What made you become Christian or religious in general?

[Othelos]

Praying never helped. I only prayed because I was supposed to.

It's a shame you've had such an experience, but sincerity can sometimes be key.

I don't think I ever truly believed in God, I really only did things and felt a certain way because of what other people did/felt.

I feel much more true to myself now that I've left, and I've finally been able to leave personal issues behind.

[Menassa]

It's a shame you've had such an experience, but sincerity can sometimes be key.

I don't think I ever truly believed in God, I really only did things and felt a certain way because of what other people did/felt.

I feel much more true to myself now that I've left, and I've finally been able to leave personal issues behind.

Perhaps it's time to reexamine the case for yourself, instead of for what others tell you.

[Bojikami]

I became atheist after a decaying faith in god.

[UED]

Atheist/Buddhist

Brought up as a Buddhist, I like the theory and I think the soul might reincarnate.
Though then again I believe most religions are just plain old myths

[Othelos]

I don't think I ever truly believed in God, I really only did things and felt a certain way because of what other people did/felt.

I feel much more true to myself now that I've left, and I've finally been able to leave personal issues behind.

Perhaps it's time to reexamine the case for yourself, instead of for what others tell you.

I agree. Honestly, I'm open to joining something that aligns with my beliefs as a person, but it would have to be non-theistic, and spiritually rather than emotionally or morally based.

[The Vekta-Helghast Empire]

I was Protestant until about 13. Now I'm a firm Athiest. It's amasing how much actually looking into your 'faith' can change how you see things. The Bible is at best, to myself - an above par collection of ficticious novels full of contradictions and irrationality.

[Vulpae]

If by 'Christ' you mean God, that's not limited to Christianity....

I know, but I choose to focus on Christ's teachings, and found christanity fit me well. Other religions are no less right, I found the Torah and Koran perticularly illumniating. But in the end I liked christ's teachings about selflessness, forgiveness, and love. So took them to heart.
We're all trying to get to heaven, and have pretty much the same virtues.
PS: Paul was a good guy, and a devout man. Sometimes I wonder if he tried a little to hard sometimes, but I enjoyed his writings.

Yep, calling Paul and Barnabas Zeus and Hermes, respectively, and then stoning them is a sign of real acceptance. No they realized the same thing I did, religion is the opioid of society keeping them mollified as they are unable to accept that when they die they are gone.

I'm going to respond to this directly. Because it's a lot more complex than some proto-revoloutionary simplification created in the wake of the french revoloution, and embraced by later communists.

Greeks didn't "realize religion is an opiate." In Greece and Rome keeping the gods happy was what kept the wheels of civilization turning. They embraced the religion completely. Greeks feared their gods who were petty & spiteful, but rewarded people too. Read Homer's Oddesy and note the fact that 18 years of hell for the hero was touched off by refusing to sacrifice a lamb to posidon.

Christians don't sacrifice, because to do so belittles the fact that their god did the sacrifice for them, and offered himself up, to himself, and went through a torturious crucifixion in the process.
That caused a major issue because keeping the gods happy kept the wheels of prosparity turning. "Christians don't sacrifice? Don't they care if our city goes bankrupt because they didn't sacrifice to hadies god of wealth and death!" was the overriding mentality. Many priests of the greek gods acrively whipped up trouble too to avoid loosing influence to the new kids in town. (after constantine rome kept on perscucating people, they just changed the symbol under which it was done.)

Second with things like christians calling eachother "brother" and "sister" dispite being married, romans thought it was incest or somthing darker.

Third: christians focused on the afterlife, somthing gods of the time didn't give a crap about. For those at the bottom of socity, slaves and the poor, there's a lot of appeal in a god that accepts all, blesses all, forgives all, and promises a better life in the next world. Especally as the one you lived in grew bleaker, and the rich kept getting richer, while you kept getting poorer.

Fourth: Christians preached that all men & women were born equal, somthing revolutionariy, and dangerious at the time. (we all know the later churches weren't perfect, especally in western europe. But that comes from existing alongside fudalisim, and the church absorbing the sexisim of roman culture.) Christ broke bread with whores, theves, and tax colectors as equals. He preached about giving charity and that wealth and earlthy power meant nothing in the eyes of god. Not exactly encouraging to those looking down from powerful places when your people start believing themselves your equal...


They converted quickly, I didn't say it was an insta-switch, and change is always marred with reactionary ignorance, & violence. But within three generations most greeks had abandoned the old gods.

