sent in by Janet I don't know where to begin. I could really go on forever about this. I was born to a Catholic mother and had no choice whatsoever. I was forced to attend mass and religious classes and even went to a Catholic kindergarten run by nuns. The nuns scared the crap out of me and at 5 years old I was already confused. Shouldn't I feel safe with the nuns? Aren't they supposed to be "good"? I never understood the many contradictions of religion and the readings from mass, and whenever I asked about them, I got the same lame answer. "It's a mystery." Well, my mind doesn't wrap around "mysteries", and my mother would get very angry when I questioned her religion. In my eyes, religion has caused more problems that it has ever helped. I don't even have to go into the wars fought and lives lost and torture and rape and pillaging done in the name of religion. (There's not a doubt in my mind that if there were no re...

sent in by Janet I don't know where to begin. I could really go on forever about this. I was born to a Catholic mother and had no choice whatsoever. I was forced to attend mass and religious classes and even went to a Catholic kindergarten run by nuns. The nuns scared the crap out of me and at 5 years old I was already confused. Shouldn't I feel safe with the nuns? Aren't they supposed to be "good"? I never understood the many contradictions of religion and the readings from mass, and whenever I asked about them, I got the same lame answer. "It's a mystery." Well, my mind doesn't wrap around "mysteries", and my mother would get very angry when I questioned her religion. In my eyes, religion has caused more problems that it has ever helped. I don't even have to go into the wars fought and lives lost and torture and rape and pillaging done in the name of religion. (There's not a doubt in my mind that if there were no re...

sent in by Cecilia I stopped practicing Catholicism in my teens because a lot of the teachings just didn't make sense, especially the whole thing of Jesus having to die for our sins. If God is all powerful couldn't he just forgive us without demanding a blood sacrifice. I always planned however to raise my children in the church because I thought it would be good for them to have a belief system. Then five months ago my daughter was born. I immediately decided that there was no way I was going to raise this precious girl with the kind of guilt and fear I was raised with. Even when I was only seven or eight years old I lived in constant fear of burning in Hell. Everytime I said a bad word or disobeyed my parents I imagined my soul getting blacker and worried if I died before I got to monthly confession I was doomed. When my beloved grandfather died I feared he may not have been good enough to make it to Heaven. I have concluded that raising children with religion just isn...

sent in by Cecilia I stopped practicing Catholicism in my teens because a lot of the teachings just didn't make sense, especially the whole thing of Jesus having to die for our sins. If God is all powerful couldn't he just forgive us without demanding a blood sacrifice. I always planned however to raise my children in the church because I thought it would be good for them to have a belief system. Then five months ago my daughter was born. I immediately decided that there was no way I was going to raise this precious girl with the kind of guilt and fear I was raised with. Even when I was only seven or eight years old I lived in constant fear of burning in Hell. Everytime I said a bad word or disobeyed my parents I imagined my soul getting blacker and worried if I died before I got to monthly confession I was doomed. When my beloved grandfather died I feared he may not have been good enough to make it to Heaven. I have concluded that raising children with religion just isn...

sent in by William As a child, and young teen I followed my parent s instruction and went to church on a regular basis. I studied the bible, King James version and memorized hundreds of passages in my years. In my youthful ignorance, like a sheep I followed my adult leaders and gave my life to God. My first church was a very conservative Baptist church called, The First Baptist Church of X. It was very, very conservative. Women to this day do not wear anything that comes above the knee. They strongly believed that the King James Bible was the most correct version and still teach all to memorize passages in the old English tongue. I went to church two to four or more times a week. There was Sunday school, (Sunday morning, kids were downstairs in classrooms and learned a different bible story every Sunday, which was an hour long,) after that there was the Sunday service, (which was almost 2 hours long,) Sunday afternoon on occasion we went to one of the local retirement homes/cent...

