Thread: When did you lose/gain/convert your religion

1)2) Christian- baptist (southern)
age: born into it
reason: family indoctrinated me
influence: family, friends, preacher, youth minister,

2)Atheist
age: 15
reason: became skeptical after reading the bible front to back, then a met a kid (now best friends) that was atheist and he basically converted me through conversations.

3)Zen Buddhism
age:18
reason:spent two years homeless and did A LOT of soul searching and serious meditation, eventually came to a new type of mindset and a new way of thinking and living in general.
Influences: Homelessness, Life, struggle, meditation, love, my mind

spent two years homeless

Wow! I don't know what to say! I'm glad you're not homeless anymore. I wonder how many other people on this forum were homeless for a while. There really is such a stigma about what homeless people are like. The stigma would make them too dumb or lazy to even know how to turn on a computer

What is the real face of homelessness?

Originally Posted by juroara

What is the real face of homelessness?

The feeling in your stomach that constantly aches, but you can't tell if it's the hunger of not eating for days, or the "dread" that you don't know where you'll be laying your head each night, or if it's food poisoning from eating some bad food.

It's a mind altering experience, and doesn't always turn out how mine did. But i wouldn't trade those two years for anything. Though i'd toss my self an extra loaf of bread lol

1)Catholic
age: since born
reason: I've been always been that way
influences: family, of course

I don't really go to church anymore. My parents have been busy with their job and what not and haven't had time to take us to church. I go with my friend and her family...when I can.

Originally Posted by MementoMori

reason:spent two years homeless

It makes me mad knowing that so many people have or still are out their living on the streets and we can't help them. I mean we can but we can't get to all of them. I'm glad you're safe now.

Edit: I sound rude... in a way. I don't know exactly how to put it.

i didn't take it rudely, thank you both

I'm still gaining my religion. One step at a time.

wow... I could post for hours on this one topic

1) Brought up agnostic

2) At about the age of 4 I prayed with my Methodist Grandmother for God to make Satan nicer. She giggled and said I couldn't ask for that. I asked her why and she couldn't answer. And so began my religious questing.

3) Nondenominational
Ages 7-10
Lived in Puerto Rico, got involved in some Bible studies which lead to a church off the navy base. Was baptized the same day as my [step] father.
I read the Bible by myself and began finding "contradictions". I knew God had a name etc.

4) Agnostic (for lack of a better word)
Ages... ??? 11-13
I studied with:
Baptists, Southern Baptists, 7th Day Adventists, Lutherans
I hated being told I had to have blind faith. I couldn't figure out contradictions between what the Bible and various churches taught.

5) Wiccan, Spiritist, Celtic etc Dabbler of various alternative religions
Ages 13-18
I gave up on Christianity for awhile.

6) Agnostic Quester again
Ages 18-24 though I bounced back into Spiritism for a time toward the end.
Studied with the Pentecostals and Mormons and then with Jehovah's Witnesses.

7) Jehovah's Witness (Christian)
Ages 24-present
I'm currently disfellowshipped but working on being reinstated
There are no more contradictions and the Bible finally harmonizes with what is being taught AND practiced at the Kingdom Hall ("Church").

Agnostic (0 to 9) My mother is atheist and my father was Christian, so I was sort of in the middle. I remember wondering if God was real, but I was never truly an atheist.

Eckist (10 on) My Dad became an Eckist, which made me interested enough to learn more, and I liked what I learned, so I became an Eckist and have been one since.

Originally Posted by MementoMori

spent two years homeless

That is something to be respected. Not many people can say that they have been there. I don't think I could do that, myself. How do you feel about conservatives saying that poor people deserve to be poor because they don't work?

well, it's funny that they should say that because in my case it was from 1) the types of jobs available where i live and 2) the availability of jobs in general. I worked a job while in high school, from 9-11 grade, and was in line for a promotion to assistant manager. Then the head manager had to move, and a new guy came in and hired a new fellow and gave the position to him (buddy+buddy thing) so i moved to another job. This started my circulation through temp agencies, and the ones where i live are the type that hire for 3 months then let you go and rotate new employees in so the company they work for never has to hire you and give you the full pay. Well, i used up all the temp agencies within a 75 mile radius of where i live. Then the job market here began to fall through.

