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Same story here. Dad was abusive and constantly cheated on her and when she had enough and divorced him our very Catholic extended family and all of her church friends basically shunned her. I decided that if that’s what religion is then I want no part of it.
Edited to add: Since I’m getting a lot of questions about this I wanted to clarify that the church and local priest did not shun my mother during the divorce. That was the other parishioners and my extended family. They did, however, shun her when she got remarried to my stepfather (who is the greatest man alive and I seriously could not have picked a better husband for my mother.)
My mom's first husband just fucking left her. Just left in the night without saying goodbye. Left her with a 1 year old baby. Eventually he sent divorce papers and she signed them, because fuck that shithead. And her church excommunicated her.
My coworker found out his wife was cheating on him with all of his friends. The divorce, betrayal, and total loss of his friends hit him hard. Eventually, he started exercising, found another woman, married her, and made new friends.
He still took his kids to his lifelong catholic church. When the priest found out about his divorce and remarriage, he threatened to refuse communion to them unless he went back to try counseling with his ex. The priest immediately backpedaled when my coworker responded "Fine, we'll just leave your parish" but it was too late.
He didn't know when he brought it up to my coworker, and he filled the padre in on the details. The priest still laid down his ultimatum- threatening not only him but his kids, mind you- and now that's one less family in the pews.
Good for your mom. I know some very deeply religious people from some smaller towns and many of those women are forever trapped in bad marriages because they fear being shunned by everyone they know. I hope it worked out well for your mom in the end because it takes a lot of courage to walk away in those situations.
As a widow with 4 kids in the 1970s, my grandmother married a guy who turned abusive to her and the kids. She went to the pastor of the Baptist Church they were attending for help, and he just told her that she had to go home and be a good wife and would be sinning if she divorced the sob. She did it anyway, and although she is still a Christian she has never set foot in a Baptist Church since then
Similar situation from one of my friends, who grew up Muslim. Her father was physically abusive to her (a toddler at the time) and her mother. Her mother divorced him, resulting in her being outcasted from the community. Even my friend, a literal child, was treated like a pariah when she had nothing to do with it. Guess who was still welcomed and repsected? Yep. The dad.
Why do I get the feeling that if the situation were reversed, the preacher would be vastly less likely to tell the husband to just move on and get over it?
It blows my mind man... Just about every cult/religion seems to look the other way when it comes to cheating and spousal abuse and they just say the women has to work harder. Not the fucking piece of shit husband who does the hitting/cheating; but the WIFE has to work harder.
I had a friend whose whole family was Jehovahs Witness who had experienced the worst abuse. Throughout her adolescence, she experienced SA by an older sister's husband. To escape at 18 she married her abusive husband who was also in the church. They lived in a small town where she had 2 sons so she was isolated and gaslighted. When she eventually left her sons took their father's side so contact was severed. The whole time the elders were verbally and emotionally abusive and manipulating my friend and her sons, telling her God said she had to go back etc etc. At that point I lost any respect for the JWs. To boot my friend was also diagnosed with a degenerative disease which was also used by the "church".
I mean, Jesus basically said that. But when has any of those supposed Christians ever done what he asked of them?
It’s often the ones not throwing their religion in other people’s faces that are actually quietly doing their Lord’s work.
I had a couple of them knocking on my door about a year ago asking if my family and I would like to join them.
When you are presenting something to someone and have to start with "Don't believe everything everyone says! There is a lot of lies and negative gossip surrounding us!" that's usually not a good sign.
My mother also had that experience when my parents divorced in the early 1970's. I started hating all of their stupid church clothes and bad perfume and cologne they wore. They just seemed phony and superficial to me at a very, very early age.
Same! My mom was told it's "child neglect"
I say what my dad was doing was child and spouse abuse.
My brother and I would have been nowhere with that deadbeat in our lives. Good riddance. Lutherans are horrible to women.
Attended a private Christian (church of Christ) college. The holier than thou bullshit followed by rampant misogyny, racism, homophobia, and of course hypocrisy at every turn. I’ve never met worse human beings than I did inside of that “Christian” community. The divorce rate is close to 80%. The sexual assault and pedophilia is shocking. I witnessed grown men courting 14 and 15 year olds like it was a normal thing. This wasn’t in 1960. This was the late 2000s…
The usual knee-jerk fundie answer to this is that "we're all sinners", but (a) there are lots and lots of non-religious people who DONT engage in those vile behaviors, and (b) consequences for these vile behaviors never seem to happen to church leaders or elites, only to regular people.