sent in by William As a child, and young teen I followed my parent s instruction and went to church on a regular basis. I studied the bible, King James version and memorized hundreds of passages in my years. In my youthful ignorance, like a sheep I followed my adult leaders and gave my life to God. My first church was a very conservative Baptist church called, The First Baptist Church of X. It was very, very conservative. Women to this day do not wear anything that comes above the knee. They strongly believed that the King James Bible was the most correct version and still teach all to memorize passages in the old English tongue. I went to church two to four or more times a week. There was Sunday school, (Sunday morning, kids were downstairs in classrooms and learned a different bible story every Sunday, which was an hour long,) after that there was the Sunday service, (which was almost 2 hours long,) Sunday afternoon on occasion we went to one of the local retirement homes/cent...

sent in by Michael I was raised in a family that could best be characterized as "unthinkingly Protestant." My parents (to their credit) hadn't really studied their religion seriously, but just got it from their parents. We were sent to Sunday school, because that's what nice people do. When I was a teenager, I started to take a serious interest in philosophy. I read Aristotle, Plato, Nietzsche, Sartre, and others. However, I don't recall that I ever seriously encountered or thought about the question of whether God really existed. It just wasn't something that people around me discussed. One day, I was talking about philosophy with a friend, whose father happened to be an anthropologist. The friend asked me, "Do you believe in God?" I answered, "Of course." He replied with the question, "Which one?" and went on to explain how he'd learned from his father than people around the world believe in all kinds of different,...

sent in by Michael I was raised in a family that could best be characterized as "unthinkingly Protestant." My parents (to their credit) hadn't really studied their religion seriously, but just got it from their parents. We were sent to Sunday school, because that's what nice people do. When I was a teenager, I started to take a serious interest in philosophy. I read Aristotle, Plato, Nietzsche, Sartre, and others. However, I don't recall that I ever seriously encountered or thought about the question of whether God really existed. It just wasn't something that people around me discussed. One day, I was talking about philosophy with a friend, whose father happened to be an anthropologist. The friend asked me, "Do you believe in God?" I answered, "Of course." He replied with the question, "Which one?" and went on to explain how he'd learned from his father than people around the world believe in all kinds of different,...

sent in by M The grass was green and the sky was blue. The confidence of life I felt early in my life was intense. I adored life and clouds and rain and fireflies and people. That was my earliest recollection of living and loving life. I noticed as I got older that the name of the game was to conform to family, events, country, people who talked of god, corporations, etc. An interesting thing happened when I was 8 years old. My mother got lung cancer and was given 5 years to live. Now, I was the fifth of six kids, there was a nine year gap between the first three and the second. So, my parnets where relatively old to have the next group. My mother was a Catholic and Father said he was Lutheren, but didn't really practice anything. Anyway, after my mother got sick, thing's got worse. There was alot of tension in the house and uncertainty. She had a "mother be worshipped" things going on in her mind. We had moved from Illionois to Colorado when I was six. The first t...

sent in by M The grass was green and the sky was blue. The confidence of life I felt early in my life was intense. I adored life and clouds and rain and fireflies and people. That was my earliest recollection of living and loving life. I noticed as I got older that the name of the game was to conform to family, events, country, people who talked of god, corporations, etc. An interesting thing happened when I was 8 years old. My mother got lung cancer and was given 5 years to live. Now, I was the fifth of six kids, there was a nine year gap between the first three and the second. So, my parnets where relatively old to have the next group. My mother was a Catholic and Father said he was Lutheren, but didn't really practice anything. Anyway, after my mother got sick, thing's got worse. There was alot of tension in the house and uncertainty. She had a "mother be worshipped" things going on in her mind. We had moved from Illionois to Colorado when I was six. The first t...

sent in by Jay I was born into Christianity, and just like everything else your parents tell you, it has to be true. Well, as a child my ability to reason did not go far beyond "stove hot", so naturally I fully believed what my parents told me. It is reasonable to assume that they taught me about their god and did so as a verifiable fact. So I didn't doubt it, I didn't know any better and if I went to church I didn't get in trouble. To be honest, I never really believed in Jesus Christ as he is presented in the bible, I believed in Jesus Christ as the church presented him (if he did in fact exist at all). I never read the bible or prayed, and I certainly didn't tithe. It took me until I was fifteen years old to read the bible, and at that point something very curious occurred. I realized that many parts of the bible, and I'm sure that those reading this need not be refreshed, flat out contradicted each other. Even the sections that made sense w...