Every employer only wanted highly experienced, trained individuals, so i was out of luck for a job, i have no problem working. This then led to me (at 18 in the 12th grade i was moved out and living with a friend) losing all facets of acquiring rent and i applied for government aid but here they require you to work and make at least some money, so therein lied my problem. There were no jobs i was qualified for, no jobs available to me, and i didn't have the means to move elsewhere in search of more work. So i ended up being evicted, lost everything except my car (was the only thing i owned) so i would spend the next two years casually walking parking lots looking for loose change for food and for small amounts of gas to rotate the places i would park my car at night... You could say i cleaned up a lot of parking lots of spare change.

So for conservatives that believe that the poor deserve poverty because they don't work, is like saying people in 9/11 deserved what they got because they went to work that day... doesn't make sense, and is ridiculous.

1) 0 to about 7. Agnostic / Should have been Christian. It's all pretty vague; I can't actually remember what I believed, but in my home I was brought up agnostic. My school was Church of England, and we had prayers and hymns regularly, but I don't think I ever took any of it seriously. I saw most of it as a bunch of amusing stories, I think.

2) 7 onwards. Atheist. The age is fairly arbitrary, but pretty young I realised that there is no evidence for God, and no logical argument for God. People are motivated to believe in God through fear of death or inability to cope in a world without a 'higher calling' or meaning. The simple observation that there were many many contradictory religions, none of which had any more evidence than another, along with the fact that religions are geographically distributed and passed down from parents to children, made it pretty obvious that God is not an objective truth.

I do have a few beliefs though. I believe that consciousness is a mystery and the only thing worth ascribing any kind of sacred value to. I also believe that you make your own purpose in life, and that the only virtue to be had is in experience of the world. I think Buddhism has some good ideas, but I kind of deduced them separately, not because Buddhism says so.

I don't ever remember being Christian, like my parents expected me to be. Maybe when I was little and I didn't know anything at all I believed in it like I believed in Santa Claus. It evaporated over time.

1) Christian - Catholic
up to 11 yo
Both my parents are catholic and I studied in a catholic school. I remember having several sceptical questions to ask in religious education class, but I just didn't have the guts to ask them -- and when I did, my teachers ridiculed me.

2) Atheist/Irreligious
from 11 yo onwards
I realized the idea of "God" is stupid and became atheist. At first I was still kind of afraid of going to hell (blame it on the brainwashing they put on me), but then I realized "hell" is ridiculous too and was not afraid of voicing my opinions anymore.
Nowadays I have some interest in atheist religions (ie Buddhism), but not enough to bother about them.

---

Originally Posted by MementoMori

So for conservatives that believe that the poor deserve poverty because they don't work, is like saying people in 9/11 deserved what they got because they went to work that day... doesn't make sense, and is ridiculous.

Here between us, conservatives don't actually believe that. That's why it's called an ideology and not an opinion. It's what makes them sleep well at night. A mere rationalization. They know that if they go too deep, they'll find truths that will hurt them.

You know, there is this thing called human emotion, and it really fucks up critical thinking.

0-3 nothing
3-6 still nothing but raised agnostic
6-10 agnostic
10-15 began staying awake at night asking myself questions and looking for answers within myself
15-the present. Had some kind of awakening where I realized that we are all one consciousness. I realized that we could experience this firsthand by transcending the ego. But I didn't have those words. For me when I was ten my metaphor was that we are all water balloons in an ocean and all we need to do is pop the balloon that makes us feel separate and the water within us is the same as the water without us and in all other balloons. It wasn't until I researched Hinduism and Buddhism that I learned that others also knew this. But I found Hinduism too superstitious and so now I pretty much agree with Buddhism, but Buddhism belongs to me, I don't belong to Buddhism. I also see the truth in all religions and the superstition and dogma in all religions.

Originally Posted by Xei

I think Buddhism has some good ideas, but I kind of deduced them separately, not because Buddhism says so.

