I've been tooling around these forums for a little bit of time and I see a lot of fighting and accusing and all that fun stuff. This isn't a thread asking people to stop because that's not my place nor do I really care. What this thread is for is to get to know people a little better. I'm curious (and other people my be as well), what people's beliefs are and how they got their (i.e. an athiest who used to be a catholic, or a born again christian who used to be an athiest). As well, I'm also wondering what other religions or ideas you have studied?

But, I'm not the type to ask people to do stuff that I won't do myself so here's my background:

I grew up in a catholic family and went through all the rituals all the way up to confirmation. Up until I was about 16 I was heavy in the church. Altar boy, head of my church's youth ministry, and part of a committee to choose the direction of the services (the next youngest person was 33). So, I was pretty heavy. Slowly over time, I started questioning the religion, finding inconsistancies that didn't sit well with my, as well as quite a few other things. So I went from being super religious to agnostic, not sure what religion to believe in, but still believing in god. From there I started reading a lot about other religions, studying quite a few (even leaning towards wiccan quite heavily for a while). At the moment, I'm more athiest then anything else, believe in a collective unconscious.

So, that's where I come from and i'm curious about everyone else. This may help to see where people's beliefs come from and why they make the posts they do (in other threads). Thanks!!!!

I grew up in a pretty non-religious household. My father was an atheist, and my mother a catholic...but religion was never a topic of discussion. I went to a baptist church until I was 13, and then discovered paganism from a friend of mine. From there I called myself a pagan for 7 years when it seemed to have "left" me. I've always loved reading about other religions because the different concepts fascinated me. I started to read about Islam after a lot of the bigoted comments I heard from everyone around me about muslims. I'm not the type of person to hate someone based on who they are; so I went in hoping to at least learn enough to enlighten others around me about their belief, rather than believing every tom, dick, and harry who "heard something on the news."

So after a while, I found myself liking what I was reading, and after a couple of months of debating should I or shouldn't I, I converted to Islam.

I grew up in a family that you could consider "Christian". Though to be sure, they never mentioned Jesus - it wasn't until I was 14, when I first heard of a guy named Jesus. Though perhaps when I was very small, I might have believed my parents religion (which was an offshoot of Seventh-Day adventism, with a focus on works and the Coming Kingdom of God rather than on anything else), but I stopped believing in their Faith when i was very young. Indeed, their beliefs are probably closer to Orthodox Judaism than any branch of Christianity (my Dad took the "Belief-O-Matic" test and came out as Orthodox Judaism). Come to think of it, GIDEON MAGE linked an article in the "Jesus in History" thread that was written by the founder of my parents religion, that should give you an idea about Jesus in their beliefs.

My parents were very good actually - they never forced me to go to Sabbath School (church was on Saturday, the Sabbath, so there was no "Sunday School"), and I only recall ever going a handful of times. When I was a teenager, they let me choose whether I even wanted to go to church with them, which I sometimes did but mostly stayed home. During my teenage years, I was invited to an Anglican church youth group, which I attended for a month or two before stopping - I found it much better to get drunk at my friend's place (yes, we were underage).

Throughout my teenage years, my beliefs were basically Agnosticism - at any given time though, I could be strongly Agnostic (I accepted the possibility that there may be a god), to almost Deism (that there was a god out there but that it was too big to confine to any single man-made religion or book of Faith).

When I was 19, I attended a camp at the end of Year 12 - a chrisitan camp held up on the Mid-North Coast of New South Wales. On the second day there, we were swimming at the beach when the sandbar that most of us were on collapsed, dragging people under and causing a very strong rip. We were all "city-folk" unused to beaches. Some had never been to the beach in their lives, while others hadn't even learned to swim, just wading knee-deep on the shore.

Three people drowned that day, two of whom were friends that I was close with.

In the aftermath of this event, I met two people. I'd met them before, but only in passing (at the youth group all those years ago). They put aside their own grief (they also knew the people who drowned) and took the time to look after me. They never pushed their beliefs on me, they were just there for me, someone to talk to. They Loved me in the way that I would later come to believe that Christ loved us and taught us to love others.

It was then, around the age of 20'ish, that I picked up the Bible and really read it for the first time. I'd read parts before, but only ever to pick holes in it and argue with others to show them that it was just a book and could not hold the real words of God. This time, I really read it. And it made sense. The Love that God showed us in giving his life, I could relate to this for the very first time - one of the people at the beach who drowned was a hero, a real hero. He went into the water not once, not twice, but three times to pull people out, the third time with a surfboard to save people. He gathered some people who got a hold of the surfboard. When there was no more room left, he gave up his own place on that surfboard for another struggling swimmer. That was his last action on earth before he drowned. He gave up his life so that others might live.

Just as Jesus did.

It was then that I converted to Christianity. No longer was Agnosticism an acceptable position for me to live in. Contrary to my previous belief that God was too big for any book or Faith, I came to believe that God did indeed inspire the words in the book known as "The Bible". That God did indeed love us all so much that he would save us from what we ourselves could not.

