Hi :)

[Aractus]

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Hi! Im katie, an 18 year old atheist from Montana. I have been an atheist for around four years now. My story of why I became an atheist is different than the usual reasons like research, and skeptical thinking. At least as far as I know those are the usual reasons, I don't know many atheists who talk about it. I grew up christian, and it never occurred to me to question my beliefs. I had a huge fear of my older brother going to hell for his disbelief, and this made me cry myself to sleep at night. I would pray and ask god to send me to hell when i died so I could be with my brother. I very much believed. Back to why I became an atheist. I have an aunt who had 3 children. The children were all very young, 3, 5, and 6. They were an extremely religious family, these kids were very brainwashed. They were very nice people though, my aunt was one of the nicest people I've ever met. She was one of the best moms I've seen. Her kids were everything to her. One day my mom got an upsetting phone call, my aunts youngest was very sick. He was in the hospital, but there was not much they could do. The next day there was another call, he had many seizures, and passed away at age 3. I immediately broke down and cried for hours. I could not imagine how sad his parents, and siblings must have been. My family immediatley made food, and went to be with them. I decided I needed to be strong and hold myself together for the kids. When we got there my aunt was a mess, I hugged her, and went to the kids room to hug them. I went into their room, and saw something unexpected. The kids were laughing, and playing as usual, and I could barely hold myself together. As soon as they saw me the oldest says " katie did you hear? He went to heaven!" These kids had absolutley no idea what happend, then I couldn't stop the tears. They talked about it so causally, they did not feel bad about the loss of their brother. He was gone, and thats when it hit me. He was gone, i was never going to see him again, and that was that. My family went to the funeral, which was made all about god, and called a goodbye party. My religious dad even said " if you do dont question your maker about your sons death you have to be fucked up." That is why I became an atheist. I did not identify that way right away, and just recently stopped referring to myself as agnostic. I started calling myself an atheist after a lot of research on the internet. Im glad I found this forum, i would like to hear some of your stories . I apologize for the typos, and grammar errors, I am using a phone.

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Hello KP, welcome. I think it's not fair to ask a 5 and 6 year old to "understand" death in the way that we do. In fact, I'll share a story with you.

Olivia Lambert was a girl who got cancer very early in her life. Her parents spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money to take her to see specialists all around the world, and also through fund-raising many Canberrans donated to assist as well. I've never met the family, however one of our parishioners at our church was involved with the family through pretty much the whole two-year or so battle (that's not important to the story though).

What is important is that a few weeks before she died, aged 8, the mother was on the radio saying that she's so very scared of loosing her little girl - as understandable she would be - but that Olivia isn't, even though she knows she's going to die. She said she was more worried about how her parents would cope than with dying. Kids just don't have the same attitude towards death as adults do - they know it's serious, but you can't expect them to handle it in an adult way, it just isn't how it happens.

I'm sorry for your loss, thanks for sharing your story, and I hope you too find the above story is useful in some way (you can read the rest of her story here).