That's what we all say.

What do you mean?

The things I agree with are things like 'don't harm other creatures'.

But then there are other things like 'the virtue in removing yourself from experience in the universe' which I don't agree with and I think the opposite are true.

1) Christian - Protestant (I think that's the proper term in en)
age: birth
reason: It was always just a label, germany is a 'christian country'.
Influences: non, other than born into. my family never was religious, really
just a label.The good night prayer was as much of a ritual as the good night
kiss. We went to church once a year at christmas, again, more of a tradition.

2) Atheist
age: teen-years
reason: there were obvious flaws in christianity. I started refusing to
go to church on christmas (only one that stayed home), which was the only
thing that actively changed, but then again, very few people around me
believed in a god and it was never an issue.
influence: again, non really, maybe a general scientific understanding..?
The first time that I was really confronted with peers that actually believed
this stuff was when I came to the US for a year - and I quickly learned that
it is best not to argue with irrational people. (srsly, didn't work, I was the
only one and the only thing that came out of me explaining my opinion was
people being offended)

3) unlabeld, maybe agnostic with buddhist and universalist traits
age: 20s
reason: I started reading a lot, about many things and came to the
conclusion that the general atheist arguments are not my own and I
could no longer identify with any of that. From then on I have been
keeping an open mind and tried to form my own, deeper thoughts.
-Realized that the concept of atheism can by no means be argued
from a christian basis, which many do and which is as redicolous as
christianity, imo.
-I developed a sincere interest in our nature and the nature of reality,
before this point I just didn't really give a shit.
Influences: Many people (Hesse and Sartre come to mind, but also
people I met), travel, science, philosphy, indian culture, psychedelics,
experience, an understanding what spirituality means (basically different
language)

Cool thread, I love reading other people's experiences in things like this.

1) Christian - Catholic
I was raised in a very devoted family (church every weekend, Sunday school, the real deal). Believed wholeheartedly for a long time. I was sent to a catholic high school where early on we studied the Bible. I wasn't one to question my beliefs, but I always had a logical mind. The blatant contradictions jumped right out at me, and I started question my beliefs until one day they just weren't there anymore.

Influences: Everything my impressionable young mind was exposed to back then.

2) Atheist
Throughout the rest of high school I felt betrayed by Catholicism for lying to me for so long. I blamed religion in general for most of the problems and suppression of progress in the world. Started getting into trouble for bringing these beliefs into a catholic school and arguing with people who believed in such things. Brought a lot of grief to my parents by taking it out on them. Probably encompasses the worst times of my life, to be honest.

Influences: The internet, bible class (actually reading and analyzing what it was I supposedly believed in).

3) Non-Dualist
Probably the best way to describe it. I got very interested in psychology and philosophy of mind in college, which eventually led me to religions and philosophies of the East (Buddhism, Taoism, Upanishadic Hinduism). Slowly began to realize that by subscribing dogmatically to a set of beliefs, be they religious or not, I was just creating countless divisions and unnecessary boundaries between myself and the world. The problems of the world seemed more and more like a projection of our sick self-involved minds than a byproduct of religion. Like Dannon said earlier, I saw the truth in all religions as well as the dogmatic close-mindedness. I became obsessed for a while with overcoming the ego and desire.

I started to realize the subjectivity of truth and the idea that all that matters is life itself, not the endless amount of description we tend to ascribe to it. The only things I really did believe in was the relativity of truth (everybody's just as right as I am in the mind), and a causal deterministic universe (free will is illusory). Everything else I left blank, believing that we can't ever really 'know' anything for certain.

Influences: Neuroscience, Vajrayana Buddhism (Dzogchen), Einstein, Advaita Vedenta.

4)
Recently I stopped looking for a set of beliefs or ideals to identify with. I realized the paradoxical nature of my mind: that any act of trying to overcome the ego is still an act of the ego, any desire to get rid of desire is still desire, and belief in having no beliefs is still belief. Now I'm just concerned with living, slowly leaving the linguistic describing and analyzing behind.

