I am not a religious person, nor have I ever been.
My parents and their families went to Churches, Protestant or Baptist or Methodist or something. For both of them, it had been so many years and so meaningless to them that neither remembers any passages or even specifics of their denomination, and never bring up religious matters or language in conversations. The same essentially applies to the rest of my family; most the ones ever went to religious service at all have long since stopped.
Thanks to my great-grandparents, I've been to exactly two sermons in my life, and don't remember anything about either of them except being extremely bored. For a year or so when I was a kid, I went to an evening Church school-thing with some friends. I don't remember anything from that either except for one of the last times. I asked the teacher (if that's the right word) when we were going to move on from the Bible and start learning stuff like math. Not making a scene or anything, just as an aside. She calmly told me that's what normal school is for. And so, at the age of 8, I decided I'd heard all that religion had to tell me.
I've since found religious theory and history a fascinating subject, and combined with mathematical concepts like the meaning of infinity, have formed my own theories about what the concept of a God is supposed to represent. I have no faith in anything that could be called God, be it a bearded man in the clouds who casts hugs or lightning bolts, or an all-encompassing sentience outside the grasp of human vision. Not that I'm above taking His name in vain or shouting at Him when I'm stuck in traffic, but that's just habit.
I've at times flirted with Gnosticism or Pantheism, thinking I might as well recognize the limitations of human reason and accept that there could be an unseen Higher Power, or even that faith can empower people to greater faith than without. I reject such ideas now, if for no other reason than that removing God from the equation of the universe requires finding demonstrable answers to replace Him. I used to let myself be offended by other people's faith, but I'm more than willing to let it be a complete non-issue now.
The funny thing is, the further I've moved away from faith in any God, the more I've come to realize what an awful person I am. Sometimes I wonder if this doesn't prove religious people right, or if I'd be even worse with self-righteousness on my side. If nothing else, Atheism has taught me the value of religion; the world is a confusing place when you have to acknowledge that your decisions are born from your own judgment.
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Topic: Religious people, make yourselves known! (Read 64911 times)