southernhybrid
Contributor
You could have been just as "atheist" as an eight year old or younger if you had been raised differently. You were not permitted to be anything but that fundamentalist little girl. You were denied experiences and knowledge that would have made that happen. The tribe, the culture was all you knew and you needed community for survival. It wasn't some grand conspiracy, just well intentioned ignorance, stupidity and provincialism.I agree, but then how do you explain people like me? I was totally brainwashed, or so they thought. I was forced to spend most of my Sundays in church. First there was Sunday School, church service, youth choir, youth group indoctrination and finally the Sunday night service. Then there was a missionary woman who held weekly brainwashing meetings with the children in the neighborhood, and Pioneer Girls, and Vacation Bible School. I've probably left something out. I know. Whenever my father was angry, he'd tell us to get our bibles so he could read some gawd awful OT horror story to us. Maybe that many brainwashing attempts leads some of us to atheism.
But, at age 18, after attending a fundamentalist college for one semester, I put away childish things. Isn't that what their good book tells them to do?
Pretty much the same experience here. Never got to know anyone who wasn't a member of the same parish until I was probably fifteen. Got interested in a girl at 17 but she was Lutheran. The horror! I remember having a conversation with my mother who told me it was not a good thing because she wasn't catholic.
All those experiences weren't choices. There wasn't any real freedom involved. Only by going away to college - not a religious one - did I get to know people where religion didn't matter. But it took decades before I met someone who was willing to use the word "atheist" to describe themselves. That was quite the experience.
It wasn't quite the same for me. It's true that I never met another atheist until I met my current husband when I was 30, which was a few years after I began considering myself a strong atheist. Most of my childhood friends weren't fundamentalists. They were liberal, or moderate Christians, Jews or Catholics. I was a free range child, so in-between the Sunday madness, I explored nature, walked for miles most days and interacted with families that came to the country from other places, mostly Italy and Poland, so at least I was exposed to some diversity.
I grew up just outside of New York City, so in-between the Sunday madness, there were plenty of trips to the city. Then again, they included two weeks of attending the "Billy Graham Crusades". But, sure, I might have been an atheist long before my mid 20s, if I had been exposed to other things. When I was exposed 24/7 to the conservative Christians in college, it opened my eyes quickly. So, it was Christians who helped me leave the cult. I didn't become an atheist over night. I did a little bit of my own study of other religions, convinced that I had just been exposed to the wrong one. Then suddenly I got it. There are no gods. We are all alone in the universe except for the other humans and animal life that share the planet with us.
I know we are off. topic, but there are days when we need to express these things, even if they were events in the distant past. Plus, I do enjoy hearing the stories of how the rest of us, who were raised in religious homes were able to break away. My point is that the brainwashing and indoctrination doesn't always take.
