As for me, I thought God was aces when I was in early elementary school. My family took me to a Methodist church before I started school but stopped for reasons I never knew before I started school. My father was in the navy and was gone more than half the time. He was the more religious of the two so maybe that's why we stopped going.
Because of the early age at which the indoctrination was stopped, I was pretty much on my own to make sense of God and Jesus and angels and heaven and hell on my own. I like what I came up with better than what most Christians are having. Regardless, by the time I was ten, it no longer seemed very likely that this wonderful interpretation I'd come up with -or any other- was at all plausible. So, reluctantly, I let it go. My whole family and everyone I knew were true believing Christians so my impression was that I was a pretty odd bird. Mostly though, I just didn't think about it a lot and I never challenged anyone's beliefs. I didn't talk to anyone about it and didn't read about atheism.
If it was up to me, the story I'd woven together to make sense of God would be true. But of course, it isn't. I wasn't happy to let it go. So I was never eager to talk anyone out of what I wished I could have for myself. Eventually, once I got away from my family, I became as satisfied with the world without God as I had been with the one I'd created. I'm still ambivalent about talking people out of their beliefs .. except when they try to inflict them on the rest of us politically. Can't say I have any regrets about having grown up believing what I did. Nor do I have any regrets that I no longer harbor any of those beliefs. It has made for an interesting life in that regard.
Because of the early age at which the indoctrination was stopped, I was pretty much on my own to make sense of God and Jesus and angels and heaven and hell on my own. I like what I came up with better than what most Christians are having. Regardless, by the time I was ten, it no longer seemed very likely that this wonderful interpretation I'd come up with -or any other- was at all plausible. So, reluctantly, I let it go. My whole family and everyone I knew were true believing Christians so my impression was that I was a pretty odd bird. Mostly though, I just didn't think about it a lot and I never challenged anyone's beliefs. I didn't talk to anyone about it and didn't read about atheism.
If it was up to me, the story I'd woven together to make sense of God would be true. But of course, it isn't. I wasn't happy to let it go. So I was never eager to talk anyone out of what I wished I could have for myself. Eventually, once I got away from my family, I became as satisfied with the world without God as I had been with the one I'd created. I'm still ambivalent about talking people out of their beliefs .. except when they try to inflict them on the rest of us politically. Can't say I have any regrets about having grown up believing what I did. Nor do I have any regrets that I no longer harbor any of those beliefs. It has made for an interesting life in that regard.
