Do you retain the beliefs/religion you were born into?

My father comes from a Lutheran background and my mother from a Catholic one. I was never forced to be of either faith, but I moved toward Lutheranism both spiritually and culturally, though I was certainly rather weak in spirituality.

Even having officially dropped ties to a church and confirming my atheism, I still feel highly connected culturally to Lutheranism and to Protestantism as a whole. I still attend church on special occasions, especially when in Finland, but I'm certainly not a deist in any sense of the word.

It's very difficult to fully sever ties with religion when it plays a strong role in one's familial and national histories and traditions.

 

I was born into no religion, so yeah!

 

Do I retain the beliefs I was born into? I hope not. One should, ideally, grow as one lives. If someone's beliefs are 100% the same after 20, 30, 40 years...well, it suggests to me that that person either is extraordinarily lucky to have "gotten it right" so early, or else--more likely--that person has not grown.

As far as specific church, there wasn't anything that I recall from when I was very young. My parents came out of mainstream Protestant churches, although my mother's family had ties to a church that was quite conservative by all accounts. (That specific church, that is, not the denomination.) My mother's attendance when I was really young was non-existent. My father attended what later became an ELCA (Lutheran) church. (ELCA didn't exist back then--this church was one of the denominations that merged to form the ECLA.) I have no idea why he attended--conviction? Force of tradition? I think church was one thing he gave up when he left my mother--and certainly later his choices were entirely based on what the current woman in his life did. So he's been both mainstream and fundamentalist at different points in the last 25 years.

As for me, I now will say I consider myself more "spiritual" than "religious." In a way, that's probably been long the case. Although when I was younger, I probably had a stronger tie to Christianity. Not a pure Christianity, though. Now I'm more open minded and interested in other religions. At the same time, however, I'm more likely to set foot in a mainstream Christian church than was once the case, although I need an environment that is fairly liberal. And I'm sure lots of specific beliefs would be different vs. when I was young.

 

Yeah. Atheism.

Although, my parents never enforced it or anything. They couldn't care less whether we went to church with my grandparents or not. We don't talk about religion much in my family; it's just not important.

 

Atheism, yes, and no. Yes because I don't believe in anything, and no because I don't passionately disbelieve in anything at the same time. I believe in human ability and potential; I believe in myself... in The World over Heaven.

 

Well, I'd have to say no on this one. My parent's are atheists, but the primary school I went to was a Christian church one where we had to go to church pretty much every week, and interestingly enough that church was the same church I was christened in. It's weird thinking how religious I was back then, vs now. Our school was... old fashioned to say the least, we would weave bracelets in the church and would have to pray every lunch time and nearly every (if not all) assemblies. We had "bible races" where we would race to see who could get the right section/verse of The bible first. Hell, they even had a "bible club" which no one ever joined.

It's weird even talking about it for me, it's almost like I'm recalling some one else's life instead of my own. I always felt a little conflicted as to what to believe, my parents taught me about atheism whilst my school taught me about Christianity at the same time.

So why did they send you to a religious school and christen you? You might be asking. Well, the whole Christening thing is because A) They're worried that if we have anything but "Christian" down on our papers then people might see us as "difficult" "argumentative" "un-agreeable" and/or "undesirable" that people may not want to hire us. I don't know how much truth there is to this, but when I put "atheist" down under my beliefs on Facebook, my sister said I shouldn't have done that because it'll make it harder to find work.

Well screw that, if someone doesn't want to hire me because I'm an atheist, then I don't want to work for them anyway. and B) It was seen as a good school, but it went really downhill with new management when I got accepted into it. But I hear it has gotten better over the years since I left, I hope most of the teachers there got fired after the racism allegations. It wasn't exactly new news that the school had it's biases, and it was curious that everyone there was pretty much the same, no diversity. Sure, you had people from different backgrounds come and go but they never stayed very long. I hate the fact that I was so naive at the time that I had no idea what was going on. :dry:

You see, to enter the school you had to have certain requirements. Since I'm white, I had no problems entering the school since all I had to do was be dragged to church when I was a baby/toddler for a minimum of two weeks by my parents (who sat through a bunch of church services and a christening just to get me a place into this school, which warms my heart by how much they were willing to do for me to try and do what's best for me ).

But for POC it was a different story, for their child to enter they had to show a ton of papers and documents since they didn't believe that anyone who wasn't white could be a Christian. :eusa_doh: The ones who were eventually accepted were often indirectly encouraged to leave, which is just plain horrible. Now I understand why there were people we sore eyes hanging around the bathroom, now I understand why they never stayed for very long. And I feel terrible for having anything to do with that school, HOW DARE THEY teach about acceptance whilst they bully students who are different and don't fit in to their mould they have set up in their minds, HOW DARE THEY treat people like that.