I owe a lot to those two people who shared Jesus' love with me. But more than that, I owe everything..... everything to God, to Jesus Christ.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for sharing, Buddha. And thanks for starting this thread

Well I'm only 14 so this might not take that long

I live in a large Roman Catholic family .. But religion is never on anyones minds [ Except mine ]
I never really sat with the religion - At the time I didn't know it but I was agnostic .. I also didn't really care.
But recently I've realized some things .. read a few books supporting both sides of the story [ Eg, Evolution vs Creationism ]
And now I'm a strong Atheist.

I think we would all have to write a book about ourselves in order to answer those questions, so let me just tell you what my grandmother learnt me:

Respect and love all beings.
Never look for pleasure in ridicule, disgust, hate, violence and etc. and certainly never unify with others in these things.
Joking is okay, but if you are misunderstood, then either make it clear that you were only joking and also apologize if someone is still hurt by what you said.
All holy books contain the hidden secrets of mankind's past and future and must never be disrespected, and neither should any of the stories they are created out of be disrespected.
Religion is crap, unlike faith and hope.
GOD is LOVE, so all you need is LOVE and everything that goes along with LOVE.

I guess I lost faith in an afterlife a long time ago, but I'm still hanging on to hope because I suppose I could be wrong.
Does GOD exist? I don't know, but if GOD really is LOVE, then maybe GOD does exist after all.

For atheists the answer is simple: they went to catholic schools LOL

For my life until Aug 15 of this year I was Christian, but then I left that and became a Noahide under the teachings of Orthodox Judaism.

I don't see much difference, as long as you belong to any religion, you are one of the religious folk.
Some people dance around the fire, some go to churches, and some simply think alone, but it all comes down to the same thing

Family was nominally CoE but never practiced. Never went to church except for weddings or funerals. Never went to Sunday School, no mention of religion around the house, at relations or at any school I went to. Only one of my closer relations (an Uncle) is religious (Mormon).

My sister flirted with Spiritualism for a while, and I got to learn a bit about it. As for me, I'm Agnostic. Mind you, I wouldn't worship a deity if they proved they existed because I don't believe in worship. I enjoy learning about beliefs and questioning them, but this is mainly because I can't see the attraction for people to believe.

I am what you would call spiritual. I have faith the soul exists for reasons of my own (not a wish for continued existence or fear of death if that's what you're thinking .)

Youre talkin about us, NW. How about you talkin about you?

What I said also explains the reason of my beliefs:
I DIDN'T go to catholic school

Sad songs say so much, eh

I've deleted some of the posts on this thread. Remember what you are supposed to be discussing in this thread. If you want to converse like a chatroom (libra II and northwest), then I suggest you visit the chatroom - just click the link on the top of the page. Also, libra II - PM sent, I suggest you read it.

Some people in this world are worried about all the wrong things.
I usually say sorry to people if I insult them, so please wonder why Buddharat, still hasn't received an apology.
Please feel free to delete this post too if you wish.

when i was born my family was hardcore christian. when i say hardcore christain i mean penicostal. my mom and dad were both cathilc before this but somehow my dad changed his beliefs to the penicostal way so they started going to that church soon after i was born. penicostals are the ones who speak in tounges.....i've seen this, it's real. i don't think it can be explained scienctificly someobody blurting out perfict korean or some african tounge out of nowhere. so penicostals speak in tounges, the women wear long skirts and all have very long hair down to their butts. the men have to shave and only have short hair. one thing about penicostals is they are very nice to people. we lived in cincinnati and cincinnati has a bad poverty problem. homeless people and poor familys use to come in at the end and the preachers would help them and give them money for food and stuff (even though we knew that's probably not what they would use it for). we would donate money to poor countries in aftrica, south america, and asia. BUT NOW, penicostals are very nice....but when it comes to God i found them very mean and judgemental. they believed if you were any religion but penicostal christain you were going to hell. you could be catholic, prodistant, baptise, buddhist, islamic....if you were not penicostal you were going to hell. you had to repent, be baptized, and get the holy ghost (speaking in tounges) or you were hell bound. if a man had long hair and didn't shave (like i do now) and a women had short hair....hell. if you listened to rock or rap (i'm a rapper now)......hell.

this became a problem with my parents who were originally catholic. when my moms sister died of cancer when i was 11 something happened to my mom in the church one day which made her very upset. basicly somebody or one of the preachers said a catholic could not go to heaven and would go to hell. my moms sister who was catholic just died and this affended my mom and dad.....we never went back after 12 years there. as a teenager when my mom and dad got devorced. my mom tried to turn me and my brother catholic agian (bring us back to our italians roots). but being catholic is confusing if you were not taught it since you were a kid trust me. so she just let us go on and believe for our selfs.

now i still believe in god and that jesus was the son of god. i believe in the bible. but now i'm learning other religions such as islam, buddhism, and hinduism among others. i basicly have a theory that says God gave us all our differen't religions for a reason, what's the reason i don't know. why is there religious violence, and differn't dogmas, and poverty, and pain in this world, i don't know. i might never find the ansewer. i just know that all our religions were given to us for a reason and i want to understand them all. way differn't then how my brother came out. he believes in god but believes everything religious is a bunch of crap and we were all put here to do what ever we want, whether hurting people or loving people. an anarchist basicly.

sorry for telling my whole religious life story.

and yet the catholic school in the states are meant to be one of the BEST...funny that...so I take it you never attended eh?? LOL

So I guess that all atheists where once catholics according to YOU?? and not one came from a protestant background??...