Assembly of God on my mother's side and United Pentecostal (different flavors of Pentecostal, but only the right one isn't going to hell) on my father's; Methodist on my step-father's and Roman Catholic on my step-mother's (until she eventually converted to UPC). My 2nd step-mother was also UPC, she held on over 20 years before divorcing my dad.

I really believed, it never actually had occurred to me that God might not be real, I had never met anyone who even hinted God might not be real. I thought I ought to be devoted and read the Bible. It definitely was an eye-opener.

(March 14, 2020 at 10:51 am)Dundee Wrote: Atheists may have a Protestant grandfather or a Catholic Grandmother  etc.

It may be interesting to talk about our background a bit.

Sure. Born and raised by two devout RCC parents.

Myself and siblings often ponder why it is that two such devout catholics managed to raise 4 godless heathens

(March 14, 2020 at 6:28 pm)Abaddon_ire Wrote:

(March 14, 2020 at 10:51 am)Dundee Wrote: Atheists may have a Protestant grandfather or a Catholic Grandmother  etc.

It may be interesting to talk about our background a bit.

Myself and siblings often ponder why it is that two such devout catholics managed to raise 4 godless heathens

Maybe just because they were too devout?

Was raised Catholic. At 11 years old I started rebelling. At 13 I was done with the Papists. When I was in High School my parents transitioned to Pentecostalism. I did not join them. I was a Sufi Muslim for a short time. I now am the lone Atheist is a mixed Pentecostal/ Catholic family.

These were part of my programming.

Catholic on my mother's side, predominantly Johos on my father's.

Fortunately dad and his father were smarter than that.

Both my grandparents worked in the church. Maternal grandpa was an elder in the Lutheran Church (Missourah Synod) and died before it ended up getting ludicrously corrupt. Paternal grandpa is a deacon in the Catholic Church. Since we lived in Illinois and my paternal grandparents didn't, I ended up raised in the former.

(March 15, 2020 at 6:37 pm)chimp3 Wrote: Was raised Catholic. At 11 years old I started rebelling. At 13 I was done with the Papists. When I was in High School my parents transitioned to Pentecostalism. I did not join them. I was a Sufi Muslim for a short time. I now am the lone Atheist is a mixed Pentecostal/ Catholic family.

@ Pentecostal

Were they speaking  "in tongues" then?

(March 14, 2020 at 10:51 am)Dundee Wrote: Atheists may have a Protestant grandfather or a Catholic Grandmother  etc.

It may be interesting to talk about our background a bit.

I had a completely Roman Catholic upbringing. I didn't discover until I was in my mid-20's that my dad was really a Lutheran who converted to Catholicism in order to marry my mother. Even then, his Catholic "education" amounted to nothing more than a few weeks of catechism lessons, followed by baptism. Although he attended Catholic church services thereafter, he was still every inch a Lutheran. He always came to me whenever he had questions about the Catholic faith.

Family was Catholic. We went to church for a brief time, up until my first communion, and then we simply stopped attending. Religion or reading the bible was not something in which we actively participated in the household, though there was religious paraphernalia, pictures of Jesus and crosses, on the walls. The only religious experience I remember is reciting nightly prayers until at some point I just did not anymore.

When I was a teenager, I fell into the wrong crowd and converted to Pentecostal Christianity. I understand now that I did it because I wanted to fit into some sort of group, and they were the most welcome at the time. It did not take me long to see the vileness they hid behind their religious fervor.

Through my early and mid-twenties, I got into Wicca. Solitary practitioning, which probably derived from my blossoming introverted personality. Granted, pagan and new age religions are much more inclusive than the unholy Judeo-Christian trifecta claim to be, yet something in me kept insisting that relying upon fictional religious concepts was no way to live.

Between Pentecostal Christianity and Wicca, I had done extensive reading on the Agnostic works of Robert Green Ingersoll, but at that time in my life I simply had not been ready to make that leap away from religious fantasy. I cannot pinpoint the general time that I finally shed all the religious nonsense, freeing myself to properly enjoy reality for what it is instead of what I wanted it to be, but I have enough years of being an atheist under my proverbial belt to know the only thing that will bring me back to religion is dementia in my old age. And that hardly counts, now does it not? Especially since from my perspective the mind of an elderly person with dementia is hardly much different than the delusional mind of the religious believer.