It goes without saying, but religion is such an interesting thing. There’s so many of them all around the world and they are all so different. In the USA, the predominant belief system is Christianity, so it’s pretty much the only religion I have had any experience with.
My childhood was spent between my somewhat religious father’s and (unbeknownst to me) atheist mother’s houses. I was taught (by several adults) that there is a man in the sky that judges you after you die, and that he well send you to a good place if you were a good person, and a bad place if you were a bad person. That was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of religion for the first 8 or so years of my life.
Early in middle school, I didn’t think much of religion other than “I’m Christian, I guess”. But I didn’t go to church, never prayed, and didn’t know much about the Bible. My only exposure to the book itself was receiving children’s picture-book of it as gifts as a small child (which I never thought to read) and going to a Christian day-care for a handful of weeks (where I think we had like, two bible lessons, max).
But one day, I was having a discussion with my mom – I think it actually started as a discussion about Santa Claus – and she brought it up that people don’t necessarily believe in the Christian God or any gods for that matter. She said that she didn’t believe in God because any evidence for him was based in faith and not scientific evidence. She told me that people made stories to make themselves feel better about death, but also to control people. She also went on about the bad history of the Catholic Church. None of this is necessarily incorrect, but it was probably too much for a child. I wish she would have just left it at “people believe different things”.
I think I had a bit of an “edgy atheist” phase after that. I never berated anyone or anything, in fact I don’t think I even talked about it. I was shy, I wasn’t going to get into an argument. I just scrolled and saved edgy memes on iFunny (it was middle school, remember). Nothing more came of it so I’m not sure you could really call it a phase. I had a cynical view on religion, but it never came up with friends or anything. Religion was never pushed onto me by my friends at that age (or any age).
Probably the worst and only situation I’ve ever been in with regards to religion was when one of the children of my dad’s friend, same age as me, asked me late one night if I believed in God. I was not going to lie. I told him no, I did not believe in God. It created a bit of a stir. I didn’t want to say anything other than that, though – I knew I would be digging myself a hole if I tried to explain my reasoning. I knew religion was a sensitive topic to anyone, so I kept my mouth shut. But he insisted, “if you don’t believe in God, you don’t exist”. How silly is that?! I was right in front of him.
Later on, that same family was discussing with my father about us attending that same church, weekly. This upset me greatly, but honestly I was more concerned about my Sunday mornings than what would be happening at church. But nothing really came of it. We went to 1 (one) church service for a special occasion, and that was the end of it.
Through my own thoughts and experiences, my internal, cynical view on religion as a whole chilled out over time. Come high school, I had the chance to talk with some friends about it, civilly, and a couple of them didn’t believe in any deities either, but some of them did. And I respected that. It became clear to me that religion was a deeply personal thing that varies greatly between people of the same denomination. The believers among my peers weren’t necessarily homophobic or otherwise discriminatory. If they were, then they for sure weren’t my friends.
There have been times where I’ve been asked if I believe in God in my adult life, and I just say “I don’t practice any religion”. I think that’s more accurate than saying I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in the Christian God, or any from any mainstream religions. Honestly, I’m a proponent of what I like to call “personal spiritualism”, where one crafts their own personal belief system through their own experience. My own personal spiritualism is pretty limited and it’s something I don’t think about a lot, but it basically consists of my idea that for all intents and purposes, Human Souls are Real Things and should be treated as such within our society. Perhaps I will elaborate on that another time.