Influences: J Krishnamurti, Zen, Taoism, Discordianism.

Heh, I've done more adding-on and refining than converting, but I'll give it a try.

1) Transpersonalism / Reincarnation
Age 4 to present
Reason/Influences: I had access to more experience and information than I'd had time to accumulate, and I knew that I hadn't always been part of this family, but also had perspectives from other situations. I didn't even know about birth and death, so I wasn't thinking in terms of serial lifetimes, but more seeing that I existed in a larger frame of reference than my present situation, and also that adults were hiding their full nature from each other and themselves.

2) Polytheism / Limited Universalism
Age 5 or 6 to present
Reason: I came to experience that larger frame of reference more or less as a personal deity, which I sometimes associated with what people called "God," but never took for lord, master and creator of the universe. I more or less abandoned that interaction around age 19-20 after a vision/communion including a series of unpleasant events culminating in my death (sometime in the next 1-5 years, as a matter of fact ). Later on, age 22 or 23, I made peace w/ Big Me via guru yoga.
Influences: on-and-off church attendance with my neighbor-lady / future grandma? Maybe. Outright monotheism struck me as ridiculous from my earliest exposure to it, but it still seemed to me that it mattered more how someone believed than what they believed, so I suppose I was already a bit of a Universalist.

3) Unity of all things / Illusory nature of material separation
Age 14 to present
Reason/Influence: I experienced awareness without ego very directly, by accident, as described in this old post:

Spoiler for spoiler:

One of the most influential and spontaneous, which I never do justice in describing, came when I was fourteen. It was summer, and my stepbrother and I had camped out in sleeping bags on the lawn, out in the woods (two of our neighbors were hunting cabins). In one corner of the big lawn was a pine tree about 5 stories high, where flocks of starlings would gather numbering into the thousands, so the sky would go black if they took off.

That morning, probably around ten based on the sun, I woke up but didn't wake up. Awareness dawned in me without any thoughts or volition, without me present. My eyes remained closed, but the sensory information permeated my awareness: the cacophony of the starlings, the warmth and light of the sun, the smell of the grass and the pressure of the earth. Except it wasn't broken up into different inputs: just one awareness, without subject or object, and no boundaries.

No telling how long it lasted, but my stepbrother, who had been up a while, came over and lightly slapped both my cheeks, really waking me up. "Hey, you'll get sunburnt," he said, and I just sat propped up on my elbows, staring at him, putting the experience together and realizing how far it was from anything he could understand. It had been so direct. I, my sense of myself, was an illusion. Separateness, the very idea of things, was an illusion.

4) Buddhism
On and off since age 22ish
Reason: There came a point where the simplest way to sum up my outlook was "I'm Buddhist," because my experience affirmed the truth of the teachings and I was making use of the practices, but at the same time I've never taken refuge and can't say I practice the five precepts (#3 and #5 tend to trip me up, mainly). So, you can size me up based on Buddhism, but please don't judge Buddhism based on me
Influences: Sogyal Rinpoche's A Tibetan Book of Living and Dying was the straw that broke the camel's back, but my earliest meditation training was a philosophy prof from a Cambodian Theravada lineage.

5) Universalism
While I've been a sort of reluctant Universalist my whole life, it's only in the last 2-3 years I've set aside most of my disdain and animosity toward monotheism, though it still flares up on occasion.
Reason: No matter what the label or foundation of your worldview, we are all confused, blinded by prejudice and trauma, and our vision is incomplete. While we all like to think we have it figured out and have found the best (even THE RIGHT) way, when it comes down to it we are all--atheist and Baptist, Buddhist and agnostic--in very much the same position, and on average each have about as much "figured out" as the others: very little.
Influences: The Dalai Lama, Unitarian Universalist clergy and parishioners.

Originally Posted by Xei

What do you mean?

The things I agree with are things like 'don't harm other creatures'.

But then there are other things like 'the virtue in removing yourself from experience in the universe' which I don't agree with and I think the opposite are true.

