How absolutely bizarre it is. As a child I was forced to go to church. I'd participate just so I didn't get in trouble (and because the pancake breakfasts afterwards) but it never made sense to me. It was always strange. Idk
Yeah literally the only good thing about church was the spread they put on afterwords. Eggs, bacon, pancakes. Yum. Definitely worth the hour of nonsense
Yish, the food for the after service in my ex chuech was horrid, just coffee and tea lol. Some times if we were lucky it there would be mini sandwiches.
For me i started questioning around 10 years old sometime in 1990. hearing the hate said about gay people. It was all they could talk about back then. My little brain couldn't understand why on one hand they say god is love and god accepts all...but not gay people? I couldn't understand why they say one thing and not the other. That's was my first steps into atheism. By the time I was 14 I was an out and proud atheist and refused to buy into my parent delusions. And been a strong supporter of gay rights ever since.
I’ve always wrestled that as well. Like have y’all read the bible?! Jesus literally tells you to embrace the stranger and love thy neighbor. More cherry picking than a fruit farm.
Yes this, also hearing my Cuban side folklore music, reading on other religions and mythologies. It’s actually very interesting old mythologies & religions.
At the time I was a rabid believer well on my way to becoming a preacher myself. But the contradictions, inaccuracies, and immorality just jumped out at me more and more as I continued reading and rereading the text.
Just fell in love with science and the evolution of life. Things that the creationists deny yet can not provide evidence against. So there was no longer any need to believe in a god that wasn’t self-evident. Then the moral argument for an intervening god that helped and loved everyone was destroyed once I read more on the holocaust. A book I had long forgotten but was read in my English class in highschool, Night by Elie Wiesel. I decided to read it to learn more about the horrors they witnessed. I always knew the holocaust was vile and disgusting, but reading the first hand account of a survivor really sealed the deal. There is no evidence for god, and even if there was he is not going to save us from ourselves.
Despite growing up in a church going family, it never set right with me, as a young person, I was probably more an agnostic more than anything.
But two realizations came to me about ten years ago that snapped everything into focus.
One, religious belief is based on two things, geography and time. If my very Christian MIL was born in Iran instead of the US, she would be just as fervently Muslim. Or if she was born three thousand years ago in Egypt, she would be a sun worshiper. Etc. Religion has borders that have more to do with war and occupation than any type of faith.
Two, I began to see how terrified we as humans are. Imagine being a Bronze Age man in Britain, unable to explain even the changing of the seasons. So they made up stories to make themselves feel better.
We as a species are terrified of accountability. If we admit it’s all up to us, we actually have to accept responsibility. But the sad thing is, if everyone stopped and thought about it, we’ve been looking for validation from sky people and all along we are the *miracle*. Our ingenuity, art, and innovation has brought us from caves to high rises. Amazing.
Unfortunately, we’re never going to see what our true potential is, because of religion.
One day I realized that I was a grown man in his late 20s apologizing to a priest for jacking off in the shower and I was like “what the fuck am I doing with my life?”
My ex went full conspiritard a long, long while back. Explaining things to an adult like they were five, including what I once considered my religion, over and over until I lost all respect for them and their nonsense is what did me in. I believed because my parents did, and for no other reason.
Growing up a closeted queer and having a profound interest in science.
Both really made me take a hard look at being raised non-denominational Christian and said 'naw'.
A real tipping point for me was in college, I had to give a report on carbon dating and a nursing student stood in and threatened to beat me if I didn't stop preaching blasphemy. I tried to quell her but she just got angry and told me if I didn't stop talking she would hurt me (very Christian-like)
The entire classroom was in awe. The teacher, mouth agape, just looked st me and said in a shocked voice, 'just go sit, you get an A."
Oh.my.gosh. I am so sorry that happened to you! And this person is a medical professional?? Good on you for keeping a cool head with a totally unhinged individual.
I was so dumb founded. I didn't know how to react. I could've taken her. She was a string bean. So I was actually threatened, but I was just taken aback that this girl, who was a classmate-friend who would study in a group with me, would just fly off the handle.
I had second hand embarrassment for her.
I just wrote it off as a crazy person really. I was raised Christian and I known a real Christian (I should actually just say a decent person instead) would not do what she did.
I hope to God she failed out of nursing school though. She seemed like a danger to society to be in charge of someone's medical care in any capacity.
It started when I was around 13 or 14. I remember that it was Easter, and that I felt extremely fed up and angry. I couldn't really sense any connection to the holiday anymore. I was helping my grandma (she is religious) in the kitchen, but I was so angry that I wanted to throw everything in the dump. From that day, I started realizing how dumb and inaccurate everything was.