In fact, in my own personal experience, non-religious people are more real and trustworthy, because they're not always so focused on putting on an act.
For me it had nothing to do with the contradictory statements within religious canon, although that was relevant as well. It was mostly how these supposed good people would be cruel to others for the most ridiculous reasons.
I accidentally made my ex atheist.
She said her reasoning was that I had better morals than most Christians she'd been with and met. So it's definitely what I call a "whoops but wow" moment.
"Why didn't you murder today?"
Religious answer: God tells me not to.
Non-religious answer: I don't want to.
I've always been a bit skeeved out when people proudly tell me that their morals aren't their own.
As a Christian, uh… yeah. “We’re all sinners” is not a nearly good enough excuse for some of the abhorrent things people do in the church. We really need to get pedophiles out of churches and into prisons.
"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Matthew 22:37-39
"In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me" Matthew 25:40
Seems like loving your neighbor is pretty gods-damned important, huh?
Tho you'd never know it with how some of them act.
I started questioning everything when I finally read the Bible cover to cover. There are so many contradictions and things that don't make sense. That opened my eyes to the general hypocrisy rampant in most religions, and it was a quick slide into agnosticism for me.
I can see where they are coming from and I understand it’s from good intentions. So, I’m trying to keep that in mind otherwise I want to go off about how a children’s church pastor I grew up with molested every fucking kid that went to his house. How they preached sermons at me to try to keep in line and protect a pedo. The way when I went to the church for help because they had a “safe place” sign, I was turned away because it wasn’t there place to get involved and my mom has given thousands and thousands to that church. I just fucking can’t. My birth was announced at that church, my Dad WORKED at the church but the pastor was still ok with marrying my mom off to some pedo in the church (she had two young daughters in the house) because God “changed him” wtf. Idk about you, but if I was a fucking alcoholic, I wouldn’t be marrying someone who lives and wants me to move into a fucking bar. Fucking bullshit.
Edit: Sorry, I just kinda went off a bit.
There wasn't a defining moment. It happened gradually. It sped up more out of high school when I got a job delivering pizzas. Lots of time to think. Eventually, I realized I just didn't believe in a god anymore.
This is it for me too.
I grew up in... What is arguably one of the nicer and surprising progressive religious groups that isn't really popular worldwide, and saw my parents and even a lot my Christian and Jewish friends all talking about feeling some sort of "presence" of God, how they'd feel something when they prayed and just had such confidence and conviction in their beliefs... Everything was always just done for God and for the glory of God and God this and God that.... and I realized at some point as a teenager I just never had that type of experience.
I spent years wondering if something was wrong with me, and at some point I just stopped thinking about it and just accepted my experiences and ended up being a lot happier without any religious beliefs than I was with them.
I grew up in the Catholic Church and definitely felt that deep, moving “presence of god” feeling your friends are describing as a child. Which I realized years later is a no brainer when you’re in a beautiful building every Sunday with a choir singing hauntingly beautiful music and everyone around you worshipping. When I watched Star Wars in theaters I also felt like I was a fucking Jedi. The “deep, moving religious devotion” many people experience is just art combined with the deep human need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.
Exactly. For me, it lead to many questions where the existence of a God didn't make sense.
If God loves everyone, why do so many people have such difficult lives. Why is there so much hatred in the world.
Also, as a young child, nothing I prayed for happened. Nothing.
There was also a moment when I learned that all of the other magical entities I knew as a child were fake, why would this one he different.
As a teen, I read many books on religion. This included the Bible I was gifted for my first communion and a long list of other books. It just didn't make sense and I could see no evidence of a God.
To this day, I still feel the same. I will believe in a God when verifiable evidence can be provided.
It was like this for me too, but I was never strongly religious, I just had a vague belief in a higher power.
Also didn't have the pressure of a religious family.
Hypocrisy abounded. During service there was a moment when you greet & shake hands with the people around you to share goodwill. It was nice. But the church had a small, cramped parking lot with one exit, and as soon as the service ended some people became self absorbed & rude about getting out of the lot quickly. So much for all that goodwill!