I just mean Buddhism is very contemplative by nature. Most of the people I know that are influenced by Buddhism say that they came upon the ideas themselves but that Buddhism helped them articulate those ideas. It was sort of a joke, but in reality that is the only real way to come at Buddhist teachings because you have to understand them for yourself.

1) nontheist
Age: Raised
Reason: While growing up religion was a non-issue. My parents never discussed it with me at all, and no-one else did either.
Influences: None

2) Agnostic/Christian
Age: 7 or 8 or 9 or something
Reason: In school we learned about Christianity and went to church and stuff, I didn't really know what I believed in and didn't much care.
Influences: School

3) Atheist
Age: 14 - present
Reason: Around this time I started really thinking about what things meant and had religious discussions with a friend. I also felt like school was trying to convert me to a Christian, which I didn't much like. After a time I came to the conclusion that religion was hocus.
Influences: Friend, logic, school

1) Raised irreligious
Age: Birth - 9
Influences: My grandmother wanted me raised Catholic. My Catholic father told her if she wanted that, she could pay for the private schools, the rituals and all. Needless to say, I'm not Catholic haha. Thanks Dad. Too bad the parents felt the need to circumsize me due to tradition. It still angers me but whats done is done, they weren't to know.

2) Agnostic towards Christianity/Curious about mythology and the paranormal
Age: 9 - 13
Reason: I had a schizophrenic uncle who was/is into auras, chakras, New Age bullshit and psychic powers. He filled my head with junk about Atlantis etc until I started doing some reading of my own and figured out it was all completely unfounded and hokum.
Influences: The Internet. And I remember asking my mother once "Mum, do we (as a family) believe in God?". The phrasing of the question belies my misunderstanding of the concept of personal belief, as I saw it as a communal idea. She answered "That's a personal question that you have to search for on your own, and not listen to other people who claim to know the truth". That's all she ever said on the subject and it was enough to satisfy me at the time.

3) Trialled Christianity
Age: 14 (for 2 months)
Reason: A girl. I'll be honest, she was hot, but there was only room for one man in her life and its hard to compete with the supposed creator of, well, Creation. For a few months I went into it with an open mind, and for a while I was acting a lot nicer, swore less, and being a 'model Christian'. Then shortly after finding the girl wasn't interested I realised the only reason I was 'behaving' was because of a hope for posthumous reward. There and then I decided that was a bullshit reason to be nice to people, one should be nice because its the right thing to do.
Influences: A local Pentacostal church which has since become an Assembly of God. This was my first real exposure to hardcore Christian belief (and Creationism).

4) Agnostic
Age: 14-20
Reason: I was researching all the major religions and theologies, as well as developing my critical thinking skills. I wasn't quite ready yet to let go of the idea that this was all there was to life. I had not encountered much biology or cosmology until around age 18 so did not have alternate explanations for why the world was the way it was (and could therefore not appreciate how beautiful it actually is).

5) Atheist/Anti-theist
Age: 20-present (25)
Reason: My ability to think critically about claims and to always demand independent verification of them meant that no esoteric ideas could take hold in me for longer than idle curiosity would allow.
Influences: I was introduced to Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. My life would never be the same again. 'The God Delusion', 'God is Not Great', 'Letter to a Christian Nation', 'Pale Blue Dot' and 'Cosmos' will forever be among my most treasured possessions as they helped me realise my ultimate purpose in this life is to stamp out ignorance whereever I find it, to encourage education and to promote the grand, beautiful view of life that a secularist can hold to anyone that will listen honestly and without duress.


Bottom line: My exposure to all the worlds religions, rather than the few that exist with the loudest voices in my community, along with training in how to think critically about claims, and access to a naturalistic explanation of why the Universe is the way that it is brought be out of ignorance and into enlightenment. Lucid dreaming was just the cream in the coffee.

1.) Christian--Methodist
Age: 0-14
Reason: raised this way

2.) Christian--Unitarian
Age: 15-17
Reason: Parents took me to a nearby Unity church, and while they didn't like it very much I found that their views made more sense to me.

3.) Pagan/Pantheist--Nondenominational
Age: 18-21
Reason: Had a traumatic experience and happened to fall prey to a bunch of lunatics who took advantage of it. I had already become somewhat distant from Christianity because I felt that my prayers were not being listened to.

