My family was secular so I didn't have religion shoved down my throat as a kid. I got curious about church when I was around 8. I went for a year or so then had an epiphany about how nonsensical it was that a loving god would consign people to hell and stopped going.
I toyed around some with occultism in my teens but have been an atheist ever since. Nothing about religion makes sense and I live in the material, rational world.
That sounds pretty heartbreaking, I’m sorry you’ve gone through that. Hope you’re in a better place today. If you’re OK with me asking, were your parents under chronic stress to both have developed such psychological traits?
My mother worked at a catholic school; she was sexually harassed by the principal of the school and rather than firing the POS the diocese sent the whole staff to sexual harassment training. I found that to be a real slap in the face. Showed me they still had zero interest in accountability. I still appreciate the message behind a lot of what the church preaches (I loathe some of their stances, mostly related to sex and abortion) but I refuse to enable their hypocrisy.
I never was personally. But one thing that constantly gets me is religious people knowing their church people are touching little boys and girls and they still believe in them and their higher power.
At one of those bible study after church things, I asked the priest if when I die and go to heaven, I’ll get answers to things I’ve always wondered, like how many stars there are, or since I’m outside of time then, be able to observe historic events like building of pyramids or the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs , or supernovas, or how technology would be in the future.
… he said that I wouldn’t care, I’d be too busy being astounded by the face of god for all eternity.
Which I thought was the lamest way to spend eternity, and what’s worse, would mean that my main trait at the time, curiosity, wouldn’t be part of me when I’m in heaven. Then would it really be me up there?
Act 2. I eek out the “why does a loving god allow souls to be tortured and burnt for all eternity” question to a different priest and got some answer like hell is just the absence of god. Which, I can understand why to him that’s torture but for me… it seemed more like a “ok you don’t want to stare at my godly face for eternity? Be elsewhere then with your fellow non believers “. Which from my pov, it’s like ok no big deal then?
And from there the shadow of doubt grew enough and now I understand this is all there is so we just gotta make the best of it, and try to push the envelope for humanity in any way we can.
Not really formerly religious, but I do want to talk about this.
SCHOOLS NEED TO STOP SHOVING IT INTO MY FACE.
It’s very tiring studying in a Christian school, but there’s no choice. In my region, it’s either religious schools or bad schools.
My secondary school (equivalent to grade 7-12) is insane about Christianity. Every Friday it’s like a horror game to escape from the teachers who try to drag you to fellowship. Oh you want to go to spring camp? Half of the time in camp is spent listening to Christian talks.
Here’s another dumb policy. The school cannot do anything on Sunday due to church stuff. There was once a pretty big table tennis competition, but it was on Sunday. The school would NOT allow the responsible teacher to bring the school team to the competition just because it was Sunday, and that sparked a pretty big news within our region.
This is like YouTube adblock blocker backfiring, but for Christianity.
Ex-Christian here, I was in a pretty easy going division of Christianity, main thing was that we didn't believe in hell and were "metaphysical" (hippie way of saying we didn't strictly adhere to the Bible). I would often look after the smaller kids in Sunday school, and one day we put on the veggie tales version of Noah's ark, and I actually watched it while watching the kids, and somewhat considered the idea that if there was a flood, inevitably quite a few children would have been caught up in it and died, which in my mind a kind god would not have even contemplated. The level of cognitive dissonance I experienced kind of made me think about listening to atheistic opinions to double check I wasn't completely off the mark with my beliefs. So I listened to Dawkins, Hitchens, and Carl Sagans arguments then actually sat down and read the Bible. Not gonna say I accepted it overnight, but that is what eventually led me to where I am today as an atheist.
I remember as a tween sitting there and praying and I just sorta realized wtf am I doing. I had always asked too many questions so I thought it weird an imaginary guy could hear everyone and everything at once. Then I was brought to a fmaily member's church where they told me my father was going to hell because he was a soldier, no ifs and or buts about it. So yeah if 10 year old me can realize it, I don't know what the hell is wrong with these fucking abrahamic religious zealots.
I went down the rabbit hole of the Ancestral simulation, the Boltzmann brain, simulation hypothesis and these shows like matrix and westworld made more sense than any other religious text
The contradictions were too glaring by the time I turned 12. God is love but hell is eternal and full of millions of objectively good people who just practiced the ‘wrong’ religion? Those things can’t both be true.
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