Growing Up in a Religiously Divided Home

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rowing up in a religiously divided environment has been a blessing. My mother, raised Protestant her entire life, wanted me to be exposed to her religion from a young age. My father, an atheist, had no objections to her wishes as long as I was brought up to be open-minded and think for myself. However, the views of my parents differed from those of others in my town. In my hometown, the prominent religions were Judaism and Christianity. If your family was Jewish, you went to Temple, and if your family was Christian, you went to Sunday School. Thanks to my mother, I went to St. Paul’s Lutheran pre-school, where I got my daily dosage of God. At the age of five, I was ready to enter elementary school as a hardened Christian who loved church and took personal offense when my friends questioned God’s existence.

When I reached fifth grade, my perspective started to change. School was boring me, I had no homework, and sports were not a large part of my life. I did not spend my free time after school playing video games or watching movies, but rather, I filled my hours with astronomy. After a trip to the observatory with my dad one night, I decided I wanted to learn as much as a ten year old could about space. I spent my afternoons and evenings watching documentaries about black holes and other planets. After a few months, I came to the realization that we do not need God and religion for our world to exist. Science had all the answers to the history of the universe, none of which involved a higher power. From that point until this past year I identified as an atheist. Now, I call myself an agnostic, and for good reason. The journey I have had with my views on religion has made me into a critical thinker who has come to the conclusion that I will never be able to call myself a believer or disbeliever for the rest of my life.

Part of my logic for not choosing sides when it comes to God is because of my 9th grade physics class. If I were to analyze the existence of God, or lack thereof, using the scientific method, which is the most reliable way of testing hypotheses, no opinion would be viable. Mere faith and scripture is not concrete evidence for God. Yet we can never disprove God because no discovery or experiment will outrule the possibility of a symbiotic relationship between science and a higher power.

I would never insist that someone abandon their faith if the religion they practice aligns with their true beliefs. But I have seen too many cases of people identifying with, or even living by, a religion and God that they only believe in because of their family and community. I hold thinking independently at a very high value, as many at Exeter do. And I believe that if you find yourself in the predicament of being raised with a religion you do not completely buy, searching for what does resonate with you can be the first step to being yourself. The likelihood that over 50 percent of the global population believe in two faiths, Christianity at 31.5 percent and Islam at 23.2 percent, is slim. Questioning how you have been raised as I did can reap great benefits and is a way to teach yourself to be a more individualistic person.