By Slugsie, on July 10th, 2009When you read through the many Atheist/Atheism based blogs you will come across many many stories of how people de-converted from one religion or another and came to Atheism. The stories are pretty enlightening, and it’s encouraging to read how people take the woo out of their lives.
It’s much rarer however to read about people like myself however who consider themselves to be life-long Atheists.
For me as a child religion was always sitting in the background, pretty much never intruding into my life. I knew it was there, I knew plenty of people who were practising Christians, I just wasn’t one of them. It didn’t seem to serve any practical purpose other than to take up time on a Sunday morning. I think my parents are/were (my mother died 14 years ago) nominally Christian, but very far from being practising. We basically never attended church (with the exception of the usual Hatch/Match/Dispatch events for friends/family), and neither I nor my sister have been baptised. Religion was never even a topic of discussion growing up as far as I can recall, and we certainly weren’t guided towards any particular belief system. We were simply raised to be well rounded human beings, with a sense of right and wrong, good and bad. There was never a need to back it up by threatening the wrath of some all powerful invisible deity at some unknown time in the future, why bother when there was the all powerful threat of being sent to my room right now!
So it’s from this background that I quite naturally and of my own accord found myself to be an Atheist. No other position made sense. When you’re free from religious preconceptions, all the modern dogmas start to look a trifle silly. It’s always struck me that in the caveman days it would only be natural to project a deity onto things like the Sun, Moon, and Sky etc. Those were visible physical objects that have a very obvious influence over your everyday life, so if there was any chance that they could have a conscious entity behind them then you would definitely hold it in high regard, and the temptation to deify it would be great. But as time moved on, and human knowledge grew, it became obvious that there was no such entity to heap praise upon. No sane person nowadays would believe that if you don’t pray to the Sun god, then she won’t rise in the morning. Once you realise that those gods aren’t needed, why invent others to replace them? They’re superfluous.
When it came to raising my own daughter, I decided to take a similar approach. I wouldn’t try and push her to follow my beliefs, but let her decide for herself. She attends a Church of England junior school – primarily because it’s one of the best in the area – where they are fairly liberal. They do do the Christian thing, I’d be surprised if they didn’t. But they do also cover other religious beliefs too, giving the kids a well rounded view of the world around them. Whenever she asked me a religiously based question, I’d try to answer honestly, point out my own beliefs, but also offer insights into how others believe. I’m not stupid enough to believe that I never favoured Atheism, but I did hope I provided enough information so she could make an informed choice. She’s a reasonably bright young person (obviously, she’s my child 
) so she took it all on board, and eventually declared to me that she also didn’t believe in God etc. This was towards the end of last year, when the Christmas season was coming into full swing, so I wondered how she’d handle her belief in Santa. To my surprise she declared that she didn’t believe in him either! She’s obviously a bit more perceptive than I am because I think I was a year older before I gave up that one – either that or I was a bit more shrewd and realised there was something to be gained by holding onto Santa. Interestingly though, the Tooth Fairy is still in business. I guess the lure of cold hard cash is still too strong.
So it looks like another generation of Atheists is born. Recent studies seem to suggest (in Great Britain anyway) that religious belief in the younger generation is at an all time low, and falling. Hopefully that will translate more and more into people who have similar experiences growing up as I did. Once there are significant numbers of second and third generation Atheists around the world will be a very different, and in my opinion better, place.
If there are others out there that have always been Atheist, I’d very much like to hear your story.
July 10th, 2009 | 
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I’m a third-generation atheist, at least if you count on my mother’s side. Both my parents are non-believers, and my maternal grandparents are similarly enlightened. I, however, had a different experience than you did growing up. I grew up in the rural southern Californian desert, where matters of faith are very near and dear to a lot of folks. Besides the obvious annoyances of not being able to play with friends on a perfectly good Sunday morning (or, in some cases, all Sunday… damn Mormons), I suffered bullying and ridicule even as a small child for not believing in Jesus. Accordingly, I spent a lot of time between the ages of 8 and 10 researching the various religions of the world, and they all seemed equally silly. I was probably 12 before I actually learned the word “atheist”, and it’s been my word of choice since then. My parents provided essentially no guidance on these matters, aside from explaining their own beliefs, but allowed me to make up my own mind. Our public school here did a very, very brief section on world religion in 5th grade, but that was at least enough of a start to figure out that they’re all equally deluded.
