I was born in China, I remember very early on, I was taught the concept of 命運 (fate), 投胎 (reincarnation), 上天 (the heavens) 睇住你 (are watching you), and 報應 (karma)… lot of that stuff.

My mom told me that if I “waste food”, i’d 畀雷公劈 (get stuck by lightning by the “god of thunder”; or some bullshit like that)

A lot of Chinese drama has those spiritual themes

One time I was like: “so what religion are we?”

Then my mom was like 道教 (Taoism), but I was so confused like I thought it was 佛教 (Buddhism)?

So idk what ever the fuck their “religion” is?

My mom always said “唔可以全信但唔可以唔信” (you can’t believe it all, but you also can’t no believe any)

And she also told me the story about the tale of man that was “waiting for god to save him” when it was flooding" and said that guy was stupid

I used to believe in Santa, then I found out my uncle was the “Santa”, so yea I just stopped believing. I used to believe in ghosts cuz all the Chinese ghost stories in media, but then I stopped believing.

I read a lot of Western Atheism stuff… Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins… so I believed less and less…

I still sort of hang on to the reincarnation thing as a sort of copism, well not the karma stuff, but more as in “matter cannot be created or destroyed” so it must be recycled, that sort of way…

We weren’t able to see atoms for a long time, maybe there’s a “soul” that we cannot yet measure? (I know atheists are gonna say I’m being silly xD)

Like the “fate” thing is just so bizzare. I wasn’t supposed to be born as a second child during One Child Policy, so I feel like “maybe ‘god’ intervened and saved me?”. So bizzare, I wasn’t even supposed to exist.

edit: typos