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earilest skeptical memories

Three important stages

Event #1: When I was a kid, project Blue Book closed, announcing they didn't find anything that indicated UFOs were real. Suddenly there were way fewer UFOs being reported. Even I could see a connection: the less attention paid to them, the less people saw UFOs. It started me to thinking that just because something was widely believed, didn't mean it was true. But the real turning point came with...

Event #2: I briefly flirted with mysticism in my late teens -- so much so, that someone thought it was appropriate to buy me an astrology book for my birthday, one that predicted day-by-day what would happen to me. I looked though it, and sure enough, eveything the book foretold more or less came true. I actually got to the point where I'd read the book first thing in the morning and if it said it would be a good day to exercise (what day isn't?) I'd go for a walk. This went on for a couple of weeks or so, until I noticed the book was for the upcoming year! In a stroke I could see how easy it was to delude myself, and it had a profound impact on my thinking. The final crowning event that shaped my skepticism occurred with...

Event #3: The McMartin Preschool trial. I started out utterly convinced that these people were the worst scum of the Earth, and deserve the worst possible torture devised by humans. I eventually came to see the whole thing was a stupendous farce, and that the accused were in fact victims of an obscene matrix of credulity, ignorance, and evil. I saw how much damage woo thinking could cause, how prevelent it was, and how it must be fought at ever possible level. And it eventually led me to realize that there were a lot of other people like me out there, similarly outraged.
 
I started wondering about the existence of god etc, after seeing the IRA's Hyde Park bombings on the TV. I asked my dad (an atheist and sceptic) what had happened. He told me all about the IRA's campaign and about the struggles between catholics and protestants in Ireland. Wow, I thought, this is weird. Two groups of christians like me blowing each other up? Why would god let that happen. It started me thinking about the whole religion thing, I mean one gods people against another... fair enough, but two of lots of people who worship the same god... that just has to be wrong. So at 7 years old, I decided that it was pretty much a bunch of hooey. Think my dad was quite proud! (unlike my woo mother!)
 
gfunkusarelius said:
wow, that is AMAZING logic...we only use 10% of our brains, so anything that we percieve to conflict with the bible is due to our lack of capacity to utilize our brain. did god cauterize the enlightenment portion of our brains after adam's fall from grace?
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It is a common myth that we only use 10% of our brains. A myth that has persisted in spite of new knowledge about the brain.
 
I wish I could say that I rebelled against my preacher father, but I didn't.

My first skeptical moment (that I can remember) came when I was a little boy, reading about - surprise! - dinosaurs. All my books had the dinos dragging their tails around, and I couldn't understand how - callouses or no - the dinos didn't tear their tails apart on the rocky ground, or get backaches dragging them behind themselves. Wouldn't the tail slow you down? Wouldn't the constant friction make it hot, and give you blisters?

Never made sense to me.
 
I wish I had some "innocent child prevailing over stodgy Sunday-school teacher" reverse-glurge story (I was more concerned about not being yelled at for contradicting the authority figure - when I wasn't mad about having to waste 4 hours of my precious weekend being bored stupid).

No...my first skeptical memory was of those diaper commercials. Why was the p!ss always blue?! I thought they used some special fluid that would absorb better into the material (I think I just realized why I almost flunked chemistry). I know I was wrong now (it's blue because you can't show pee-pee and poopy on network TV), but that's my anti-climactic story all the same.
 
My earliest skeptical enquiry I remember was asking the local 'pastor' of the church how God could just 'be there' to create everything. It did not make sense that everything got created from something bar him. The answer at around age 7 did not seem adequate even then.

Add to that much skeptical analysis of world events 'if god is so nice, why is that allowed to happen' etc.

Hence im fairly bleak on religion.

I was a UFO nut when I was young too. LOVED it. Dabbled a bit with conspiracy theories (Stilchin, planet x etc, hollow earth theory etc) about 10 years back until I stumbled across David Icke circa 1999/2000 who being such a complete nutball made me re-evaluate everything I thought of when it came to CT's.
 
In Australia, even in public primary schools, children attend religious education once a week. At the age of seven, my class was forced to memorize a prayer. From an early age I had manners drummed into me by my family and I was quite shocked when "god" didn't answer my prayers. So I figured there was either no god or he was a rude SOB who would even reply to small children.

I wish that I had been as skeptical with some of the other BS I've been interested in. It was only since reading this site have I ruled out the possibilities of some of that crap.
 