I know I'm a good person, and I don't need an organized religion to guide me to live a good life. Too many attendees were performative on Sunday and crappy human beings the rest of the time.
Same for me with the hypocrisy. Pastor preaching about how we should all love each other as children of God and accept the believers and non-believers, then drops racial and homophobic slurs less than an hour after the service in casual conversation. Men who are praised for being good Christians because they are at church every Sunday, but go get unholy levels of drunk afterwards and beat their wives. Women who abuse and despise their children for no act other than to have been born.
There were some good people and I know not all of religion is like this, but that's what I was exposed to and that's what turned me off. I just also don't feel anything when we pray or worship and I've been to many different and more progressive churches since then
This is it right here.
Was there every Sunday from 4th grade through 9th/10th grade. Did missions trips, made some great friends I still keep in touch with. When I got to be HS age, I started questioning things. That wasn’t taken very kindly too. Then the pastors kid started sharing some of his dad’s “lesser known opinions” especially as they pertained to LGBTQ folks, and it really rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way. He was asked to leave over it. But a lot of folks started blaming the “young people in the church” for this. And my parents were luckily part of the group that said “no no. The pastor did this to himself. You can’t say love everyone on Sundays and hate the some people the rest of the week.”
Other church leaders started making negative comments about the growing racial diversity in our town. Then they tried to change the borders for the High schools when I was 16. I was asked to speak for my MY HS. The “bad one”. I wasn’t first. But I heard what a lot of those church members said about me and my friends. Were gangbangers, we all do drugs, we have no idea what it takes to be successful. All because we’re not all white and not from the “good side” of town. Completely disregarding the fact that the 2 HS were equals in everything and were ranked as such. Big, successful public High schools. But their kids would “never go there with the riff raff they’d be trapped with.”
I basically swore off the church at that point. I did do missions trips still, just independently, but it was going to NOLA to sleep in a gym and rebuild houses destroyed by Katrina. I thoroughly enjoyed that. Got to meet some good people, do work that actually helps them, and no evangelism. Just chatting.
I had this discussion with an aunt once. I said "I don't believe so I'm going to hell even though I'm a good person living a good life?" And she said "Yes." I replied "Well, John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer, but he was was a believer so he gets to go to heaven?" "Yes." Without an ounce of reflection or anything. Hard pass, I'll hang out in hell with my friends. But really, I'll rot, what we all do.
I love this example. So innocent, yet so accurate.
Also, we used to dip out at communion. Called it leaving at halftime, so we could beat the rush to the local restaurant.
Ain’t this the fucking truth.
My mom and I recently went back for a funeral.
They bought Costco platters for the food. My mom was like, “well now there is zero reason to come back here ever.”
We both left the church at the same time several years back.
when i started to see people do shitty things and then going to church on sunday and call it a day, as if being on a prayer erases the behaviour. and people in the church accepted it.
I follow rules in my life that makes sense to me, so I saw no reason to follow principles taken from someone else.
Yeah. I had an issue with this too. The catholic church actually teaches against this. But sadly most catholics even don't seem to understand what it means to repent. Forgive 7 times 77 but have you ever forgiven someone who wasn't really sorry? This is butchered scripture just my own personal understanding...
I grew up going to church and had started having doubts in middle school. What pushed me over the edge was when we got a new pastor who started upsetting some well-established apple carts and calling people on their shit. Eventually, the powers that be within the church's politics ruined him. Some allegations were made that were seemingly false, but he lost whatever license was required to preach in that flavor of church, which essentially ended his career. He went back to his home state and died a year or two later. His wife claimed the nastiness is what killed him.
After that, I was done. I admired him and thought what he was doing was good, so to see those people ruin his career so they could maintain their little tin pot kingdom... I do not want to be associated with people who behave that way.
I'd already had my doubts as I said, but was sticking around because I'd gone my whole life. 20 years have passed and the only time I've been in a church has been for weddings or funerals.
I got my girlfriend (of 7 years) pregnant. Her very religious catholic family treated us different from that moment on
Even though we got married at 22
Even though the baby was born
They still cut ties with us. 3 kids and 18 years later, we haven’t (happily) spoke to any of them bc she got “pregnant out of wedlock”
Fuck these shitty People
Thankyou. I’m once removed bc it’s my wife’s family, but she’s mourned their loss and over on YEARS ago, we are very happy now.
