How much does place of birth affect religious beliefs

[mognar]

As the title says, my question is how much does place of our birth and how our parents brought us up, affect our beliefs. I ask becouse I have met a few people who say that they are atheists becouse their parents are atheists, therefore they cannot become something else, becouse that is how they were brought up.

It doesn’t make much sense to me, becouse it basicly says that conversion is impossible. However, I was also raised atheist yet later I became catholic. Nevertheless, my country was predominantly catholic in the past, so I am thinking whether the conversion was really my choice, or if the fact that my surroundings are full of christian heritage (churches, crucifixes on every corner) somehow affected my choice of religion.

On the other side, we live in the age of internet, and we have an easy access to all kinds of information, therefore we are not somehow limited by our knowledge of religons, and I think we can literary choose any religion, no matter where we live.

What do you think ?

 

[Meemai]

As the title says, my question is how much does place of our birth and how our parents brought us up, affect our beliefs. I ask becouse I have met a few people who say that they are atheists becouse their parents are atheists, therefore they cannot become something else, becouse that is how they were brought up.

It doesn’t make much sense to me, becouse it basicly says that conversion is impossible. However, I was also raised atheist yet later I became catholic. Nevertheless, my country was predominantly catholic in the past, so I am thinking whether the conversion was really my choice, or if the fact that my surroundings are full of christian heritage (churches, crucifixes on every corner) somehow affected my choice of religion.

On the other side, we live in the age of internet, and we have an easy access to all kinds of information, therefore we are not somehow limited by our knowledge of religons, and I think we can literary choose any religion, no matter where we live.

What do you think ?

I have fiddled with buddhism, and try to use some parts of buddhism in christianity. Meditation etc, but as focus object God.

I have come from a catholic family, but my country is mainly protestant. I have taken a look at protestantism, but like catholcism more. Some reasons are that we do not use sola scriptura, and we have the saints which trough the holy ghost etc, have given us vast amounts of knowledge.

I have been atheist most of the time, and most people seem to become atheist, which is indifferent to birth-place. So I would say most people start out atheist in nowadays society and then start running to some religion. Who knows what one? I think the catholic church teaches though that some religions have bits of truth.

I wouldn’t be a muslim myself, because I think we cannot reach God by very strict living rules, God has to give us a hand which he did by well Jesus came to reach out his hand to us.

 

[TK421]

Your place of birth has an enormously large impact on what your religious beliefs will be. A person in a Muslim country that feels remorse over having lived a carefree, selfish lifestyle, will fall back to Islam in order to perform reparation and acquire peace with their Creator.

Conversion to other religions isn’t impossible but it is improbable. Most Muslims, for example, that convert to Christianity are in hotly contended spiritual battlefields, such as in Nigeria, where’s there’s a clash between the introductions of both Christianity and Islam. In somewhere like Saudi Arabia, this is much less common. The internet will do its part to help erode that some, but your influence from friends & family is much stronger than intangible voices online.

I think with each new decade, these cultural barriers will very gradually erode more and more away, and the world will becomes very porous in its ideology and in its religiosity.

 

[TK421]

Moreover, your religion itself might not be a very good indicator of what your overall ideology is like. An orthodox Catholic Nigerian will find very little brotherhood with a secular liberal nominal New Zealand Catholic that plays video games 40 hours a week and never goes to Mass. The Nigerian Catholic is likely to find more commonality with a Muslim in their own country.

 

[Crusaderbear]

nurture always rules where initial/baseline beliefs come in to play.
HOWEVER an open mind can go a long way to changing beliefs, you just need to accept you or your parents may have gotten it wrong!

Lucky for us that “thou shalt not make mistakes” never made the top ten!

 

[ClearWater]

Our place of birth GREATLY affects our religious choice.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

… I have met a few people who say that they are atheists becouse their parents are atheists, therefore they cannot become something else, becouse that is how they were brought up.

It doesn’t make much sense to me, becouse it basicly says that conversion is impossible. However, I was also raised atheist yet later I became catholic. Nevertheless, my country was predominantly catholic in the past, so I am thinking whether the conversion was really my choice, or if the fact that my surroundings are full of christian heritage (churches, crucifixes on every corner) somehow affected my choice of religion.

On the other side, we live in the age of internet, and we have an easy access to all kinds of information, therefore we are not somehow limited by our knowledge of religons, and I think we can literary choose any religion, no matter where we live. …

My grandparents on one side became Catholic (from non-conformist, with an Anglican phase) during WW I due to the serenity of a war widow neighbour. On the other side my Jewish grandmother, having become Anglican, married a foreign Catholic whom she knew because of WW I. None of them appear to have been much catechised. Neither of my parents was much catechised. I was scarcely catechised by the diocese I came from nor in my present one. The family had a number of friendly Protestant acquaintances.

God must have been at work in you because you must have seen God at work in people you knew. Scriptures describe the Church in this way. It is because I saw this that I kept coming back to churches both Protestant and Catholic after I grew up.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

It depends on the individual.

I think most of us have heard about how in the U.S. Catholics and nonCatholic Christians have been shrinking. Gee, how can that be? Until recently this was considered a Christian country. If we had millions of people growing up in a Christian country, in families that had been Christian for generations, then how is it possible that so many are currently rejecting those beliefs?

