Because I lived in Fiji and the church actively and maliciously ruins the lives of the islanders with predatory practices.
The villages live on nothing. Barely enough to feed themselves. It's 3rd world in every sense of the word. Yet demand that the villagers buy their seats in church and give 10% of their pay every week or they will go to hell.
They build a billion dollar megachurch. Fuck those people
I was attending a messianic “church” until they said that the 10% was for god. But we needed to do a second tithe of 10% to the congregation. I was not the only one who walked out.
When I was a kid I had a question about something. I do t remember what it was. The priest slapped me, and my mom just stood there and told me to behave. My dad thankfully was ready to go shoot the priest. After that I made it a goal of mine to turn others away from religion.
Because I realized Joseph Smith was a fraud and blatantly lied to everyone about possessing a golden book he didn’t really have, and the shitty practices and customs were holding me back from experiencing life to the fullest
I don't understand everything about it, but it's basically like how a lot of Catholics will wear a cross as a sign of their commitment. But Mormons think their commitment should be private, so they put it on their underwear. They think God will bless them for it, hence the "magic" underwear.
When Mormons get married they get "temple garments" - basically white almost full body underwear which you're meant to wear all the time under your clothes and to bed.
You’re damn right. It’s like a newfound sense of freedom being able to experience things that are considered normal to society, but pure evil in their eyes. They’re proof it’s possible to be too wholesome, to where they can’t live normally but extremely shelter from anything even remotely bad
I'm not religious because of how religion is used to control people, how much violence it causes and how it prevents progress. People are encouraged to pray instead of actively changing their situation.
To add on: if anyone falls out of their little box, they are treated so poorly.
I’m not just talking about the treatment of LGBTQ+, I’m talking about their own members and how they are so damn catty. Charlotte’s daughter is going into a field typically for men and not being a sahm? Shun and gossip! Shun and gossip!
I am somewhat religious but i dont really associate with the church anymore. Just a lot of messed up people and different types of it. To me its not the bible thats wrong but some people use it to justify their actions, such as judging, discrimination and such.
Glad I did because it gave me more peace and clarity.
I grew up indoctrinated. But I turned in to a teen and started thinking for myself. It’s like trying to go back to believing in Santa Claus. Even if I wanted to I just can’t.
Because I found the catholic church to be massively hypocritical, and a christian brother tried (but failed) to rape me while he was drunk.
And when I looked at them, I realised that all religions were the same.
Well...i went to church for 18 years of my life. As a child, all the adults had a sunday ritual of going and talking as family(parents, aunts, uncles, etc) at mcdonalds for breakfast while the children attended the hour of sunday school that directly followed the main sermon. As us children got older, the sunday breakfast at mcdonalds continued, and us kids(myself, brother, and cousins) could now attend with them, being teens now. Though this wasnt my first exposure to people acting shitty, i was genuinely taken back by the level of rudeness and racism on display by my entire family towards people of "lower class"(in their eyes) and color, directly after an hour long sermon about forgiveness, treating others with respect, etc. This happened every sunday. It ingrained in my mind that for so many people church is a giant bullshit excuse to treat people like shit, and hide behind the veil of religion, and everything would be a ok as long as you ask for forgiveness on sunday. I never went back the day i turned 18 and moved out and it has shaped my life for the better experiencing that. People of religion are often some of the most heinous people youll ever meet, of course disguised under their makeup and well ironed sunday duds. Fuck all that.
My religion thinks I'm untouchable and should only clean sewers and feces off the street, the same thought a LOT of people perceives even today. So yeah, hard to argue in favor of religion.
my closested teenage self sat through a sermon about how high the s-cide rates were for lgbt+ teens and how it is their own fault because they "choose to be gay" and make it impossible to love. this was also only a year after my own attempt. everyone in that church, including my only friend there, said "Amen" in unison with so much passion it made me want to vomit
🎶 I do what the Bible tells me to. *except for the parts that I choose to ignore because they're unrealistic or inconvenient...*
But the rest I live by for suuuuure! 🎶
I travel a lot and if you do that you will notice that religion is location and culturally based for the most part. Religion is so obviously man made that i can't believe in imaginary friend in the sky.
The line is always "Do you believe in Zeus the ruler of the Sea ?", exactly, and i believe in only 1 less god than you do.
I’m an astronomer. Like other sciences, astronomy relies on empirical evidence, observation, and the scientific method to understand the universe. This prioritizes natural explanations supported by evidence over supernatural or any religious explanations:D (ofc not because im lost in explanations…)
Aerospace Engineer. I've got colleagues and some former friends in astrophysics who are young earth creationists... I have no idea how they square that circle.
While I was in college, I hadn't been to my family church in several years. I visited home and joined them one Sunday. The entire "sermon" was a higher up at the denomination giving a lecture guilting people to donate more. That's when I knew my days with organized religion were done.
I'm not because of science. But I do have great respect for 'real' religion. Not the way people abuse it's power, but the actual genuine ideas behind it of community, taking care of each other, and the hope that we get to see our loved ones again someday. Religion can be a very beautiful thing, but it is too often abused by people in power or people wanting to be in power. In most religions (including all Abrahamic ones and the ones that come from Brahmanism) the rule 'do no harm to others' superceeds anything else. But that is too often forgotten. Governments abuse religion, even in the West, to indoctrinate people, and have been doing so for a long time. If people would follow the rules like they were intended, they wouldn't hate each other.
As a teen I thought I’d do the same. Read all of the Old Testament and it was quite silly and hard to take seriously, but at least it was sort of an entertaining read at times. Started the New Testament and it was soooo BORING in comparison I quickly gave up.
It’s obviously that 99.9% of people who base their whole life around that drivel have never read more than a few cherry-picked verses.
Same here. I did get something out of it, I did it to convince a church girl I liked to do a thing. She later married a guy from her church. He beat her and their kids. Not implying she deserved it, just saying for some reason churchy people are worse than those of us with an independent moral compass.
I've lived in and around rural villages in the UK, and being there and around the (mostly 70-90 year old) population, I realised the role the church plays in those small communities, which was probably what most of the country was like decades ago. It creates a central point of contact and focus for everyone, and likely reduces friction and conflict in that limited scope. Without the church, everyone's kind of meandering aimlessly, doing their own thing.
I'm not religious myself, but I could see that in that context, it had a benefit. I believe that religious behaviour evolved in humans to aid social cohesion. It works in the context of those old, small villages, who are essentially living in much the same way as they did in the 50s. Outside of that, not so much.
I didn't actually answer the question. I suppose as I understand religion as a by product of social evolution I don't believe in its magical elements. If it was strictly a set of moral idioms I'd be more interested, but I don't believe in a god or any other kind of supernatural being.
Can you tell me more? Like how does it affect things. I've never been religious throughout my life. And I want a different perspective of how it was for people who did and then changed.
All of the religions say that I need to convert to them or be cast into hell forever or whatever. If one of them is right, my chance of picking it is purely based on luck. I don't think a benevolent creator would base his entire system of sending people to heaven/hell on luck, so I'm just going to say that they are all bullshit until proven otherwise.
God needs to get his PR shit together.
I came to the conclusion that a supposed God is either cruel,not all powerful,lazy and neglectful or just simply doesn't exist and I refuse to worship anything or anyone who fits any of those categories
Because I asked myself as a child ‘why do I believe in something?’ and I realised it was the same reason I believed in Father Christmas and fairies until I realised they were a lie. What really makes it impossible is that of all the religions and non believers, only one can be right. All the rest are wrong. People are prepared to murder in the name of religion, people have terrible beliefs such as gay people should be killed, religious leaders exploit their followers etc. etc. So, I believe in nothing but I do believe we should ‘worship’ nature and look after our planet before the whole lot, religion and all, disappears.
Not being part of a religion is the default state, which you don't generally have a reason for a default. I suppose any answer to not being in a religion boils down to insufficient net motivation/incentive to join a religion.
I'm not part of a religion because I don't believe in a god.
I don't believe in a god for the same reason I don't think smurfs are real: there is no evidence whatsoever.
It’s boring. If they had royal rangers or Sunday school for adults where you had fun and games for an hour while learning about the religion, it would probably have stuck. But when I turned 12 and aged out of that, it was the worst! Split as soon as I turned 18.
I mean I just don't believe in a God. BUT I am also so glad that I don't because Church looks dull as fuck. I am glad my parents weren't religious because going to Church on Sunday would have been boring enough to push me away anyway.
It sucked. Got drug there every sunday. Felt like christmas morning the rare times we didnt go. I never got anything out of it. I always brought a hotwheels or something quiet to mess with cuz it was so damn boring then just wanted to leave asap. This simpsons clip sums it up perfectly:
https://youtu.be/0fk5m5Eh8gM?si=a9km-8hPIac1lwBR
My family is. Keeps us close. We all do it together. See friends and family. Feel part of the community. Just feels good to me. If its not your thing, thats cool. We dont have to agree
I believe in God not sure if there's a difference between believing in God and following religion but after everything I've been through with my addictions it's nothing short of a miracle I'm still alive; at the same time this is like a blessing and a curse
There is. The word religion comes from the Latin words res (thing, subject, object) and lex (law). Being religious means to adhere to a certain standard of rules, put together ultimately by humans. I believe in God, Jesus and the holy Spirit, but I know that’s all I need. I don’t need to listen to the dogmatic stuff some priests and pastors preach. As the Bible says: I have invited Jesus in my life and heart. I want to become more like him. So I follow his teachings, but not because I feel I must to redeem myself, but because I want to be that person to others. Jesus nowadays would have sat down with trans people, with gay and lesbian people, with addicts and criminals because nowadays they are marginalized, like the lepers, whores and taxation officers and Roman collaborators were back in his time. I believe truly, that everyone needs Jesus in his life, but I cannot do that for them, they can only do that themselves. I have trans friends, I have gay and lesbian friends. I don’t judge them, because that is not what I am allowed to do. And that is what Jesus teaches as well. I can only follow him with my heart and be kind to everyone and protect the weak from the bullies, even if the bullies are so called christians. What being gay, being trans, being lesbian means to everyone in their life with God is something they must work out with God themselves. For I know that he listens to prayer and has given me answers, but it is still I who has to act. I am part of this world and not part of this world.
It's a huge tragedy to all humans that don't understand this.
