Pastafarian. I've preferred alfredo to marinara ever since I was a kid and loved pirates. I just knew that my colander had a sacred use: as a hat!

None. I was raised Lutheran and it never really was important to me, just something I was forced to do. I sorta liked the singing and community aspects, but by high school I was done with it. I try not to be a reddit atheist though, I honestly respect anyone whose religion brings them to similar moral conclusions as my own. There is plenty in the christian bible to get you there, helping the poor and the sick, giving up material wealth and living in common, but in america the vast majority of christians do not follow the teachings of jesus in any meaningful way, so I'm not too broken up about no longer being christian, and even the highly progressive churches have often been pretty culty in my and my friends' experience.

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Reformed Christian. I was raised in a Christian family, and always believed in the basic concepts of God, heaven, hell, etc. But I mistakenly thought Christianity was about trying to be "good enough" for God until my mid teens. Around this time I realised that I couldn't be perfect, which was super distressing for a time. But then I read Ephesians 2:8-9 which says:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

This was a big relief, as it meant that I didn't need to rely on trying to be good enough for God. I just needed to accept God's free gift of salvation. That's the moment I would say I became a Christian.

Since then, I've had times where I've questioned it all, but I always come back to the resurrection of Jesus. I find the non-miraculous explanations of the resurrection account to be so implausible that it makes more sense to accept that it's a historical fact. And if the resurrection's true, then it makes sense to believe the rest of it as well.

Buddhism. I first learned about it when someone was discussing whether it's a religion or a way of life. They specifically mentioned that it doesn't necessarily prevent you from being Christian (which I was) at the same time.

3 years later and I disagree with that statement, to a certain extent. You could choose to ignore the "supernatural" parts of Buddhism and just learn from the lessons. But I think the more you learn, the more it just kinda makes sense.

For instance, buddhist believe in "re-incarnation" but there's a lot of debate about what that is. I prefer death and rebirth. Which I interpret as: I'm a different person than I was 10 years ago. The old me died and was reborn as what I am now.

Other things that I like about it: it is encouraged that you have skeptisicm about what you learn. I'm fact, you shouldn't just accept it because without questioning what your being told, you can not come to a true understanding and belief. The lessons all revolve around how to be a better person. How to achieve nirvana through your thoughts, actions, views, etc. Many of the principles were first introduced when buddha was alive 2500 years ago. Today, psychology studies have shown that many of them really do have long lasting, extremely beneficial effects. Think meditation and mindfulness (not necessarily invented by Buddhism, but popularized by it)

For me it really resonates. A lot of the things I care about are discussed. From mental health to treating life with respect to the environment to forgiveness. I also don't find much hipocracy.

Some sort of humanist atheism/existentialism? I guess...

As a teenager and young adult, I used to be very interested in cosmology and astrophysics, to the point I wanted to study it at uni. The vastness of the world and existence seemed like a beautiful enigma. I was also always interested in philosophy, which ended up more lasting than my interest in physics.

After growing older, the vastness of nature and existence seemed more and more haunting than beautiful. If there was something like a God, it had to be a mad idiot god. I actually kind of sympathised with Gnosticism and similar thoughts for a while, but I could not believe in a metaphysical, perfect entity waiting even further behind everything. I could not believe in some sort of salvation, that could just come to us by giving up on materiality. It seemed like an empty self-delusion. Similarly, I respect Buddhism a lot, and think there is a lot of good ideas within it, but it's ultimate life-nonaffirming philosophies and focus on avoidance of suffering did not resonate with me.

Looking at the history of our planet, our universe, and humanity, it seemed clear to me, that existence just stumbles along. We are a "mistake" in a vastness of empty, dumb, boring clouds of hydrogen and dust, nuclear furnaces and holes in reality, devoid of meaning. Life felt more and more to me, like a great rebellion against a vast, seemingly all-encompassing nothingness. No aliens in sight either, that could relieve us of our burden. Just humanity, as the one lifeform so far known to us, that at least has the potential to not fall into the traps of self-annihilation and lifelessnes that permeates our past and present. Just humanity with the responsibility of getting our shit together or life eventually being just reincorporated into the vast, dumb nothing of the "idiot god", so to speak.

All the mistakes of humans felt to me more and more like just extensions of the same stupidity that is also manifest in all of nature. And our struggle against it, feels like a sort of "sacred duty". Those loaded words to illustrate, that I'd think of myself as actually having strong faith in a weird way, even though it is not rooted in the supernatural as such.

It's also evident to me, this faith has at least partially persisted for me as an anchor for myself. I have not been suicidal ever since I felt that way, even though for most of my life I have been struggling with trauma and a variety of mental health disorders, and have been suicidal before. I could not think of that anymore, suffering seemed almost meaningless to me, now, and it feels better to endure it than to give in to the vast nothingness without a fight, without trying to create as much good as possible in this small contingent miracle that is life, that has been brought forth by so much struggle and so many seemingly impossible coincidences, chance and "mistakes".

I have a big aversion against beliefs that put faith into higher powers, be it nature or God or some sort of transdimensional aliens or whatever. I try to analyse beliefs like that not with disdain, though, but as results of how we are caught in the world we are, in our circumstances, and how life itself has had to "trick" existence itself into allowing life to exist, by follwing its rules but also emergently transcending them, creating something new from it, that is more than the sum of its parts.

Politically and philosophically it lead me to Marxism and Hegel respectively. Marxism with it's focus on changing our material foundations and dynamics, in order for us to be able to develop our humanity and be able to act more rational in the grand scheme lends itself well to it. Hegel, with looking at the development of ideas and humanity dialectically, developing something until it reaches the limit of its own contradictions also appealed to me.

Sorry for the wall of text, the question caught me in a somber mood and caused me to monologue.

Atheist.

No arguments that I've heard for the existence of a deity have met their burden of proof. For some of these deities (the Abrahamic god, gods of most eastern religions, Zeus, Xenu), I actively assert they do not exist, while for others (e.g. a deistic god) I can't honestly claim they don't exist due to the lack of falsifiable claims involved, but I still don't believe claims that they do exist.

Atheist, thought a lot about it.

I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I was born into, but as I grew, I had to know for myself it was true or not. I did a lot of praying and reading, and one day received an answer to my prayers. In this case, the best I can describe is a flow of light and knowledge, and a confirmation to my Spirit that it was true.

From then on I've had more experiences, but that was the start, and that is why I continue on the path I'm on.