Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
I was a deeply devoted Christian (Southern Baptist) until I was 15 or 16 and left it. I went to neo-Paganism after that for awhile before drifting away and ultimately becoming agnostic.
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What religions have you belonged to in your life?
- Thread starter Sand Dancer
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Sand Dancer
Currently catless
What made you decide on agnosticism as opposed to belief in gods?
Sand Dancer
Currently catless
What did you think of Nichiren Buddhism? I was a little turned off by the expectation of proselytizing.
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Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
It was realizing the problems and errors from the neo-Pagan books I was reading and a part of the reason I left Christianity was the lies so I didn't appreciate these errors and lack of fact checking; I realized the problems with promoted amd endorsed practices like reading Tarot cards and Astrology; I realized I believed primarily for the comfort and that's not good enough of a reason to believe in something; I realized the reality that we humans can scarcely describe reality around us correctly, we don't necessarily take in the world correctly, we don't see things as they are, we don't hear things as they are so how can we perceive or understand something like a god? I have felt things and had spiritual experiences, and while it certainly felt real I am forced to acknowledge I really don't know what was going on.
Orbit
I'm a planet
The group I was with was pretty mellow, and I was just a teenager so I think they curbed their expectations. Chanting and the whole ritual thing was enjoyable, but ultimately the premise was ridiculous.
Vinidra
Jai Mata Di!
I was born into a Southern Baptist family. I never joined the church, though, so I don't know how much of a Baptist you could really say I was, lol. Agnostic for a while, then vaguely interested in Gnosticism, then realized I'd been into Hinduism since I was child (after reading some books with Hindu protagonists), and just let what was meant to happen, happen. I am a Shakta Hindu and have been for...at least seven years now, maybe more. I don't remember exactly when I went from "interested in Hinduism" to "I'm actually a Hindu."
I did not previously cognize that about you. Quite the paradigm shift. Do you sometimes feel like you're lived 2 lifetimes in this one birth?
Raised CofE, was skeptical by about 10, and basically been an atheist from soon after.
Vinidra
Jai Mata Di!
Sometimes, yes!
It's pretty wild when you think about it. But I was drawn in by Hinduism at age 11, and I think it was always meant to be, even if it did take me quite a while of getting to the point of actually calling myself a Hindu.
Raised Church of England (Anglican), spent a few months going to a Methodist church when i went to stay with relatives at around age 11 then back to CofE. Left at age 14 and over about 2 years became more and more distant from religion and more and more atheist.
Indeed, some people have a difficult time doing that. I'm not sure why, but maybe it's because the term 'Hindu' still has some negative connotations out there. I'm currently assisting a person in his full conversion process via the namakarana samskara. He already did a legal name change. It will be interesting for me, as it's been 40 plus years since I did that. I have to 'educate' the priest here on the concept of an adult namakarana samskara. Most interesting thing I've done in awhile. But hey, it's our duty when someone, on their own volition, reaches out for some assistance.
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Sand Dancer
Currently catless
I kind of wish I was raised in it, so it wouldn't have been a fear thing and I could have drifted away gradually. I am not proud of being a fearful person and I sure wish I had done some research before I let my friends scare me with hell.
Sand Dancer
Currently catless
I wish I would have had more of that type of experience. I wasted a lot of time in a religion that was not ultimately for me.
I dunno...there is good and bad for it.
My approach to religion with my kids has been somewhat like my approach to other 'tricky' topics like sex...
If they're old enough to ask a question, it's kinda my responsibility to help them arrive at an answer.
Neither of my older two are at all religious or have belief in God. They know I'm an atheist, but have Christian relatives, and out closest friends are Christian.
One daughter is interested particularly in Norse mythology, so I've helped her with that, but she has no belief per se. She just finds the stories interesting and somewhat...hmm...not sure on the word here. They leave room for her to think through them, I guess. They're not all highly moralistic, etc. Some resonate, some she discards.
In any case, I would have preferred being able to find out more about different beliefs when young, rather than being taught the CofE version of the truth, but ultimately it wasn't problematic for me.
Not so different from my story. Apart from being a French-speaking skull, of course.
Mon français est vraiment trop nul
Viker
Your beloved eccentric Auntie Cristal
I was mostly raised Southern Baptist, independent Baptist and Evangelical. I became drawn to paganism and Satanism during adolescence. During that time I still "shopped around". These days I have my own thing going on which is influenced by my years in Satanism and the like. I don't necessarily consider myself Satanist but I am sort of related I suppose.
I assure you the last couple of years were not nice, hence the reason i left.
But taking that long just shows the hold the church has on people
Probably just as bad with a Lancashire hills accent as it is with an Australian accent.
halbhh
The wonder and awe of "all things".
