RET Reflections

Many of us had childhood or family influences which tried to perpetuate specific religious beliefs upon our young developing minds.  And many of us found alternatives like humanism, agnosticism, or atheism which appealed to us in totally different ways.

Today’s meeting will allow each of us to reflect on our individual personal pasts to recall the following:

• List three specific beliefs/teachings from your previous religious indoctrination(s) which you found questionable, suspicious or incredulous which most affected your decision to abandon that religion.
• List three specific tenants of atheism, secular humanism, or rationalism which most appealed to you and have helped to shape your core values by which you live today.

This may seem like a tough assignment to some of you but just think back over your religious indoctrination, try to remember the parts you liked the least or found the most objectionable and why.  It may be difficult to come up with three, but I think most of have at least one big one which was our last straw in deciding to no longer affiliate with that (or any other) religion.

If each of us comes up with only one example from the two categories above, it should still prove to be an interesting group dialogue.