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Are you the only nonreligious person in your family? Or are some or all of them nonreligious?

The majority of my family claim christianity. My father, however, is a deist and my brother is the same as me, agnostic atheist. My grandfather is interesting. He was a christian most of his life but after he was technically dead (for a quadruple bypass heart surgery) he changed his mind a bit. He was one of my unlikely allies, when I told him about my stance he shrugged it off and said it was fine (unlike others). He then admitted that he didn't really believe any of it, he just attended services because he felt it was part of his culture and as a way to socialize since many of his friends were already deceased. His church in particular has a significance to him since he was one of the primary funders of it and he even made a small model of it that eventually became the blue print of the building itself. The model is still inside the church.

AustinSkepticus 7 Feb 28
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53 comments

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1

I don't know about my brother havent seen him in fifty years last time I did see him he was non religious my parents were not religious don't know about unts and uncles because I never asked but they didnt seem very bothered never went to church.

11

I am the only one. My siblings are very religous. They pray before meals. I will bow my head and go along. It is not worth distrubing the piece. I want to run away, however I tolerate it. However at my home, during hoilday dinners, I will read an inspiring poem when there are christains at the table.

9

I was raised reformed Jewish, but my parents consider being Jewish as more of an ethnicity than a religion. Some members of my family are more observant, but I never was, and as I got older I began to question religion more and more.

9

nope no religion in our family ! totally normal, lucky me!

8

I stand alone. No one ever brings up the topic to me. I am not rude or anything. They just do not like my use of logic in the discussion

8

my dad was raised irish catholic, so he is an atheist. my sister most likely is, but probably would say shes not. My mom is sort of christian, but i don't know to what extent. my maternal uncles are pretty religious, bit not very judgemental.
my paternal aunt is a non practicing catholic.
my former inlaws are nut jobs. my ex is probably an atheist, but as a narcissist, has to keep up appearances. his family are dinosaurs deniers.
when my kids' bird died, i overheard the girls talking. they hoped that the bird loved jesus so he could go to heaven. i try not to interefere in my childrens exploration, but if someone tells them about the end of days or going to hell, i make sure they know whats up. i don't want them fearing what happens in the rapture or when someone dies. their grandmother has told them i will go to hell or be left behind because i don't love jesus. i tell them that im sure jesus was a great guy, but no one gets to decide our fate.
its funny because they created an advancement of rock, paper, scissors. there is also black hole, jesus, and science. science beats everything, including jesus.

7

I don't think anyone's been religious in my family since about 1880.

Jnei Level 8 Mar 1, 2018
7

I'm the only one. It's a tough works out there

7

My immediate family members are all atheists.

7

I'm the only one that I know of in my family. It's been a lonely road at times.

6

On my mom's side I have one cousin who is at the very least an agnostic. My dad's side Im not sure

5

The majority of family is diehard Catholic and Lutheran. My mother is and step father are loosely agnostic, and I'm the only atheist my combined families.

5

Been a believer all my life until recently...less than a year now when I became a skeptic. I come from a family of believers (Christians) and still to open up to them about my "conversion" from Christianity.

Gorro Level 2 Mar 1, 2018
5

For a long time, I think I was the only atheist(I stopped believing at about 11)but now one of my sisters is also an atheist. My other siblings are varied sects of Christianity, including Jehovah Witnesses, and other insane cults. All of my cousins are are totally addicted to Jesus.

5

I think its just me, and maybe a distant cousin

5

I'm for sure agnostic, and my wife says she is. Our son thinks he needs God to help him; don't know where he got that. Our daughter and her family probably are agnostic, as they don't speak of religion. But, neither my wife or I have discussed it with them.

4

Yes, I'm the heathen, agnostic liberal in my family. But I've always walked to the beat of my own drum and have always been honest with my family about who I am and what I do. They've leavened to accept things in me they don't agree with! 😉

4

I think like your grandfather, my family met their social needs through the Church...and the Elks Club. We were at one or the other all throughout my youth...until they figured out I was steeling beer out of the basement. My large adopted family was 100% Catholic, but they were really cool about it all...except for my mom. The rest did their thing without throwing expectations around for anybody else. I was a 'Knight Of The Altar' and served mass, but not because of devotion. We did it to drink the last bit of wine out of the celebration cruets after mass.