Lastly it's important to remember when Rome and Greece became Christian, Christanity also became Roman & Greek. Their faith changed, the root culture did not.

[The USOT]

Not really. I've always had to ultimately depend on myself to get through difficult situations, even as a devout Christian.

The beliefs I was brought up to believe in are entirely emotionally based, because my mother isn't a strong person and a lot of times she needs it to center herself so she doesn't fall apart.

I'm not like that at all, because I spent years and years feeling secretly alone and depressed, even when I was supposed to feel loved by God. I'm a lot stronger because of it, and I don't need religion to patch up wounds. I'd rather actually address them and get over issues, not glaze over things to avoid dealing with the truth.

If you put your effort in, is a little help along the way so bad?

A little help is never bad. But its worth considering what the help is.
If you build up a system of help based around someone who may not be real, if you stop believing in that someone it can be really awful. Many people first going through the change from Theism to Atheism who were devout find that much of their sense of identity and an identity crisis whilst going through other major problems can leave you in a bad way.

Unless the issue is directly religious based (e.g. somebody having an issue over theology) I dont think its a good idea to direct them to any path which has any orientation on faith position. Letting people deal with the issue in their own way, and supporting them through secular means poses far less risks than potentially making the situation worse.

[Lenciland]

If by 'Christ' you mean God, that's not limited to Christianity....

Yep, calling Paul and Barnabas Zeus and Hermes, respectively, and then stoning them is a sign of real acceptance. No they realized the same thing I did, religion is the opioid of society keeping them mollified as they are unable to accept that when they die they are gone.

I'm going to respond to this directly. Because it's a lot more complex than some proto-revoloutionary simplification created in the wake of the french revoloution, and embraced by later communists.

Greeks didn't "realize religion is an opiate." In Greece and Rome keeping the gods happy was what kept the wheels of civilization turning. They embraced the religion completely. Greeks feared their gods who were petty & spiteful, but rewarded people too. Read Homer's Oddesy and note the fact that 18 years of hell for the hero was touched off by refusing to sacrifice a lamb to posidon.

Christians don't sacrifice, because to do so belittles the fact that their god did the sacrifice for them, and offered himself up, to himself, and went through a torturious crucifixion in the process.
That caused a major issue because keeping the gods happy kept the wheels of prosparity turning. "Christians don't sacrifice? Don't they care if our city goes bankrupt because they didn't sacrifice to hadies god of wealth and death!" was the overriding mentality. Many priests of the greek gods acrively whipped up trouble too to avoid loosing influence to the new kids in town. (after constantine rome kept on perscucating people, they just changed the symbol under which it was done.)

Second with things like christians calling eachother "brother" and "sister" dispite being married, romans thought it was incest or somthing darker.

Third: christians focused on the afterlife, somthing gods of the time didn't give a crap about. For those at the bottom of socity, slaves and the poor, there's a lot of appeal in a god that accepts all, blesses all, forgives all, and promises a better life in the next world. Especally as the one you lived in grew bleaker, and the rich kept getting richer, while you kept getting poorer.

Fourth: Christians preached that all men & women were born equal, somthing revolutionariy, and dangerious at the time. (we all know the later churches weren't perfect, especally in western europe. But that comes from existing alongside fudalisim, and the church absorbing the sexisim of roman culture.) Christ broke bread with whores, theves, and tax colectors as equals. He preached about giving charity and that wealth and earlthy power meant nothing in the eyes of god. Not exactly encouraging to those looking down from powerful places when your people start believing themselves your equal...


They converted quickly, I didn't say it was an insta-switch, and change is always marred with reactionary ignorance, & violence. But within three generations most greeks had abandoned the old gods.

Lastly it's important to remember when Rome and Greece became Christian, Christanity also became Roman & Greek. Their faith changed, the root culture did not.

Yes religion was an opiate to a society to them, not necessarily their's but that of their gods.

Second:Incest was okay with the Romans because to them sex meant nothing.
Source:http://www.roman-empire.net/society/soc-household.html

Third: On the contrary, their hard views on the after life made most Romans do good things, but as human nature tells us we focus on the bad person instead of the good person so it is mostly bad and occasionally good.
Source:http://death.wikia.com/wiki/Death_in_Ancient_Rome

Fourth:Ahh, yes, the Church was always very equal and that is why it is in the Bible that women cannot have public church roles. To say they adopted their sexism from the Romans is a completely wrong idea. Rome had some of the most progressive women's rights laws that the world would see for almost two thousand years. They went to school, owned land, wrote their own wills, could marry whom they pleased, could divorce when they wanted, had laws protecting them from spousal abuse, played many of the game's that Roman boys played, and got to exert overt political power.
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Ancient_Rome

[Vulpae]

Yes religion was an opiate to a society to them, not necessarily their's but that of their gods.