If you also include periods of time of even just an hour or 2 of intense and total focus/attention/devotion.... (because sometimes we do have something transcendent and wonderful we find and explore in just an hour or 2, and those can matter to change you in a lasting way...) Though most of these below were for much longer time (most of these for years or decades of time), let me include below one thing that was only a few hours.
Wonder (at the all things) (and this one recurring throughout life) (no wonder I didn't hear my parents calling me...)
Learning from adults (perhaps peaking the most about age 2-4 especially), where I'd seek over and over to try to gain the subtleties that the adults had for my own and was utterly fascinated and devoted to paying total attention to every nuance of the adults
Nature (total fascination with leaves and sticks and birds and water, and on and on (this is somewhat like the first, but the first includes more, in that it also has all the non sensory things like states of being, feelings, imagining great distance across the Universe, melodies that come into one's head that were never heard, and on and on)
Wanting to do good (yes, that can be very much a religion, definitely, and even moreso for a 6 or 8 yr old because one believes it will change things...)
Leaving this world to be inside stories I found was fun, so I'd do that with some stories religiously, like Trumpet of the Swan, Charlottes web (E.B. White), and then later in time as an adolescents Novels and Imaginative worlds, especially from the better science fiction -- this can be like a religion: I began to collect eveyr last book of some author and read to get into an entirely different world and live in it for a time, and then could bring back things into my life.
Occasional wondering about God as from some very few sermons of one of the better preachers I heard, where God is more transcendent (in other words, a more realistic view)
Grazing into the sky and entering an altered state of mind ( I just found another name for this, and a description: The Sky Gazing Meditation by Donald Altman | Spiritual Practice | Spirituality & Practice) -- I began to do this more and more, a devotion, and would set aside time for it, even 90 minutes or 2 hours often. I'd be asked: "What were you doing?" and they didn't seem to believe my answer.
-----so far, here, I'm only up to about age 14 above ----
Ayn Rand's ideology. I bought all of her published books from New American Library and read them all, and the novels repeatedly, and became ideological of course... That's especially very much a religion (and yeah, Rand would deny that accurate description of it...(based on reading 2 biographies about her later by those that knew her very well) )
Leading to a phase of being very pure ideologically atheist, where I'd try occasionally to preach sermons about that to try to convert others, though also I didn't especially like being a preacher, but was so passionate on it, etc.
But being ideologically atheist eventually gets old (it can be very repetitive and in time like being inside of a box)
Science (was already a strong interest at age 12, from astronomy, but it just intensified and intensified)....So I began to go to libraries to be able to afford enough material to meet the demand for more (like magazines such as Scientific American, etc.), astronomy texts, etc. Example: I could not take physics in high school due to course scheduling conflicts so I got that teacher to lend me their texts they had, all 3, one at a time, read through them and then talked them into letting me be part of the scholastic team for competitions, and then won I think 1 or 2 firsts, and a second maybe once in regional meets (I also competed in math and usually won 1rst or 2nd in that also, so it's a bit hard to remember how many)
Computer programming of a smart game player for a game like monopoly (a king of basic AI way back in the 80s when this could be just something like an extensive decision tree for games or such) -- I lived and breathed that for months one summer.
Each of these things was very devotional/total/seeking/religious for me in that it became my only concern, and I'd give it 100% of available free time until it was like 1am and I could literally not keep my eyes open, etc.
After college though, that's when things really got fun....
lol
I began to seek out new things from around the world.
The list is lengthy and if I tried to give it all you'd probably think I was lying...
I'll just list only a couple of highlights then:
Many many hundreds of hours of Transcendental Meditation (the kind from
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi that at that time at least you'd have to pay to learn)
Many hundreds of hours of free dance (which community can become a religion for members, where it's all they talk and they do things like GABRIELLE ROTH'S 5RHYTHMS and try to change themselves in dance).
Native American style sweat lodges (the intense kind where the point is to change you, and the heat can get overwhelming so at times you might even have to cave in and lay down and pull up the edge of the tent to avoid passing out, etc.)
Hindu chanting (including one wonderful experience of hearing the thousand names of God)
Learning and applying the ideas of many famous thinkers like Lao Tzu and Emerson (so great) -- I'd do those religiously, trying to get fully into that way described in the text, over weeks/months of repeated efforts, often resulting in interesting changes in my attitudes/way of living/being
Various one time experiences like 'encounter evenings' (a rather challenging thing of looking into someone's eyes for 20 minutes or more, putting your hand on their chest, synchronizing breathing -- it's really quite something)
Then, at some point, wonderfully, I began to slowly try out wonderfully the ideas/teaching of Jesus even while I continued exploring many other things also.
It turns out that trying out/doing these kinds of teachings, like "Love your neighbor as yourself" is...a kind of life-altering thing, sorta like jumping off a cliff of the land you used to live on, to go to a new land.
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Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Christian, atheist, and then agnostic leaning towards pantheism.