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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We're all atheists - I just disbelieve in one more god than you do. [/quote]

Beat me to it! I was going to post the same remark.

I grew up in a church-going but not especially religious family. For instance, we went every Sunday but I don't remember my parents ever suggesting that we pray together or ever inquiring whether I had prayed. As a kid and teenager I would have said I believed, but I'm not [i]really [/i]sure I ever did. For one thing, I could never get that worked up about all the nuances of faith. Like, why was it so critically important that I believe the stuff about the Trinity? ("You see, kids, it's all one God -- you must know there is only one -- but within that one it's really God, and also his Son, and then a separate thing that we wave our hands about and don't quite explain.")

Then as I started to grow up, I just strained against the idea that I was supposed to endlessly praise and proclaim my faith in an all-powerful deity who observed my every move and always would and who, presumably, gave me the very intelligence that I was using to start questioning him. The subservience wasn't my thing, and I also struggled hugely with the idea that my friends who happened to be born to Indian immigrants or the Schwartzes down the street would be condemned to burn while I enjoyed eternal life just because my parents brought me as a babe to the baptismal font.
 
But most of all, I remember high school football. It was the deep South, and like everyone on the team I was "encouraged" to participate in pep rally and pre-game prayers [i]that we would win[/i]. And if I happened to practice enough and develop my skills enough and use my physical abilities to catch a ball in the endzone, I was expected to drop to my knee and thank God that he had decided that I should do so. This more than anything else shook me to my core. Surely if God existed, he didn't care what was happening on a small grass field in Alabama between some teenagers. And if he did, why would he want my team to win in a blowout and the other team to lose? Were they less deserving in the next town over? Did they not pray hard enough? And if you open up [i]that[/i] can of worms, the harder questions get tougher. Why did my grandma have to suffer through a debilitating fatal illness while Suzie down the street is so proud that God's grace - prompted by prayer - restored her own grandmother to health?

All that is to say: I started asking questions. And once I started, I wasn't finding answers within religion.

There are times that I wish I could believe. I wish I believed that I would see my dad again, or my grandparents, or that they were able to be "looking down" on my wonderful kids right now. So I get the consolation element. But try as I might, I just...don't.[/quote]

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