I became a skeptic after being severely injured from being hit by a car while riding my bike. While I recovered quickly, I lost my hearing in my left ear. My parents are diehard Catholics and my mother, sensing my despondency over my accident, arranged to have me talk with the youth minister at our church. He asked me if it had felt like the hand of God was lifting me up, preventing me from being injured more than I was. Having just taken a physics class in high school, I told him no, it felt like gravity and Newton's Second Law. From that point on, I knew that supernatural explanations were worthless...

Since then, I've rejected religion, embraced skepticism and I try to approach each day with a sense of wonderment of all that nature holds...

As for my accident, they did have to tow the car that hit me. But that's not supernatural either, it was a piece of crap Mustang II. Just good ol' American engineering...
 
I'm sure it was a long process, but a few of the memories that stand out:

Being told in my first grade class at a religious school that we'd be skipping over the section on "cavemen" in our readers. -- "Why?" I thought, "those pictures look cool!"

Being told in a Bible class that Adam and Eve were giants and we, their descendents, had shrunk due to sin. -- Even at 8 years old I knew that had to be crap. I sinned all the time and was still growing.

Being told as a teenager that there were all sorts of satanic messages hidden on the reverse track of rock and roll records. -- I remember trying to play them backwards for myself and being irritated at not hearing anything.

Being told by religous relatives that people who worshiped on the wrong day of the week were going to hell. "Why in the world would 'God' care if otherwise believing Christians got together and prayed on a different day?"

Reading Inherit the Wind as a teenager and laughing at the courtroom dialogue.

Teachers in various Bible studies classes shutting down debates on biblical interpretation.
 
As a kid, I fell for pretty much every form of woo that existed. Astrology, lucky numbers... I even owned a rabbit's foot. I think my problem was that I had too much trust in adults -- I figured there was no way that adults would buy all this stuff if it wasn't real.

However, I do have two memories that sort of fit this thread:

1) Reading a "science facts" book in my school library that had a factoid to the effect that, in order to visit every home on Earth in one night, Santa would need to fly at many times the speed of light and spend something like a nanosecond at each house. That pretty much put the nail in that coffin for me. (Kudos to whoever wrote that thing, by the way -- it didn't explicitly say Santa wasn't real, it just presented the facts and let the reader draw his own conclusion.)

2) The end of a week-long Bible class during the summer. (My parents never really tried very hard to instill religion in us, so it's entirely possible the thing was my idea at the time.) It was like regular school in that all you really had to do was regurgitate what the teachers were telling you, so I was pretty "good" at it. I think the instructors decided that this must mean I was a very pious kid rather than just the dutiful student I was, because they were telling my parents and I on the last day all about their Sunday School program or some such thing that they were sure I'd love. I said something like "Well, I'd like to, but I have a very busy schedule," and my parents were both amused and embarassed at my blatant but surprisingly adult lie.
 
Come to think of it, the whole concept of original sin struck me as a goat-**** at an early age.
 
About the sin=shrinkage thing: Aren't people on average taller nowadays than they were a few centuries ago, and still getting taller, despite the televangelist cries that society's going down the tubes?
 
I was fairly skeptical at an early age, fueled by the lack of religious training by my parents (both Hindu, but keep/kept their beliefs private) and by voracious reading of fantasy novels. All the magic was obviously pretend.

For a while in middle adulthood, I believed a variety of unsubstantiated things. The activities of a very woo and controlling acquaintance allowed me to start jettisoning those beliefs. This board has been a wonderful resource.
 
When I was a pre-teen I loved comic books, and wanted to be a superhero. Unfortunately I didn't appear to have any super-powers. I wasn't a gifted athlete. I couldn't build technological marvels that defied physics. And I routinely got my butt kicked in every time I was involved in a fight. So I read most of the occult books in the public library. Things with titles like "Guide to Astral Projection" or "Telekinesis for Dummies". However, nothing in any of those books every seemed to work for me. I couldn't understand why someone was allowed to publish instruction manuals that obviously didn't work.

I ordered X-ray glasses, and hypnotic coins. They didn't work either. (Imagine my disappointment when I took the glasses apart and discovered the secret ingredient was a feather.)

Then I stumbled across the autobiography of Robert-Houdin. The part that impressed me the most was his trip to Algeria. He performed some of his standard tricks and convinced the audiences that French "magic" was more powerful than the "magic" of the Algerian fakirs. It jump-started my brain. If the Algerians had been deceived by magic tricks, then maybe I had been too. I became more and more skeptical from that point on.

I still read and enjoy comic-books.
 
Bikewer said:
Being a huge dinosaur fan, I immediately objected. "But Miss (insert name, I don't remember), what about all those skeletons!" "They must have been plant formations."

