If you had been raised away from all religious influence, what would you believe?

That’s a difficult question to answer honestly because it hinges purely on speculation. The best I can say is that I was not raised to be religious. I was never given any religious instruction until was a teenager. I was raised to appreciate nature, fishing, hiking, camping, music and the exploration of my own mind. I was awed by the natural world, and I spent a lot of time in the woods. That is where I had my spiritual fulfillment. As a child, I had a very open mind and a belief that anything is possible.

Eventually I began having experiences that I could not explain and found my way to church. After a few years of that kind of religious instruction, I realized they did not have the answers either. I returned to nature, and my Muskogee Creek tribe’s ceremonial ground. I eventually went to earn my degree in anthropology. Today I am a very spiritual and rational person. I cling to reason and art. Science has been a useful tool for me, but it only accounts for a small portion of the universe. I subscribe to no particular religion, but I do have an affinity for eastern philosophy, Taoism and Buddhism. I’m still fascinated by the human mind and I still have a belief that nearly anything is possible.

"If the belief in God were natural, there would be no need to teach it.

Children would possess it as well as adults, the layman as the priest, the heathen as much as the missionary.

We don't have to teach the general elements of human nature--the five senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. They are universal; so would religion be if it were natural, but it is not.

On the contrary, it is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists, and were religion not inculcated into their minds they would remain so.

Even as it is, they are great skeptics, until made sensible of the potent weapon by which religion has ever been propagated, namely, fear--fear of the lash of public opinion here, and of a jealous, vindictive God hereafter.

No; there is no religion in human nature, nor human nature in religion.

It is purely artificial, the result of education, while atheism is natural, and, were the human mind not perverted and bewildered by the mysteries and follies of superstition, would be universal."

Ernestine Rose, in A Defense of Atheism, 1878

See that year again?

1878...

Atheism is NOT a new phenomenon...

~

That might be real. Jesus did say that folks who rejected Him as being the Son of Yahweh have been youngsters born of the satan. So is Jesus pronouncing a few men and women bloodline is going again to the satan fathering youngsters? Who might he have fathered youngsters with however Eve? Was Cain fathered through the satan and Abel and Seth fathered through Adam? If that used to be the case then each the Devil's and Yahweh's genes might were handed down in 2 separate bloodlines in the course of human historical past.

I imagine that since I knew already that I didn't believe in any deities at age four, had I not been raised in a religious culture that I wouldn't have given the idea of deities any thought at all.

Simple, have common sense. Everyone is born ignorant to Gods. Those born, are then brainwashed to believing there parents religion.

One could only wish a world so good... Imagine a world where people dont say "we, us, them", or doesnt have sexism, or racism. What a place. No separation whatsoever.

I'd prolly be religious. I despise alot

Of religious people cause my parents made them all seem like assholes (and alot of them make themselves that way too). But if it was never talked about never pushed never stereotyped. Id be religious.

I would pray and ask God to show me what to believe. I did that when I was young, and got the guidance and direction I needed. Try it for yourself.

I probably wouldn't believe in anything because I would have never learned it.

Anything you want to believe.

I'd be mediating and I'd be really happy and love everything and everyone