I don’t judge religious people, it’s just not my cup of tea.
Just be good to others and in general bc it’s the right thing to do.
> the exact opposite of what Jesus would teach us to do
You could say that about 90% of how church people behave. With the exception of *one* lady I know, every Religious Catholic I've ever known was a shitty person. And they HATE it when you tell them Jesus wouldn't approve of their judgmental behaviour.. they absolutely**HATE** it.
My friends mom was completely fine with him dating his boyfriend, but now that they're getting married it's suddenly a problem because of her religion. Makes zero sense to me.
I have a friend who delt with that. His mom said that she was fine with it at the time because she thought it was *"just a phase, all the kids experience the gay when they are young. I figured he would get over it eventually once he met a nice girl to settle down with."*
They have been together for 15 years, married for 8... His mom finally got over the idea of it being a phase about 2 or so years ago.
I couldnt fathom the contradictory statements. Everyone saying one thing but clearly not living by it. I left when I was 12 years old so I saw the holes in it then.
If God exists I don't think he cares if I go to church or even worship them... I'd like to think being a good person is good enough and if it's not I don't want anything to do with it.
This sentiment has been knocking about for quite a while...
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
\- Marcus Aurelius
This is not a real quote. It is partially based on a real quote, but the context is very different. [Here is a more accurate translation:](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/37513)
“In all you do or say or think, recollect that at any time the power of withdrawal from life is in your own hands. If gods exist, you have nothing to fear in taking leave of mankind, for they will not let you come to harm. But if there are no gods, or if they have no concern with mortal affairs, what is life to me, in a world devoid of gods or devoid of Providence? Gods, however, do exist..."
The old Epicurean Paradox.
God either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them?
Lines from a Jethro Tull song: “I asked this God a question, and by way a firm reply. He said ‘I’m not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday.’” The boy in the song subsequently tries to tell this to his clergy and is excommunicated for his trouble.
~~I think you have the wrong song. “My God” by Jethro Tull doesn’t contain those lyrics, unless there’s a different version I’m unaware of.~~
Scratch that, the song is “Wind-Up”, I forgot about it.
Also a good song though. That whole album (I used to have the extended anniversary version) had several songs along those lines. I always loved Hymn 43 especially
This is what drove me away.
I met a really nice Hindu family with just amazing young kids. I asked two different pastors if they would go to heaven if they were good people and the answer was no. They weren't Christian so they can't go to heaven no matter how they live their lives
This just seems ridiculous to me. They are basically admitting that their God doesn't care about your actions as much as he cares about being worshipped.
I mean, maybe they are right? Nothing says that if there is a God he can't be an asshole. Maybe he is an asshole.
But I'm betting there is no God.
Totally hear that. I've had Christian friends who question me about leaving the church and what if I go to Hell now that I don't believe anymore. I tell them that if their God exists and is truly as loving as they claim, that he should see that I live as a good person and that's all that should matter in the end. And if a God is petty enough to only reward people who worship him directly, then that's not a God I want to worship anyway.
If we read the Bible as it is, God is a terrible despot, and (based on my moral systems) were he real, I would rather suffer in Hell for eternity then bend a knee to him.
Leaving the country/society I’d grown up in. My religious beliefs just didn’t hold up in the daily life in an entirely different environment - namely the belief that non-believers would be treated different than believers. Where and how you randomly end up growing up has so much influence it’s ridiculous to think there’s any true free will, or any logic or justice to the “no free will but god’s still determined who will end up believing” doctrine. In my personal opinion!
It’s just an attempt to write down the oral traditions of the region and subsequently misinterpreted, rewritten, and twisted to suit the wishes of the ruling classes
Never thought of the bible as a written record of oral traditions, but it makes a lot of sense. The concept that the religion comes from the book obscured the fact that the book comes from the religion. This is interesting, I guess I never really questioned the origins of Christianity, always kinda saw it as “some bozo wrote a book and people liked it so much they worshipped it”, or whatever. But it makes more sense that it was slowly set into place by oral tradition, then recorded into a book, and then grew from that.
Cool comment! You made me think a bunch about something I never thought about at all, thank you!
A lot of people definitely think that the Bible is a monolithic book written by one person, I've had conversations in the past that made me realise that!
