Have you got some kind of Christian backgound?

[Abaddon_ire]

Myself and siblings often ponder why it is that two such devout catholics managed to raise 4 godless heathens

Maybe just because they were too devout?

Well, since they are both long dead I can say what I will about them.

Dad was a strict catholic, but a very quiet and private individual. Thus he held his own beliefs very close. The interesting thing (to me anyway) was that while he slaved away all day as a public servant, by night he was a stage magician. It was not uncommon to have some catholic loon. post performance accost him as a servant of dark powers. This always confused him. It wasn't like he was pretending that this was "real" magic. I operated as "prop-boy" often and saw this. I was just as puzzled. I suppose that I knew the mundane reality behind the illusions as performed. I think it gave him an appreciation of what it really is to have a religious nut rant at you. 

Then at one time he attempted to institute a nightly rosary recitation. Somehow, all of us kids had other engagements at just the wrong time. Colour me unsurprised. Then we discovered that it was possible to trap one or more other siblings into being there at the appropriate time. Let the games commence. That was savage. But hilarious both at the time and in hindsight.

He gave up after a few weeks due to lack of attendance. There were no repercussions because that was his way. He knew he could not force anyone to believe as he believed. And he was not the sort to force the issue. 

As for Mom, she was a devout believer, headscarf in church, the whole nine yards. But she was always accepting of every colour or flavour of other beliefs. All of them. Even though none of them (bar one) was her own. Her default was to deal with the person as a person, not some bucket of arbitrary faith claims.

And that is it. I had the unhappy task of identifying my mothers corpse in the presence of the cops. I had the unhappy task of finding my father on the deck in his kitchen.

They are gone.

But I love and respect them because they allowed space for us kids to develop and learn and reach our own conclusions despite their own deeply held beliefs.

[chimp3]

Was raised Catholic. At 11 years old I started rebelling. At 13 I was done with the Papists. When I was in High School my parents transitioned to Pentecostalism. I did not join them. I was a Sufi Muslim for a short time. I now am the lone Atheist is a mixed Pentecostal/ Catholic family.

@ Pentecostal

Were they speaking  "in tongues" then?

Yes, tongues. No snake handlers though.

[Fake Messiah]

Yes, I have a proud Christian past. I was one of the few survivors in Johnestown and that's why I'm now out of religion--because they all died and the place is gone. And let me just say that Peoples Temple was a great religion. Jim Jones picked up many troubled people from the urban area which society abandoned but who now enjoyed living in nature, working together, singing, and learning about animals.

But it's because of those idiots Dawkins and Hitchens that you only see the bad stuff about Johnestown. Like all of you neoatheists only concentrate on the massacre of 900 people, and yet that was only like one day, and those deprivation tanks was something that I wasn't even aware of when I was in Johnestown; also I still don't believe that Jones was doing speedballs--I mean how could a man who so profoundly talked about the Sermon on the Mount be coked up? You're all bigots.

[Belacqua]

Atheists may have a Protestant grandfather or a Catholic Grandmother  etc.

It may be interesting to talk about our background a bit.

I was raised completely without religion. 

We were in a small town that had a church on every corner, but this was before the Moral Majority, and before the Repubs rallied Christians against abortion as a way to trick poor people into voting for them -- in my time it was still considered impolite to talk about other people's religion. (See Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter With Kansas for the story of how this change occurred.)

As soon I was out of high school I fled, and went to places where I could study art and art history. (Chicago, NYC, London, etc.) In those circles no one admitted to devotion beyond a sort of mild family tradition, and atheism was typical. 

Eventually, though, if you want to understand art, you have to study the theology behind it. So I was lucky enough to begin learning about religion from its best advocates in history, not the people in the corner church or televangelists. 

Because of this, I think I have a different view of religion from most people here.

[Dundee]

Televangelists really are a plague!

[arewethereyet]

It's interesting how may Catholics have come over to the dark side...at least according to this poll.