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i check the forum every day....no-one ever posts crying

My mom is a catholic and my dad is methodist, but I was raised catholic. If I was raised any other way, my mom's adoptive father would go berzerk and probably disown me. Anyhoo, ever since I was little, going to church was such a nuisance. I suppose I believed in god because I was never aware of any other point of view; I just assumed it was another fact like George Washington being the first U.S. president. About two years ago, the idea of atheism was somehow introduced to me, sometime in school probably. So I started thinking more about it and realized that religions are just different creation myths created by societies to answer that ever-present questions of "how did i get here??" and "what is my purpose??" I agree with marx's little thing "religion is the opiate of the masses" (or something like that). It's just some made-up thing so that people's minds could be at ease. It gave them something for them to look forward to and threatened eternal damnation for those who did not behave/conform. Unfortunately, i was forced to be confirmed in the catholic faith, or face the wrath of my grandpa. None of my family members know that i'm an atheist; i'm afraid of the consequences if i do. At one point before my confirmation i was complaining about it to my mom, probably about the amount of work or something. She said that I needed to get confirmed for my grandpa, and that after that she didn't care what i did. So, im thinking, great!! maybe i can finally tell her that i'm an atheist!! biggrin But no. Like 2 seconds later, she says, "as long as you have god in your life. I don't care if you become Jewish, Buddhists, Hindu, whatever, as long as you have god in your life." haha. great.

What I really hate are the christians who always try to convert you!! When you tell them you're not interested, they're always like, "I'll pray for you!!" I just want to knock them upside the head right then and there!! And they're so hypocritical!!!! Many of them seem to be fairweather believers, too. They suddenly decide to pray right before a big test, when at any other time they show no sign of any belief. I was in class right before this little quiz, and the guy sitting in front of me hadn't studied at all. We had like 10 min in class to study, but he spent it talking about how he hadn't studied and "couldn't study." Then when he got the quiz, he said, "please jesus let me do well on this quiz!! Please baby jesus!!" I was just like wtf.

Ok so I've probably gone off the prompt or whatever, because I forget what it was. ^^ O well, this works too.

me too, my gran's dad was a methodist minister and that side of the family is quite relgious

Yeah. My family isn't that religious. I rarely hear my dad say anything and it usually consist of "If god is real..." kinda thing. I know my mom belives but I never hear her talk about it.

So there isn't much influence to me.

I hated God; that felt wrong. I loved God, that felt wrong too. Then I stopped believing in that crap altogether and I felt perfectly right.

And then you get intolerant fools like my parents who are like "convert to make us happy" and you say no, "i won't hate myself to be loved by you"

I wasn't exactly religous before atheism. I celebrated christmas (ok still do) I believed in God and Heaven and Hell but I nver went to church. My parents never talked about religion. I actualy thought that protestant, catholic and christian where all seperate religions (don't laugh!!!) anywho I was pretty happy thinking I would go to heaven when I died and more so thinking my loved ones when watching over me. But I wasn't gonna keep on believing something just cause it was easyer. What converted me? well, my friend once asked me if I believed in God and why, and I told her well how else could we have come to be. But then I started to think that wasn't a real reason. And I stoped believing around the same time I stoped believing in Santa. I sorta saw Santa as a metaphore for god. He's watching you to see if your good or bad, he rewards you for being good and punishes you for being bad.And I justed started to think "God didn't create man, man created God."

my mother was very wishy-washily a christian, and my dad was insane. between the two, i never really had to deal with anything so banal as a parent's religion.