Atheists raised Christian: did the stigma assigned to the word "atheist" by your religion?

Question

make it initially difficult to accept your "converstion"?

Answer 1

Well I just didn't want it to be true for the first few years. I don't think that it was really that I cared what others thought of me, it was just that at ten deciding your parents are delusional is pretty hard to grasp.

Answer 2

The word 'atheist' wasn't something I can remember hearing in church. Mostly what we got in church was 'sinner'.

Australia changed from a country spilt along religious lines to a secular society very quickly, right at the time I was growing up.

My family started out going to church and sunday school, but by the time I was about 10 we no longer did, and the churches were emptying fast, a process which has continued to this day.

It's not actually even been about atheism as such, the most recent census shows that the majority still describe themselves as 'christian', but that seems more a cultural tag than a matter of church attendance.

Of course, since the migration of significant numbers of fundies from the US about 20 years ago, who don't vote but breed like rabbits, that may all change, but I hope I'm long gone by then.

Cheers :-)

Answer 3

It was not the stigma of the word atheist that made it difficult, it was the guilt and shame that the belief in a punishing and vengeful god lays on you. Once I got through that, realizing I wasn't going to an imaginary hell because I no longer believed, I was much better. I could care less about the word atheist as a label, I prefer skeptic myself.

Answer 4

No. I never had a moment of conversion. I just realized as time went by that what I heard in church was irrational and unwarranted, which got me off Christianity. Then I became increasingly skeptical about the existence of any God or supreme being, and realized I had become an atheist.

Answer 5

It was the mere stigma attached to anything other than Christianity that made it difficult for me to accept my personal beliefs. I struggled trying to believe in their religion because that was what the world around me was doing - that's how our society perceives things. I felt like I should be Christian and didn't want to incur the wrath that non-Christians incur, but eventually I couldn't even pretend anymore.

Evil "atheist" or no, I just wasn't Christian.

Answer 6

that's an extremely great question. Atheism actually potential 'without god' and because maximum human acts of devastation have been interior the call of one god or yet another, this might advise that they are much less volatile than those with a faith. in case you think of roughly it in a greater precis way, atheism promotes loose thinking and the choice to have faith what you desire without the hassle of somebody telling you what is right with none evidence. in this style, many faiths actual sell lack of wisdom over wisdom. (The reasoning in the back of this lays with early society people attempting to type a viable society that purposes properly jointly. faith is an extremely powerful thank you to do this, subsequently why there are maximum of similarities between them). So looking on what you advise by way of harm, in early human society atheism would have been greater adverse to the form of the human race yet in present day cases (the final 150 years or so) faith is dropping its place in present day society.

Answer 7

I'd say so, and it was a real eye opener that most Christian "teachings" about atheism were totally wrong, and blatantly made up to support their view. It's another prime example of the lack of objective thinking, and not looking beyond "religious beliefs" for truth.

Answer 8

I remember that I felt sorry for atheists and could not understand why someone would not want some kind of afterlife or eternal reward. As I later found, my thinking was based on fantasy and as reality set in, I "converted".