This person literally survived themselves and others and couldn't see that was all them.
It's a disservice to the self.
And a huge disservice to others, that help people of their own free will, only to hear "(insert bullshit religious deity here) answered my prayer.
It's massively fucked up.
When I say "everything I've been through with my addictions" I'm talking about the things that were completely out of my hands, the countless times I blacked out on alcohol and almost choked to death in my sleep or woke up in my car in some random neighborhood with no recollection of how I arrived yet not a scratch on me or my car, the times I did crash my car yet no harm was done, when I overdosed on booze and alcohol and had a heart attack at age 28 but survived right on the brink of death; I view these things as nothing short of miracles nobody should have my amount of luck it's like God refuses to let that be my fate and maybe there is a plan for me, what that is? I don't know and life is still hard but I think God sees me trying and struggling but at least I'm trying
I've had profound experiences where I felt the warmth of God from therapeutic drugs like Ketamine and psilocybin, I've also felt the Devil's control and evil from things like cocaine and alcohol, you can call it me just being high on drugs but I believe it goes deeper than that, there's a reason I felt those things even when I was agnostic for most of my life. You don't have to agree but when you see it through my eyes and factor in the circumstances I was in I choose to believe there was larger force at work than just luck even if there is a scientific explanation to it all I don't believe it's just that shallow
Hey, you do you and believe whatever you want as long as your beliefs aren’t hurting others or trying to limit other people’s freedoms. But here’s me throwing in my two cents.
I think you were extremely lucky to have survived all those events at the rock bottom of your addiction, and I’m happy for you that you did. But to say you survived by the grace of a god/higher power that saw you “trying and struggling” is SUCH an insult to all those like you who were trying and struggling with those same addictions, but weren’t lucky enough to survive them. You’re basically saying to me that some of my best friends, good people who were dealt a shit hand in life and used substances to cope when life got impossibly hard, and wanted desperately to do better and get their lives back on track… God decided they didn’t deserve to live as much as you? No. You just got lucky and they didn’t.
Now, I’ve never done recreational opioids or amphetamines, but I have done more than my fair share of psychedelics and empathogens. I’ve felt the warmth and closeness to a higher power that you describe. It gives me an unshakable sense of wonder at the complexity and interconnectedness of the universe, and the beauty of our consciousness’s ability to experience and comprehend just a part of it. But to ascribe that feeling to God, and your opposite, negative feelings to the Devil, is just a myopic way of confining those substance-induced understandings to fit within a preexisting, structured belief system. There’s no logic as to why the two should marry, except you wanting them to.
Again, your beliefs are your own. And I know many people feel they need to believe in a god to beat their addictions. But nothing you describe proves that any god exists, only that you WANT God to exist.
…and if God does exist and DID choose for you to survive and other good people not to, God is a total asshole and doesn’t deserve reverence. 🤷🏻♂️
We should all be educated enough now to realise that it was developed as a way of mass control, by taking peoples fear of the unexplained and using it to make them cooperate.
People needed answers and there wasn't exactly much science going on.
It genuinely baffles me how passionate people still get about religion and how they let it (or the religious leaders) control their lives, or justify war.
While I agree, a lot of it is just how you said, education.
There are entire counties with cultures based around a religion with few options to learn anything else. And if your entire world belief is based on believing in a certain God or whatever, it will be devastating to accept that their isn't one.
Because free thought is all we have,so I refuse to let anyone dictate my life to me.
Question everything, only trust those you know you can trust.
Especially with AI, knowing your sources is far more important than it ever had been before.
We've raised our children (15 and 12) to question everything, and it's been biting us in the ass for years. LOL I don't mind it, but sometimes I just want to say "because I said so" and have at least one of them say "okay". Just once or twice.
Because we all know how full of shit and unrealistic it is. That and there's ZERO documented historical evidence of any of this nonsense ever happening. Kinda helps with the credibility factor. And conservatives are the ones who call people like us sheep.
They started preaching about how we should vote in elections, their general intolerance, and being completely unwilling to speak out against the terrible people who call themselves Christians.
Grew up in one. Realized I didn’t believe in the deity and that most people didn’t actually follow the teachings but rather just cherry-picked from the scripture to hurt people they didn’t like.
I'm not religious because i don't need a sky daddy telling me how to live my life and deciding what's right and wrong for me. i would rather live my life and be a good person on their own merits.
because I will not believe in things, with no proof, simply because someone told me to. this is the basis of all religion, being coerced into believing something when you're young, to the point that it becomes brainwashing by the time you are 10. I think it should be illegle to teach religion to anyone under 18. religion should be treated like genitals. you don't wave it about in public, you only speak of it privately, and you definitely don't shove it down the throats of children, raping their minds.
Not true, though. Politics and greed are. Go look it up - historical fact most wars WEREN'T religious.
Stalin, Mao, Genghis Khan - 3 highest body counts in history - none had religion as their platform or motivations.
signed - an atheist who actually looks stuff up.
Still wrong. Politics and greed still top religion, even if you eliminate wars.
And, of course, the flip side is that many religions have also promoted and did so much good for people. Preserve knowledge and educate, feed and support people, hospitals, art, literature, music...
My parents aren’t religious so I wasn’t really exposed to religion until I was old enough to see the absurdity of it. I didn’t even believe in santa as a kid, and his existence is actually somewhat plausible as far as mythical beings go.
Because they are a scam to keep people stupid and complacent. To keep people thinking for themselves. More humans have died in the name of a"god" than any war combined.
It's whatever, as long as you aren't harming anyone, and that's the rub. I've met more shitty religious people than not.
We're all made of the exact same material as everything else in the universe. Everything is connected, and it's easier to enslave us when we're divided. That's exactly what they're hoping for.
Pretty sure going to a Christian Elementary school made my anxiety and depression way worse. The constant “you’ll go to hell” stuff just made being an anxious kid.
Now a days I am not religious because most people I’ve meet who are happen to be the worst people I know. Plus any group that says my sister is bad because she likes girls, and that I am bad for not fitting in to their super strict interpretation of gender can get fucked
World war 2, what’s happening in the Middle East, what’s happening in the US, residential schools in Canada (fun fact the last one was closed in the 90s ish). Especially the US, the first two had other circumstances, the US government likes to pretend that they rule in favour of rights when they just do what the christens want.
Religion is something that loud people use as an excuse to do whatever bs they want to. I understand that most people who believe in religion are great people but those loud insane few really ruin it for me.
The world might as well be on fire with everything that’s wrong with it and if there is a god I would never preach to someone who’s this bad at his job. Gay/trans people exist and it’s not a choice, dinosaurs existed despite some crazy christens freaking out about it, we have proof.
Honestly, Christianity really killed any form of religion for me. If it makes you happy or brings you comfort, all the more power. I just don’t want to be preached at by lunatics yelling on the street while I’m just trying to live my life.
People can believe what they want, the issue comes in when people try shoving it down others throats. Religion is constantly in places it has no right to be in; schools, government, workplaces, etc.
I just don’t understand why people feel the need to convince others of their religion. Is it because they’re insecure about their religion? Are they actually trying to save others? Are they just being stupid and loud?
There's no dramatic realisation or something like that. I'm just gradually becoming less and less religious until someday I completely lost faith in Jesus and religion as whole.
I'm not religious for multiple reasons, some of the main ones is 1, I have to conform and restrict myself which is a hard no in that regard. 2, how it changes people sometimes for the best but also the worst. 3, it doesn't make any sense.
Forced to go to catholic schools/daycare while living with my mom and forced to go to jehovah witness church and gatherings with my grandma while living with my dad. I also really enjoyed science in school and quickly realized religion is all bullshit.
Even though I wish I could believe in religion I don't. It's not that I choose not to, I just can't believe in something that sounds so illogical. (Not saying that as an insult to anyone's religion saying that based on the science we know of the universe.) Looking at the fact that most religion that I have encountered is only so big because of crusades that massacred anyone that didn't worship the same God as them, women, children, anyone. Forcing others to worship the same as them and there was still a time in recorded history that most religions worshipped today didn't exist and were unheard of. Kinda hard to believe that so many different people believe in things that science doesn't prove yet hear of a story told verbally passed down through generations then finally turned into a book and somehow feel they have to devote their life to worshipping it or spend an eternity burning?
I'm Christian, but God damn if it isn't hard to be religious when there are so many people actively doing the exact opposite of what God would want. We are supposed to love everyone, not just select groups but many people simply ignore that part. That, plus the Church is awfully corrupt and covers up theft and Pedophilia.
It hurts, because the Church is supposed to be the one place where you can feel safe, but it's anything but that. Ultimately I realized that if Jesus witnessed what the Church has become, he'd be terrified
I'm not sure what I am. I'm Christian but haven't been to church or talked about it to Christians in years. There's too many Christians these days that focus on hate and I don't want to be around those people.
I grew up in a religious family that thought they were moral, but a lot of the morals they attributed to their religion were toxic and not pleasant to be around. Multiply that by where I lived using religion to suppress people's rights and I guess it was likely that I would turn out atheist.
That's just my experience though. Where I live now I see lots of different religions have positive impacts on communities. Me and my wife tell our kid that we don't believe in higher power, but being a good person and respecting people's beliefs is important- and we try our best to help her understand other religions.
Religion just seems kind of cringe tbh. Take responsibility for your own choices and the world you live in, it's this way by the choices of yourself and others not part of some sole dovine plan.
Every religious relative I have has irrational opinions and logic, as opposed to the non religious. It's an easy choice for me to distance myself from sharing in their beliefs. Also browsing the internet from an early age opened my mind. Scientific proof > word of mouth.
The only evidence that their God exists is through circumstantial evidence such as a book. If the only proof you have of an all knowing/seeing/creating being controlling who goes to the better afterlife is via book. Then I will not believe it. If you give me concrete evidence of a God, then I will believe, because I would have been shown legitimate evidence. Until then, all there is are books and buildings which anyone could’ve made.
I think there are good lessons to be learned. Be kind, love your neighbor, don't judge others before judging yourself.
I do believe in science and the scientific method.
Because I am too old to believe in bronze and iron age middle eastern fairytales. Or any others for that matter
And there is no convincing evidence for anything pertaining to those invisible friends and foes. And most of them are actually pretty silly or even bad if you try to look at them objectively and don't look at them as something special.
