It was kind of a slow burn. Every time I heard a new argument against the existence of God, I’d repeat to myself, “Just because I can’t think of the answer doesn’t mean there isn’t one.” You can only say that so many times before it starts to feel like you’re being stubborn.
Probably the most compelling argument was, to me, the contradictory nature of an all-knowing God existing in the same reality as free will.
I decided I was an atheist (logically) a long time before I started to feel like an atheist (emotionally). What pushed me over the line there was when it was pointed out to me the sheer arrogance of looking out at the massive, incomprehensible scale of the universe and saying, “the creator of that really cares about me in particular.”
So now I say I’m an atheist, somewhere between gnostic and agnostic. I can’t rule out the existence of something that could be called God by someone’s definition, but I’m confident the abrahamic god, the one I grew up with, can’t exist.
There were just too many contradictions and the more I learned about science, especially physics, astronomy, and psychology, and the way the world works, I discovered that there is always a rational explanation for things, even if sometimes the knowledge necessary to comprehend something is not something I possess personally at the moment. People who would preach in my church would confidently claim things I knew to be fallacies, misleading, or straight up incorrect, not out of malice but their own ignorance as well, and I stopped trusting the words of religious leaders as I discovered they were as human as myself- their faith didn’t protect them from error or make them better people, and eventually I just couldn’t fall back on faith or ideology to be the bedrock of my moral or philosophical compass because it just wasn’t trustworthy.
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.
I grew up with very devout parents who raised me in a particularly conservative Calvinist Christian denomination, and I bought it all for years for a few reasons. For one, everyone I trusted seemed so utterly convinced by all these things I had been raised to see as fact. Also, the incredibly biased sources I was given for any questions portrayed anyone of different faiths or beliefs as deluded at best or evil at worst, which didn't really make their positions appealing.
I prided myself on faith, because when I ran into something that didn't make sense I'd be like "Wow, it sucks that that might make some people stumble, but I'm going to do my best to just trust God on this one."
The first cracks started to form when I started to realize the sources I trusted might not be trustworthy. Despite all the weird religious special pleading, I'd otherwise been taught decent critical thinking, and I started to see actual rebuttals to the religious apologetics I'd been raised on, rather than the pathetic strawmen conservative Christian writers had constructed, it made me question the apologetics and the writers I'd thought were upfront, honest, and wise.
Still, I held onto the thread of faith. This stuff had been absolutely drilled into me, I had been raised not to let anything shake that, and I was starting to discover I really didn't like the idea of losing my faith when that was the glue of my family and every other meaningful relationship in my life.
Any time I made friends (mostly online, some through college) who weren't within that big Christian bubble I'd been raised in and reinforced, myself, though, it raised this weird uncomfortable thought in the back of my head: "If friends, or really anyone end up suffering for all eternity for not having this religion, how exactly am I supposed to deal with that knowledge for eternity to make heaven the bliss it's supposed to be?" If this eternal soul of mine is perfectly able to be, like, transcendentally happy forever while knowing it's all on the backs of billions of people suffering for eternity, that soul isn't me anymore. In a weird way, the idea of heaven being something that would fundamentally make me something unrecognizable made the concept make a whole lot less sense.... Sooo I tried not to think about it.
This went on for a few years, concerns and doubts growing quietly, and this one day, someone was trying to talk to me about ghosts. He asked if I believed in ghosts in the first place and I said "No." and he was downright surprised because, you know, all these people say they've seen ghosts! He says he's seen ghosts! And, yeah, I don't find that compelling.
I went home and thought about that, then thought about the purported evidence for ghosts, then thought about the defenses various religions made for their beliefs, considered why I didn't buy them... Started to realize a parallel here- and then I buried that line of thinking. I was not okay losing my community. I was less and less certain I believed, but I still wanted to play the part so it would keep my faith going.
COVID happened, as did the BLM protests of 2020, and it suddenly became extremely clear that my community kind of fucking sucked. That popped the lid on my thoughts and I started to look in earnest at what I believed, and why other people with the same general beliefs could think that treating people as other people was optional.
Ultimately, I ended up in an epistemological situation. A number of the "facts" of the Bible were patently untrue, with the same sorts of errors I'd seen as gotchas against other religions. The arguments I'd seen for belief were much more obviously poorly formulated when I compared them to near-identical arguments for other religions. I realized my epistemology had a big fucking problem with it, and that problem was the belief in faith as indicative of truth. Oh, hey, look at that, people can and have believed every possible position on faith. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?