Second:Incest was okay with the Romans because to them sex meant nothing.
Source:http://www.roman-empire.net/society/soc-household.html

Third: On the contrary, their hard views on the after life made most Romans do good things, but as human nature tells us we focus on the bad person instead of the good person so it is mostly bad and occasionally good.
Source:http://death.wikia.com/wiki/Death_in_Ancient_Rome

Fourth:Ahh, yes, the Church was always very equal and that is why it is in the Bible that women cannot have public church roles. To say they adopted their sexism from the Romans is a completely wrong idea. Rome had some of the most progressive women's rights laws that the world would see for almost two thousand years. They went to school, owned land, wrote their own wills, could marry whom they pleased, could divorce when they wanted, had laws protecting them from spousal abuse, played many of the game's that Roman boys played, and got to exert overt political power.
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Ancient_Rome

I'm refuting wiki pages, from various wikis now... Link me to a university dissertation and archeological study.
It's important to differentiate between the early republic, late republic, early empire, mid empire, and dying empire, periods in roman history and culture.
Please do some actual research, and you'll realize that some of what you are spouting at me are preconceived notions and stereotypes. Some of which were first spread as propaganda by the Anglican/Dutch churches about Catholics during the age of sail, largely to counter the power of catholic missionaries in the New World and Far East.

2:Among common romans but the Greeks had a dim view of it at the time (were totally cool with homosexuality though). But the idea of a cult where all the marriages are "Brothers" & "Sisters" now that raised some eyebrows.

3: Right, the heroic romans go to Elysium, the damnati (slaves, criminals, and so forth) go to Tartarus. But everyone else gets a grey endless afterlife. The primary concern is keeping the bastards in the grey depressing afterlife, and not here menacing the living.
Christanity offered those damnati a much better afterlife, especially those who had been born into slavery for generations.

4: Roman society was progressive to their own citizens (again it's Rome, so anyone who's not Roman gets the raw end of politics.) during the republican era. But after the reforms of Augustus, it became more and more sexist, and more abusive to the slave caste, not that they were that kind initially. but it got worse as the imperial system calcified and the empire rotted from within. Your data is flawed and sees things from one perspective, and assumes Rome was the same Rome all the way through.
It is no coincidence that Peter was crucified for preaching what amounted to women's liberation. Almost all the slave girls in the city refused to sell their bodies as a result of his preaching, in roman socity by telling the whores they don't have to put out. He was committing treason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_rol ... ristianity
note the difference between egalitarian, and patriarchy thought sets. You are doing the religious equivalent of claiming all Americans are Republicans because you hate republicans.

Stop thinking in propaganda & stereotypes man.

[Avenio]

Read Homer's Oddesy and note the fact that 18 years of hell for the hero was touched off by refusing to sacrifice a lamb to posidon.

I would suggest you go and read it first before you go and lord yourself over other people. Odysseus was cursed to his voyage because he blinded Polyphemus and made the mistake of boasting and proclaiming his name to Polyphemus as he escaped. Polyphemus then told his father, Poseidon, what Odysseus had done and Poseidon cursed him to wander the earth for ten years.

2:Among common romans but the Greeks had a dim view of it at the time (were totally cool with homosexuality though). But the idea of a cult where all the marriages are "Brothers" & "Sisters" now that raised some eyebrows.

The Greeks were not 'totally okay' with homosexuality. They had homosexual relationships, but men were also expected to have wives and bear children to them as well. Being solely attracted to men and having no interest in marrying would have been very weird to them.

4: Roman society was progressive to their own citizens (again it's Rome, so anyone who's not Roman gets the raw end of politics.) during the republican era.

Sure, if you ignore all of Roman Republican history. Seriously, almost all of pre-Imperial Roman history is punctuated by struggles between groups like the optimates and the novi homines over the disenfranchisement of Rome's poor citizens. Marius and Sulla, the Gracchi brothers, the list goes on.

It is no coincidence that Peter was crucified for preaching what amounted to women's liberation. Almost all the slave girls in the city refused to sell their bodies as a result of his preaching, in roman socity by telling the whores they don't have to put out. He was committing treason.