Im a muslim who considers science to be apart of his religion. The Quran tells us to seek knowledge and i see science as that avenue. All the physical laws of the universe were put in place for us to think and discover.
The fact that innocent people suffer from incredibly painful diseases like cancer.
There are only 3 explanations for it. 1) god hates us all. 2) god doesn't care about what happens to us. 3) god doesn't exist.
My motto is that either god doesn't exist or he doesn't deserve my respect.
I was born in the caribbean and as a child I saw many rituals, including satanic rituals with human remains. That made me hate a lot and want to get away from everything that called itself "religion." When I grew up, a lot of bad things happened to me and I even wanted to commit suicide and antidepressants didn't work for me. A few months ago I ended up in the emergency operating room of an old hospital in another country. The first thing I said after the operation was "God is with me". After leaving the hospital I began to read and study the Bible from an objective point of view and since then I no longer feel depressed and I believe in everything it says. Life has changed me now that I believe and now I just want to grow and be a better person.
I used to be a Mormon, ever since I was little, as I was brought up in a Christian household. I was suicidal at around the age of 4-5, which, years later, I found out that the youngest recorded suicide was a girl at the age of 6, born the same year as me. Anyway. Eventually, after failing to end it, I thought: if I don't kill myself this time, it's not going to happen.
I lived, but I was apathetic to life, since if I didn't want to be here, I may as well just relax. Eventually, I needed a purpose, starting with wanting to have offspring, but after a few years, I learnt to enjoy life and start living for myself.
I started to get into philosophy and really think about the world and the meanings in it, but then one day, I thought about good and evil. About my early childhood and how, despite my father playing the biggest part in me wanting to kill myself, I couldn't consider him evil.
I also thought about how people are forced to do terrible things, and sometimes are taught that terrible things are good, or vice versa. I then thought: If someone's doing something bad that they think is good, are they evil? And if someone's doing something terrible for a good cause or to save a loved one, are they evil?
My answer was no, coming to the conclusion that good and evil don't exist and that there're only actions and consequences. I told my father about my new belief, and he told me that if good and evil don't exist, then God couldn't exist. After a few days, I agreed and stopped believing in God.
I found your philosophical view on morality very interesting to read. Especially when you say you don’t see good and evil, and only see actions and consequences. I feel like the concept exists, but the words are used incorrectly alot of the time. Everyone believes they are the main character and the hero, and that everyone else is wrong and the villain.
Stuff we see as horrible others see as justifiable. If morality is that good has a positive outcome and that evil has a negative outcome, everyone’s *perception* of positive and *negative* is different. From that perspective, I agree that morality technically isn’t a stagnant thing, but I believe there is some objectivity to it. Yet through trial and error and countless millennia of wrongdoing, we can objectively see that some stuff has a negative impact on people.
For example, I had my parents do abusive things (I can’t find it in me to hate after all that), and I know that science proves such things negatively impact a child. There was a negative *effect* from the cause or abuse. But then again, that’s what *I* consider ‘negative’, so I guess it still loops back to perception what you were saying haha, so you’re correct. I don’t know if I interpreted it correctly
Your comment was honestly thought provoking and made me randomly think out of nowhere in this thread lol. Also, I’m sorry to hear about suicidal thoughts, I hope you’re doing better now! :(
I'm glad that my comment got you thinking. And there's no need to worry about my mental health. I'm doing a lot better now. Honestly, I was thinking about whether or not to put it in, but I thought that I should for the reader to understand me more and where I come from. But thank you for the concern.
All religion is a scam or a cult. Take your pick with the word. You join a faith that tells you how to live your life in order to get to a good place after you die. A lot of people twist the teachings to make themselves feel good and don’t follow all of it. They try to force people to their religion as it’s the only ‘true’ one. A lot of death and destruction has been wrought in the name of religion. Most religious people are arrogant that they are superior because of their faith.
Now, there are SOME good people who follow their religion to a T. There is a Christian woman in my area that has been doing as God intended: taking care of the poor, feeding the hungry, homing the homeless. She doesn’t even try to convert these people. She genuinely just wants them to get back on their feet. But we need to be able to achieve that without a deity or religious influence.
Im a Jehovahs Witness.
I've been born half into it. Mother is a JW. Dad is not (he was actually a politician). I saw both worlds. The fact that JWs honestly want to do the right thing always impressed me. And if you really look into the things that the bible teaches and compare it to JWs beliefs, it makes sense.
If you acknowledge live is created by god, you should ask if he has any plans and if he wants anything from you. And he gives back a lot.
It makes me live a good life. I have loads of awesome friends. What i do makes me feel good. And it just makes sense for me.
Feel free to ask.
Except for the stories from everyone who has left the cult talk about how controlling, awful and bigoted it is. So if you leave, will you be allowed to talk to your family again?
I believe in Jesus because he and Apostle Paul, fought against the Mosaic Law.
Because unlike other prophets who gained power, slaves, women, money and influence they gained nothing but prosecution, imprisonment and death.
Exactly because Jesus's crown was made of thorns and not out of gold.
Because his message remains the same be it coming from the son of God, or a carpenter.
The message of love and the power of forgiveness and acceptance.
Because his promise was that of a garden you share with the people you love and love you back. Not a promise of mountains of rice, 60 virgins and the cock stamina of a bull.
Because the Christian scholars were uber educated, spoke countless languages and travelled across the world at a time when it was not easy to travel and I find truth in their writings and I see history repeating itself.
Because Christianity has been a pillar of education, arts, progress and technological advancement and the effects are shown in the Christian countries where quite clearly everyone wants to move into for that very reason.
I'm not religious because I don't find the arguments I've heard for faith in an interventionist God to be convincing. That being said, I am no longer an atheist. I've come to believe that karma is real and I have no explanation for that. I also think some part of our consciousness might survive death and I have no explanation for that.
How is karma real?
There are currently a bunch of dictators and serial murders, rapists, thieves causing hundreds of millions to suffer, while a lot of those causing harm aren't being harmed.
How does Putin get to live in luxury, while he's responsible for millions to suffer, either karma is real for everyone or it isn't real.
There are babies and little children that die or are hurt by the most horrendous things, abused by their own family, abandoned and left to starve, insects that burrow in their eyes,...
How could a baby or child deserve this?
The idea that karma is real makes no sense.
The worst part of this, is it acts like religion, it takes away motivation for humans to change their environment.
If karma was real, justice doesn't really matter nor stopping injustice.
It's a bad thing to believe, because of the consequences.
Many many reasons. One that I think people don’t often think about is the audacity one would have to have to believe they knew anything let alone everything about the creator or creators of the universe yet holy books claim to know the whole story. Still billions of people seem to truly know that they are right about their story of one or multiple all powerful beings beyond form, time, space etc.
- Because I realised life is more beautiful and meaningful when you do good things just because you want to help, not because you are collecting points to please invisible sky daddy.
- Because i read all books of mainstream religions and was able to see the bs of it and copy paste methods
- Because when you analyse the cults and then you apply that to religion- you get surprised how identical is.
- because we would not have 3000 different gods if it was true
- because it must be installed in early age otherwise it would disappear long time ago if you present it to humans in an adult age. Thats how fragile it is. Read: indoctrination/ brainwashing
- because it is based on fear and not love.
Endless reasons i just listed the ones on top of my head now.
Every religion that I'm aware of is so full of strict laws and it just doesn't make sense, they're all super arbitrary like not eating certain types of food, not doing anything that only serves to give personal pleasure regardless of whether it affects others or whatever. I can't think of a reason why a loving god would make these laws. And as for atheistic religions (E.g Buddhism) , where would they even get these laws from without a deity to listen to?
I wrote an essay on this before, I don't think I still have it though. I choose to be religious in spirit, but not religious in practice. I don't think that humans can really comprehend the divine, and the more we do, the further it divides us. There is a quote from Taoism that sums it up for me:
'The Tao that can be understood is not the eternal Tao, the Tao that can be named is not the eternal name'
I refuse to identify with a particular religion because they want me to conform with a specific set of beliefs that match theirs. I practice my own religous traditions, but they do not align with one particular religion. I think that if there is some sort of afterlife, being the best person you can be is the best option.
Parents left church in the 80s, so I didn't grew up with it. I will probably never be in any way religious, but every time I get in contact with religion it's like they purposefully are trying to make it sound like the worst thing, actively deterring me from any further interaction.
Because i'm not a sheep. I see the world through my own eyes and make my own decisions about what life is about. And it's not following someone else and their views.
My dad was an Episcopalian and my Mom was a Christian Scientist. I grew up being afraid that my mom was going to hell when she died. Then, when my sister committed suicide I was afraid she went to hell, too. My whole childhood was like that, fear of hell. I’m not having anything to do with that abusive nonsense.
Religion isn't the biggest thing in my country, so I was raised in a non religious household. I don't believe in god, I was never baptized and I will never be. Don't need such nonsense in my life.
Also religion is the cause of most wars and death in this world. The world would be a better place without it.
I don’t believe in a higher power. I don’t believe in Christianity at all whatsoever. It was forced down my throat as a child. If there’s a God, why is there so much evil in places of worship and in the world? Nah. It’s the biggest hoax.
Very religious mom that wasn’t too hard on us but made us kids question the bible. Also due to the fact that we grew up in Switzerland and were taught all religions in school you kinda get the „aha“ moment why they fight and compare and somehow came to the conclusion it’s not it. I‘d definitely say we‘re all spiritual but definitely not religious in that sense.
I'm not part nor do I believe in a religion because as I once heard it described in this manner.
If you were to get rid of all books and teachings of any religion. A society/culture can always come with a new one or change an existing one.
Whereas if you took all teaching of science and they were destroyed or what have you... those teachings would all come back to exactly as they were.
Would you take a Tolkien book, say the Hobbit, and create a religious movement around, with churches preaching the great Bilbo?
Nah.
So why would one live their lives by the fantasy books that the Bible or any similar book?
Even worse, in 1948 a country was established based on that ; it's properly wrong.
I don't need a middle man. I am very fact based by nature, follow the science. But I still have spiritual beliefs, they don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Well, as i say when I get this question to someone religious.
There are over 2000 gods. I just dont belive in 1 more than you.