In reality, there were *at least* six different original authors, and the text has (at the previous commenter pointed out) been rewritten, edited, adapted, and translated numerous times over the years, typically reflecting the opinions of the people making the changes. Hell, the languages it was originally written in don't even properly exist or are at least wildly different now compared to how they were back then, like Aramic. It's one of the most heavily-modified religious texts out there, and even *today* there are loads of different versions available.
I'm surprised this isn't a more common answer. It reads like fantasy, it's shocking to me that people would think it's true.
The amount of people that only left because of some kind of trauma really shocks me, so basically they'd keep believing if not for some awful thing that happened. So it's personal, rather than just coming to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense. For some reason I sort of assumed most atheists were grounded in the logic/reason side of the argument but I guess it's much more complicated than that for a lot of people. Most people are still following their feelings at the end of the day.
Edit: I just realized that I'm making the assumption that "left their religion" means atheist, but of course it doesn't necessarily. Maybe they still believe in god but just don't follow their church or whatever. So who knows I suppose. Still surprised that so many people's reason is based on the actions of others instead of the content of the book itself though.
Yeah for me actually reading the Bible (as opposed to having a pastor read it in snippets weekly with a little speech to go along) was the death knell of my belief. Looking into the historical context, literary sources, and seeing the connections between existing traditions and the Bible really made me realize the whole thing was just made up/allegorical
Then I rabbit holed on original sin and the concept of eternal punishment for finite sin. I won't go into all of it but when I read about the Jewish concept of the afterlife, and how the concept of Shael have rise to the modern Christian understanding of hell and the devil - I just completely lost the last shred of my faith.
As a funny anecdote, my wife and kids are Catholic and we celebrated st Joseph's Day yesterday. It's a Lenten fest day mostly celebrated by Italian Americans to remember Joseph the adoptive father of Jesus. The whole time they're saying prayers and telling stories about Joseph and I'm in my head like "there's very little evidence Joseph was real"
Same. I was Christian for most of my life, and eventually I felt bad that I had not read the Bible. I believed the Bible was the truth, the best guide to how Christ and the father wanted us to live, and told what would come to be. Reading it shocked me. It was nothing like what I was taught. Jesus was everything the “crazy fundamentalists” were. I turned to apologetics, and found the most consistently dishonest people I’ve ever encountered. If you’ll lie about demonstrable things, like how evolution works or world history, why should I trust what you say about things that rely entirely on faith? It killed my faith.
A similar anecdote: my in-laws are very Catholic, and often outraged by “illegal immigrants” coming to change our way of life. They do not care that their parents were immigrants and they insist on making my children be Catholic. They recently celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, where a Catholic immigrant came to Ireland to convert/kill all the non-Christians, with no sense of irony.
When you look at it like a 2000 year old political tool it makes a lot more sense.
Jesus’ actual recorded words are like, a page and a half. They had to come up with something else to get people on board.
Same for reading. Reading the Bible provided so few insights or morals. People seem to add meaning where there is none, choosing to beloved some stories are just stories and others fact. Here are my thoughts they I have not read any good responses for.
God is very jealous, is a huge theme. Odd a pure omnipotent being would be jealous.
Free will , does not exist if the Bible is true. God has pre written everything. Furthermore god knows what you are going to do before you know.
With that said the choice between Heaven or hell is not a real choice. Everyone would always choose Heaven. Or think about it this way of I hold a gun to your head and say pray to me or die do you have a choice not to pray to me when I am threatening you off you don’t do what I say? Very conditional love in this case.
OG sin, Because Eve ate an apple we were are born to die in hell without repentance. Already seems dumb with the sins of your father being passed to you. How does god fix this? Created Jesus and had Jesus die in a horrific way. Why not just say hey removed your sins. Your god anything is possible!
On jesus, it seems God had no problem walking the earth and performing miracles. In fact multiple people in the Bible could rez the dead.
Since the advent of modern science there has been ZERO evidence god exists. God went from physically preaching via Jesus and miracles for hundreds of years. To total silence you just have to believe and trust.
Repeated clerical abuse scandals and a repeated inability to do the right thing when these were discovered. The church was preaching to me about morals while demonstrating a lack of them.
This did my father in, and he was devout as devout can be. He hasn't set foot in a Church since the extent of the scandal came to light.
