Many of us have proclaimed their belief system, be it Theistic, Atheistic, Evolutionist what ever, many times on these forums. But rarely have we detailed the journey we took to get there. In another thread I made the claim that I believed, for the most part, the belief system that someone followed was ‘inherited’ from the parents or guardians. That it was quite rare for people to change religions, but not so rare to turn from religion altogether.
In the light of this I would be interested in hearing the stories of the people on this forum as to how they came to be in the theological headspace they currently inhabit. In other words what are your theological histories? Please bear in mind that my idea for this thread is to share our own personal stories in regard to faith and belief and not to debate or comment on the content of those stories. That would be better left for other threads.
I hope that this will not be seen as an introduction thread as most of us know each other quite well but may not actually know each others theological history at all, and in relating that history it might help us understand where the other person is coming from a bit better.
So to kick us off here is my story. Please bear with me.
Myself (born 1970) I come from a middle class family living in Essex UK and my parents were CoE but not overtly devout. By that I mean they professed the faith and taught myself and my sister about God, Jesus, Christmas, the Bible, Santa all the usual trimmings, but were not regular church goers. Generally attending marriages deaths and Christmas mass, the usual. I was baptised when I was small but not a baby ( bout 5-6 I think) and still have my baptism new testament somewhere.
I admit I was interested and regularly took myself and my large children’s illustrated NT to Sunday school. We would sit round and read and discuss the stories in the Bible asking questions and getting answers. It was good, but over time the answers caused more and more questions, and the more questions I had the less the answers seemed to be answering.
I can’t remember when I stopped going to Sunday school, but stop I did, and for a long time religion drifted from my life. I still did Christmas, said ‘bless you’ and probably said I was a Christian but these were all things I was trained to do. Someone gives you something you are taught to say thank you and when someone sneezes you say bless you. You are frequently taught these things before learning the significance. I still say bless you occasionally but am trying to wean my self off these religious concepts.
Again there is no clear cut time I can point to where I stopped believing in god I can only guess it happened over time. I do recall claiming to be agnostic, but over time this hardened into Atheism. Learning history in which many, many atrocities have been either, motivated, perpetuated or justified in a significant way by religions had a huge part in my turning away from faith. My expanding scientific knowledge also chipped away also. The blatant ignoring or wilful misunderstanding or misrepresentation of scientific ideas to justify Theological concepts also undermined religions in my mind.
The time I truly knew I was an Atheist was (as posted elsewhere) I was in amongst a large group of Christians at a weekend seminar/concert (was there for the music) and during a preachers sermon right before the band I was there to see, he was asking those who had let Jesus into their life to stand up and shout out the good news. Before long I was at the bottom of a sea of jumping happy clappers, ecstatic with joy and faith. I wanted to get up and join in, to feel that warmth and acceptance but I knew if I did I would be betraying what I knew to be true. There was nothing in the world that could make me stand at that moment. It was then I knew, for certain that, I was not messing around and I truly believed in my Atheist views. My strength of feeling on this surprised even me.
I have come to enjoy theological debate with anyone and everyone though to be fair my combatants have mainly been of Christian views (Protestant, Catholic, JW, LDS, YECs and so on) and have yet to really dip my toes into other religions. However I recently read The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown and this has re-ignited my interest in religions and their ideas.
Though Mr Brown’s book is just a novel, a work of fiction, based on research and concepts in other books and so on, it made me realise I have very little knowledge of religions in general. I was thinking many questions. Was Dan Brown’s book totally fabricated? Was it based in anyway on fact? Did Gnosticism exist and what was it? And so on. So since then I have been buying books on many religious subjects. Gnosticism , Christianity , Islam, and all manner of religions and also buying books from both sides of the fence. After all if I only read stuff that agrees with my specific point of view what will I learn? You can often learn more from polemics from the other side
I realised I had been arguing against religion with very little ammo. I didn’t know about Constantine, nor the destruction of Judea (CE 70, same year as the Coliseum I think) I didn’t even know of the convention of BCE (Before the common era ‘aka ‘BC’ Before Christ) and CE (the Common Era aka’AD’ the year of our lord). In short I was arguing from a bigoted uninformed position that almost bordered on Dogma, and that would not do at all. So I’m learning all I can. And the thing is, all the reading I’ve done to date and all the new information I have learned has only served to enhance my Atheist views.
So that’s where I am and how I got here. Sorry for the mild vagueness in the middle. My journey to Atheism was not a sudden epiphany but a slow gradual process; the epiphany came in the realisation that I had made that journey.
Yours Stephen ‘Ohnhai’ Rushbrook
I look forward to your stories, but please remember please refrain from commenting on peoples stories in this thread as it should only be about sharing our stories with each other. Debate on any question raised are probably better raised in other threads
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