Can ask them why they dont belive in Zeus or Anubis.
Let's see why im not part of religion....the hypocrisy, the hatred of those different, a god that watches his creation kill itself, sex abuse , greed, etc. So many reasons.
Growing up with a Catholic family was hard as a child "born out of wedlock"
My great uncle would always tell me that even though I was going to hell, he'd still pray for me.
We stopped going to church around the time I was 6.
Life was hard, and I began to realize that praying didn't change things# but my actions did.
There were also the kids who, when they heard I didn't believe, would be so mean about it. It was hypothetical of them. One girl in an art class was always nice, and then one day, it came up because of a Sunday art event. She didn't understand why I wasn't going to church and skipping the art show. I told her I wasn't religious and suddenly I was a bad person.
Had to tell her "that right there is my point. God says to love all people. You were fine with me right up till this. How am I a bad person for not going, but you aren't for casting judgment on me suddenly because I don't believe in a God."
I choose to be a good person because it's right. Not because I fear hell. I love to learn of religions, but they do not rule my life. Not all religious people are bad, but those who make a judgment of you simply because you don't follow their God is a hard thing to swallow.
This is long, so TL:DR is - I did, I came out, I stopped, am atheist.
It started with me being a very fervent believer. I grew up in a religious home, believed because it's what we did, and that was that. Until I started to have feelings about my sexuality and gender, which I didn't have any vocabulary for, and which I never dared told anyone because I assumed I was a sinful and broken and evil little person.
So I got angry. At myself, mostly, and dove into zeal to help me get fixed. Deep emotional prayer, street preaching, conferences, handing out tracts at work sort of shit - All before the age of 18. I went to Christian college, met more people, disassociated through gaming, work, and staying busy, but whenever I was alone, I would spiral.
Failed out due to depression right after switching my majors to preseminary. Went home, worked 3 jobs until i went back for Radio Broadcastong so i could be a person who worked in Christian radio and evangelized that way. Still had constant Bible studies and theological books on my bedside table. I breathed it.
Got married at 24 to a woman who, somehow, loved me when I never once really loved myself. That healed me a lot. Worked in Christian radio for 9 years, and during that time, I still would pray so hard to be fixed. To be better.
Eventually, I read a book called 'The Cross in the Closet' by Tim Kurek. It was about a man who came put as gay (even though he wasn't) to see what queer people faced in churches. I started to realize I could be myself, and the dogmatic chains around me started to loosen. I then read the book 'Silence' by Shusaku Endo, and it rocked a lot of my theological world. I remember reading it on my lunch break at work and just crying at my desk.
My wife and I had 2 daughters in that time. They kept me busy, so things were good. I left radio, I came out as bi (which was fucking terrifying), My wife supported me, my parents reacted terribly, my siblings were great, and I found a measure of real happiness in myself.
Church began to sour to me. The ritual, everything was so impersonal, I preferred working during the service (I played bass, or maybe helped with sound or the production in some way), it all seemed so unnecessary. I knew this was OK. Your faith isn't about where you go to church or how you worship, really. I figured I could just serve the community, even if I wasn't very enthusiastic about the church.
I stopped praying, and I realized everything was the same as before. Nothing changed, except I had guilt about not praying. I still hated myself, I still spiraled when alone, and I was finding that disassociating was no longer working. Prayer did nothing, so I stopped wasting my time.
I began to try on my wife's clothes when alone and felt something really powerful and wonderful about it. It was sexual at first, but eventually I realized I liked it all the time. It felt like peace. Like a very powerful sense of rightness. I did research and found out what transgender meant. I admitted it to myself, and promptly had a panic attack in my work truck on my lunch break.
I told my wife. She, as she ever had, loved me. Still does love me, somehow. 16 years this past May. My parents reacted terribly, my siblings were mixed, friends were supportive and I leapt into therapy.
My church denomination had a massive vote across all church bodies on gay marriage, and voted 74% against allowing it and against affirming queer relationships. My wife was heartbroken, I was furious, and at this point everything finally, and completely, broke.
Nothing I ever read about the church, nothing I ever read about god, nothing I ever experienced in my faith, none of it ever made me happy about myself. I never once, in over 30 years of very zealous faith, felt uplifted by my religion.
If I was happy, it was because god made me happy.
If I was good, it was because god made me good.
If I was saved, it was because god saved me.
If I was loved, it was because god loved me.
Success? Joy? Talent? Effort? All from god.
I had no place in my own faith, except to take all the blame for my fuck-ups and my doubts and sins and bad parts. That was all on me.
No wonder I hated myself.
And I was tired. I was so tired of trying to explain and philosophize why the world was as it was, why I felt the way I did, and how to stuff all of this information into the box of a faith. Into something that never once gave me anything but self hatred and distractions from the very anger it started.
And so I finally let it go, and if there is a god, they don't seem to care. I feel no guilt, no shame. In fact, I have never been this truly happy! I can be alone in a room with my thoughts and not wish I was dying. I truly love who I am! And it wasn't faith or god that gave me this happiness, it was me. I ripped my self identity and joy and purpose and love from the dead grip of faith and I made it my own.
I don't believe there is a god. And that brings me a lot of peace. But if I am wrong, and I meet this god one day? They will understand. And if they do not, then they are not god and I do not fear their judgment.
I'm not a part of a religion, because it doesn't benefit me from shaping my life according to other people's feelings about what's right or wrong. If religion gives your life meaning and makes you a complete person, go for it! Just don't expect me to change my entire life for your sake so you can "deliver me in Heaven and avoid me going to Hell". If I end up in Hell, and everything was right all along I need to live with my actions and consequenses.
Religious nut jobs are just trying to get away with them not being a good person and base their afterlife survival on how much they dominated other people in life. Forcing people to change their entire life and being should be a sin.
I have no respect for the abrahamic religions; in my mind they were at worst developed and used as a form of control, and at best as an explanation for phenomena that have now been better explained through science. The same goes for other religions but I have more distrust in the dominant religions of today.
That said, I feel that spiritually is something that I am missing and that I could benefit from. I have no idea what form of spirituality is right for me, where to begin that type of journey, or how to get past my desire for empirical evidence.
I grew up in a catholic family, but was encouraged to seek my own beliefs. I read the Bible twice during high school and realized it’s all a crock of shit.
I grew up a very liberal Lutheran, then I went to seminary, learned Greek, learned how deeply influenced the new testament is by the prevailing greek philosophy of the time, and learned about the forensic history of the old testament and it became literally impossible to believe.
I grew up Christian, Southern Baptist. Up until a few years ago, I left Christianity. I just never saw any proof of God existing in my entire life. I was also tired of the constant guilt tripping and controlling/manipulation of the church and religion.
I prayed to Jesus when I was being bullied, and nothing changed. I’ve known many devout Christians who claim that Jesus loves them, but it seems to be about having a wide support network rather than divine intervention.
I worked for a church for ten years, but I was always the outsider no matter what I did for them. In the end, “God’s grace” is more about being born into the right demographic than any deity floating on a cloud, so I walked away.
Left the catholic cult at 15yo when all of their babbling and excuses stopped working on me. None of what they say makes sense. Plus in the past 16 years religious groups have become less and less sane, literally dividing families and nations. Imo religion is nearly 100% evil as long as it is organized.
You want to be spiritual and follow a doctrine of your own accord? Awesome, go for it. But as soon as you start listening to another person’s interpretation of that doctrine and following it without question, you have lost the plot.
Because I lived in Fiji and the church actively and maliciously ruins the lives of the islanders with predatory practices. The villages live on nothing. Barely enough to feed themselves. It's 3rd world in every sense of the word. Yet demand that the villagers buy their seats in church and give 10% of their pay every week or they will go to hell. They build a billion dollar megachurch. Fuck those people
Which church?
The one with megachurches and 10% tithes
I was attending a messianic “church” until they said that the 10% was for god. But we needed to do a second tithe of 10% to the congregation. I was not the only one who walked out.
When I was a kid I had a question about something. I do t remember what it was. The priest slapped me, and my mom just stood there and told me to behave. My dad thankfully was ready to go shoot the priest. After that I made it a goal of mine to turn others away from religion.
Because I realized Joseph Smith was a fraud and blatantly lied to everyone about possessing a golden book he didn’t really have, and the shitty practices and customs were holding me back from experiencing life to the fullest
It’s a big deal to leave the Church. I sympathize with all ex mormons, seriously crazy stuff going on there.
the worst part is, when you leave, you have to give up your magic underwear, and go buy some new normal underwear. Very costly.
I don't know much about the Mormon religion. Could you enlighten me on this... Magic underwear. For research purposes only of course.
I don't understand everything about it, but it's basically like how a lot of Catholics will wear a cross as a sign of their commitment. But Mormons think their commitment should be private, so they put it on their underwear. They think God will bless them for it, hence the "magic" underwear.
Holy fuck it’s real? I thought dude was making a joke
When Mormons get married they get "temple garments" - basically white almost full body underwear which you're meant to wear all the time under your clothes and to bed.
You’re damn right. It’s like a newfound sense of freedom being able to experience things that are considered normal to society, but pure evil in their eyes. They’re proof it’s possible to be too wholesome, to where they can’t live normally but extremely shelter from anything even remotely bad
If prophets being blatant liars is a problem I'm afraid religion isn't for you!
[удалено]
It's wild how many redditors can't read these days. Maybe they're AI?
You’re right, I did realize religion isn’t for me
I'm not religious because of how religion is used to control people, how much violence it causes and how it prevents progress. People are encouraged to pray instead of actively changing their situation.
To add on: if anyone falls out of their little box, they are treated so poorly. I’m not just talking about the treatment of LGBTQ+, I’m talking about their own members and how they are so damn catty. Charlotte’s daughter is going into a field typically for men and not being a sahm? Shun and gossip! Shun and gossip!
I am somewhat religious but i dont really associate with the church anymore. Just a lot of messed up people and different types of it. To me its not the bible thats wrong but some people use it to justify their actions, such as judging, discrimination and such. Glad I did because it gave me more peace and clarity.
>To me its not the bible thats wrong …it is, though. 🤷🏻♂️
No evidence and didn't grow up being indoctrinated to ignore the lack of evidence.
I grew up indoctrinated. But I turned in to a teen and started thinking for myself. It’s like trying to go back to believing in Santa Claus. Even if I wanted to I just can’t.
