Well, my family is a weird split between Christian and Atheist. On my Dad’s side my Grandmother is Christian and Grandfather is Atheist. My Dad was put through Catholic private school and hated it… he’s never expressed any religious belief for as long as I’ve been alive. My mother’s side of the family are all Protestant Christian (My grandmother on Dad’s side is too she just has an extremely weird perspective on Christianity).
So, my Mother tried to raise my siblings and I as Protestant Christians. Unfortunately for her I’ve always loved learning about biology which brought me to knowing 'bout the theory of evolution… which contradicts Mom’s Creationism. At first I was just ignoring the evolution but as life went on I was presented with a mounting body of evidence of Mom being objectively wrong about various things and occasionally deliberately lying to me. This is also with the strain of Christianity Mom’s side of the family has holding that being Christian is to have a relationship with God, including that he would be responsive to prayer. I never felt it. No presence of some “higher power” or anything that I could take as being the answer to prayers to it, not even “No”, no response at all.
After enough of that I had to ask myself what I believe. Being presented with science verses dogma and being told they’re mutually exclusive (by the side of dogma) I chose science. Kept that decisions to myself for a few years out of fear of retaliation. In that time I learned about ethics, a little philosophy, a little physics… and the online Atheist community in-general. So by the time a family member asked me directly if I still believed in God I had pretty well made up my mind that #1: I don’t and #2: if I’m wrong I certainly don’t want anything to do with them. I left the second point out of my answer and told them the truth: I don’t believe in their god anymore.
It took me a month or two to stop worrying that some retaliation was coming… it never did but my relatives were curious about what I did believe since it wasn’t the same as what they did. I’ve pretty much settled on a materialist view of the Universe, I don’t believe in anything that is supernatural.
Well, my family is a weird split between Christian and Atheist. On my Dad’s side my Grandmother is Christian and Grandfather is Atheist. My Dad was put through Catholic private school and hated it… he’s never expressed any religious belief for as long as I’ve been alive. My mother’s side of the family are all Protestant Christian (My grandmother on Dad’s side is too she just has an extremely weird perspective on Christianity).
So, my Mother tried to raise my siblings and I as Protestant Christians. Unfortunately for her I’ve always loved learning about biology which brought me to knowing 'bout the theory of evolution… which contradicts Mom’s Creationism. At first I was just ignoring the evolution but as life went on I was presented with a mounting body of evidence of Mom being objectively wrong about various things and occasionally deliberately lying to me. This is also with the strain of Christianity Mom’s side of the family has holding that being Christian is to have a relationship with God, including that he would be responsive to prayer. I never felt it. No presence of some “higher power” or anything that I could take as being the answer to prayers to it, not even “No”, no response at all.
After enough of that I had to ask myself what I believe. Being presented with science verses dogma and being told they’re mutually exclusive (by the side of dogma) I chose science. Kept that decisions to myself for a few years out of fear of retaliation. In that time I learned about ethics, a little philosophy, a little physics… and the online Atheist community in-general. So by the time a family member asked me directly if I still believed in God I had pretty well made up my mind that #1: I don’t and #2: if I’m wrong I certainly don’t want anything to do with them. I left the second point out of my answer and told them the truth: I don’t believe in their god anymore.
It took me a month or two to stop worrying that some retaliation was coming… it never did but my relatives were curious about what I did believe since it wasn’t the same as what they did. I’ve pretty much settled on a materialist view of the Universe, I don’t believe in anything that is supernatural.