What Religion, If Any, Were You Before You Became An Atheist?

[thesummerqueen]

There are a lot of medicinal herbs in England - comfrey, just to pick one, was widely used to bind wounds. Stinging nettle was used to stimulate arthritic joints. Many culinary plants were also purported to have certain medicinal properties (think of how many people today take garlic pills for extra health benefits). There was also a whole branch of herbcraft that developed where the cure for a particular disease or wound was supposed to be found in a plant that resembled the affliction (something like homeopathy). Of a surety, literature brought in from the Crusades or trading boosted legitimate knowledge.

It's a little unfair to say these people didn't have some sort of plant knowledge - even if later it was found to be falsely based. Too many things came from plants: flax made oil and linen, blue dye came from woad, onions flavored food and meadowsweet contains the same chemical that aspirin does today. They had to force food from the earth they worked. Truthfully, these people had in some ways a far more intimate knowledge than most of us do with plants and herbs. They were in way closer contact with them.

What we don't do nowadays is say a prayer over the medicines we're given - many of which contain compounds from plants. Instead we fall for the 'magic' of advertising and pretty packaging and take the same shit in 'organic' form.

[Diamond]

Former Xian here!

I just became an atheist last year. What happened was that I got incredibly annoyed with xians and xianity and one day thought "What if there is no god? Would it matter? 'Cos everyone sure is making a BFD about it." Long story short, over the course of a few weeks, I came to my own conclusions.

[Jaysyn]

I live in the bible belt & most of my family are "weak" christians (although one cousin is a crazy-ass primitive baptist preacher with quite literally 11 children) but my parents never seemed to care too much about it, so I was never really indoctrinated past going to a christian daycare after school when I was a kid. I was never baptized or christened. I used to pray when I was young, but I eventually figured out it was pointless, shortly after I figured out Santa wasn't real. Aside from weddings & funerals I've never been to a church service. I think the idea of getting up early on a Sunday for any reason is just silly.

[DeistPaladin]

I was a Reaganian.

There was a time when I wanted to see Reagan's face carved onto Mount Rushmore. I believed in weird things like "trickle down" economics. I read sacred scripture like "Atlas Shrugged" and thought it was economics gold. I look back on the strange things I used to believe and wonder what I was thinking.

Like a lot of people who lost their faith, my transition was gradual. I went from conservative Republican to libertarian to "moderate libertarian" to what I am today.

---

Some other articles of faith I used to hold:

"You don't need to worry about how tax cuts will be paid for. The economic growth they will generate will eventually create the government revenue to compensate for the current shortfall."

"Another reason not to worry about how tax cuts will be paid for is we can simply cut spending. After all, there's hundreds of billions of dollars of waste that the federal government can simply cut out of its budget without touching what's allocated to defense."

"Poor people are just lazy. That's why they're poor."

Oddly enough, many people still believe these crazy things. You'd think after 30 years of trying a failed policy, people would realize you're not going to get a different result.

[Minimalist]

There was a time when I wanted to see Reagan's face carved onto Mount Rushmore.

Having that shithead depicted with a head of granite seems oddly appropriate, amigo.

[Nitsuj]

I was a Catholic until about 5th grade, when I dismissed religion as a bunch of shit. I was at a Catholic school until 3rd grade. Now I'm back at a Catholic school, and am so glad I'm not part of the mass stupidity that takes place every day.

[krazedkat]

Christianity at first
and then I was Jewish (following my grandmother's belief)
NOW I'm atheist .

[Justtristo]

Remembering back, when I was younger I was maybe a pantheist or deist. However I have never been religious in any sense of the term and been a skeptic since my teenage years.

[Faith No More]

I was raised Methodist but never bought into it. Even at a young age there was just something incoherent and illogical about the bible to me. By the time I was about 15 I understood that if Jesus was a real person that everybody got the whole thing entirely wrong. I won't say definitively there is no God but I have no belief in him/her and don't think a God would care whether I believe in him/her.

[Autumnlicious]

I was a former death cultist, following the will of our undead overlord.

It took three years to deconvert, with me trying to be a deist at one point, afraid to let go.

Since then, I've learned that belief is a great thing - I can believe in myself and conquer my challenges.

In a way, I graduated from simple belief to belief in oneself. I grew up.

Too many don't though.