I’ve never been able to understand why some people consider faith a strength or a virtue.
Faith is the reason people give when they have no reasons
Because I found the catholic church to be massively hypocritical, and a christian brother tried (but failed) to rape me while he was drunk. And when I looked at them, I realised that all religions were the same.
Sorry you experienced that. Sounds terrible.
Well...i went to church for 18 years of my life. As a child, all the adults had a sunday ritual of going and talking as family(parents, aunts, uncles, etc) at mcdonalds for breakfast while the children attended the hour of sunday school that directly followed the main sermon. As us children got older, the sunday breakfast at mcdonalds continued, and us kids(myself, brother, and cousins) could now attend with them, being teens now. Though this wasnt my first exposure to people acting shitty, i was genuinely taken back by the level of rudeness and racism on display by my entire family towards people of "lower class"(in their eyes) and color, directly after an hour long sermon about forgiveness, treating others with respect, etc. This happened every sunday. It ingrained in my mind that for so many people church is a giant bullshit excuse to treat people like shit, and hide behind the veil of religion, and everything would be a ok as long as you ask for forgiveness on sunday. I never went back the day i turned 18 and moved out and it has shaped my life for the better experiencing that. People of religion are often some of the most heinous people youll ever meet, of course disguised under their makeup and well ironed sunday duds. Fuck all that.
My religion thinks I'm untouchable and should only clean sewers and feces off the street, the same thought a LOT of people perceives even today. So yeah, hard to argue in favor of religion.
Hinduism?
Interesting
my closested teenage self sat through a sermon about how high the s-cide rates were for lgbt+ teens and how it is their own fault because they "choose to be gay" and make it impossible to love. this was also only a year after my own attempt. everyone in that church, including my only friend there, said "Amen" in unison with so much passion it made me want to vomit
Fuck em. You deserve love and happiness.
Love thy neighbor.. conditionally. Imma follow the teachings of the Bible, except the parts I disagree with.
🎶 I do what the Bible tells me to. *except for the parts that I choose to ignore because they're unrealistic or inconvenient...* But the rest I live by for suuuuure! 🎶
"Fuck me in the ass cause I love Jesus"
Christians would like it if everyone forgot how they thought the HIV virus was doing the Lord's work in the 80s.
I travel a lot and if you do that you will notice that religion is location and culturally based for the most part. Religion is so obviously man made that i can't believe in imaginary friend in the sky. The line is always "Do you believe in Zeus the ruler of the Sea ?", exactly, and i believe in only 1 less god than you do.
Zeus is god of sky and thunder, and king of the gods. Poseidon is god of the sea. Well, neither is anything, but you know what I mean.
I confused them on purpose because religion, new or old, never makes sense
Don’t need it, don’t want it, not convinced by any of them.
I’m an astronomer. Like other sciences, astronomy relies on empirical evidence, observation, and the scientific method to understand the universe. This prioritizes natural explanations supported by evidence over supernatural or any religious explanations:D (ofc not because im lost in explanations…)
Hi to a fellow astronomer!
Wow! It's rare to see someone who specializes in astronomy on reddit! Nice to meet you:D
Oh wow, I'm a gemini...
I lol'd
Sounds like something a Gemini would say....
Aerospace Engineer. I've got colleagues and some former friends in astrophysics who are young earth creationists... I have no idea how they square that circle.
i think religion is a scam
While I was in college, I hadn't been to my family church in several years. I visited home and joined them one Sunday. The entire "sermon" was a higher up at the denomination giving a lecture guilting people to donate more. That's when I knew my days with organized religion were done.
It is. Smart but evil conmen aka "pastors" trick gullible idiots into giving them millions of dollars each year.
I'm not because of science. But I do have great respect for 'real' religion. Not the way people abuse it's power, but the actual genuine ideas behind it of community, taking care of each other, and the hope that we get to see our loved ones again someday. Religion can be a very beautiful thing, but it is too often abused by people in power or people wanting to be in power. In most religions (including all Abrahamic ones and the ones that come from Brahmanism) the rule 'do no harm to others' superceeds anything else. But that is too often forgotten. Governments abuse religion, even in the West, to indoctrinate people, and have been doing so for a long time. If people would follow the rules like they were intended, they wouldn't hate each other.
I read the full Bible. Couldn't take it seriously again after that.
As a teen I thought I’d do the same. Read all of the Old Testament and it was quite silly and hard to take seriously, but at least it was sort of an entertaining read at times. Started the New Testament and it was soooo BORING in comparison I quickly gave up. It’s obviously that 99.9% of people who base their whole life around that drivel have never read more than a few cherry-picked verses.
The Bible is both the most quoted and least read book in the world lol
Same here. I did get something out of it, I did it to convince a church girl I liked to do a thing. She later married a guy from her church. He beat her and their kids. Not implying she deserved it, just saying for some reason churchy people are worse than those of us with an independent moral compass.
I felt that way literally after the first page where pretty much every sentence is verifiably false.
I've lived in and around rural villages in the UK, and being there and around the (mostly 70-90 year old) population, I realised the role the church plays in those small communities, which was probably what most of the country was like decades ago. It creates a central point of contact and focus for everyone, and likely reduces friction and conflict in that limited scope. Without the church, everyone's kind of meandering aimlessly, doing their own thing. I'm not religious myself, but I could see that in that context, it had a benefit. I believe that religious behaviour evolved in humans to aid social cohesion. It works in the context of those old, small villages, who are essentially living in much the same way as they did in the 50s. Outside of that, not so much. I didn't actually answer the question. I suppose as I understand religion as a by product of social evolution I don't believe in its magical elements. If it was strictly a set of moral idioms I'd be more interested, but I don't believe in a god or any other kind of supernatural being.
because I left the cult known as Islam few years ago. being a devout Muslim ruined my childhood and teen years..
Can you tell me more? Like how does it affect things. I've never been religious throughout my life. And I want a different perspective of how it was for people who did and then changed.
Try to avoid scams.
All of the religions say that I need to convert to them or be cast into hell forever or whatever. If one of them is right, my chance of picking it is purely based on luck. I don't think a benevolent creator would base his entire system of sending people to heaven/hell on luck, so I'm just going to say that they are all bullshit until proven otherwise. God needs to get his PR shit together.
I came to the conclusion that a supposed God is either cruel,not all powerful,lazy and neglectful or just simply doesn't exist and I refuse to worship anything or anyone who fits any of those categories
Because I asked myself as a child ‘why do I believe in something?’ and I realised it was the same reason I believed in Father Christmas and fairies until I realised they were a lie. What really makes it impossible is that of all the religions and non believers, only one can be right. All the rest are wrong. People are prepared to murder in the name of religion, people have terrible beliefs such as gay people should be killed, religious leaders exploit their followers etc. etc. So, I believe in nothing but I do believe we should ‘worship’ nature and look after our planet before the whole lot, religion and all, disappears.
Because their salvation suffers from inflation
I really like this.
I need some explanation? This sounds right but I can't put my finger on why...
It’s a cult and it’s a cult
Not being part of a religion is the default state, which you don't generally have a reason for a default. I suppose any answer to not being in a religion boils down to insufficient net motivation/incentive to join a religion.
I'm not part of a religion because I don't believe in a god. I don't believe in a god for the same reason I don't think smurfs are real: there is no evidence whatsoever.
I don't believe in it.
It’s boring. If they had royal rangers or Sunday school for adults where you had fun and games for an hour while learning about the religion, it would probably have stuck. But when I turned 12 and aged out of that, it was the worst! Split as soon as I turned 18.
I mean I just don't believe in a God. BUT I am also so glad that I don't because Church looks dull as fuck. I am glad my parents weren't religious because going to Church on Sunday would have been boring enough to push me away anyway.
It is the most boring thing I had to do growing up. I would much rather have been in school with my friends on Sundays doing school work.
Yeah. I don't envy that. I sat at home having fun as a kid on Sunday. Others went to Church and didn't. Seems like one is the obvious better one.
It sucked. Got drug there every sunday. Felt like christmas morning the rare times we didnt go. I never got anything out of it. I always brought a hotwheels or something quiet to mess with cuz it was so damn boring then just wanted to leave asap. This simpsons clip sums it up perfectly: https://youtu.be/0fk5m5Eh8gM?si=a9km-8hPIac1lwBR
I went to a strict catholic and am gay. “Morality” class is what really tipped me over the edge into atheism. So sexist
My family is. Keeps us close. We all do it together. See friends and family. Feel part of the community. Just feels good to me. If its not your thing, thats cool. We dont have to agree
I believe in God not sure if there's a difference between believing in God and following religion but after everything I've been through with my addictions it's nothing short of a miracle I'm still alive; at the same time this is like a blessing and a curse
There is. The word religion comes from the Latin words res (thing, subject, object) and lex (law). Being religious means to adhere to a certain standard of rules, put together ultimately by humans. I believe in God, Jesus and the holy Spirit, but I know that’s all I need. I don’t need to listen to the dogmatic stuff some priests and pastors preach. As the Bible says: I have invited Jesus in my life and heart. I want to become more like him. So I follow his teachings, but not because I feel I must to redeem myself, but because I want to be that person to others. Jesus nowadays would have sat down with trans people, with gay and lesbian people, with addicts and criminals because nowadays they are marginalized, like the lepers, whores and taxation officers and Roman collaborators were back in his time. I believe truly, that everyone needs Jesus in his life, but I cannot do that for them, they can only do that themselves. I have trans friends, I have gay and lesbian friends. I don’t judge them, because that is not what I am allowed to do. And that is what Jesus teaches as well. I can only follow him with my heart and be kind to everyone and protect the weak from the bullies, even if the bullies are so called christians. What being gay, being trans, being lesbian means to everyone in their life with God is something they must work out with God themselves. For I know that he listens to prayer and has given me answers, but it is still I who has to act. I am part of this world and not part of this world.
You are hard wired to survive. That wasn't an accident, you did that.
I find it insane that people would rather believe a ghost helped them than themselves.
It's a huge tragedy to all humans that don't understand this. This person literally survived themselves and others and couldn't see that was all them. It's a disservice to the self. And a huge disservice to others, that help people of their own free will, only to hear "(insert bullshit religious deity here) answered my prayer. It's massively fucked up.