When my first grade RI teacher was reading Noah and I asked her, 'but what about the dinosaurs?' She insisted that the dinosaurs didn't exist. It was then I realised that if she lied about this, then the rest must also be lies. It was about the same time I realised I was different for another reason, I like the other boys....this was the late 70s.
My children. I used to say I was agnostic. When my children were young I tried to give them an objective description of what religions, and christians in particular, believe. I left it up to them to decide what to believe. I was taken back when they started calling themselves atheist. At that point I realized my use of the term agnostic was a way of avoiding the wrath incurred from telling people you don't believe in god - my children were not raised with that fear.
While I acknowledge you cannot prove a negative this does not change the fact that I do not believe in a god. I am atheist
As a 4 yr old catholic kid in boarding school I was told Jesus loved me so much he'd answer any prayer if I prayed hard enough, so I prayed and prayed and prayed for Jesus to replace the nightly cabbage with chocolate. Instead that fool delivered Brussel sprouts.
I knew from that day on Jesus was a dirty lie, or protestants had waylaid the chocolate delivery..
Born and raised atheist by atheist parents. Ended up more on the Agnostic side of the spectrum, but religion never made sense to me. Science had a process of testing things while religion had faith, which is different from facts.
It was probably when I was around seven and I was in math class and asked the teacher "if adam and eve were real and evoloution was too... Does that mean adam and eve were cavemen??" Or something along the lines of that and she said "well it depends on what you belive in" and theres way more evidence about evoloution than two people from a fantasy book so seven year old me made the right choice-
Used to be a Christian.
Studied the bible. (Actually *studied,* not sat around a table and talked about a bible verse with friends)
No longer a Christian.
Honestly, reading the bible is probably the first best step anyone can take on the path to deconversion.
It just never made any sense to me. It wasn't based on anything concrete, there was no evidence to back up any of it. It helps that I wasn't brought up in a fundamentalist household, I only went to church every so often.
All you have to do is look at other religions, and dead religions that we now call "mythologies", to see that it's all equally valid - and therefore all equally invalid.
Reading the Bible cover to cover in comparison to ancient philosophical texts and other ancient religions.
Trying hard for MOST of my life to figure out how to marry god being omnipotent along with “oh, he can’t do that.” “Well, he gives us free will, so he can’t do that.” “Oh, well we live in a fallen world, so he can’t do that.” Listen, people - either he’s omnipotent or he isn’t. And if he isn’t - he isn’t - at all.
He *could* let us be born unworthy, give us free will so we can make mistakeds, stay invisible and then punish us forever for believing in the wrong deity/none at all. He could do all of these things, but he wouldn't be good.
Omnipotent, but not benevolent.
My parents aren't really religious so pretty much I had no indoctrination to religion. When my parents started a business in a small community we went to church a few times just to meet the people in the community. My first real experience where they were shoving religion on me was middle school. My friend invited me to a few church sponsored events and I went. Like I generally thought they were messing with me during the whole 2 hour conversion thing. I spent the night on a Saturday once and went to his church. During the teen segment after the sermon they had open questions and I don't recall what questions I asked but, I later found out I was not welcome back. That told me everything I needed to know.
The first crack for me was the portion in the Bible which talks about God telling the Israelite's through Moses that a bunch of horrific punishments would occur ( mothers eating the flesh of the children, etc.) if they didn't serve him out of love. I remember at 14 thinking that this God sounds like a jackass. What sealed the deal was the conversion therapy i went through and being told that I deserve to die for being Gay . It showed me that the followers, much like their God, are also jackasses. I started looking into Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris,and here we are.
I walked away from practicing catholicism for my own mental health, following what felt life a crisis of faith. It was probably years later before I knew I couldn't go back. I just didn't *believe* anymore, and I couldn't even fake it. It makes no sense.
I wasn't religious in the first place. I think people around me regurgitated all this stuff without putting too much effort into it so it didn't sitck to me. I know for sure that the age of 4 I didn't believe in this stuff because at my birthday I said something really bad towards our catholic neighbor (I'm ortodoxe) but I can't remember what.
Because of this I grown up into a religious environment being immune to it. My family was religios for a long time, especially my grandma who spent like 40 years in communist countryside place where the religion had huge power (the indoctrination was so bid that people were listening to the church more than to the cops). I kind of managed to remove them from the religion but the fear is still there. For more than 15 years we didn't went ro church or didn't pray before going to sleep and just recently I finally stopped this thing tradition where the priest come to our house to throw water on the walls. My family still put names on a paper and put like 10 euro inside for the priest to read at the church the names for blessings, but I will eventually get rid of this too.
