Hi, I'm George from Greece. Everyone in Greece are Christian Orthodox and so was my family but my parents were never strict in those matters. We did attend church and I did like it as a child. But everytime my parents wanted to teach me something or give me advice they never ended the sentence with the phrase "because God wants us to" or "because if you don't behave God will know"
From an early age I understood that what most people tended to do was in most cases not something I should adopt in my life and that's because I learned from my parents to be skeptic and raise doubts about something if I felt like it, off course not meaning that this doubt would always lead to a negative impression. Not a biased doubt that is.
So growing up I did like the idea of a superior being watching over me (and I still do) and I wanted to conform to the rules of my society (that includes religion). Despite my efforts, I saw that the "religious" people around me where not so religious as they claimed to be. I saw people attending church almost every day, fasting (that is not eating diary and meat some specific days if I'm correct about the word), occasionaly "preaching" people about what to do and what not, being judgemental on other's people's "sins" and "flaws" but in the end they proved to be even worse that the people they judged. Furthermore, apart from the inconsistencies of the Bible and my will to read it as an allegory (I think it is an allegory), the mediums of God (priests etc) and their practice of religion made me sick of religion and what it stands for these days. I'm grateful religion once existed but I think it's out of place in modern societies. In the end religion itself never evolved willingly so as to answer to modern needs and problems and since I do not want to live in the principles of a society 2000 years old then Christianism has almost nothing to say to me.
I want to stress that, that whatever moral values I have, I have them from my parents and little do I remember religion having anything to do with that. The fact is that off course my parents were raised in Christian families but my upbringing and experiences have taught me that people on their own can be moral if they want.
So as of the moment I guess I'm agnostic (simply because I want to believe in a God, although I wouldn't be surprised if evidence showed in the future that there could be no such thing). So, hello :)
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