Australian Atheists Forum

I've been an atheist almost all my life. My parents were not churchgoers, although they would have described themselves as Christian (Church of England for my mother, probably Methodist for my father). So my first active contact with religion was when I started school. (In UK schools the day started by law with a school assembly of a reglious nature, and religious education classes were compulsory unless your parents opted you out.) I accepted this in a very passive way, but by the age of nine or ten I had stopped believing. Two of the factors that contributed to this were: receiving a book of Greek myths for my eighth birthday and going to the Scripture Union after school club where the session ended with a serial story about missionaries in Japan. These made me aware that Christianity was not the "universal truth" it was made out to be.

So I continued through school resenting the school assembly and RE lessons, until my 18th birthday when I wrote a letter to the headmistress stating that I would no longer attend the assembly. A few of my friends became "born again" and one told me how sorrow she was for me, because although I was a good person, I was destined for Hell because I didn't believe.

University was relatively religion free - I was occasionally invited to go to church, but didn't lose any friends by declining. I then became a primary school teacher, and opted out of teaching RE (this was my right, legally, but probably was not seen favourably by the headmaster). After eight years teaching I switched to a career in IT.

I migrated to Australia in 2002, and was disappointed to find that in this supposedly secular country, religion penetrated more into everyday life than in the UK with its state established church, where religious schools are less common, especially in the private sector, and I had never cpme across a religious hospital.

I retired at the end of 2020, and now spend my spare time gardening, walking, singing, and solving cryptic crosswords.

I had The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends by Ann Terry White when I was about 9, as well as a big thick book of illustrated bible stories and I really enjoyed both of them. I can't remember how I first got the idea that the latter might also be a book of myths and legends even though people insisted they were true, but I remember giving it some thought even in those early days.

I was incredibly thick, for what was supposed to be a bright kid: I started reading early, and Greek/Roman myths were part of what I took in before third grade.

The idea that "zero" was a religious choice didn't occur to me till after my teens, though.

Duh.