Thanks for a great site; for putting into words things that have been going round in my head for some time. You asked for responses on how others "found" atheism. Well, pretty much like yourself, I was brought up in a fairly non-religious religious family. We too didn't go to church, or say grace, or stick metal fish to the boot of our car, but there was this implicit understanding that we were in some way religious. When I was around ten or eleven years old, I started going to Boys Brigade (can't remember why) which as I'm sure you know is a religious organisation. To my young mind, all this god and Jesus stuff seemed fairly harmless, believable even. The natural progression from Boys Brigade was Sunday School and bible classes. My parents were "well chuffed" at my apparent acceptance of religion and they themselves began attending the same church. My paternal grandfather was, apparently, a Methodist Lay (Ley?) Preacher and his strict attitude had bestowed my Dad with a healthy (!) respect for religion. My Mum is a "lapsed" catholic, but hey, a church is a church, right ? So, on we went, happily going to church every Sunday, getting "in" with the Pastor, etc. When I reached my mid 'teens, I started to wonder about all this religion stuff. By then, I had received the teachings of the Darwin theory from a particularly good biology teacher and thought "Yes, that makes sense". This scientific explanation seemed more fitting to my "mind-set" and I felt more comfortable with it than the religious view. This, combined with the more attractive appeal of pop music, females and alcohol, meant that my visits to the church became less and less and finally ceased completely. I don't recall a big fuss being made at the time by my parents, but I am sure that my change of direction was noticed.

From then, I entered adulthood formulating my own views on life, the universe and everything. God and religion didn't even figure in my outlook. I pride myself on being an open-minded sceptic, a pessimistic optimist. I believe in myself and believe that I and only I hold the key to my destiny. Luck (bad or good) and chance aside, it's me that carries the can for what happens to me. I can't look to some supreme being for guidance, only to myself. I am a Humanist, if you want to put a pseudo-religious label on it; I believe in people, not some archaiac set of beliefs. This, I felt, made me a stronger person than someone who relied on religion for their answers, although I respected those who had chosen to believe. (There is some famous quote along the lines of "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" and I'm prepared to go along with that.)

The fact that the great majority of wars and conflicts had their roots in religion also saddened me. The "my god's better than your god" attitude that had sparked off all of this hatred seemed very wrong to me. The crusades, the Nazis and the Jews, native American Indians, Serbs and Croats; the examples of religious persecution and bigotry are many and varied and I couldn't work out that if god and his followers are meant to be so good, why were they killing each other in his name ? It just didn't make sense and served to reinforce my atheism.

The big test of my non-belief came about three years ago. My sister had seen fit to have a baby and the time came for religion to be force-fed to the innocent child, sorry, the time came for the baby to be christened. As the kid's aunt and uncle, my wife and I were the natural choice to be god parents. Ah ha ! Problem. I don't believe in this religion and I especially don't believe in imposing this religion on someone too young to know what it's all about and make an informed choice on whether they want religion. My wife had not been christened, but I had. She shared my views on the subject and we agreed that our children would be left to make up their own minds as to whether they wanted religion or not. After years of doing "anything for a quiet life" as far as my parents were concerned, the time had come for me to make my stand. I rang my sister and calmly explained that while we where honoured to be asked to be god parents, we didn't believe in the ideas behind it and would feel uneasy and hypocritical if we went through with the ceremony (which is also why my wife and I were married in a Registry Office and not church) So, although we would strive to be the best aunt and uncle in the world to the young child, we could not be god parents. My sister seemed to accept this, albeit with a few tears of disappointment. The trouble came when she immediately rang my parents to tell them the news. Then the stuff really hit the fan. They couldn't believe why I wouldn't be a god parent. They seemed to think that they had somehow failed in their upbringing of me (certainly not the case) and that my denouncement of religion reflected badly on them as parents. When I actually uttered the immortal line, "but Mum, I don't believe in god" it was as if I had said "but Mum, I worship Satan as my Lord". As is so often the case, the past was brought up as "evidence". The fact that I used to go to Boys Brigade and that I used to go to Sunday School and that I used to enjoy going to church so much. The fact that I hadn't set foot in a church for over ten years seemed lost on them. As I pointed out, I used to like playing with my Action Man, I used to enjoy jumping in muddy puddles and eating worms, but I don't any more. Well, for a while I was extricated from the family, (scathing letters were the chosen form of communication - leading to one hysterical and memorable spelling mistake, where my Mum referred to the chap who ran the church as "a lovely Pasta") but as time went on my parents seemed to accept the fact that I was no longer a believer. Everything is back to normal now.