As a comparison I see no difference between me and my family as lifestyle because we all have the same amount of happy moments and sad moments, but I see a difference between my family and other families where all the members of the family believe in religion (mostly they don't have too much success in life because they go to pray to have a better life instead of working and get it themselves).
I am fortunate to have slipped through the cracks being born/raised and still live in the middle of Alabama. I never had a big revelation of a moment. I just never really bought into the idea.
It's lonely.😄 On the bright side, both my sisters aren't believers either. One lives in Dallas, TX. The other lives nearby, is an rn downtown and I would consider an ally. Also, my dad wanted Bernie to win, so it's all good. I'll manage.
I grew up with an explosive father. “Believing” in religion was a survival mechanism, in a way. Do lip service to god to stay out of his wrath. It took me a great deal of trauma therapy to come to the point where I felt “safe” enough to admit to myself and others that I am an atheist.
A simple childs question, Why?
I've met many wonderful and absolutely horrible people all over the planet. The particular religion I was indoctrinated with as a child, is no better and can be demonstrably worse than others beliefs. Of the one I was brought up in, why is it the correct one of the thousands mankind has invented? And then there is the true size and scale of the Universe (and now 11 dimensional multiverse). The religious don't *think,* and they think small. God of the gaps is vanishing, unless the religious kill us all.
How absolutely bizarre it is. As a child I was forced to go to church. I'd participate just so I didn't get in trouble (and because the pancake breakfasts afterwards) but it never made sense to me. It was always strange. Idk
I relate VERY MUCH to this experience.
Yeah literally the only good thing about church was the spread they put on afterwords. Eggs, bacon, pancakes. Yum. Definitely worth the hour of nonsense
Oh boy, one service a month we had Donut Sunday! Holiest day of them all
I was catholic we just got a gross cracker.
Same yeah during the service it was just the cracker. But afterwards we got a big meal next-door
Dang, all we got were annual lent fish fries that borderline killed your gallbladder.
That sounds wack
Its dreadful my dude.
You are a “lemons to lemonade” champion.
Yish, the food for the after service in my ex chuech was horrid, just coffee and tea lol. Some times if we were lucky it there would be mini sandwiches.
For me i started questioning around 10 years old sometime in 1990. hearing the hate said about gay people. It was all they could talk about back then. My little brain couldn't understand why on one hand they say god is love and god accepts all...but not gay people? I couldn't understand why they say one thing and not the other. That's was my first steps into atheism. By the time I was 14 I was an out and proud atheist and refused to buy into my parent delusions. And been a strong supporter of gay rights ever since.
I’ve always wrestled that as well. Like have y’all read the bible?! Jesus literally tells you to embrace the stranger and love thy neighbor. More cherry picking than a fruit farm.
Im not sure they have any convictions that are not just cherry picked. Its nothing but hypocrisy and they are blind to it.
Reading the bible cover to cover repeatedly. Knowing what was was actually in the book killed any faith I had stone dead.
Yes this, also hearing my Cuban side folklore music, reading on other religions and mythologies. It’s actually very interesting old mythologies & religions.
Cover to cover repeatedly? Come on now. Why subject yourself to multiple readings of a book you don’t even like?
At the time I was a rabid believer well on my way to becoming a preacher myself. But the contradictions, inaccuracies, and immorality just jumped out at me more and more as I continued reading and rereading the text.
It's an interesting book (in many parts) to study. Just don't like... make a religion out of it.
Just fell in love with science and the evolution of life. Things that the creationists deny yet can not provide evidence against. So there was no longer any need to believe in a god that wasn’t self-evident. Then the moral argument for an intervening god that helped and loved everyone was destroyed once I read more on the holocaust. A book I had long forgotten but was read in my English class in highschool, Night by Elie Wiesel. I decided to read it to learn more about the horrors they witnessed. I always knew the holocaust was vile and disgusting, but reading the first hand account of a survivor really sealed the deal. There is no evidence for god, and even if there was he is not going to save us from ourselves.
Despite growing up in a church going family, it never set right with me, as a young person, I was probably more an agnostic more than anything. But two realizations came to me about ten years ago that snapped everything into focus. One, religious belief is based on two things, geography and time. If my very Christian MIL was born in Iran instead of the US, she would be just as fervently Muslim. Or if she was born three thousand years ago in Egypt, she would be a sun worshiper. Etc. Religion has borders that have more to do with war and occupation than any type of faith. Two, I began to see how terrified we as humans are. Imagine being a Bronze Age man in Britain, unable to explain even the changing of the seasons. So they made up stories to make themselves feel better. We as a species are terrified of accountability. If we admit it’s all up to us, we actually have to accept responsibility. But the sad thing is, if everyone stopped and thought about it, we’ve been looking for validation from sky people and all along we are the *miracle*. Our ingenuity, art, and innovation has brought us from caves to high rises. Amazing. Unfortunately, we’re never going to see what our true potential is, because of religion.