4.) Christian--Unitarian
Age: 21-22
Reason: Got tired of being lied to by said previous group and de-brainwashed myself from their bullshit. When I brought up the lies, I received death threats. Retaliated by plastering evidence of their lies everywhere possible before leaving. Bounced back into Christianity hard, looking for answers there.

5.) Deist/Agnostic/Other
Age: 22-present
Reason: During another traumatic experience, I realized that I didn't pray for God the entire time. It was that moment that I realized I didn't really believe God would help me because he doesn't exist or doesn't exist on a personal level. Not sure if I ever had true faith in God since this revelation. Was unable to make myself believe again. In the meantime, I have never been able to reconcile the Bible and other Christian beliefs with my own logic and reason.

I have other beliefs and habits cobbled together from other religions and personal experience, but they mainly exist to help me cope with and explain the unknown for myself, so they change constantly. Right now you could say that I am Deist or a philosophical Taoist, with a belief (or knowledge) of other spirits and beings--none of which are gods in the sense of Omniscience and omnipotence. I have a tentative belief in reincarnation, in that something is recycled, but essentially everything that makes you you will die. But I don't believe that reincarnation is the only possibility after death--just the most common end.

Great thread!

What I find interesting is that a lot of the time those people who are seriously devoted or genuinely interested in the truth of God and the universe were once atheists/agnostics. I guess those titles can be seen as a transition stage that can symbolize that one takes the process critically and seriously. It's also interesting how many of us change so often from one view to another.

As for myself I can really only think of three main stages:

1) Raised as Christian/Catholic
Age: 0 - 16/17ish

I believed in the Christian God, while I intuitively didn't really agree with some of the negative views of Him. In retrospect however, it all seemed like blind faith and I didn't really question the depth of the real meaning of Christianity with great significance. I was very spiritually naive, and being so I didn't realize it at the time.

2) Atheist then Agnostic/Non-religious
Age: 16/17 - 18ish

My memory is a little cloudy but I think there was finally a period of doubt and serious questioning at this stage. I believe I was first an atheist because of a progressive realization of how inconsistent the Bible was, including the depictions of many miracles that I found ridiculous (including stories from the Old Testament). My narrow views on other potential religions didn't help. I don't remember being too fond of the anthropomorphic depictions of God, great beings and such. What also influenced this doubt was that I became a more of a spiritual person, inclining toward Lucid dreaming and the importance of perception, and the typical Law of Attraction/New-Age phase a lot of people go through. I was still rather naive though, and I was exploring many philosophies of life with uncertainty about (the Christian) God.

3) Advaita/Non-duality
Age: 18ish +

When I least expected it, I had arrived at a profound understanding that contextualized all religion and spirituality altogether. Reading "Power vs. Force", a book by Dr. David Hawkins, I saw how he, as a Mystic (also psychiatrist/clinician/author), had affirmed the essential spiritual meaning of the great religions as the Divine Reality and teaches the essential pathway of "Advaita", which is timeless. I was stunned that I didn't see it before, and without a doubt my life was totally transformed, with a new purpose. I realized what my mind criticized was only the mere external appearance of ideologies and philosophies, and not what they actually were. It was a recognition of the differing paradigms; that one can understand the Reality of God while living a rational and fulfilling life. It was a rock-like comprehension of the wisdom, which I began to finally see in everything; the truth and integrity of it all stood on its own. There were countless reference points for support.

Influences and research have together been the most dense in this phase, including: Advaita, Christianity, Hinduism, The Bhagavad Gita, Zen & Buddhism, Mysticism, Taoism, saints/masters, famous spiritual teachers... Overall this reflects an intense devotion, whereby I discovered a real source of happiness, compassion and peace within myself. I am currently a natural stoner and have had beatific non-verbal experiences that are becoming more prevailing. Importantly though, it is all done for its own sake. Taosaur I know that experience you had, I've had it in similar circumstances upon waking in bed, but by no means the only experience. ;D