Went to Jesus camp and got assaulted by a counselor pretty badly, was harassed into keeping silent about it. Would rather not discuss it too much, I did have to go to the hospital. My faith died at that point and I was just going through the motions for years. I was planning on a theology degree of some sort but decided my heart wasn’t in it. Went for engineering instead. Hit a low point right before graduation and was really hoping to feel literally anything, felt nothing.
2018 sat down one night and decided that I was done pretending I was just lapsed, that I was being a coward. I was going to look at the evidence and see where it went. Been an atheist ever since.
If you mean a belief in a supreme being, I’ve been agnostic for most of my life, leaning towards atheism. That hasn’t changed.
Organized religion is a completely different thing, and in my opinion, comparable to nationalism. I’ve seen way too much inhumane shit being done to other humans in the name of some ideology or other, and I decided not to be part of it. No gods or kings, as far as loyalty goes.
Grew up Lutheran, with a mom who is very strong in her faith. Felt a connction my self for a while but always struggled with skepticism. Always dealt with self-image issues growing up, and the idea of sin turned much of that to into self-hatred. Sure, sins are forgiven, but you are still supposed to try and avoid them, but I always felt at odds with what I felt was just part of who I was (don’t really want to go into it, but not anything gender/orientation related).
Eventually, learned to love myself more, but this started the rift for me. The other thing is something I’ve always been unable to shake: of all the religions in this world, who is to say one is the “real” one? Everyone has their own image of what “God” is.
Much further reflection and family conflict later, that got expanded to the understanding that religion in general is just one of many ways we try to frame or understand things that are otherwise difficult to. Things like Purpose, Creation, our place in the grand vastness and chaos of the universe.
Nowadays, when it comes to spiritualism I align more to a sort of naturalistic pantheism. Instead of prayer, I meditate, and focus on celebrating life and wondering at the beauty of it all.
This got long and I’m not sure it makes much sense, but I tried. Not great at translating concepts/ideas into words.
I was teetering from logic for years, but I watched the towers fall on 9/11 and it finally pushed me over the edge. It there is a god and he allows this shit to happen, then he is wretched. It was a small shift from there to, no… there is no good, no god
I was a Christian until I was 18. One day I was reflecting on how Jihadist’s will blow themselves up because they’re totally convinced they’re right.
I asked myself if I would do the same, but ended up saying “I don’t believe that much”, which promoted me to ask myself “then why believe at all?”.
Since then I’ve totally deconverted and I’m now anti-theist. I resent that I was indoctrinated, and I see religion as the main culprit for most of the problems in the world.
I saw absolute human depravity growing up. In my early 20’s, I dived deep into spirituality. I found my answers on my own. Most importantly, that religion is poison. Poisonous to the whole world, and largely the cause for war, mass genocide, and to keep humanities progression crippled.
At 13 I realized one’s religion - and therefore whether they live in paradise or suffer for all eternity - depends almost entirely on the place of birth.
Why would God do it that way? There is only one correct religion and thousands of false ones? I would need to be very lucky to have been born into a culture that spoon fed me the one correct religion while discouraging all the others. What were the odds of me not going to hell?
From around 18 on it was religious people’s behavior and politics. Why do religion’s “morals” support irresponsible and hateful legislation?
Mid to late 20s I got into philosophy and realized “because God” is never the simplest answer.
Where did the universe come from? God made it of course.
But where did God come from? He was always there.
Then why couldn’t the universe just be the thing that was always there? Or at least the conditions that allowed for the universe to come into existence?
Adding God into the mix only complicates the answer and makes it less likely to be true compared to whatever our current best, simplest hypothesis is.
Youth group wanted to split out group into boys and girls, also by age, and start charging. I also actually read the damn book (I had 2 bibles ) found it dismal and hypocritical. That was the final nail in the coffin.
I was raised Methodist, but when I was maybe 7 or 8 I realized that I was only Methodist because I was raised Methodist and that if my parents were a different religion, I would have believed that instead.
It took me until my late teens to realize I was an athiest, but that was definitely the start.
Getting baptized. Before then, I felt no spiritual connection or “heard the voice of god” or anything. I understood that once I was baptized, I’d be one of god’s children and I assumed the holy stuff would kick in after that point. Funny thing though, nothing changed. No matter how hard I prayed or tried to believe, nothing was different.
I spent several years trying to find literally anything to show that any of it was real. But everything lead to the same dumbfounding dead end: you just have to have faith.
As I learned more about Christianity from a scholarly perspective, it became increasingly clear that it’s not real. The oldest book in the new testament wasn’t written until at least a hundred years after the events took place, meaning it was all disparate verbal stories for hundreds of years. The Council of Nicea later just decided to remove parts and add some new parts to the bible, justifying it by the council itself being divinely inspired to have arrived at the correct version of the bible.
It’s clear now that the rich and powerful have historically used religion as a tool to control and manipulate the masses. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s just an obvious scam that has no basis in reality. So for that reason, I’m out.
It was a slow process, but honestly the liturgy was boring and like out of touch. The narratives felt like they can’t really hold up to a contemporary audience.
That, on top of being very uninterested in being made feel guilty for random things. Sorry but I’m gonna continue masturbating and you insisting on guilt is not gonna make it stop, so what are we doing?
Finally, all the general nonsense and cognitive dissonance sealed the deal.
A mix of a generational gap and me coming out. I still like the parts about treating people and animals with respect, but the whole “restoring mana through a church building” parts and going to hell for loving someone just seems strange.
Add comment