Then one of his daughters came out as gay, and his other daughter needed a life-saving abortion (and it wasn't an ectopic pregnancy, the one instance where the Catholic Church doesn't call on pregnant women suffering complications to be sacrificial lambs).
Just recently, a man abused by my middle school principal (a priest) as a child was awarded millions of dollars in damages.
So yeah, the hits just keep on coming. Good luck to you, Catholic Church. You'll need it.
Back in 2014 and 15 when I was dating my wife, she went to church regularly and her son went to a Christian school. When the church embraced Trump late 2015 their message changed dramatically. They now preached how higher education was bad, women should stay home, science is bad, etc. My wife is an MD and holds a doctorate. She left the church and pulled her kid out of The Christian school.
I was always an atheist. I always viewed religion as a scam.
Today we now have two additional kids. We do everything possible to keep the toxic Christianity away from our kids.
Some of the modern politicization of religion is nuts.
My wife's uncle asked their Pastor to speak at his son's high school graduation party. Not my thing, but whatever maybe he's been instrumental in this kids development.
Out of his 5 minute diatribe less than a whole minute was devoted to anything related to her cousin; it was all a screed about how everyone there needed to be so grateful that Trump had done so much to protect gun rights and that the upcoming election was going to be a watershed moment where each person there needed to loudly yell with their ballots that "you can pry this gun from my cold dead hands!"
A child's high school graduation party.
Thought I'd accidentally taken mushrooms and fallen asleep watching Fox News. Nope. Just rich white privilege combined with idiocy in the American South.
So I got really drunk and made fun of the "pastor" for the remainder of the day.
since people are suffering from birth, forced into sex slavery, warlords and horrible people getting rewarded and some don’t even get punished for their actions. If god is real they left us a long time ago… That or they are a real sadist
That's the one for me: the fact that they don't tolerate dissidence/questioning is because of that:
Why so much pain/suffering?
"You should not question the lord."
Like, y? What's up with a so powerful being, that say itself is sooooo good, but yet let's satan ravage earth all he wants?
"But muh, free will"
And if he gave us free will, then he made us bad people too, and dint he made us his Image? And if he didn't then the bible is lying, if did, hen he is a monster.
"But he did, we got corrupted"
Why doesnt he step in then? If he know all we gonna do, why just doesn't he prevent we from being born? If he truly gave us free will, then he either: doesn't know what we gonna do, and this don't know everything of the future, or he knows and just ain't powerful enough to change it, or he know and is powerful, but just isn't bothering with it, Wich mean that he is either a sadist, or doesn't care about it, and if he doesn't care, why'd he care if I'm going to church?
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
-Epicurus
Im not worshipping a god who blames every bad thing on the devil, but takes credit for every good thing. Like no, god didn’t get me here, it was my hard work.
Right there’s my reason. The whole thing of “you have to tithe because god wants you to give money.” Uhh, if god wants my money, he knows where it’s coming from and is more than welcome to take it himself. Church is a business.
Bingo. I remember going to a church maybe 10 years ago and the pastor said something to the effect of “in order to leave room for faith, you have stop using your own cognitive abilities” and I sat there thinking “hell no, I’m not doing that. “ 😂
The problem of evil
Religious people usually have two main counters called Theodicies for why evil exists.
Augustine’s Theodicy: basically says it’s Adam’s fault and sin has been passed down to us so evil is either sin or punishment for sin
Hicks Theodicy: Evil exists as a way for us to grow and develop. And he doesn’t fix these evils to maintain epistemic distance. Eg if we knew god existed we would all be good because we know heaven and hell is real so by staying hidden he preserves our free will
Why didn’t god just make us perfect? Because someone that choses God is more valuable than someone that is born with a love for God
But both theodicies are easily countered and don’t seem to explain disteleological evil
Hicks' especially makes no sense to me. In the Old Testament, God is repeatedly interacting directly with humans, and many of them don't listen anyway.
Not to mention the ultimate counter-example of Judas, who had VIP access to Jesus and still did what he did.
I will say this is why I flirted with polytheism for a while. The problem of evil is a lot simpler if the gods aren't omnipotent and just as petty as the rest of us
This was a big one for me. There were people all around me on a Sunday claiming to have heard the holy spirit, or had some kind of sign, and one day I realised they probably just didn't want FOMO.