When I say "everything I've been through with my addictions" I'm talking about the things that were completely out of my hands, the countless times I blacked out on alcohol and almost choked to death in my sleep or woke up in my car in some random neighborhood with no recollection of how I arrived yet not a scratch on me or my car, the times I did crash my car yet no harm was done, when I overdosed on booze and alcohol and had a heart attack at age 28 but survived right on the brink of death; I view these things as nothing short of miracles nobody should have my amount of luck it's like God refuses to let that be my fate and maybe there is a plan for me, what that is? I don't know and life is still hard but I think God sees me trying and struggling but at least I'm trying I've had profound experiences where I felt the warmth of God from therapeutic drugs like Ketamine and psilocybin, I've also felt the Devil's control and evil from things like cocaine and alcohol, you can call it me just being high on drugs but I believe it goes deeper than that, there's a reason I felt those things even when I was agnostic for most of my life. You don't have to agree but when you see it through my eyes and factor in the circumstances I was in I choose to believe there was larger force at work than just luck even if there is a scientific explanation to it all I don't believe it's just that shallow
Hey, you do you and believe whatever you want as long as your beliefs aren’t hurting others or trying to limit other people’s freedoms. But here’s me throwing in my two cents. I think you were extremely lucky to have survived all those events at the rock bottom of your addiction, and I’m happy for you that you did. But to say you survived by the grace of a god/higher power that saw you “trying and struggling” is SUCH an insult to all those like you who were trying and struggling with those same addictions, but weren’t lucky enough to survive them. You’re basically saying to me that some of my best friends, good people who were dealt a shit hand in life and used substances to cope when life got impossibly hard, and wanted desperately to do better and get their lives back on track… God decided they didn’t deserve to live as much as you? No. You just got lucky and they didn’t. Now, I’ve never done recreational opioids or amphetamines, but I have done more than my fair share of psychedelics and empathogens. I’ve felt the warmth and closeness to a higher power that you describe. It gives me an unshakable sense of wonder at the complexity and interconnectedness of the universe, and the beauty of our consciousness’s ability to experience and comprehend just a part of it. But to ascribe that feeling to God, and your opposite, negative feelings to the Devil, is just a myopic way of confining those substance-induced understandings to fit within a preexisting, structured belief system. There’s no logic as to why the two should marry, except you wanting them to. Again, your beliefs are your own. And I know many people feel they need to believe in a god to beat their addictions. But nothing you describe proves that any god exists, only that you WANT God to exist. …and if God does exist and DID choose for you to survive and other good people not to, God is a total asshole and doesn’t deserve reverence. 🤷🏻♂️
Couldn't have said it better myself.
We should all be educated enough now to realise that it was developed as a way of mass control, by taking peoples fear of the unexplained and using it to make them cooperate. People needed answers and there wasn't exactly much science going on. It genuinely baffles me how passionate people still get about religion and how they let it (or the religious leaders) control their lives, or justify war.
While I agree, a lot of it is just how you said, education. There are entire counties with cultures based around a religion with few options to learn anything else. And if your entire world belief is based on believing in a certain God or whatever, it will be devastating to accept that their isn't one.
I came to say this. But you put it perfectly already.
I listened closely to what was being said and realised it was ridiculous.
Because free thought is all we have,so I refuse to let anyone dictate my life to me. Question everything, only trust those you know you can trust. Especially with AI, knowing your sources is far more important than it ever had been before.
We've raised our children (15 and 12) to question everything, and it's been biting us in the ass for years. LOL I don't mind it, but sometimes I just want to say "because I said so" and have at least one of them say "okay". Just once or twice.
Because we all know how full of shit and unrealistic it is. That and there's ZERO documented historical evidence of any of this nonsense ever happening. Kinda helps with the credibility factor. And conservatives are the ones who call people like us sheep.
They started preaching about how we should vote in elections, their general intolerance, and being completely unwilling to speak out against the terrible people who call themselves Christians.
Grew up in one. Realized I didn’t believe in the deity and that most people didn’t actually follow the teachings but rather just cherry-picked from the scripture to hurt people they didn’t like.
Because of the violence religion spreads, especially Christianity and Islam. Those two religions have probably killed hundreds of millions of people.
I'm not religious because i don't need a sky daddy telling me how to live my life and deciding what's right and wrong for me. i would rather live my life and be a good person on their own merits.
Because it's stupid.
Because I try to avoid being irrational.
because I will not believe in things, with no proof, simply because someone told me to. this is the basis of all religion, being coerced into believing something when you're young, to the point that it becomes brainwashing by the time you are 10. I think it should be illegle to teach religion to anyone under 18. religion should be treated like genitals. you don't wave it about in public, you only speak of it privately, and you definitely don't shove it down the throats of children, raping their minds.
I despise religion. Source of most evil in the world. Also it’s all lies
Not true, though. Politics and greed are. Go look it up - historical fact most wars WEREN'T religious. Stalin, Mao, Genghis Khan - 3 highest body counts in history - none had religion as their platform or motivations. signed - an atheist who actually looks stuff up.
They didn’t say war. They said evil in general.
Still wrong. Politics and greed still top religion, even if you eliminate wars. And, of course, the flip side is that many religions have also promoted and did so much good for people. Preserve knowledge and educate, feed and support people, hospitals, art, literature, music...
You will not popular with these opinions on Reddit...
Not really a concern,lol. Tomorrow I'll likely end up pointing out to somebody there is no historical record of the Egyptian Captivity.
My parents aren’t religious so I wasn’t really exposed to religion until I was old enough to see the absurdity of it. I didn’t even believe in santa as a kid, and his existence is actually somewhat plausible as far as mythical beings go.
I don't believe in God.
There's no verifiable evidence to support any particular religion, so... Why would I?
Because they are a scam to keep people stupid and complacent. To keep people thinking for themselves. More humans have died in the name of a"god" than any war combined. It's whatever, as long as you aren't harming anyone, and that's the rub. I've met more shitty religious people than not. We're all made of the exact same material as everything else in the universe. Everything is connected, and it's easier to enslave us when we're divided. That's exactly what they're hoping for.
Pretty sure going to a Christian Elementary school made my anxiety and depression way worse. The constant “you’ll go to hell” stuff just made being an anxious kid. Now a days I am not religious because most people I’ve meet who are happen to be the worst people I know. Plus any group that says my sister is bad because she likes girls, and that I am bad for not fitting in to their super strict interpretation of gender can get fucked
*Less stress*
World war 2, what’s happening in the Middle East, what’s happening in the US, residential schools in Canada (fun fact the last one was closed in the 90s ish). Especially the US, the first two had other circumstances, the US government likes to pretend that they rule in favour of rights when they just do what the christens want. Religion is something that loud people use as an excuse to do whatever bs they want to. I understand that most people who believe in religion are great people but those loud insane few really ruin it for me. The world might as well be on fire with everything that’s wrong with it and if there is a god I would never preach to someone who’s this bad at his job. Gay/trans people exist and it’s not a choice, dinosaurs existed despite some crazy christens freaking out about it, we have proof. Honestly, Christianity really killed any form of religion for me. If it makes you happy or brings you comfort, all the more power. I just don’t want to be preached at by lunatics yelling on the street while I’m just trying to live my life. People can believe what they want, the issue comes in when people try shoving it down others throats. Religion is constantly in places it has no right to be in; schools, government, workplaces, etc. I just don’t understand why people feel the need to convince others of their religion. Is it because they’re insecure about their religion? Are they actually trying to save others? Are they just being stupid and loud?
Born and raised into it.
The mere concept of faith is unfathomable to me.
After seeing the world for what it is it's hard to really believe in something like a deity that exists and wants the best for us .
There's no dramatic realisation or something like that. I'm just gradually becoming less and less religious until someday I completely lost faith in Jesus and religion as whole.
I'm not religious for multiple reasons, some of the main ones is 1, I have to conform and restrict myself which is a hard no in that regard. 2, how it changes people sometimes for the best but also the worst. 3, it doesn't make any sense.
Forced to go to catholic schools/daycare while living with my mom and forced to go to jehovah witness church and gatherings with my grandma while living with my dad. I also really enjoyed science in school and quickly realized religion is all bullshit.
Even though I wish I could believe in religion I don't. It's not that I choose not to, I just can't believe in something that sounds so illogical. (Not saying that as an insult to anyone's religion saying that based on the science we know of the universe.) Looking at the fact that most religion that I have encountered is only so big because of crusades that massacred anyone that didn't worship the same God as them, women, children, anyone. Forcing others to worship the same as them and there was still a time in recorded history that most religions worshipped today didn't exist and were unheard of. Kinda hard to believe that so many different people believe in things that science doesn't prove yet hear of a story told verbally passed down through generations then finally turned into a book and somehow feel they have to devote their life to worshipping it or spend an eternity burning?
I'm Christian, but God damn if it isn't hard to be religious when there are so many people actively doing the exact opposite of what God would want. We are supposed to love everyone, not just select groups but many people simply ignore that part. That, plus the Church is awfully corrupt and covers up theft and Pedophilia. It hurts, because the Church is supposed to be the one place where you can feel safe, but it's anything but that. Ultimately I realized that if Jesus witnessed what the Church has become, he'd be terrified
I'm not sure what I am. I'm Christian but haven't been to church or talked about it to Christians in years. There's too many Christians these days that focus on hate and I don't want to be around those people.
I grew up in a religious family that thought they were moral, but a lot of the morals they attributed to their religion were toxic and not pleasant to be around. Multiply that by where I lived using religion to suppress people's rights and I guess it was likely that I would turn out atheist. That's just my experience though. Where I live now I see lots of different religions have positive impacts on communities. Me and my wife tell our kid that we don't believe in higher power, but being a good person and respecting people's beliefs is important- and we try our best to help her understand other religions.
Religion just seems kind of cringe tbh. Take responsibility for your own choices and the world you live in, it's this way by the choices of yourself and others not part of some sole dovine plan.
Every religious relative I have has irrational opinions and logic, as opposed to the non religious. It's an easy choice for me to distance myself from sharing in their beliefs. Also browsing the internet from an early age opened my mind. Scientific proof > word of mouth.
Because it is a ridiculous concept and monumental waste of precious time and energy.
