Hello world! Another question for everyone here: How did you end up into espousing a nonreligious outlook? Did you grow up nonreligious, or were your nonreligious views a part that came later in your life?
And a side-question related to the above: Did you ever face difficulties growing up because of your nonreligious position? If yes, what kind of difficulties did you have to face?
Nobody in my close family circle neither believes in God, nor goes to church, but they do believe in religious superstitions, for example, cover mirrors in the house where someone died, don’t do house chores on Friday before Easter, etc.
There was a brief moment I was going to church to discover my own culture, as a result my family was very concerned! Luckily, I got over it.
And in the part of the world I am from, not the whole country, being non-religious is probably easier than being overly religious (going to church every Sunday would feel weird to many people).
I think my dad might believe in a god, but my mom is definitely an atheist.
Culturally, we’re christian, but that just means we celebrate Christmas and Easter, get confirmed at 13, and get baptised, married and buried in church. It’s not a matter of faith, just tradition.
As far as I can remember, I never believed, but I didn’t actually have a position on the question until I read the Bible and other religious texts when I was six or seven. Once I realised there was a term for non-believers, I started identifying as atheist.
My parents were both atheist. God and religion did not come up as topics for discussion. Not they were forbidden, they were just absent from my upbringing.
I went to a state school in the UK, which had a morning assembly and prayers. There were a few annual religious festivals, such as Harvest Festival that the school participated in.
I remember that I had some confused ideas around religion. At age eight, in class we were asked to think of the names of a male and female creatures. For instance, Rooster and hen for chickens. I said God and Jesus, which upset the teacher but seemed logical to me.
So, growing up, I just accepted that God and the Bible were myths.
I remember that as a kid I used to love greek mythology and spent hours reading about it. I once read the story about Deucalion and the Flood. At the same time, at primary school we were taught of Noah’s Ark story and I remember being really confused, because I couldn’t figure out which of one the two floods happened first. I used to think of them as actual history. So, at some point, I decided that if Deucalion was just fiction, so was Noah. I suppose that it was one of the first times I defied religion.
Later on, as a rebel teenager, I completely rejected religion, although I was much drawn by the occult. My parents are a chistian orthodox and a protestant, both religious until today. We had some occasional disputes about it, but that’s all the difficulty I ever faced, I think.
Despite growing up in a small, rather religious town, my parents have always encouraged my curiosity and constant questioning of the world around me. I remember that from a very young age they would get me illustrated books that touched on various scientific subjects, such as the human body, astronomy, physics, human rights, politics, history, feminist etc. Not that they were huge with science/humanities, but rather that they preferred that I get answers to my questions based on facts.
At a later age, discussions on religion came up. My parents were relatively religious. However, I can still recall a discussion with my dad on God and whether such an entity can exist. I remember I first heard the dilemma of if nothing can exist from nothing, who created the creator from him, and his feelings of being a heretic despite feeling that christianity was his identity and that he indeed believed in a higher power. To me, eventually it felt like something did not add up. I was 12 when I eventually came out as a non- believer/ non-religious at school and to my family.
As soon as I openly admitted my lack of faith, I was faced with quite a bit of bullying at school. Classmates would call me satanist, I lost friends and those who stuck around would knock on my door on Sunday morning to take me to church so that I am “saved”. Family members from our extended family would drive me to monasteries and have me pray and kneel in front of the priests, “just like it fits at a proper girl”. I ended up very confused, feeling that my lack of faith was something really bad and so I ended up trying to fit in and make sense of a religion that to me made no sense at all.
I decided to be a “good christian” and so the following easter I participated in lent in order to have the holy communion. I got my period the previous day and upon telling my aunt – who’d drag me to church in every occasion – I got attached verbally because “how could I even dare participate in the holy communion being dirty”. That conversation signified to me the end of any belief to the orthodox religion – followed by gradual detachment from all religion or faiths. Having grown up with facts rather than faith, it felt completely absurd to me being dirty for a natural function of my body. No God/creator would have classified a natural bodily function as dirty.
Eventually, once I went to University, and via a language exchange platform, I met a person with which I discussed religion and eventually lack thereof. It was the first time I heard the word atheism and it perfectly resonated with my outlook on the world. She introduced me to the works of Hitchens and Dawkins and was then that I realised that apparently there were other people in the world that not only identified as atheists, but they could provide in-depth accounts and arguments supporting their lack of faith.
To me that was the turning point in realising that my upbringing and focus in facts and my overall education was conflicting to any sense of religion/faith/unjustified belief.
Όχι, η οικογένειά μου δεν ήταν ιδιαίτερα θρησκευόμενη, πέρα από την τήρηση κάποιων εθίμων. Στο σχολείο δεν αντιπαρατέθηκα άμεσα στον καθηγητή των θρησκευτικών, απλά του εξέφραζα “αθώες” απορίες , αυτός έπαιρνε φόρα κι άρχιζε το κήρυγμα κι έτσι συνήθως γλιτώναμε το μάθημα.
Living in Greece I didn’t have a choice but to start my life as a christian. I went to church as a child but not often, some times I even held some ritualistic items as the priest chanted. Traditionally kids do that and there were not many kids in the small place I live.
Later, as a teenager in school, they taught us math, science, and all that stuff. I hated school but I learned how to think rationaly , I also met other teenagers thinking the same things I was thinking. Are they truth or not? I guess my own personality was curious and combined with rational thinking I learned to accept only what could be proved or make sense as a theory. Of course in school we were taught about christianity and the orthodox dogma and only in the final year of the school we were taught about other religions. But all that seemed like a story to me not an actual lesson for our lives.
So that was pretty much how I developed my way of thinking an I ended up that what doesn’t make sense can’t be true, except it proves true for some reason and god hasn’t been proved yet.
I can’t say I had any difficulties due to my non religious views, not many people know about them anyways (except friends and familly).
Οι γονείς μου δεν ήταν ιδιαίτερα θρησκευώμενοι και πρώιμοι πασοκσίδες, οπότε ήταν ενάντια στην ιεραρχία. Ο παπούς μου ήταν επίτροπος στην εκκλησία, σε μικρό χωρίο της Κρήτης, αλλά ήταν περισσότερο για κοινωνικούς λόγους (ως ορφανό ψυχοπαίδι απο δίπλα χωρίο ήθελε να ξεπληρώσει το χρέος). Γιαγια και σόι με αλική θρησκευτικότητα.
Απο μικρός λοιπόν ήμουν ιδιαίτερα μαχητικός και άθεος στο μάθημα των θρησκευτικών και γνωστές οι απόψεις μου. Και ουδέποτε αντιμετώπισα κάποιο πρόβλημα.
Το οτι επι χούντας τρίτη δημοτικού κάναμε θρησκευτικά και “ιστορία” (δηλαδή μυθολογία) σαν διαβαστερό παιδί με έκανε άθεο. Γιατι τους ελληνικούς μύθους τους λάτρεψα (και τους λατρεύω ακόμα) και μπορούσα να καταλάβω τα κίνητρα τους.
Αλλά οι εβραικοί μύθοι με τρόμαζαν: οι επτα πληγές του Φαράω, η θυσία του Αβραάμ, η σφαγή των νηπίων, το πιάτο με την φακή, η ιστορία του Ιώβ. Εφιάλτες μου έφερναν. Έιχαν μέσα μόνο σφαγές και αίμα, και μετά μου μίλαγαν για αγάπη. Δεν μπορούσα να τα συνδιάσω.
Ευτυχώς με έσωσε λοιπόν η χούντα 😛