General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I was raised Fundamentalist Christian. I know you all know stories, but here's mine: [View all]Whatthe_Firetruck
(606 posts)... I knew a Mormon girl in chorus that I liked. Mom was old style pentecostal but she never took me to church (nor went herself) allowing me to find my own way. I shopped around, went to babtist vacation bible school and couldn't make heads or tails of it, studied greek & norse myths, and talked to Mormon missionaries. I was confused by them too, and finally decided that religions were like spots of paint on a canvas, with bigger faiths having bigger spots, and all the spots were different colors. If you were too close, you could only focus on the clashes between the colors and the disparity of sizes. But if you drew back to see the whole it formed a harmonious collage. Basically I decided no one religion could capture all of the diety, but you find truths by choosing from the array. I disappointed the missionaries by thanking them for helping me decide I was agnostic.
Later, my family visited a more urban area and I was amazed by all the different kinds of churches and temples and whatever. I had already figured that the christs described by the different sects were different, some loving and some unforgiving, etc. I realized that people either picked a faith that had a god that agreed with their prejudices, or they twisted their church to accomplish the same end if their identity was bound up by belonging to faith a) while their preference was closer to Christ b).
I still enjoyed reading ancient myths, so this second epiphany yielded another. Humanity was naturally polytheistic (including agnosticism and atheism within that definition). If someone could not pick the god of their choosing because they decided there was only 1 God, they would fracture that God into as many versions as necessary to fit the needs of the many worshippers.
Weird, I know, but it made sense to me.