What's your background?

[DeistPaladin]

Poll for the non-believers here:

What's your background? Were you a Christian, Muslim, member of another religion once?

[Paul the Human]

I was Catholic until I was around 12 or so, but we quit going to mass a couple years before that. At 12, I started to read things... and you know how that works.

[DeistPaladin]

I was Catholic until I was around 12 or so, but we quit going to mass a couple years before that. At 12, I started to read things... and you know how that works.

Thanks Paul. I've posted a poll to keep track. I've found the results are typically 80/20, with the majority being escapees from religion.

[Tiberius]

I was a Christian until around 9, 10. Then I just found the whole idea ridiculous.

[Eilonnwy]

Catholic until confirmation age, which is about 13-14. When I found out confirmation was not just a tradition but about thinking for yourself, I did just that and refused to get confirmed. Couple years later I came to realize I'm an atheist.

[leo-rcc]

I went through the motions as a good boy should in a RC school but I really never believed in any of the stuff they pastor and religious teachers taught. I even went into the church choir, until I was 13 or so, then I just stopped going to choir and church. A few months before that during a party, I don't remember what it was for, an uncle of mine got into an argument with an aunt about belief and religion and that was the first time I realized that I'm not the only one that doesn't buy that nonsense.

[Rev. Rye]

I was raised Lutheran, but I slowly stopped believing by the age of 14 or so. I still occasionally get dragged to Christmas or Easter services when my parents feel up to it.

[Entropist]

This is the short version:

Raised nominally Catholic, but fairly open-minded parents. Didn't go to mass often at all and by my teens we stopped going altogether (I don't want to go into details). In my teens I was basically an agnostic with deistic leanings.

Again, without getting into too many long-winded details, by my early 20s I was dealing with a lot of personal emotional insecurity and low self-esteem issues. I ended up in the Church of Christ. After a couple years, was kicked out of the Church of Christ, along with some other friends and we had a house church (we thought the Church of Christ was too liberal!). This lasted a couple years.

More complications in real life, and the house church folded and I was basically a sort of agnostic, but soon became attracted to mysticism (Pseudo-Dionysius, Eckhart, as well as moderns like Buber, Tillich, Merton, etc. and some eastern philosophy). During this time I went to a few churches: Greek Orthodox, Episcopal, Universal Unitarian and Quakers. Again, without going into details, I had various problems with all of them-- and with Christianity in general.

By 2000 (at the age of 30), my dissatisfaction and my doubts started to come to a head. By 2001, I had let it all go and I was surprised by how liberating it was for me-- something I had not expected.

So it ends up something like this:

Nominal Catholic >>> Agnostic/Deist >>> Church of Christ >>> house church uber-fundie >>> Agnostic >>> Greek Orthodoxy >>> Episcopalianism >>> UU >>> Quakers >>> Atheism

I get exhausted just thinking about it... This was not a casual affair for me-- I read volumes of theology and wrote hundreds of pages of personal notes trying to suss all this out for myself. It was a real headache of my own doing.

[HeyItsZeus]

I was once a brainwashed catholic, but then I started to learn new things, real things.

[Rhage]

I was a Baptist Christian until I started high school. That's when I left the church school I was going to and learned a whole lot of things about the real world and life. I've never looked back and never will.