Seeing as the only source we have for the crucifixion of Peter is Tertullian in the 2nd century, who most certainly had a vested interest in portraying him as such, we can barely prove he was crucified at all, let alone the reasons for it.

[Vulpae]

I would suggest you go and read it first before you go and lord yourself over other people. Odysseus was cursed to his voyage because he blinded Polyphemus and made the mistake of boasting and proclaiming his name to Polyphemus as he escaped. Polyphemus then told his father, Poseidon, what Odysseus had done and Poseidon cursed him to wander the earth for ten years.

True, I spoke out of a bit of spite there. But It was the refusal of sacrifice that had Poseidon knock him off course in the first place.

The Greeks were not 'totally okay' with homosexuality. They had homosexual relationships, but men were also expected to have wives and bear children to them as well. Being solely attracted to men and having no interest in marrying would have been very weird to them..

True, though I meant they were alright with it.

Sure, if you ignore all of Roman Republican history. Seriously, almost all of pre-Imperial Roman history is punctuated by struggles between groups like the optimates and the novi homines over the disenfranchisement of Rome's poor citizens. Marius and Sulla, the Gracchi brothers, the list goes on..

I know, I suppose I shouldn't sum up so much history so quickly. Puts me on the same ground as my opponent.

Seeing as the only source we have for the crucifixion of Peter is Tertullian in the 2nd century, who most certainly had a vested interest in portraying him as such, we can barely prove he was crucified at all, let alone the reasons for it.

There are also the Dead Sea Scrolls, but like all historic documents they are suspect.

[Terra Sector Union]

Raised Roman Catholic. Instead of choosing the atheist/agnostic approach, I continued to believe there is some god but not a christian god. I also thought organized religion in general was too manipulative and controlling. Especially since there is so many different parts of Christianity. I could create my own christian religion if I wanted too.

[New haven america]

I was born into a Christian(I'm not very religious, but I do believe in God), though I never got baptized.

[Zhouran]

I was born into a Christian(I'm not very religious, but I do believe in God), though I never got baptized.

Interesting. I was born catholic. I was baptized. Currently I'm agnostic.

[Kratu]

I started to listen to the scientific minds of the past few generations and thus my mind started to question and I consider this a good thing and thus I am a Agnostic-Athiest.

[Zottistan]

Born and raised Catholic. But I was a reflective child, and at about age 10, following no particularly interesting turn of events, I became irreligious.

[Parhe]

My friends and fear.

[Menassa]

My friends and fear.

Fear?

[Regenburg]

I was atheist some time ago,supernatural events that were so close to me and death of my pop made me believe in something
my family never was very religious

[Aethrys]

I was dipped in a basin of water before I had the capacity to develop or vocalize an opinion on the matter.

[Bunkeranlage]

I quit Christianity after no one would address the continuity errors in their stupid book, and I became Zen Buddhist when I realized that they didn't worship books.

Perhaps you could name some of the errors, and I, being a Christian, could help explain...

[Rapidblaze]

faith made me strong

[Menassa]

I quit Christianity after no one would address the continuity errors in their stupid book, and I became Zen Buddhist when I realized that they didn't worship books.

Perhaps you could name some of the errors, and I, being a Christian, could help explain...

You do realize how large the Christian Bible is correct?

[Parhe]

My friends and fear.

Fear?

Of multiple things. Of course on top is the common fear many had of "What If it is real". I carried that for a while, and will comment I possibly might now. It is hard for me to understand what it is that I feel and believe as I always question myself on every little thing. Even now I am not sure since in my darkest moments I like to go to him, or thank him in my bests, through prayer or talking. Though at the same time I cannot tell if my intended audience or partner really is a God or myself, as I catch myself responding to myself all the time even while in prayer. At this rate I'll probably be bartering with a God on my death bed regardless of what I believe.

Then there is the shallower fear of being ostracized to an extent. When I believed I really met God of the Bible, in around Early Middle School through friends although I had been to church a few times before, I began attending a church and got very active in it, for a while later teaching classes to the younger children(all the while not being an adult myself), helping to lead praise in youth, and joining the welcoming team. Much my life at the time revolved around my church and about all my main group of friends at my school went to the same church. I feared losing my friends and everything good that came with them, though once they disappeared for other reason it was more a reason for me to stop attending church. Of course that ignored the fact that I could have been a Christian long after I left church, or attended church as a non Christian, but that too was a turning point in my faith.