This is all in an act of getting to know each other better. Just list your spiritual progression, starting from birth. No need to mention age or anything. Also, if you are Mormon or Baptist or whatever sect of whatever religion, don't just generalize by saying Christian.

I was raised (loose) Roman Catholic until I received confirmation (age 13). My parents weren't strict about religion and only made me go as sort of tradition. My mother is extremely anti-Catholic as of late, and my father is religion-ignorant, for the most part.

After being forced through confirmation, I had very anti-Christian views and held a grudge for quite a few years (mostly against my parents for forcing it on me). I started studying religions around the age of 14 because my family moved to Georgia and I had nothing better to do. I had fun with Southern Baptists by saying I didn't believe in God and that I loved Satan, though I never really meant it. Yeah, I was immature.

I was kind of stuck in no mans land until age 18 when I discovered Zoroastrianism and Buddhism in Uni. Zoroastrianism kind of gave me the background on Judaism and Christianity, and Buddhism was so similar to what Jesus taught that I finally started reading Christian scripture and respecting the religion.

Since then I have studied the Norse and Slavic pagan religions as well as more of the same old (Christianity/Islam). Right now I am kind of no where, I don't worship anything but I do believe Gods exist.

my family is like taoists... if it is considered a religion. it doesn't really bother me but i never really felt like it was for me.

i don't even think there is a god in it more like mother nature and the earth. anyways when i was in 4th grade i had no idea of "GOD" i asked everyone in my class if they believed in god and all of them said yes. i was really disturbed by this! i felt outcasted and bad. right now im into spiritual satanism which is sumerian/egyptian religions. i really feel that this is for me because all my life i've had some weird and fearful idea of god and those who believe in god... christians scared me when i was a kid... now i just hate them with passion

Raised mostly by a non-church-going bapist father, and partially by a menonite mother who had effectively relinquished her christian faith in exchange for a bunch of thoughtless belief in "goddess" and positive/negative "energy" and so on in the heard-it-from-a-hippy-friend fashion. After the parents were divourced (I was 8) I was pretty lacking of any faith or religion or even thought about spirituality. Maybe a few years ago when I began to be intrigued with the "big questions" I began trudging through agnosticism to atheism. Maintaining some youthful impressionability, I have allowed my beliefs and thoughts to be mildly influenced by the insight of such films as "I Heart Huckabees" and "What the Bleep Do We Know?" as well as the works of Stephen Hawking and significantly less so- Brian Greene. By now I have become a 'Spiritual Atheist'; by people's general conceptions of spirituality and relation of the concept to 'faith', the words seem paradoxical. However my understanding of spirituality is related more to it's root latin (spiro, spirare) meaning "to breath" in the sense, to be alive or exist. Even in denial of any master divine being, I embrace as my spirituality the science which ventures to explain the wonderful and infinitely confusing interconnection of everything from consciousness to consciousness, from particle to particle, from past to future, dimension to dimension, from bellow the quark to above the 'universe', from every string to every string.

I was raised by two very sinful, hypocritical parents.

After my father would beat us all, he would proceed on to the Bible Study and try to tell other people how to be good Christians. He was very legalistic, and incredibly old fashioned in his perceptions about family.

My mother was a very spiritual person, though she never did grasp Christianity, fully.

Because of them, I decided very early on that I would never be what "they were".

And so, I took my anger, and my hatred for my parents, and I became every mother's worst nightmare: a satanist. (not the MTV generation sort, either)

No fancy titles, no bells and whistles...I had the ability to connect with the spirit realm, and because of this I was "used" to perpetuate a local sect into effectual anti-Godliness.

This went on for a few years...many awful things happened, both to me, and to other people because of me.

At some point it was presented to the group that we ought to begin involving ourselves with infanticide, in the name of the Father, Lucifer.

I was instantly against this, though I cannot say why, since I had committed other equally abominable acts against my fellow man. Why should a baby be any different ?

It was not spoken of again, at least not in my presence, so I considered the subject closed.

But a few weeks later at a meeting, someone brought an infant (probably 10 weeks old), and made it clear what it was to be used for.

I ran.

Shortly thereafter, I converted to Christianity...it is a very long, detailed, grueling story, so I will spare you.

Suffice it to say, I have seen the beautiful side of evil, and it pales in comparison to the grace and mercy of God.

I am now a non-denominational Christian. I follow no "religion". I study the Bible as objectively as I can, and apply it to my life.

I pray, and listen for God's voice.

Hope that was what you were looking for...I have a tendency to ramble, getting lost in my stories.

It's the Irish in me, I think.

http://www.totse.com/bbs/wink.gif (http://www.totse.com/bbs/wink.gif)

What. The. Fuck.

(And Orthodox Judaism)

(I'm hardcore)

[This message has been edited by Aphelion Corona (edited 04-20-2005).]