Hi! Name's Ryan. I'm just about 30 and from Virginia.
I was raised in a quasi-Christian household, shuffled around to different churches every year or so (mostly because Sunday School is free daycare once a week, is my theory) and while I never really absorbed the religion/s I was exposed to, I was on board with God, Jesus and the lot. I had a brief flirtation with atheism as a teenager but it scared me and I turned back, stronger than ever in my faith for awhile. But, those doubts I had never went away and my faith eroded a second time. Since 05 or so I've slid down the slope from dedicated believer to conditional believer to agnostic. In the last two months or so I've finally arrived at the bottom and admitted to myself that I really don't believe in God any more than I've ever believed in ghosts or anything else supernatural.
I'm over the giddy high of the freshly unconverted but it's lonely having to lie about my beliefs by omission (my family is not evangelical, thankfully, but they do treat religion like a sports fan treats his team, and I'm not on that team anymore). I have friends who are supportive, at least. It's a lot to get used to.
I was raised in a quasi-Christian household, shuffled around to different churches every year or so (mostly because Sunday School is free daycare once a week, is my theory) and while I never really absorbed the religion/s I was exposed to, I was on board with God, Jesus and the lot. I had a brief flirtation with atheism as a teenager but it scared me and I turned back, stronger than ever in my faith for awhile. But, those doubts I had never went away and my faith eroded a second time. Since 05 or so I've slid down the slope from dedicated believer to conditional believer to agnostic. In the last two months or so I've finally arrived at the bottom and admitted to myself that I really don't believe in God any more than I've ever believed in ghosts or anything else supernatural.
I'm over the giddy high of the freshly unconverted but it's lonely having to lie about my beliefs by omission (my family is not evangelical, thankfully, but they do treat religion like a sports fan treats his team, and I'm not on that team anymore). I have friends who are supportive, at least. It's a lot to get used to.