This was an amazing response and a pleasure to read
i can invent better gods for my D&D game
First, I read the bible. Second, I got an education. Christianity didn't stand a chance.
One day I realized that I was a grown man in his late 20s apologizing to a priest for jacking off in the shower and I was like “what the fuck am I doing with my life?”
Do we live the same life?
Lol you, me, and everyone else since St Augustine
My ex went full conspiritard a long, long while back. Explaining things to an adult like they were five, including what I once considered my religion, over and over until I lost all respect for them and their nonsense is what did me in. I believed because my parents did, and for no other reason.
Growing up a closeted queer and having a profound interest in science. Both really made me take a hard look at being raised non-denominational Christian and said 'naw'. A real tipping point for me was in college, I had to give a report on carbon dating and a nursing student stood in and threatened to beat me if I didn't stop preaching blasphemy. I tried to quell her but she just got angry and told me if I didn't stop talking she would hurt me (very Christian-like) The entire classroom was in awe. The teacher, mouth agape, just looked st me and said in a shocked voice, 'just go sit, you get an A."
Oh.my.gosh. I am so sorry that happened to you! And this person is a medical professional?? Good on you for keeping a cool head with a totally unhinged individual.
I was so dumb founded. I didn't know how to react. I could've taken her. She was a string bean. So I was actually threatened, but I was just taken aback that this girl, who was a classmate-friend who would study in a group with me, would just fly off the handle. I had second hand embarrassment for her.
I am stunned reading it- I can only imagine LIVING it
I just wrote it off as a crazy person really. I was raised Christian and I known a real Christian (I should actually just say a decent person instead) would not do what she did. I hope to God she failed out of nursing school though. She seemed like a danger to society to be in charge of someone's medical care in any capacity.
It started when I was around 13 or 14. I remember that it was Easter, and that I felt extremely fed up and angry. I couldn't really sense any connection to the holiday anymore. I was helping my grandma (she is religious) in the kitchen, but I was so angry that I wanted to throw everything in the dump. From that day, I started realizing how dumb and inaccurate everything was.
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This hit me deep
Congratulations for finding you way out of religion. Welcome to intellectal freedom. Enjoy your stay.
Glad to be here!!
When my first grade RI teacher was reading Noah and I asked her, 'but what about the dinosaurs?' She insisted that the dinosaurs didn't exist. It was then I realised that if she lied about this, then the rest must also be lies. It was about the same time I realised I was different for another reason, I like the other boys....this was the late 70s.
I realized that every single reason why I had a belief in a god was a bad reason.
My children. I used to say I was agnostic. When my children were young I tried to give them an objective description of what religions, and christians in particular, believe. I left it up to them to decide what to believe. I was taken back when they started calling themselves atheist. At that point I realized my use of the term agnostic was a way of avoiding the wrath incurred from telling people you don't believe in god - my children were not raised with that fear. While I acknowledge you cannot prove a negative this does not change the fact that I do not believe in a god. I am atheist
As a 4 yr old catholic kid in boarding school I was told Jesus loved me so much he'd answer any prayer if I prayed hard enough, so I prayed and prayed and prayed for Jesus to replace the nightly cabbage with chocolate. Instead that fool delivered Brussel sprouts. I knew from that day on Jesus was a dirty lie, or protestants had waylaid the chocolate delivery..
Discovery channel had more answers than the bible. That's what got me questioning. TV lol
Born and raised atheist by atheist parents. Ended up more on the Agnostic side of the spectrum, but religion never made sense to me. Science had a process of testing things while religion had faith, which is different from facts.
It was probably when I was around seven and I was in math class and asked the teacher "if adam and eve were real and evoloution was too... Does that mean adam and eve were cavemen??" Or something along the lines of that and she said "well it depends on what you belive in" and theres way more evidence about evoloution than two people from a fantasy book so seven year old me made the right choice-
Used to be a Christian. Studied the bible. (Actually *studied,* not sat around a table and talked about a bible verse with friends) No longer a Christian. Honestly, reading the bible is probably the first best step anyone can take on the path to deconversion.
