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How did you arrive at your religion/non-religion?

Discussion in 'Religion and Spirituality' started by Fin D, Nov 18, 2014.

  1. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    I'll post mine later, just thought it would be an interesting read for some of us.

    Let's not insult anyone's religion or non religion please. If you left one faith to be something else, just be respectful of others in here.

    For people of religions that have various sects, please tell us if you switched form to another and why.
     
  2. unluckyluciano

    unluckyluciano For My Hero JetsSuck

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    I was catholic. Now I'm more christian/un catholocised? . I stay away from most sects though as I think most practices make people miss the point.
     
    Fin D likes this.
  3. McLovin

    McLovin Resident Pats fan.

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    I was raised catholic which led me to the path of atheism.

    I think the true value of religion is lost in the financial gain that can be made of it.

    I also believe it to be fiction.
     
    Fin D likes this.
  4. Ohiophinphan

    Ohiophinphan Chaplain Staff Member Luxury Box

    I was born into a Lutheran family and was raised within a solid congregational system. During my 20's I looked at a number of religious and non religious systems. I returned to my Lutheran roots and surrendered to what I understood was a call from God on my life. For the past 30 plus years I have served as a parish pastor in a variety of settings.
     
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  5. Sethdaddy8

    Sethdaddy8 Well-Known Member

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    My wife and I are Catholic. Our heritage is Catholic, dating back unknown generations well before our ancestors came to America around the turn of the 20th century. While we are not extremely involved/devout, we carry on the traditions and rituals. It has little to do with our core beliefs and everything to do with family and tradition, which is a nice thing, and an important thing.

    She has an uncle who we asked to do a reading at our wedding a million years ago. He is very anti-religion, so he declined to read at our Catholic wedding. It was his right and that's fine. But it's my right to think of him as self-righteous with an inflated opinion of his own actual worth. I think when you allow your own zealotry, be it religious, agnostic, atheist, whatever... to blind you to a greater humanity, and a greater world we exist in, you have gone astray. Our wedding wasn't about Catholicism, and his reading wasn't for the church, it was for his niece...his god-daughter, and our attempt to recognize his importance to us, in front of everyone who is important to us.

    Did I get my son Baptized, because I was afraid my son's soul would inevitably rot in hell otherwise? No. But it's what we do, and it was a great day spent with family.
     
    Fin D likes this.
  6. cdz12250

    cdz12250 Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    My parents were raised Catholic in Cuba. They went to university and became educated professional people. They got out of the church in large part because they considered the prohibition against birth control ridiculous in the then-modern world of the 1940's. I was not taken to church as a young child.

    I entered a Catholic school when I got here. It was a good school. I ignored the crap about going to hell if you missed Mass or masturbated, or if you saw a movie condemned by the Legion of Decency, or the stuff about the Pope being infallible.

    I don't go to Mass. I had premarital sex with women not my wife and now practice birth control. I was divorced and married my wife of 35 years, also a Catholic, in the court clerk's office, which excommunicated us both regardless of the love we share. I believe in the sacraments and in the apostolic succession, and the consequent authority of the clergy over the laity in moral matters, including myself and my family. I have simply chosen to disobey a lot of what I consider BS and refuse to judge others. I believe in gender equality and gay marriage, which the Church doesn't.

    I fully support the Church and all the good it does. I educated my daughter at mind-boggling expense at a Sacred Heart school and Notre Dame. I go to a Catholic hospital. I am a huge fan of Pope Francis. I will not lie to get my former marriage annulled, and I still don't believe the man-made crap I didn't believe in grammar school. But I totally buy the teachings of Jesus and support the good works of the Church.

    This makes me a heretic, a hypocrite, a cafeteria Catholic, or all of the foregoing. There are names in the canon law and the Baltimore Catechism for all the sins I commit by thinking and living this way. I really don't care. I follow my conscience, as God gives me the light to see right and wrong. If this means an over-inflated sense of my place in the cosmos, so be it. Guess I'm no longer a Catholic; just a Catholic ally.
     
    Fin D likes this.
  7. MikeHoncho

    MikeHoncho -=| Censored |=-

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    I let my religious influences talk themselves into corners. Then considered the more concrete ties between religion and government/control/power systems.
     
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  8. Unlucky 13

    Unlucky 13 Team Raheem Club Member

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    My parents, and almost everyone on both side of their families are Catholic. As a small child, I was taken to Mass almost every Sunday. From a very young age, no older than five, I began to ask questions about things that didn't make sense to me, to question and doubt much of what I was hearing. I also learned quickly that adults don't like it when you ask questions like this all the time and aren't satisfied when they can't give a good answer. Looking back on it, it's funny, but I quit believing in God before I quit believing in Santa Claus.

    My parents still made me go to church and Sunday school until I was 13, when I was given the choice to get confirmed as Catholic or not go back. They made it out like it was a huge threat. I happily took the offer to not go back and watched football pregame on Sunday mornings while they took my brother and sister to church. As a teenager, I considered myself a hardcore Atheist. Absolutely felt that all religion was wrong, and was insulted by how much those who are religious tend to put down those who are not. This only increased in college, when I spent my freshman and sophomore years in Tennessee (I grew up 45 miles South of Pittsburgh), and was confronted by people who openly hated me because I wasn't religious for the first time. I regularly had people try to convince me to go to church with them, and many wouldn't take no for an answer until I cut off my relationship with them.

    In my mid 20s, I came to a realization of sorts, that while I didn't believe in any religion or god, I had no proof that anyone else was wrong either. For a long time, I considered myself an Agnostic. Unfortunately, I also found that telling people that sometimes came off to them as an invitation to try and convert you to their side.

    I met my wife when I was 26. While she was raised in a Southern Baptist church, like generations of her family before her, she's devout while understanding that others can have their own different opinions. Unfortunately, most in her church aren't the same. She pulled me to church with her (during the football offseason) a lot early in our relationship, but there came a point that I just couldn't take it any more. Her church is the kind that says their way, very specifically their way, is the ONLY right path, and everyone else is going to Hell. It comes up almost every week, and really got under my skin.

    These days, I just say that I'm not religious. I don't care and I don't participate. I use the analogy that being religious is like being a sports fan. Just because most people are doesn't mean that everyone is, or that its a necessary part of being human. If you could somehow prove without question that one religion was true and right, it would not change my behavior one little bit. I feel that I'm a good person and live a good life. If there is a god and thats not good enough, then I don't want to be part of it anyways.
     
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