I wasn't really raised into religion - my mom was a believer (Honestly not sure if she still is, I've picked up hints that may have changed), but she never once went to or brought me to church, we never talked about religion, etc. I think she got enough of that stuff when she was a kid.

I do like to go all-out on decorating for Christmas - just last year I spent a whole lot of time setting up and coding my own tree full of individually addressable RGB LEDs, in addition to all the other decorating on the interior of the place.

Despite that I still love saying "Happy Holidays" to anyone who gets bothered by that phrase. 😁

Was raised atheist.

I still use common colloquialisms without paying much mind to them. "thank God, oh my god, Jesus christ" etc. Kinda hard to get rid of those, but it's no biggie, really.

What I will say, is that while I do identify as an atheist in the sense of not believing in established religions or cults, I do consider that I am able to believe in more than what reality presents. I've always said I'm an agnostic atheist, but as of late, I've been feeling like it's rather OK and even necessary to wonder about reality and existence a lot more than what science allows itself to. For example, if you take even a moment to ponder about what physics and the quantum realm means about reality, you'll feel like something else is definitely going on, like we're obviously not seeing the full picture and there's a good chance we never will, and that the picture were missing is unparalleled in its majesty. To just think that we seem to be just a combination of countless fields fluctuating together to form reality, but at the end of the day you could just say we're the expression of different waves going through different mediums juxtaposed on each other. A combination of planes crashing in on each other in a multidimensional membrane, a universe that could be just one possibility out of a mostly dead multiverse, where even our universe seems to be mostly dead, yet here we stand. It's hard to wrap your mind around it, or even begin to grasp it all. Definitely makes you feel like there's more to it than just chance, hell, chance sounds like an implausible explanation for all of this.

I think I mostly take issue with "matter of fact" stances, where people will claim things are a specific way because their faith or textbook says so. No. Just, experience life, question it, question your beliefs, but also question life itself, don't settle for just "big bang and chance and meaninglessness" as science is just a tool, don't settle for just "God willed it all and demands these things of us", we're not here for that long, let's ponder on it all while we can, and enjoy the life that were lucky (or unlucky) to be able to experience for one moment in eternity of nothingness, or an eternity of eternities of different existences. Who knows what were doing here, where we go from here, where do we come from? It's ok to acknowledge that the answer to those questions is "nobody on this earth knows, and maybe we'll never know". Let's cope together, let's smile together, let's live and ponder together.

Not a goddamn thing. If I needed religion to tell me how to live, I'd be completely amoral and depraved. I simply treat others as I wish to be treated and live life trying not to negatively impact anyone else.

Some of the philosophy has stuck with me and I take a keen interest in the social and anthropological aspects of religion, but I've had such a consistently bad experience with American Christianity (particularly online) that I just can't really trust anyone enough to even think about partaking in any of them anymore.

I'd rather just improvise anyhow.