I’m a member of an atheist organization in the far-flung suburbs of LA, where I attend graduate school, and I’m continually amazed at how few members we have that were born atheist and stayed that way. I’d suppose that such folks are probably more inclined to be apatheist than those who lose their faith, but I couldn’t say for sure. I have a friend who’s in Religious Studies… maybe I could ask her to figure it out.
Justin, thanks for your response. I’m not at all surprised that growing up an Atheist in America wasn’t easy. Here in Great Britain, religion tends to be a much more quiet private thing. The local priest is more likely to come round for a quick cup of tea and a chat than to try and bash you over the head with religious teachings, it’s so much more ‘genteel’. I’m definitely thankful to have grown up where I did, and I tip my hat to all those who can maintain their rationality in the face of such strident opposition.
I’m a second generation atheist who grew up in the American South. My parents basically left it up to me to discover and make my own mind up on religion. In growing up I encountered a mix of religious fundamentalists (many of whom tried to “save me”), religious traditionalists who thought religion to be very important, but a personal matter, and people who identified as Christian but who were basically apathetic about it. I can honestly say that I only knew one other person my age while growing up that publically proclaimed to be an atheist. As a young adult, there were a number of girls that refused to have a relationship with me because I was an atheist. Eventually, though, I did get married (to a moderate Christian) and we have two kids (7 and 12). In the first 7 or 8 years of our marriage, we hardly ever went to church. Then we went regularly for a couple of years. The fundamentalism proved to be too much to take, and now we are back at hardly ever going again. The kids are just relieved that they don’t have to get up early on Sunday anymore and go anywhere. My website has been a reaction to my experiences at church for the last two or three years.
Jeff
Jeff, I’ve been following your 123 Religious Comics blog for a while now, always raises a giggle.
I’d be one happy Atheist is you were able to get back to doing some more of your own strips again. 
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your background.
id guess the reason we dont get much ‘airtime’ so to speak is that we dont have interesting stories like the deconverts have, we just kindof live the same as we always have, living proof of how needless religion is, but not a great journalism piece.
Your absolutely right of course. But the very fact that we manage to live (hopefully) good, moral, lives without religion should be worthy of airtime.
Well, I can dream can’t I.
My case is rather simple; both parents believe in god, but aren’t overly religious. Never went to church, even for Christmas, Easter, etc. The assumption that god exists never really occured to me. I actually remember asking my parents what religion we were when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. I assumed that religion was something you were born with, but like your family history not that important. It was probobaly around 10 or 11 that I actually noticed people thought god existed. And that’s when I started noticing that people were idiots when it comes to religion.
My family was pretty similar, my mom is Protestant like her family and my dads side doesn’t have a religion. My dad prevented my mom and her side of the family from introducing religion to my brother and I, letting us choose for ourselves.
Visiting my mothers parents though, they tried to sway me over to their beliefs and I had never actually heard of Yahweh or Jesus or most of the stories. I right away made the comparison between god and Santa Claus, and decided that it was something parents used to keep kids in line and teach them… except parents believed the bible stories.
I never quite believed the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or Loch Ness (As if that was a fairy tale). I did pretend I believed just so I would get more presents
.
I recently talked to my dad about various religious things and found that he had all the same questions about it as I did growing up, and he worked it out while in college.
I told him that I will take a more direct stance against religion with my child, because of all the bad religion has done in the world. I can’t let someone think committing atrocities is okay as long as you think you’re being guided by a book.
I also grew up in a nominally Christian family that never went to church on any occasion. I always attribute my beliefs to the fact that I had no religious education before the age of ten.
When at ten I finally went to Sunday school it was just too late. I couldn\’t believe in burning bushes or a sun that stayed up for a day or women turned to salt. I really wanted to but I\’d only just gotten over the disappointment that all my fondest childhood dreams of magic were just dreams, and then I go to church and suddenly everyone is right back at square one. I was baffled. The contrast between what I knew of day to day life and what I was supposed to \"know\" at church was just too much for a ten year old to reconcile. I am grateful for that to this day.
This is a great article, I really enjoyed reading it. Until now I had not read a story of another person growing up as an atheist. I, too, was raised on logic and good values. If you’d like to read my story, check it our here: http://firstchurchofatheism.com/index.php/2008/growing-up-faithless/