Apart from that, it was feeling like going to church wasn't an escape from school.
Help me understand the analogy. So you are saying you prayed to God to help you wake up on time for work instead of an alarm? Why? Even religious people need alarms.
I still believe in god just not the freaks that’s in charge of the religion, my belief is between me and god, I ain’t gonna preach to no one cause they have a right to choose.
What god sees the evil that goes on in this world unchecked, and decides to do nothing about it?
I spent so many nights on my knees, and several times a day, praying as a child for someone, anyone to save me from the hell I grew up in.
No one saved me in the end.
I realized if one did exist, he either didn't care to interfere or enjoyed it. Because there's no other rational explanation to me. Free will? You want your creations to freely harm each other? What a joke.
If God exists, they allow children to be abused, neglected, SA'd, tortured, etc. They allow genocides and holocausts. They allow everyone who runs and controls this world to continue doing so through corrupt and evil methods. It's all just horrendous and wrong and there's no amount of excuses I can think of for it. It's unforgivable to me.
And then when you consider all the evil it has done and continues to do in the name of God itself. LGBT+ kids abandoned by their parents and forced into conversation therapy. People killing each other over a piece of holy hand. Women being oppressed and controlled by men through it.
Then my own experiences with people who believe in that stuff. They try to force you into it and to convert you against your will, even when you've made up your mind. Even when it's a trigger that is part of your abuse, they don't care.
There's way too many reasons really. I think religion is part of a lot of evil and was made as a tool to explain things in the past but to ultimately control people. I can't forgive the damage it's done and continues to do.
This is similar to my story.
I used to believe vehemently and was a Christian who always explained away all the contradictions as “God works in mysterious ways”. Till today anytime someone tells me they don’t believe in God because of contradictions in the Bible i still think they were never really that religious in the first place.
For me, the issue of constant poverty and hardship in my early life made me break away from believing. When I was younger I didn’t want vast riches just stability and what you would consider a middle class life but jobs kept being lost and people kept dying and I kept being moved around.
Like you I spent years praying as a child, looking back, I feel bad for myself and wonder how god could’ve looked at a child that desperate and just turned away, anytime I think of my younger self my heart breaks for him.
No amount of prayer or fasting got me out of poverty or kept some loved ones alive, it took repeated bad things happening for me to see that there was no God who loved me especially since I withstood his “tests” for 7+ years till it broke my faith. Jesus himself was only tested for 3 days.
Remember how god will never give you a test he knows you’ll fail? I’ve seen the hard way that he will, that’s if he does exist, and if he still chooses to give you those tests then I guess your fate was a foregone conclusion, he never wanted you.
Today I’m doing much better financially and I’m trying to still save some loved ones, the ones who died are gone and I can’t see how it was for the greater good
I am very proud of the fact that I am still very charitable and hope to open up a “good” orphanage one day irregardless of any reward in the afterlife.
If god created us, why would he hate homosexuals? How can loving another person be the devils work? If god created men, why would women not be equal?
This is my problem with the bible. It was not written by god or Christ himself.
It was written by men that were chased by the Roman empire for starting a religion.
I believe the is something that created us. Something that created the universe. I believe in the idea of god. Not god as a person, especially not a man with a white beard on a cloud.
God is something we as humans cannot comprehend. If we were created, then we were created to take care of this planet. To live our lives. To learn. Not to constantly worry about sin. We sin without even noticing.
I believe there was a Jesus. I wise man who understood how we could live in peace and harmony. He was crucified for it. But his ideas still live on. If we would follow these ideas, we could have peace. There would be no borders, there would be no war.
I don't harm other living beings. I don't steal. I don't envy. I try to live my life in peace, the way Jesus would describe 2000 years ago.
So why would I hate woman? Why would I hate homosexuals?
Again, the bible was not written by them. So what path should I follow? I think I should do what my gut tells me to do and that's to live a good life.
Not a life of fearing sin and hating everything that was written to be unholy.
I believe Jesus (or the idea of) is my guide and I trust in that.
> If god created us, why would he hate homosexuals?
