Prior to the age of 6, I had never heard of god or church. Then I went to 1st grade where I found that all of my classmates went to church. I started going to Sunday school at the local Methodist church. I was thrilled because a few of my friends went there AND we got to color. It's kind of ironic that the first time I questioned god was at this very same place.
We were learning about the creation story - Adam & Eve & that damn talking snake. Of course, we were coloring pictures of them & the Garden of Eden while we learned about them. I was puzzled because I thought that cave men were the first humans, and Adam & Eve in the picture did not look like cave men. They looked like modern humans, only naked. So I asked the teacher why, if Adam & Eve were the first people, then why weren't they cave people, because they were the first people. The teacher looked flustered and told me that Adam & Eve were NOT cave people, and that they were definitely the first humans; cave people came later. Although my 6 or 7 year old brain did not fully understand evolution at the time, I remembered from looking through the encyclopedias at my grandma's house the picture of primates gradually becoming more human like until they became modern man. I was thoroughly confused and flustered, but being the shy kid that I was (and wanting desperately to fit in) I kept this thought to myself.
The thought that Adam & Eve must have been neanderthals haunted me for quite some time. Eventually that turned into the thought that the creation story was a bunch of BS, but that's a story for another time.
When/what was your first skeptical thought? When was the first time you questioned religion?
<3 M
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