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I am not. I was raised Catholic and I hated it. Church didn't make any sense to me; it actually sort of scared me to see tons of people standing up, sitting down, and saying all the same stuff it unision. It felt like a cult. I didn't like the idea that I'd been brought into this religion as a child without any choice. "You will go to church, you will do your sacraments, you will say prayers at night." But why?

A few times in my teen years, I made an effort to be involved in religious life, just to see if it would make any sort of positive difference in my life, and it never did. I think there are people who need religion in their lives because it makes them feel good, and there are people who don't. I just don't.

I now consider myself an atheist, but I'm not overly vocal about it. I just don't believe that there's any higher power so great that it deserves to be "worshipped." I hate the word "worship." I don't believe that everyone is living according to a "plan" that "god" has set out for them. You control your own life. Good and bad things happen to everyone, and they're not predetermined.

I don't think badly of people who are religious, but I do disagree with people who try to convert others -- my policy is to respect others' beliefs as long as they respect mine. I find the variety of religious and spiritual practices in the world very interesting and like to read about different religions. But actually practicing one just isn't for me.

FI is an atheist as well, and we are in agreement that we will raise our children without religion. We plan to be knowledgeable about various religions so we can explain other families' practices and beliefs to them if they ask. If they choose at any point in their lives to become involved in religion, that's fine. Whatever makes them happy, as long as they don't try to foist it on us.

This is something I really struggle with. I don't know what I am or what I believe. I was raised Catholic and found a lot of comfort in the Church for a long time. Eventually though, my brain could not swallow the things the Vatican came out with. Their comments on proven scientific things really bothered me. Eventually I left the Church. Not only did the rules and stances on things bother me, but so did the entire idea of God and creation. I am a very logical person and I believe things when I see facts and evidence and when things 'fit' together. The more and more I thought about religion (any religion) the more and more likely it seemed that it was created by people, not vice versa. That people in moments of solitude, hardship or trial, created a way to unload some of their burden. Prayer is definitely comforting, and most (especially me) people really turn to religion during the hardest of times. To me that signaled that this wasn't something that created the universe, but something that people created to help them through dark times.

I have a very hard time believing that there is an omnipotent spirit somewhere that created us all, knows us all, and can hear every prayer we utter and loves us all. I especially have a hard time believing that if a loving God existed, he would have allowed so many wars to be fought in his name.

I think I might be a hopeful agnostic or maybe a cautious atheist. If there is a god(s), I think it's something that we all come to on our own and the name of the religion really doesn't matter at all. This was proven to me by seeing scripture from the dead sea scrolls...and how much the text of the bible has been altered. We really have no idea what the original text said, so I'm cautious to believe the interpretations of church leaders who also tell us that condoms spread AIDS. In many ways, I wish I were not quite so analytical but I am. I guess I think that if there is a god, no one religion is right because no one even knows what any of the religions started out like because the scripture was all altered over the centuries. Sometimes for political reasons, sometimes to surpress the idea that women were once priests. Even the Koran, which is only translated verbatim in Arabic isn't foolproof, since the first two-thirds are comprised of the Old Testament (Torah) and New Testament (Bible) and those texts were altered constantly before Islam came into being. So, without a firm, founding text in which everyone believes and follows everything,  I cannot reconcile myself with any one religion or any one practice or any one belief.

Sorry this is rather lengthy. As you can tell, I internally debate this all the time. I choose to live my life simply in an effort to be a good person. I try not to judge people for things like their beliefs or their values. I don't think it's right to tell people what to do. I try to treat people like I prefer to be treated and I recognize that everyone has their own problems and sometimes people need a little help. I think and hope this is the most I can do and if a dollar or a can of soup can help someone, I'm all for it. I probably won't pray for you though, although I may send good thoughts your way.

I was not raised in any religion although I guess you could say we were generically Christian in that we had a Christmas tree, were visted by the Easter bunny, etc. Of course now that I am grown I realize that those things don't really have anything to do with Christianity.

When I was in college I started to become very intellectually curious. I love philosophy and deep, critical thinking and I really didn't have anyone to talk to about these things. My friends always thought it was weird to talk about stuff like that. I was in a strange place because I felt like a lot of the cultural assumptions about sex and life were starting to ring false to me. My friends were all pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, enthusiastic users of birth control, and they were great people. But I could tell they really didn't know WHY they believed these things. They just kind of thought that way because that is how "everyone" thought.

I was really confused because I felt like I had two choices: socially liberal agnostic/atheist or doctrinaire Biblical fundamentalist. I didn't fit in anywhere. Neither group seemed intellectually vigorous although the agonstics had a veneer of learning, which somehow came off worse than the Bible-thumpers who at least accepted that they were turning their brains off. You know?

I was always being told "one day science will be able to explain everything," and I would reply "yes but what about WHY everything?" and I would get looked at like a two-headed monster.

After a lot of work, my junior year of college I was confirmed in the Catholic Church. Catholicism is so intellectually rich and deep, I think I could spend a lifetime studying all the brilliant works produced over the last thousand years (and more being created right now)! The approach to sexual ethics (and ethics in general, really) is very counter-cultural and I LOVE that. In the 21st century you can't be an orthodox Catholic without having really thought it out. It's not the default position anymore - maybe back in the 1700s, but nowadays soft minds go elsewhere - the social pressure is in the opposite direction.