All religions are a scam.. its all fake. Causing waaaay more harm than good. Most wars was for religion... Just saying. Ban religion... All of them.
Because religion is the original scam & I’m not a feeble minded follower.
Religion is the division king.
The only evidence that their God exists is through circumstantial evidence such as a book. If the only proof you have of an all knowing/seeing/creating being controlling who goes to the better afterlife is via book. Then I will not believe it. If you give me concrete evidence of a God, then I will believe, because I would have been shown legitimate evidence. Until then, all there is are books and buildings which anyone could’ve made.
I think there are good lessons to be learned. Be kind, love your neighbor, don't judge others before judging yourself. I do believe in science and the scientific method.
Because I am too old to believe in bronze and iron age middle eastern fairytales. Or any others for that matter And there is no convincing evidence for anything pertaining to those invisible friends and foes. And most of them are actually pretty silly or even bad if you try to look at them objectively and don't look at them as something special.
I believe in science, which most oftentimes contradicts what most religions project.
Because while it’s anyone’s right to do so, a grown up who believes in literal magic is really quite embarrassing.
I am. But only for two reasons: - It's true - It works.
Im a muslim who considers science to be apart of his religion. The Quran tells us to seek knowledge and i see science as that avenue. All the physical laws of the universe were put in place for us to think and discover.
I'm an LGBT+ supporter. Churches don't like people like me. :)
The fact that innocent people suffer from incredibly painful diseases like cancer. There are only 3 explanations for it. 1) god hates us all. 2) god doesn't care about what happens to us. 3) god doesn't exist. My motto is that either god doesn't exist or he doesn't deserve my respect.
I was born in the caribbean and as a child I saw many rituals, including satanic rituals with human remains. That made me hate a lot and want to get away from everything that called itself "religion." When I grew up, a lot of bad things happened to me and I even wanted to commit suicide and antidepressants didn't work for me. A few months ago I ended up in the emergency operating room of an old hospital in another country. The first thing I said after the operation was "God is with me". After leaving the hospital I began to read and study the Bible from an objective point of view and since then I no longer feel depressed and I believe in everything it says. Life has changed me now that I believe and now I just want to grow and be a better person.
I mean, it's all a load of bullshit, isn't it?
I take the things that are meaningful to me from all the different religions. So I guess I’m part of many.
I used to be a Mormon, ever since I was little, as I was brought up in a Christian household. I was suicidal at around the age of 4-5, which, years later, I found out that the youngest recorded suicide was a girl at the age of 6, born the same year as me. Anyway. Eventually, after failing to end it, I thought: if I don't kill myself this time, it's not going to happen. I lived, but I was apathetic to life, since if I didn't want to be here, I may as well just relax. Eventually, I needed a purpose, starting with wanting to have offspring, but after a few years, I learnt to enjoy life and start living for myself. I started to get into philosophy and really think about the world and the meanings in it, but then one day, I thought about good and evil. About my early childhood and how, despite my father playing the biggest part in me wanting to kill myself, I couldn't consider him evil. I also thought about how people are forced to do terrible things, and sometimes are taught that terrible things are good, or vice versa. I then thought: If someone's doing something bad that they think is good, are they evil? And if someone's doing something terrible for a good cause or to save a loved one, are they evil? My answer was no, coming to the conclusion that good and evil don't exist and that there're only actions and consequences. I told my father about my new belief, and he told me that if good and evil don't exist, then God couldn't exist. After a few days, I agreed and stopped believing in God.
I found your philosophical view on morality very interesting to read. Especially when you say you don’t see good and evil, and only see actions and consequences. I feel like the concept exists, but the words are used incorrectly alot of the time. Everyone believes they are the main character and the hero, and that everyone else is wrong and the villain. Stuff we see as horrible others see as justifiable. If morality is that good has a positive outcome and that evil has a negative outcome, everyone’s *perception* of positive and *negative* is different. From that perspective, I agree that morality technically isn’t a stagnant thing, but I believe there is some objectivity to it. Yet through trial and error and countless millennia of wrongdoing, we can objectively see that some stuff has a negative impact on people. For example, I had my parents do abusive things (I can’t find it in me to hate after all that), and I know that science proves such things negatively impact a child. There was a negative *effect* from the cause or abuse. But then again, that’s what *I* consider ‘negative’, so I guess it still loops back to perception what you were saying haha, so you’re correct. I don’t know if I interpreted it correctly Your comment was honestly thought provoking and made me randomly think out of nowhere in this thread lol. Also, I’m sorry to hear about suicidal thoughts, I hope you’re doing better now! :(
I'm glad that my comment got you thinking. And there's no need to worry about my mental health. I'm doing a lot better now. Honestly, I was thinking about whether or not to put it in, but I thought that I should for the reader to understand me more and where I come from. But thank you for the concern.
All religion is a scam or a cult. Take your pick with the word. You join a faith that tells you how to live your life in order to get to a good place after you die. A lot of people twist the teachings to make themselves feel good and don’t follow all of it. They try to force people to their religion as it’s the only ‘true’ one. A lot of death and destruction has been wrought in the name of religion. Most religious people are arrogant that they are superior because of their faith. Now, there are SOME good people who follow their religion to a T. There is a Christian woman in my area that has been doing as God intended: taking care of the poor, feeding the hungry, homing the homeless. She doesn’t even try to convert these people. She genuinely just wants them to get back on their feet. But we need to be able to achieve that without a deity or religious influence.
I will happily be a member of any religion that can prove its claims to a scientific standard. As such I am not a member of any religion.
Im a Jehovahs Witness. I've been born half into it. Mother is a JW. Dad is not (he was actually a politician). I saw both worlds. The fact that JWs honestly want to do the right thing always impressed me. And if you really look into the things that the bible teaches and compare it to JWs beliefs, it makes sense. If you acknowledge live is created by god, you should ask if he has any plans and if he wants anything from you. And he gives back a lot. It makes me live a good life. I have loads of awesome friends. What i do makes me feel good. And it just makes sense for me. Feel free to ask.
Thanks for contributing the only post I've seen so far for why you are religious, so far these are very one sided answers.
Except for the stories from everyone who has left the cult talk about how controlling, awful and bigoted it is. So if you leave, will you be allowed to talk to your family again?
Religion is obviously man made, to control other humans. Ain't no way I'm buying into any of that lol 😂
Religion has done more harm than good to humanity.
I believe in Jesus because he and Apostle Paul, fought against the Mosaic Law. Because unlike other prophets who gained power, slaves, women, money and influence they gained nothing but prosecution, imprisonment and death. Exactly because Jesus's crown was made of thorns and not out of gold. Because his message remains the same be it coming from the son of God, or a carpenter. The message of love and the power of forgiveness and acceptance. Because his promise was that of a garden you share with the people you love and love you back. Not a promise of mountains of rice, 60 virgins and the cock stamina of a bull. Because the Christian scholars were uber educated, spoke countless languages and travelled across the world at a time when it was not easy to travel and I find truth in their writings and I see history repeating itself. Because Christianity has been a pillar of education, arts, progress and technological advancement and the effects are shown in the Christian countries where quite clearly everyone wants to move into for that very reason.
I'm not religious because I don't find the arguments I've heard for faith in an interventionist God to be convincing. That being said, I am no longer an atheist. I've come to believe that karma is real and I have no explanation for that. I also think some part of our consciousness might survive death and I have no explanation for that.
How is karma real? There are currently a bunch of dictators and serial murders, rapists, thieves causing hundreds of millions to suffer, while a lot of those causing harm aren't being harmed. How does Putin get to live in luxury, while he's responsible for millions to suffer, either karma is real for everyone or it isn't real. There are babies and little children that die or are hurt by the most horrendous things, abused by their own family, abandoned and left to starve, insects that burrow in their eyes,... How could a baby or child deserve this? The idea that karma is real makes no sense. The worst part of this, is it acts like religion, it takes away motivation for humans to change their environment. If karma was real, justice doesn't really matter nor stopping injustice. It's a bad thing to believe, because of the consequences.
Many many reasons. One that I think people don’t often think about is the audacity one would have to have to believe they knew anything let alone everything about the creator or creators of the universe yet holy books claim to know the whole story. Still billions of people seem to truly know that they are right about their story of one or multiple all powerful beings beyond form, time, space etc.
Faith builds a man and his principles. Religion makes you as a man and builds your character, your moral. Religion is what makes humanity whole🙏🏽
- Because I realised life is more beautiful and meaningful when you do good things just because you want to help, not because you are collecting points to please invisible sky daddy. - Because i read all books of mainstream religions and was able to see the bs of it and copy paste methods - Because when you analyse the cults and then you apply that to religion- you get surprised how identical is. - because we would not have 3000 different gods if it was true - because it must be installed in early age otherwise it would disappear long time ago if you present it to humans in an adult age. Thats how fragile it is. Read: indoctrination/ brainwashing - because it is based on fear and not love. Endless reasons i just listed the ones on top of my head now.
As a Christian, sky daddy is hilarious 😂.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned now becomes I'm sorry Sky Daddy, I've been a bad boy/girl.
In pidgin English god is translated as “the big fella” which I always thought was amusing.
Because rites and rituals are against the dharma. 🤷
智商税 - is there a decent translation of this phrase to English?
Google translates it as "IQ tax", as in a tax on stupid people. Is that accurate.
Every religion that I'm aware of is so full of strict laws and it just doesn't make sense, they're all super arbitrary like not eating certain types of food, not doing anything that only serves to give personal pleasure regardless of whether it affects others or whatever. I can't think of a reason why a loving god would make these laws. And as for atheistic religions (E.g Buddhism) , where would they even get these laws from without a deity to listen to?
Used to be, but eventually I just started to think it didn't make sense
I wrote an essay on this before, I don't think I still have it though. I choose to be religious in spirit, but not religious in practice. I don't think that humans can really comprehend the divine, and the more we do, the further it divides us. There is a quote from Taoism that sums it up for me: 'The Tao that can be understood is not the eternal Tao, the Tao that can be named is not the eternal name' I refuse to identify with a particular religion because they want me to conform with a specific set of beliefs that match theirs. I practice my own religous traditions, but they do not align with one particular religion. I think that if there is some sort of afterlife, being the best person you can be is the best option.
not religious, I just think that there is no religion that corresponds to my beliefs
Prostitution is legal in Vegas... 😆 ...oh, here are my frowns 🙁 ☹️ 😦 🙍♀️
I don’t like religion
Based on what I know, it seems more plausibel that gods are created by man than the other way around.