Even in 6th grade, I realized that was a lot of hooey.
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Bible camp, 5th grade or so, and they were teaching us some kind of young earth creation thing, and I said "What about dinosaurs?" and the answer was deeply unsatisfying. After everybody else had gone off to make lanyards, two counselors decided I was obviously in need of extra attention and attempted to explain that dinosaurs were were in the ground to test the faith of paleontologists, except for Leviathan, who got to make a cameo in Job.

I realized at that moment that I was being forced to choose between God and Stegasaurus. This is not a choice any child should have to make. I slunk out. God was, y'know, fine and all, but dinosaurs! I had books about them! With illustrations! The coolness factor of God compared to the coolness of dinosaurs...no, He just didn't compare. Possibly if I had had a stuffed plush God I slept with at night, He'd have been in the running, but Steggy was my stalwart ally against monsters under the bed, and made a good pillow, too. God was just not gonna be able to compete with that.

My mother discovered this later and was furious, and informed me that it was an absolute load of crap and there was no reason that dinosaurs were incompatible with Christianity. So I didn't quite lose my faith there--it took a few years--but that was the first time I can pin down an adult telling me something seriously silly like that and me thinking "...no, I'm not going to believe this."
 
I've been a skeptic from an early age. I can't remember ever believing in Santa Claus. I'm sure I did at one time but I must have figured out pretty early that it was just mom & dad putting the presents under the tree.

When I was 5 my parents gave me a book about dinosaurs (which I still have 36 years later.:) ) I think that had a big influence on me. It warded off any belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis (though neither of my parents were creationists.) Astronomy was another favorite subject as a child. Knowing how big and old the universe was made it difficult to believe in a god that was only concerned with one planet around an ordinary star.

[OT] Does anyone here remember those plastic kits from the early '70s called 'Prehistoric Scenes?' I had nearly every one of those. I recently stumbled onto some on eBay. If you're not familiar with them, here are a few...
Saber-tooth tiger
Triceratops
Cro-Magnon Woman

Steve S
 
BronzeDog said:
About the sin=shrinkage thing: Aren't people on average taller nowadays than they were a few centuries ago...?
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Nope. We're shrinking. I heard it on Coast to Coast. Stephen Quayle has a book we can all buy on giants, and he knows about giants - whole tribes of them - between 8-10 feet tall, living in Micronesia and the jungles of the Yucatan.

Come on, do some "real" research. Don't let physical evidence planted by the Illuminati fool you!:D
 
My first sceptical memory:
I was about five-six years old and had done something bad (I do not remember what it was unfortunately) and I new that there should be trouble with Boss Mother. So what could a desperate, crying little child do?
:idea: Pray to God seemed like a good idea at the moment, so I did that...
Mom found out what I had done and sent me to bed early as a punishment.
Needless to say, I was really dissapointed at God and his poor assistance :mad:
 
As a youngster, before I was homeschooled, I attended private Christian schools. One school was attached to a church called Grace Fellowship. It's one of those "mega-churches" here in Tulsa (we have several). It falls into that catagory we call "Charismatic".

During one sermon, Pastor Yandian told the audience that the worst question we can ask God is "why". To ask God "why" would demonstrate a lack of faith. It is lack of faith that prevents Christians from experiencing miracles. *Everything* depends on faith. God, in his great benevolence, has already granted all of our prayer requests... in the spirit world. It is our faith that brings the miracles to pass in the physical world. But asking "why" is expressing doubt. And doubt is the opposite of faith.

This frustrated me. I can't ask "why"? I was always instinctively curious about the how the world works. I wanted to understand why things happen, and why people make the decisions that they do. And if God wanted to me do something, I wanted to know WHY!

I had another problem with our pastor's sermon. If you get right down to brass tacks, God wasn't telling us anything. Our preachers were telling us what to do, based on their interpretations of the Bible. So he wasn't telling us not to question God. He was telling us not to question HIM.

This event still bothers me. I have the same feeling any time someone gets upset with me for looking deeply into a subject. I know I have to make some assumptions in order to function in this world, but I would feel rather silly believing in assumptions that are wrong. The only way I know is to ask "why", and to examine the evidence thoroughly and fairly.
 
When I was a kid I used to be a big UFO nut and believed just about everything I read. (including Von Daniken) Whenever my mother took me on a grocery shoping expedition, I would hound my mother into buying me the latest issue of whatever UFO magazine was around. In one particular issue I saw "ALIEN DISSECTION TABLE UNCOVERED" and I quick turned to the page and was dissapointed in discovering that the "alien diessection table" was in fact the Russian Lunokhod lunar rover. That event pretty much sent me on the path of skepticisim. I thought that if the author of that article was making up the the whole shmear, well then, what about everything else I read about?
 
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