And what I love most of all is that the Church continues to challenge me and make me grow. Catholicism totally blows up any political or ideological category. The Pope sounds like President Obama when he talks about economics - he is pro-worker, pro-union, pro-redistribution of wealth. He's against the death penalty, war,  and in favor of the environmental movement. But the Church is also pro-life, against the redefinition of marriage, and against pre-marital sex, no-fault divorce, contraception, IVF. One ultra-conservative friend told me she "hated" the Church because the Church is pro-immigrant. To me, when an institution manages to piss off conservatives AND liberals, it must be doing something right! Right now I am going to Mass at a church where the pastor preaches against the death penalty pretty frequently, because I've determined that's the message I need to hear/have my heart softened on most right now.

  As a child I didn't attend church. Once I got older we attended and Evangelical church. Even though I loved that church and the sermons I felt in a way it was very judgmental. At 19, pregnant and not married I had an overwhelming amount of support from our church and even from our own Pastor, I still felt like the elephant in the room.

 It was very important for me to get married in that church. It was where I met my husband and where we spent many sundays together while we were dating. Once we got married we didn't attend as much. I felt as though you don't need a strong chruch connection to have a strong connection to God. Sure, if you find a church your comfortable with and like very much then I say go ahead and devote yourself to it. If not then so be it.

 To me, picking a religion is a simple as picking out a car. You have your favorite makers, and from there you pick your favorite brand. You pick what makes you feel safest and most comfortable. In the end though we are all drivng down the road trying to get to one destination. Just in a million different types of cars.

I am religious because I have felt the Holy Spirit, and it led me accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior. 

I guess I'm non religious or not interested in organized religion.  I'm not really atheist, because I believe in God...not sure what that would be.

But basically I was raised Catholic.  I think my parents only took me and my sister to church because it was the "right" thing to do.  We went to church, summer church camp, sunday school all that until 6th grade.  In 6th grade I got confirmation, and we never went to church again after that!  I guess they felt I reached the end. 

Needless to say I remember as a child always hating church.  I would always question the teachers in sunday school and ask them, "how do you know that?"  I never liked the answer I got (because it's in the bible!) and it caused a lot of doubt for me at an early age.  In 11th grade I met my now FI and he was Episcopalian, so I decided I wanted to give religion a try again, and we went to his family's church for a while.  I felt much more connected to that than Catholic church...I guess because I considered it to be "Catholic Light" like Robin Williams says. It wasn't a place where there was a lot of guilt, like I felt with Catholicism.

Anyway, I went a couple times a month for about a year and then his parents had a falling out and decided to switch to another church (Anglican).  I fundamentally disagree with the things that this Anglican church stands for so we don't go there, and we don't go to the Episcopal church because my FI decided he was Atheist after studying science in college.  I really couldn't care either way because I dont' feel any NEED to go to church.

Well....that was long, but thats what religion is for me.

I am very religious, very very spiritual, and my career as a scientist has actually solidified my faith more than anything else in my life.

Now that my husband and I are married, I am ramping up my outward displays of my faith (I kept it very private before) within my home so that he can participate, because it's nice to have someone else on the same page as you around. There are no churches for my faith, and the community exists but I haven't been very involved in it lately so no one I personally know.

Our wedding ceremony was a "coming out" of sorts to our family members and their friends - OUR friends knew what we were about but it came as a surprise to everyone else because we are private. We felt very loved when most everyone told us it was sincerely the most meaningful ceremony they had ever seen.

Now that I have my husband and his father, who shares our faith, we are trying to build our own little community in faith together, so this is my primary motivation these days for being more faithful - giving them a place as well to be themselves spiritually. We were all isolated before, but now we get together on the religious holidays and celebrate as a family. :)

I didn't grow up in this faith, but I am much happier now because I celebrate and worship out of true desire and not obligation. Same for DH and FIL. And since our family will only get bigger, we are THRILLED to establish traditions.

If I had to "label" myself, I'd say I'm an agnostic Jew...if I can do that.  Well, I guess I can, why not. :-) 

I was raised in a Jewish household with one parent who was pretty religious (my dad having grown up in a very Jewish household), and another who sort of went along with it (my mom is Jewish, but it wasn't a big deal for her growing up).  I went to Hebrew school, had a bat mitzvah, went to continuing Jewish education for a few more years (until I managed to convince my parents to let me stop), and that's sort of where it dropped off. 

I was lucky (in my mind) that the synagogue I grew up in was very open and very respectful--the rabbi conducted same sex unions, prayers were slightly altered in their language to be more egalitarian, and there was definitely a sense of balance that I think reflects my current belief system (and probably why I still have a connection to Judaism).

I have to say that I've become a Jew who goes to services on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and that's about it.  That being said, I do still strongly identify as Jewish, though it may be more of a cultural identification than connection with the ideologicial ideas.  I think Judaism is a funny religion, in that it's not just theology, it is a whole culture that the religious ideology is rooted in.  To me, it feels like one of the only religions that I think you can identify with and still call yourself an athiest because the non-religious aspect has such a strength to it.

As far as the idea of "God" and a higher power, I don't think I believe in the traditional "God" as is written in the Torah and spoken of in prayers.  Honestly, in reading English translation, part of me gets a bit ehh when I read what I perceive as a high level of submissiveness.  (And that may be why I don't feel as strong a connection to the religion itself).  I do believe that something must exists, and I definitely have a strong connection and reliance on ideas of fate, things happening for a reason, etc, which I guess ties into an idea of a higher power of some sort.  But I do like that to exist in a way that still allows me to be equal...I don't like idea of having to give myself over and have no control over my actions. 

This may have ended up longer than intentioned...sorry about that.  Just wanted to add my two cents.  :-)  And I appreciate reading about everyone elses' experiences, and REALLY appreciate the acceptance that seems to be happening on this board, especially with a topic as potentially controversial as religion.