Parents

[wolfy-hound]

The fact is that a lot of people in this thread keep saying "Your parents are forcing religion on you!". That's untrue. You cannot force religion on anyone. You can force someone to go to church. You can force someone to hear you talk about Jesus. You cannot force them to embrace your belief system. Do you ONLY hang out with people who believe exactly the same stuff that you do? Got a friend who thinks a different video game is the best? A different music style? If so, you can hang out with people who have different religious beliefs too.

As far as "Oh, if they force you, you will hate it", that's bunk. Plenty of people resist doing plenty of things, but then come to like that activity. Plenty of kids go to school hating math and thinking math is useless, and go on to become scientists and doctors that use math every day, and some even become mathematicians, purely because they love math.

The FACT is, no one can prove God/Jesus/Allah/FSM doesn't exist. So when anyone says "I know GOD doesn't exist.." they are expressing their opinion about their belief system(choosing not to believe in any god is still a belief system). So if YOU want people to respect YOUR right to not believe... you should allow OTHER PEOPLE to have their own beliefs. Yes, if someone else thinks blue is the best color, they are entitled to believe that. You have no right to force them to believe that red is the best color, no matter how strongly you feel that blue sucks.

I personally believe that most Christian beliefs are detrimental to society, right down to "praying for someone else". I think people waste their time and money devoting themselves to a religion. But I won't tell them they have no right to do it. They can't tell me I cannot spend my extra money on action figures, and I can't tell them they can't spend their extra money giving it to a church.