My take on this bunch was that the Church took all the glory while jeebus and his daddy played second fiddle. My Dad donated all the equipment and labor to level the land, dig the foundation and swing the beams into the new church in the late 60's. His close friend donated the concept and engineering of the building. When the Knights Of Columbus wanted to build a community building, my Dad and his brother fronted the money for the building.

Lots of similarities here. My grandfather's church just completed a community center in 2010, he also helped that take root.

4

So far as I know I'm the only committed atheist, but I'm fairly sure my immediate family probably don't believe but it's not something they're bothered about, they don't go to church and don't have any religious rituals like grace. My extended family on both sides were, and the ones still living probably still are, church goers more out of habit and tradition than anything else. I have one uncle who's very active in his local church but on the rare occasions that we meet up it's never cropped up in conversation.

4

I am the only one that I know of. I heard that two of my uncles became nonbelievers after their mother died from diabetes. Their siblings (my 3 aunts) and other church members prayed at her bedside instead of allowing my uncle to give her sugar water. The uncles have never announced that they were atheists. They just never went to church and never spoke of God.

3

Though both my father and mother's side of the family are LDS/Mormon, and my stepmother's family are all Scientologist (she raised me from the time I was 8-9 years old), I've been fortunate in that both my father and stepmother are atheist/agnostic; my mom is still religious, though she's not strictly Mormon--she takes a more watered-down generic-Christian approach these days, finding comfort in the God delusion but also rationalizing it in a way that allows her to smoke a ton of weed.

Outside of my immediate family (as an aside, I have 5 younger siblings, only one of whom identifies as agnostic while the rest attend church with our mom and believe in God because they're too young to have considered otherwise), a couple of my dad's siblings have recently confessed to losing their faith. My dad has 18 brothers and sisters, and I have 67 first cousins on just my father's side, all mostly Mormon, so this is kind of a big deal. The breaking point for one of my aunt's was when my cousin came out as gay--she watched the reaction of the church to her daughter, struggled with the morality of it for about a year, found Sam Harris and Hitchens, and the rest is history.

While I've had it comparatively easy, thriving in a family of free-thinkers who value open discourse about religion, politics, philosophy and science, my father and stepmother haven't had the smoothest of roads. My grandma on my father's side literally thinks Jesus tells her buy things off the Home Shopping Network, and my stepmom can't be open AT ALL about her feelings toward the Church of Scientology because her family will "disconnect" from her, label her a SP, or "Suppresive Person", and may very well send henchmen to her door to harass her, slander her name or good character, try to sabotage her job, etc. Quite a sad and ridiculous state of affairs.

2

I'm the only non-religious person in my family, which at times is not easy to deal with.

2

My parents fell away from their original more traditional chtistianity. They claim to no longer believe in a theistic god, but I think they use the term god to refer to what connects!the universe, if not a grey haired dude in the sky.

I have no idea if or what my only brother believes. His wife claims to be catholic, but is nonattending/nonpracticing.

The rest were/are still believers, many fundamental.

Zster Level 8 Mar 3, 2018
2

I realized, before joining your group that I shield my one son from family judgement (many are fundamentalists). My sons are a mix. I promoted questions, which their father (my former) disliked. He and all but one son did talk, openly. This son is an athiest, for all the right reasons, in my opinion. I miss our mussing about science and physics and being suspicious of religious broohaha. I should take him to lunch on a business day, so we can resume our philosophical discussions, alone. I hope I can evolve into a good enough mom to talk openly with another son, the jock (that is a language very foreign).

May we all find a common ground, easy boundaries, without tension with our families to speak openly, without any jusdement or proselytizing - about anything.

2

I would say everyone is slightly or questioning christians (none of them seem to ever really talk about religion or god and i think really rarely attend church), agnostic or atheist.

2

It may seem funny, but thankfully, I don't think of religion all that much anymore, re my family. The only one left is my brother. Since I made my views firmly, calmly known (my attitude is kinda if you want me in your life, well, this is me), we balance out; neither of us preach to the other.

It worked out, mostly

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