Someone finally spoke up in the end, and they were fined £50 when it was taken to the police and possibly the courts. I heard about it in the news after I'd left that school but honestly, I think they deserve more. I saw how miserable students were, what about the families that didn't speak up? What about them?

But anyway, I'm getting off the topic here.

I don't think being LGBT has had any affect on what I believe in. Sure it made me miserable for a while when I was going through denial due to religious reasons, but I didn't become an atheist because of that.

When I reached Year 9 in high school, we did about scientific theories and belief systems. High school was very different from primary, it was a lot more diverse and open. It didn't treat atheism as some kind of disease like primary school did, and I felt for the first time more open about asking questions and finding out about the world. Evolution wasn't described as "an evil man who made up a ton of "conspiracy theories", who hated God and was "great mates" with the Devil" like they would tell us in primary but instead they went into detail explaining to us what Evolution is. I remember when I was younger and my dad would try and explain such concepts to me and I would just stick my fingers in my ears and say "la la la la la" immaturely because I couldn't take feeling so confused as to what to believe I would just try and shut the other side of the argument out since it was easier that way.

But this time I decided to listen, as I wanted to once and for all form my own opinion and I knew I was in a surrounding where I was safe to do so. So I listened for once and those few sessions were incredibly informative about scientific theories and different religions. So I decided to do some research, look into different arguments and perspectives, and think about all the questions I had about religion mulling around my head and analysed possible outcomes for different situations and looked for any flaws and/or contradictions I could find in arguments for and against different religions and possible deities. I found darkmatter2525's videos on YouTube very useful when looking into this.

So after extensive research, (which was a lot of effort to go to considering I was twelve around this point) I came to the conclusion that personally I don't find the idea of a god/gods a very believable or realistic one, however I am fine with what ever you believe and it's ok if you think otherwise. As long as you're not homophobic or a general asshole, chances are we can get along fine.

After I became an atheist I was more willing to let myself question my sexuality, as before I had felt crushes on girls but I always denied and tried to ignore them but when I became an atheist I decided to acknowledge these feelings I was having and it became apparent after the self harm that even if I ignored these feelings I would still feel attraction and I would only be lying to myself if I said I didn't and even if I tried to change I was forever stuck being me. And boy did I try, I went to some rather concerning lengths to try and change my sexuality, but all it ever did was cause me pain. So I chose to accept myself in the end, because hey, I'm gay either way. I felt the need to self harm less as an atheist, and it was a lot more freeing too. Now I'm not saying you can't be religious and pro LGBT rights or accepting that you're gay, but what I am saying is that, that's just how it was for me.

I even went through a phase where I would commit a ton of small sins just because I could and I didn't give a damn anymore, like by being vain by styling my hair and wearing ribbon and gold and silver and dying my nails and not feeling guilty for wearing mixed fibre clothing (which I did before anyway, but oh well). A month later I was sat in design technology class and I was thinking about certain feelings I had been having for certain girls and celebrities recently at the time and I remembered about my first crush in year 7 on this girl in my English class and that time I was caught looking in the girl's changing room when we were getting changed for PE, and when I was obsessed with Brittany Spears but I wasn't sure why at the time and it suddenly dawned on me. Oh sh:***:t, I might be gay! I'd wondered if I was gay before (hence the self harming, and trying to date random guys to try and avoid the truth) but I'd always pushed it to the back of my mind before, and to remember all of it was like opening a flood gate full of emotions holding in my subconscious. Naturally I felt overwhelmed and confided in my best friend, who was luckily for me accepting of the fact that I was questioning my sexuality and tried her best to help me through it.

Flash forward a couple of years, and here I am now!

So no, I don't think being a part of the LGBT community has affected my beliefs, since I became an atheist before I started questioning things, and for unrelated reasons that have nothing to do with my sexuality.

Sorry for the long post! Gosh, I never shut up sometimes when I get going. :lol:

 

I was born into a relatively pious family. However, I never really believed/followed any of the things that were taught during Sunday School. Despite attending church for the greater part of my life, I find the church atmosphere to be stifling, and I've been to many churches(Mormon, Catholic, Non-affiliated.) I think the cause is just the arrogance and blind ignorance that I've witnessed over the years. You know, people speaking in tongues/rolling around and that whole general "I'm holier than thou" attitude(Not to say all people are like this, I've met some very intelligent Christians) , so when I became older, despite never "really" believing, I became an atheist. To answer the question of how church affected my views on lgbt people; I was, sadly, a bit of a homophobic child. It was just how the people talked, but since my revelations I've changed so much that nobody would know that I used to be a semi-hardcore church goer.

 

Somewhat, but not much time for changing yet.

I am vegatarian (no eggs and not much dairy), pacifist, and anti weapon (some larger knives should require licences, and all guns that can cause harm).