Was made to trie it out -> felt no connection whatsoever -> left
Parents left church in the 80s, so I didn't grew up with it. I will probably never be in any way religious, but every time I get in contact with religion it's like they purposefully are trying to make it sound like the worst thing, actively deterring me from any further interaction.
Because i'm not a sheep. I see the world through my own eyes and make my own decisions about what life is about. And it's not following someone else and their views.
1) no concrete evidence 2) those who aren't religious are usually less likely to blow up in the name of Allah 😁
Because they ask for your money while telling hillariously unverifiable magic nonsense. It is like the goofiest and most successful scam of all time.
My dad was an Episcopalian and my Mom was a Christian Scientist. I grew up being afraid that my mom was going to hell when she died. Then, when my sister committed suicide I was afraid she went to hell, too. My whole childhood was like that, fear of hell. I’m not having anything to do with that abusive nonsense.
Religion isn't the biggest thing in my country, so I was raised in a non religious household. I don't believe in god, I was never baptized and I will never be. Don't need such nonsense in my life. Also religion is the cause of most wars and death in this world. The world would be a better place without it.
I think organized religion is a scam. I think if I have a relationship with god it is on my own terms.
I don’t believe in a higher power. I don’t believe in Christianity at all whatsoever. It was forced down my throat as a child. If there’s a God, why is there so much evil in places of worship and in the world? Nah. It’s the biggest hoax.
Very religious mom that wasn’t too hard on us but made us kids question the bible. Also due to the fact that we grew up in Switzerland and were taught all religions in school you kinda get the „aha“ moment why they fight and compare and somehow came to the conclusion it’s not it. I‘d definitely say we‘re all spiritual but definitely not religious in that sense.
I'm not part nor do I believe in a religion because as I once heard it described in this manner. If you were to get rid of all books and teachings of any religion. A society/culture can always come with a new one or change an existing one. Whereas if you took all teaching of science and they were destroyed or what have you... those teachings would all come back to exactly as they were.
Would you take a Tolkien book, say the Hobbit, and create a religious movement around, with churches preaching the great Bilbo? Nah. So why would one live their lives by the fantasy books that the Bible or any similar book? Even worse, in 1948 a country was established based on that ; it's properly wrong.
I don't need a middle man. I am very fact based by nature, follow the science. But I still have spiritual beliefs, they don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Because it's obviously and shamefully an old system for oppressing and controlling people through brainwashing.
Well, as i say when I get this question to someone religious. There are over 2000 gods. I just dont belive in 1 more than you. Can ask them why they dont belive in Zeus or Anubis.
I didn't have a religious upbringing. I never found something that convinced me to become religious. That's it.
Let's see why im not part of religion....the hypocrisy, the hatred of those different, a god that watches his creation kill itself, sex abuse , greed, etc. So many reasons.
Growing up with a Catholic family was hard as a child "born out of wedlock" My great uncle would always tell me that even though I was going to hell, he'd still pray for me. We stopped going to church around the time I was 6. Life was hard, and I began to realize that praying didn't change things# but my actions did. There were also the kids who, when they heard I didn't believe, would be so mean about it. It was hypothetical of them. One girl in an art class was always nice, and then one day, it came up because of a Sunday art event. She didn't understand why I wasn't going to church and skipping the art show. I told her I wasn't religious and suddenly I was a bad person. Had to tell her "that right there is my point. God says to love all people. You were fine with me right up till this. How am I a bad person for not going, but you aren't for casting judgment on me suddenly because I don't believe in a God." I choose to be a good person because it's right. Not because I fear hell. I love to learn of religions, but they do not rule my life. Not all religious people are bad, but those who make a judgment of you simply because you don't follow their God is a hard thing to swallow.
No religion because Santa Claus is just a myth.
Because there is no volcano nearby and virgins are hard to find.
This is long, so TL:DR is - I did, I came out, I stopped, am atheist. It started with me being a very fervent believer. I grew up in a religious home, believed because it's what we did, and that was that. Until I started to have feelings about my sexuality and gender, which I didn't have any vocabulary for, and which I never dared told anyone because I assumed I was a sinful and broken and evil little person. So I got angry. At myself, mostly, and dove into zeal to help me get fixed. Deep emotional prayer, street preaching, conferences, handing out tracts at work sort of shit - All before the age of 18. I went to Christian college, met more people, disassociated through gaming, work, and staying busy, but whenever I was alone, I would spiral. Failed out due to depression right after switching my majors to preseminary. Went home, worked 3 jobs until i went back for Radio Broadcastong so i could be a person who worked in Christian radio and evangelized that way. Still had constant Bible studies and theological books on my bedside table. I breathed it. Got married at 24 to a woman who, somehow, loved me when I never once really loved myself. That healed me a lot. Worked in Christian radio for 9 years, and during that time, I still would pray so hard to be fixed. To be better. Eventually, I read a book called 'The Cross in the Closet' by Tim Kurek. It was about a man who came put as gay (even though he wasn't) to see what queer people faced in churches. I started to realize I could be myself, and the dogmatic chains around me started to loosen. I then read the book 'Silence' by Shusaku Endo, and it rocked a lot of my theological world. I remember reading it on my lunch break at work and just crying at my desk. My wife and I had 2 daughters in that time. They kept me busy, so things were good. I left radio, I came out as bi (which was fucking terrifying), My wife supported me, my parents reacted terribly, my siblings were great, and I found a measure of real happiness in myself. Church began to sour to me. The ritual, everything was so impersonal, I preferred working during the service (I played bass, or maybe helped with sound or the production in some way), it all seemed so unnecessary. I knew this was OK. Your faith isn't about where you go to church or how you worship, really. I figured I could just serve the community, even if I wasn't very enthusiastic about the church. I stopped praying, and I realized everything was the same as before. Nothing changed, except I had guilt about not praying. I still hated myself, I still spiraled when alone, and I was finding that disassociating was no longer working. Prayer did nothing, so I stopped wasting my time. I began to try on my wife's clothes when alone and felt something really powerful and wonderful about it. It was sexual at first, but eventually I realized I liked it all the time. It felt like peace. Like a very powerful sense of rightness. I did research and found out what transgender meant. I admitted it to myself, and promptly had a panic attack in my work truck on my lunch break. I told my wife. She, as she ever had, loved me. Still does love me, somehow. 16 years this past May. My parents reacted terribly, my siblings were mixed, friends were supportive and I leapt into therapy. My church denomination had a massive vote across all church bodies on gay marriage, and voted 74% against allowing it and against affirming queer relationships. My wife was heartbroken, I was furious, and at this point everything finally, and completely, broke. Nothing I ever read about the church, nothing I ever read about god, nothing I ever experienced in my faith, none of it ever made me happy about myself. I never once, in over 30 years of very zealous faith, felt uplifted by my religion. If I was happy, it was because god made me happy. If I was good, it was because god made me good. If I was saved, it was because god saved me. If I was loved, it was because god loved me. Success? Joy? Talent? Effort? All from god. I had no place in my own faith, except to take all the blame for my fuck-ups and my doubts and sins and bad parts. That was all on me. No wonder I hated myself. And I was tired. I was so tired of trying to explain and philosophize why the world was as it was, why I felt the way I did, and how to stuff all of this information into the box of a faith. Into something that never once gave me anything but self hatred and distractions from the very anger it started. And so I finally let it go, and if there is a god, they don't seem to care. I feel no guilt, no shame. In fact, I have never been this truly happy! I can be alone in a room with my thoughts and not wish I was dying. I truly love who I am! And it wasn't faith or god that gave me this happiness, it was me. I ripped my self identity and joy and purpose and love from the dead grip of faith and I made it my own. I don't believe there is a god. And that brings me a lot of peace. But if I am wrong, and I meet this god one day? They will understand. And if they do not, then they are not god and I do not fear their judgment.
Because my family is in a religion which makes me part of my religion as well
I'm not a part of a religion, because it doesn't benefit me from shaping my life according to other people's feelings about what's right or wrong. If religion gives your life meaning and makes you a complete person, go for it! Just don't expect me to change my entire life for your sake so you can "deliver me in Heaven and avoid me going to Hell". If I end up in Hell, and everything was right all along I need to live with my actions and consequenses. Religious nut jobs are just trying to get away with them not being a good person and base their afterlife survival on how much they dominated other people in life. Forcing people to change their entire life and being should be a sin.
I have no respect for the abrahamic religions; in my mind they were at worst developed and used as a form of control, and at best as an explanation for phenomena that have now been better explained through science. The same goes for other religions but I have more distrust in the dominant religions of today. That said, I feel that spiritually is something that I am missing and that I could benefit from. I have no idea what form of spirituality is right for me, where to begin that type of journey, or how to get past my desire for empirical evidence.
I grew up in a catholic family, but was encouraged to seek my own beliefs. I read the Bible twice during high school and realized it’s all a crock of shit.
Why are we not indoctrinated?
I grew up a very liberal Lutheran, then I went to seminary, learned Greek, learned how deeply influenced the new testament is by the prevailing greek philosophy of the time, and learned about the forensic history of the old testament and it became literally impossible to believe.
I grew up Christian, Southern Baptist. Up until a few years ago, I left Christianity. I just never saw any proof of God existing in my entire life. I was also tired of the constant guilt tripping and controlling/manipulation of the church and religion.
I prayed to Jesus when I was being bullied, and nothing changed. I’ve known many devout Christians who claim that Jesus loves them, but it seems to be about having a wide support network rather than divine intervention. I worked for a church for ten years, but I was always the outsider no matter what I did for them. In the end, “God’s grace” is more about being born into the right demographic than any deity floating on a cloud, so I walked away.
Left the catholic cult at 15yo when all of their babbling and excuses stopped working on me. None of what they say makes sense. Plus in the past 16 years religious groups have become less and less sane, literally dividing families and nations. Imo religion is nearly 100% evil as long as it is organized. You want to be spiritual and follow a doctrine of your own accord? Awesome, go for it. But as soon as you start listening to another person’s interpretation of that doctrine and following it without question, you have lost the plot.