles. This position has been eliminated by the John Paul II Vatican for most sainthood issues.)

I still contemplated joining a convent, though. I didn't like most of the men I'd been exposed to - small, Mormon communities and military bases are not exactly bastions of gender equality after all - and there were a couple of very good, liberation theology communities in AZ that would have not only taken me, but helped me pay for college. Then sex happened. I say this honestly, Thank God. :)

I left Christianity by the time I was 20, hit deism by my 22nd birthday, and I've been atheist/agnostic/probabilitarian since I was 24.

I don't regret my education, however. They were excellent in getting me to use my brain.

Pcat

Very critical thinkers, very liberal. They seem to be at odds with the Vatican lately (which is always a good sign)

I wonder what their position on "creationism" and evolution is.

Now I'm curious ....I will look it up.

Evolution happened. They don't deny the science at all. What they say is that at some point, god took an interest in the primates and gave them the push that encouraged sentience. They say that Genesis is a myth.

I would not have gotten an education half as well developed if I'd been handed off to the Franciscans or the Dominicans. They trained my mind very well.

Talking to some of the priests I came into contact with years after, they admitted to me that one of the risks of teaching as well as they do is they only have a 50% indoctrination rate. Father Andrews - whom I still correspond with because I like him - often says that Jesuits turn out half of their charges as devout, reasonably liberal and positive Catholics, about a quarter end up as Charismatic Catholics (the dirty little secret of the Church, the CCs are the fundy types like Mel Gibson and are not to be given the time of day) and about a quarter end up agnostic/atheist or other non-believers.

If they'd just pick up on the fact that they're ignoring half of the potential brains available by ignoring women, and recognize that God's stopped providing so we've got to stop multiplying, I'd still consider myself a cultural Catholic. But I disagree with too much of that sort of thing.

Pcat

My friend convinced me to go to a Baptist church with her when I was a child, and it stuck for a long while. When I stopped going to church as an act of "rebellion," they came after me!

Then I drifted off - was just "Christian" through high school.

Then I got into the "New Age" stuff.

Then I decided it was all silly, and that I had no true answers. Now I'm just agnostic - always looking for answers.

i grew up in a hellhole of abuse and turmoil, and attended catholic school until about the 8th grade. i can't honestly say i ever felt like i believed, it was just going through the motions mostly. I know since i was old enough to actually think on my own i gave up any thought of a benevolent higher power in any way shape or form.