So I let it go. I let the faith go. I let the bad argumentation go. I let myself let go of the morally absurd positions I'd been boxed into by a bunch of ancient writings. I by and large lost that community, but I had started reaching out to make friends outside of it for a bit now. I had something, and that made it easier.
My family is still in my life, though thankfully several hundred miles away. They still are pretty unhappy about the whole situation, even more upset than they are about me being trans, which I finally realized I was able to admit to myself after letting go of the religious dogma.
Anyway, it took me a long time to get here, and I can't help but be upset that 26 years of my life were colored by a view of the world that I find morally unconscionable now, but at least I got to ramble about it on lemmy to almost the character limit.
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.
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
Not a lemming per se, but I stopped judging people based on the reasoning, “because God [supposedly] says so.” It takes effort, it really does, to hate things and people. It’s draining. I don’t know how so many religious people can be so focused on hatred, all the while forgetting the adage, “hate the sin, love the sinner.” You can easily cut yourself off from good experiences and relationships if you focus on staying “pure”. It’s lonely up on that pedestal.
I’ve been Christian-lite since before Trump was President but the rise of MAGA and strengthening of religious influence in politics has made me even more happy about my decision to step away from regular attendance or association with specifically religious groups. For them, righteousness trumps any amount of human suffering, and for some, suffering is a requirement of righteousness.
“Lemming” is used to refer to people that use Lemmy (lemmy.world, lemm.ee, etc.). Give that you have to have an account to post, you are def. a lemming.
Technically I was raised in a completely non-religious household so I was never myself properly religious but I always found the reasons why that was a thing really interesting.
My grandfather on my Dad’s side did a stint in WWII protecting the Vatican as part of the Canadian forces. He never spoke about what actually happened there (because he wasn’t allowed to) but it shook his Catholic foundations to the marrow and was never able to reconcile what happened with his faith. When he returned home he had a massive row with the priest at his church that he left. Half the family disowned him for leaving the church. My father never particularly went to church though his mother remained an Anglican.
On my Mother’s side my grandparents made an enemy of the local diocese when they and a bunch of their friends conspired to run a priest out of town for being a complete asshole to children publicly and a child molester privately. My grandmother basically swapped to playing organ at another smaller church but the rest of the family became very agnostic and really didn’t want to expose their kids to the faith.
So I basically wasn’t raised with faith because three generations back everybody in my family had a religious crisis… And I am SO glad you have no idea.
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’ve gone from Sunday attending to more lax and agnostic. Does that count? If so, is because of how inconsistent the actual practical actions of churches I’ve been to. Started protestant, but enough were hypocrites (remind me of the pharisees) so I stopped going. Became catholic and loved it, but the way the church has continually terribly handled the sex abuse pedo cases has disgusted me. Priests should be held to a higher standard, not lower.
Additionally, I don’t wanna be associated with the people who are Christian on TV. All the right wing Republicans in the US govt are terrible people. Whatever they say they are, I don’t wanna be a part of that. It’s hard to reconcile “love your neighbor” and then legislate their live away or give crazy people unfettered access to guns.
On a more practical level, I like a lot of the charity work and compassion taught by Jesus. I’m OK with the spiritual aspects. I cannot get behind the church’s message (mostly protestant) about personal relationship with God. If God intervenes, then that means it’s his responsibility when he doesn’t intervene and a lot of terrible things are his fault. If he doesn’t intervene, then a lot of what the church says is wrong. It doesn’t add up.
Your response caught my attention because I had a similar path, though only in Catholic Church, practicing religion in my 20’s, but moving away after mid 30’s.
At a practical level Jesus was right, showing compassion, living modestly…. but the interpretations of the churches - not only catholic - all the pomp and circumstance around mass, preaching, shrouding secrecy, asking the poor for money, etc. made me question churches in general.
After studying some philosophy, and learning meditation practices, I believe churches play an important role in society, including that prayer enables the masses to experience meditative states that have important health benefits. Religious teachings give something in which people can believe in, instead of facing uncertainties of life alone.
Also in many cases throughout history, churches anchored small communities together.
I believe people should experience church to decide on their own, but not being guilted to staying. Each person should be able to discern, choose their path, but there are always the crazy ones out there guilting and trying to impose their beliefs on to others. That is not right.
One big problem with your last paragraph: Baptism and many other rite to join religions happen at a very young age. These children know no world without the belief almost everyone around them practices. It’s getting their norm how live is. Leaving gets hard, it means leaving your life behind.
Was raised going to church each sunday, but approaching confirmation age I realised I couldn't mesh faith with my understanding of the world. That was it for me really, I'm quite open to the idea of god(s), ghosts, magic or other forms of the supernatural, but until there's actual proof, I can't believe in it.
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.
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