Atheist And Theist In The Same Family?

[JakeDog]

Many atheists grew up in religious families. It is not an uncommon phenomena at all- it's just that there are far fewer atheists (at least self identified atheists) than theists, so you don't encounter many to begin with.

[cleatis]

Originally Posted by noland123

How does this come about that there are believers and non-believers in the same household? How is it that parents(believers) raise their children in a christian-like atmosphere and years later one child will remain a believer and another child a non-believer.

i have a bit of insight to this. My mom is a church goer, and my dad is very cynical about religion. they made the agreement that Neither my sister or i would get dragged off to church, and my dad would keep more to himself until we were older. hence, they let us make up our own minds without pushing us one way or another.

my sister goes to a Nazerine college, but is almost as cynical about religion as I am. and i have no religion. however, neither of us are against people practicing religion, but rather we take a page from all religions, because they all have something good to say.

[MTbound]

In my family I think education was emphasized and the more you learn the more you question. My father never understood why 6 of his 7 children turned to atheism. He took everything as a matter of faith and did not understand that education led us (or at least me) to atheism.

[Padgett2]

Times change and the needs of the people change. People that lived through the bad times of the Depression years had nothing to look forward to except hard times and more hard times. Work from dawn to exhaustion. The rewards of God's heaven were the one and only thing that kept a lot of them going. Life was going to get better! Only believe and heaven, peace and rest would come for all eternity.

Now, very few people work that hard, or suffer want. There are agencies to help. It make a big difference. People of today look at what may be ahead diffently. They don't have any idea of going to bed hungry or doing without medical attention. Someone here and now takes care of them and makes things better. They don't have to hope for a future heaven for things to be better.