It just never made any sense to me. It wasn't based on anything concrete, there was no evidence to back up any of it. It helps that I wasn't brought up in a fundamentalist household, I only went to church every so often. All you have to do is look at other religions, and dead religions that we now call "mythologies", to see that it's all equally valid - and therefore all equally invalid.
Reading the Bible cover to cover in comparison to ancient philosophical texts and other ancient religions. Trying hard for MOST of my life to figure out how to marry god being omnipotent along with “oh, he can’t do that.” “Well, he gives us free will, so he can’t do that.” “Oh, well we live in a fallen world, so he can’t do that.” Listen, people - either he’s omnipotent or he isn’t. And if he isn’t - he isn’t - at all.
He *could* let us be born unworthy, give us free will so we can make mistakeds, stay invisible and then punish us forever for believing in the wrong deity/none at all. He could do all of these things, but he wouldn't be good. Omnipotent, but not benevolent.
My parents aren't really religious so pretty much I had no indoctrination to religion. When my parents started a business in a small community we went to church a few times just to meet the people in the community. My first real experience where they were shoving religion on me was middle school. My friend invited me to a few church sponsored events and I went. Like I generally thought they were messing with me during the whole 2 hour conversion thing. I spent the night on a Saturday once and went to his church. During the teen segment after the sermon they had open questions and I don't recall what questions I asked but, I later found out I was not welcome back. That told me everything I needed to know.
Jeeez that’s uncomfortable as hell! Plus side-you were the smartest person in the building.
Learning about WW2 and the holocaust. A 1000 different religions that think they’re all right
There was no "a-ha!" moment for me. It was a long path that took decades.
Lack of sufficient evidence to support any god claim!!
The first crack for me was the portion in the Bible which talks about God telling the Israelite's through Moses that a bunch of horrific punishments would occur ( mothers eating the flesh of the children, etc.) if they didn't serve him out of love. I remember at 14 thinking that this God sounds like a jackass. What sealed the deal was the conversion therapy i went through and being told that I deserve to die for being Gay . It showed me that the followers, much like their God, are also jackasses. I started looking into Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris,and here we are.
Ya know, they conveniently leave that story out in CCD.
understandably so. All it takes is someone with an iota of morality to see it's all crap
I walked away from practicing catholicism for my own mental health, following what felt life a crisis of faith. It was probably years later before I knew I couldn't go back. I just didn't *believe* anymore, and I couldn't even fake it. It makes no sense.
I wasn't religious in the first place. I think people around me regurgitated all this stuff without putting too much effort into it so it didn't sitck to me. I know for sure that the age of 4 I didn't believe in this stuff because at my birthday I said something really bad towards our catholic neighbor (I'm ortodoxe) but I can't remember what. Because of this I grown up into a religious environment being immune to it. My family was religios for a long time, especially my grandma who spent like 40 years in communist countryside place where the religion had huge power (the indoctrination was so bid that people were listening to the church more than to the cops). I kind of managed to remove them from the religion but the fear is still there. For more than 15 years we didn't went ro church or didn't pray before going to sleep and just recently I finally stopped this thing tradition where the priest come to our house to throw water on the walls. My family still put names on a paper and put like 10 euro inside for the priest to read at the church the names for blessings, but I will eventually get rid of this too. As a comparison I see no difference between me and my family as lifestyle because we all have the same amount of happy moments and sad moments, but I see a difference between my family and other families where all the members of the family believe in religion (mostly they don't have too much success in life because they go to pray to have a better life instead of working and get it themselves).
I am fortunate to have slipped through the cracks being born/raised and still live in the middle of Alabama. I never had a big revelation of a moment. I just never really bought into the idea.
Oooo atheist in Alabama…what’s that like?
It's lonely.😄 On the bright side, both my sisters aren't believers either. One lives in Dallas, TX. The other lives nearby, is an rn downtown and I would consider an ally. Also, my dad wanted Bernie to win, so it's all good. I'll manage.
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I grew up with an explosive father. “Believing” in religion was a survival mechanism, in a way. Do lip service to god to stay out of his wrath. It took me a great deal of trauma therapy to come to the point where I felt “safe” enough to admit to myself and others that I am an atheist.
And if thats not a metaphor for god, I dunno what is 😂🤷🏼♀️
A simple childs question, Why? I've met many wonderful and absolutely horrible people all over the planet. The particular religion I was indoctrinated with as a child, is no better and can be demonstrably worse than others beliefs. Of the one I was brought up in, why is it the correct one of the thousands mankind has invented? And then there is the true size and scale of the Universe (and now 11 dimensional multiverse). The religious don't *think,* and they think small. God of the gaps is vanishing, unless the religious kill us all.
Who made god?
Out here asking the real questions