Parents are meat eaters (but acknowledge animals being capable of pain, emotion, and thought), just defending oneself if extreme, and pro weapons (guns protect us and should not be very strict, police do not care).

Focusing on similarities is better than dividing and seperating people, creating enemies.

 

Hello,

I was born athiest but became quasi-christian [using scientific data to back up religious history, I believe in Jesus but not God].

I think that you need to focus on difference, and focus on the postive difference. If you focus on the similarities, then you're suggesting that the only way that someone is to be accepted is if they're the same. Because some people can be completely different from you - other than the fact you're both human - but both be positive people.

 

Well, I was born into no religion and no religious beliefs, and I've maintained that very well, despite each school I've attended attempting to force religion on me.
I'm an atheist, and have been all my life
I always gave my kids the option at school of whether they wanted to do RE, most did for a while then stopped. I have one kid (adult) who attends church and I'm fine with that. Each to their own.

 

I was born into an atheist family, but grew up in a strongly christian environment. I guess you can say I took the atheist/agnostic path for many years, and I'm still not sure what to believe in, but I did take the Buddhist path for a while.
I still identify the most with buddhism.

I don't think being LGBT has affected my beliefs much, exept for distancing me further from christianity in my younger days, as I felt like the christian belief didn't have room for people like me. After all, I though, how could I believe in a God who wouldn't let me into heaven for being who I was?
I've learned now that there are plenty of christians who are lgbt positive, but I still don't think I believe in God.

 

My family raised us to be pretty neutral to all religions, my mom was raised Catholic but always told us she was open to us following any religion. She is agnostic now and was very against parents promoting any sort of religion for their children, she was basically brainwashed into Catholicism and didn't want the same "forced religion" for us. I'm an atheist who happens to be very interested in the customs of other religions.

 

I am born in a family of strong Catholics. They would do Catholic stuffs, you know with church and going to mass at Sunday and praying/giving importance to Saints. I did what they do. But I got a bit confuse because they enrolled me in a Christian School, all of the teachers there are Born Again Christians. They would do and say stuffs that contradicts the Catholic practices. So I did a little "religion searching" after I graduate in that school. I would ask religious people of different religion around and ask them if I can go with them in their churches.

I havent still found the perfect religion for me, but I am good with not having one at all. I still follow (Christian) God and his Words, but the difference is that there is no religion that's binding me.

 

Same thing for me!

 

I was taught about God since as long as I can remember, but I wasn't "officially" a Christian until my Godmother started taking me to church- An Eastern Orthodox Christian church, when I was five. Now, I strongly believed in the religion at first, simply because I didn't know any better. I suppose I started doubting around age ten-eleven, but it was only this year that I officially had the courage to call myself what I am- an Atheist. I don't have a religion, not because I absolutely hate my church or anything personal like that- It's because I have seen no evidence for the existence of a God, and thus it seems naïve to assume there is one. People often tell me that if I just look around at the world and see it's beauty, I'll believe again. This is a lie, however. If the world is so beautiful, why are there cancers and why is the human body so imperfect? Also, what beautiful thing in this world can't be explained by Science, at least to some degree? Do I wish there was an afterlife? Of course! After all, who doesn't want to live forever? Do I believe in one? No, because it seems dishonest to let myself trust in anything when there is no evidence... Religion is a tough subject for many people, but I figured maybe this post would help people at least understand the position of many Atheists, or at least me and the people I've met.

 

Yes and no.

I was born into a Methodist church, and whilst I'm still fully Christian, I am CofE now. We left the Methodist church because our minister was horrible (she used to preach a very homophobic lesson, which wasn't great for anyone) and went to a more modern church.

I definitely believe in Jesus and (try to) serve him to the best of my abilities. I am aware that, being only 15, my beliefs may yet change, but right now I enjoy being a Christian.

 

My family isn't and never has been religious.

My mum is unfortunately racist, with constant stereotyping of 'all Muslims being terrorists', and the immigrants who've come into the country over the years, stuff like that. She's gradually realising (with help from me & my sister) that a lot of them are coming because it's unsafe for them to live in their countries and the bordering countries etc. She's realising that ISIS, ISIL & Al Qaeda aren't Muslims, too. That's progress.

I don't believe she is homophobic, but I'd say she's always been a bit dismissive of gay people. That's improving too.

I've never retained the beliefs I've been born into, no.

 

I was born into a roman catholic church. But my parents weren't really strict and we hardly went to church. But I was baptised, received my first communion and conformation. My grandpa, aunt and uncle were/are pretty involved in the church. But I guess because I have a very scientific way of thinking I never really got into it and am without confession now. My decision to resign from the catholic church was also influenced by the image of women and LGBT people, the prohibition to use condoms etc. There were just too many topics I couldn't agree with anymore. I don't think you have to "belong" to a religion to believe in whatever you want to...

 

I still sort of believe in God, so yes.