As for Muslim countries, yes indeed there is ‘peer pressure’ (or worse), and yet, people are rejecting that faith as well.

And there are, conversely, numbers of people raised as atheists who have rejected that and profess a ‘belief’ now. . .some Muslim, some Jewish, some Christian, some Buddhist. . . despite living in areas where their chosen faith numbers/peers are quite small.

You aren’t doomed by geography (especially considering that in the U.S. anyway, you are quite likely to move from your ‘place of birth’.)

And you aren’t doomed by parental choices.

If you’re a ‘lazy’ sort of person, or a very ‘conforming’ type, it might be harder to ‘change faith’, but it’s not impossible.

 

[mognar]

It depends on the individual

When I think about it, for me the fact that I was born in used-to-be-christian country did not really affect my choice of religion that much. Becouse Christianity was the last option for me, I was experimenting with all different kinds of religions. And I became Christian only becouse of some kind of private religious experience.

You aren’t doomed by geography

But, it seems a bit unfair, that some people actually never even had the option to know Christ. Simply becouse they never even heard about christianity.

Your place of birth has an enormously large impact on what your religious beliefs will be.

And If place of birth really affects religious belief that much, doesn’t it reduce christianity to a simply cultural thing ? Or should I see christians as some kind of chosen people ? (becouse not everybody has the option to become christian)

 

[TK421]

it seems a bit unfair, that some people actually never even had the option to know Christ. Simply becouse they never even heard about christianity.

Plato suffered a great deal with his yearning for truth, and his sadness over the injustice he saw around him, and in his entire life in ancient Greece, he never found what he wanted. He had to wait until after death to find truth & joy.

That is why we must never be presumptuous or ungrateful:

Luke 12:45-48
45 But if that slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and if he begins to beat the other slaves, men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk, 46 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know, and will cut him in pieces,[a] and put him with the unfaithful. 47 That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. 48 But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.

And If place of birth really affects religious belief that much, doesn’t it reduce christianity to a simply cultural thing ? Or should I see christians as some kind of chosen people ? (becouse not everybody has the option to become christian)

Christianity is a divine truth that is embraced and understood imperfectly by the human will. It is to some extent beyond culture, and also to some extent cultural, not because religion in itself is cultural, but because mankind’s limited faculties make it that way. We don’t have the power to grasp all of the explanations available to us, so we grab on to the one’s that we are familiar with in our lives. It is our human nature that makes religion a cultural thing.

Christianity isn’t even necessarily the “default” religion for the modern European. A European or Australian that isn’t atheist is just as likely to be a kind of lax neopagan as they are to be Christian. They believe in, for example, a lifeforce, and a spiritual connection to nature, and the possibility of life beyond death. It is an unorganized form of religion that demands either very little or nothing at all from the individual, and they can believe it entirely privately without causing any discomfort for themselves. It is possible that an atheist with rigid conviction is actually far more open to conversion to Christianity than one of these people are: it’s hard to say. Hardball atheists frequently make some of best Christians once they cross over, because even before they became Christian, they passionately appreciated the idea of holding to certain standards instead of being idealogically nebulous.

 

[tifischer]

As the title says, my question is how much does place of our birth and how our parents brought us up, affect our beliefs. I ask becouse I have met a few people who say that they are atheists becouse their parents are atheists, therefore they cannot become something else, becouse that is how they were brought up.

It doesn’t make much sense to me, becouse it basicly says that conversion is impossible. However, I was also raised atheist yet later I became catholic. Nevertheless, my country was predominantly catholic in the past, so I am thinking whether the conversion was really my choice, or if the fact that my surroundings are full of christian heritage (churches, crucifixes on every corner) somehow affected my choice of religion.

On the other side, we live in the age of internet, and we have an easy access to all kinds of information, therefore we are not somehow limited by our knowledge of religions, and I think we can literary choose any religion, no matter where we live.

What do you think ?

I was agnostic and not raised in a home with religion but God may convert people through His grace (God’s personal revelation to me). My ex-husband and brother were both raised in Christian homes but converted by their spouse. My sister was like me agnostic converted to Christian. It can happen. Pray for the person. They may either be taught by another Christian or by God’s grace that He is real (most people learn from other people than their parents at some point in their life so it is not unthinkable).

 

[CRATUS]

As the title says, my question is how much does place of our birth and how our parents brought us up, affect our beliefs. I ask becouse I have met a few people who say that they are atheists becouse their parents are atheists, therefore they cannot become something else, becouse that is how they were brought up.

It doesn’t make much sense to me, becouse it basicly says that conversion is impossible. However, I was also raised atheist yet later I became catholic. Nevertheless, my country was predominantly catholic in the past, so I am thinking whether the conversion was really my choice, or if the fact that my surroundings are full of christian heritage (churches, crucifixes on every corner) somehow affected my choice of religion.

On the other side, we live in the age of internet, and we have an easy access to all kinds of information, therefore we are not somehow limited by our knowledge of religons, and I think we can literary choose any religion, no matter where we live.

What do you think ?

If I were born in Saudi Arabia, most likely would be Muslim. If you are raised a certain way, you just look at the world differently. Conversion is always possible, but your background does influence you view religion.

 

[987mk]

It is almost entirely dependent upon where you are born and who raises you.

If no one tells you about or exposes you to Christianity, you can’t exactly become a Christian now can you?