How have your beliefs changed over time?

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Pretty much the title. Did your parents try to force anything on you? Does anyone still believe the same things they did as a young child?

I've smothered them.

My religious ideas have always come from my own emotional reasoning, and imagination. They were in conflict with my knowledge that these things were irational.


In a sense I was a believing non-believer. My emotional and irrational half kept screaming religious ideas at me. Not literally of course but I was a natural magical thinker and I kept coming up with irrational ideas that I "half believed". I believed it on an emotional level but on an intellectual level I knew it was absurd.


Constantly reminding myself that my emotional beliefs were irrational and in some cases absurd didn't stop my emotional reasoning it just kept it in check. I didn't act on my spiritual ideas because I reminded myself that they were unfounded. They were still there I just didn't let them control me.


It was a very long time before I could smother them completely. Now my rational side is dominant and the conflict is gone. I don't feel anymore distress as a result of the conflict and one side had to win out before I could relax. If my irrational side won the battle I would be just as relaxed but I would be delusional.



So now I'm just apathetic. Spirituality is gone from my life. I held two conflicting ideas and one of them had to die before I could resolve the cognitive dissonance I was dealing with. I was both religious and atheist. There was no way that could've worked out for very long and it was hurting me so I had to bring one half towards the other side and unify myself under one of the two belief systems I held.

My beliefs are pretty much the same, it's just the way I express and explain them that's changed.

My parents were Christian (CoE) but not strongly religious and never tried to force any of their beliefs onto me, my primary school wasn't a religious school but my headmaster was and this was still when prayer was allowed in schools - this didn't make me believe, it had the opposite effect; I wondered who the hell this 'Jesus' fella was, and why I had to praise him. I clearly remember having a pantheist belief from a very early age. Religious questions from my childhood and a lack of terminology for my own beliefs lead me to study religion.

I've always held pantheist beliefs and I was interested in more ritualistic religions so upon discovering Paganism I ended up spending some time within Wicca - I wasn't a Seeker for long before I found a BTW group willing to teach me and I completed my year and a day training to enter the priesthood, but I converted before initiation to spend time looking for Norse-based paths. I liked ritual of faiths like Wicca but I knew it wasn't for me, I knew I was Pagan but didn't like the flower-power crystal-loving nonsense and nor did I like the harsher side of Paganism such as Norse paths, I knew I had spirituality but that I also was rooted in reality...nothing seemed to fit.

It was studying religion and philosophy in college that had me happen across Sea Of Faith Movement - around the same time I discovered other forms of rationalism and Scientific Pantheism - my lecturer described Sea of Faith Movement as "a type of Christian-Atheism" and thus where the term for my path came from; Pagan-Atheist. My beliefs haven't changed since, they just sort of shift slightly before resettling - my current beliefs are essentially the same as I've always had, it's just they're now in a neater, more refined, and subtle approach.

I've done a complete 180 from the beliefs that my parents taught me and ever since I've existed (happily) in a state of moral decay.

I used to be Christian and a regular church goer until I opened my eyes to reality and well? Aint no body got time for that! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEoMO0pc7k[/youtube]