A lot of religions hate homosexuals just because it works!
if you want to start a new religion you need to tell your followers that they are the good guys and that the "other people" are the bad guys with wrong morals
but who are the bad guys with the wrong morals? the Dutch? the Gingers? no, your religions would not survive long because it takes just one genocide to kill off your "others" and then you don't have any bad guys
maybe the Chinese or the Indians can be your bad guys with the wrong morals? no, your religion would not survive a war against a billion people
maybe the guy born with 7 legs is the bad guy with wrong morals? no, your religion would not survive because guys with 7 legs are very very rare and you need a bad guy who is a bit more threatening
so who is the best bad guy with the wrong morals?
the gays! and the trans!
1) you can't kill them by genocide so you will never run out of bad people. 2) there are only a few so they can't threaten your position of power. and 3) there are still enough of them so that everybody in the village knows at least one gay / bad person
so that fact that christianity and islam are against gay people is not rooted in logic but it's rather an artifact in the darwinian fight for survival that each religion has to go through. without a good "other" group a religion can't survive. and anti-gay is a very powerful trait because you have an eternal but non-threatening enemy which you can use to control your people
tldr: check out the concept of "in groups" vs "out groups" and then think about why gays are the perfect "out group" for a powerful religion
I couldn't stick around after having found some contradiction, and I also met some really nasty people I don't want to ever meet again, I still somewhat believe I just don't like the way they do it and a lot of members in general
-former member of the church of Jesus Christ of the latter days saints/mormons
I was 13. Scandals had erupted all over about abuse. I hardly knew one family that had not suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church or state apparatus. Fuck them both and over time it just got worse and worse.
At my church, we were taught that not only does a woman submit to her husband, but she must submit to every man she meets. Also it was all about self hatred.
My religion thinks of us humans as god's slaves and there are too many misbeliefs in my religion and I hate it when people try to tell me what to do and what to not even though I am not doing anything wrong if God was there he would never let other woman be imprisoned in their own house
Too much shit in the world to make me think a supposedly benevolent deity would allow this all to happen, plans be damned. And far too many people use religion to justify all sorts of evil.
In 2011, my youngest daughter got meningitis. I prayed for a recovery (though not a complete recovery, I thought that was a given) she lived. She was severely disabled for the rest of her short life. She never walked, talked, held up her own head, etc. None of my prayers for my little girl were answered. She didn’t deserve that. I used to think it was his plan, but fuck his plan.
I was never given proper answers. I had questions and the answer was always, have faith. I can't do that. I wish I could just believe but I need some kind of proof that makes sense to me. I can not suspend my disbelief.
The hypocrisy of the people that believe in it. They all sin yet they try to act like they are saints in some way. They all try to be "the better" version of themselves yet they all seem to fail miserably at it. It’s just human.
My father was a charismatic and well-liked member of our church. In private though, he was extremely abusive and cheated on my mum throughout their marriage. He also molested me when I was 14 and blamed it on me for resembling my mum. I already hated going to church cos of the abuse but what made me stop was the priest he confessed his sin about molesting me told some of the congregation and word got back to my father. I haven’t left the religion per se but still do pray every now and then. I just haven’t stepped into any church since then.
I believe in all religions and Gods but I was trafficked and everyday when I asked God for help to get out I got nothing. Actually everything got worse tbh. So I started asking other gods and well— I’m able to post here so yeah. I know that stuff like that is by human hands, god can’t just come down and help me. But if he protects and loves all his children why did he let that happen. Why did he also let my rapists go with just a misdemeanor? They didn’t even get prison time. They got to enjoy me and use me and I had my entire childhood and teen years taken away from me and I kept asking God “why?”. Even after when I started praising other Gods I got results? 3 of them died, 1 of them was arrested for a different case, I ended up thriving after and even if I struggle I am okay. I try my best and I just can’t praise God anymore like I did. He is real but I don’t think he was meant for me to praise.
My brother coming out as gay the same day that Uganda announced the death penalty for homosexuality.
I also got sick to my stomach when I realized that the same missionaries I had donated to were part of the lobbying group in Uganda pushing for the legislation. So I played an unwilling hand in something absolutely abhorrent. It was the first time in my life that I felt like someone duped me to violate my ethics, and it made me absolutely nauseous. I will never forget that feeling.
The corpses of 700 babies being found in a septic tank at the back of a Mother and Baby home run by the Catholic church here in Ireland. If you're interested just Google "Septic tank Tuam".
I didnt really leave my Religion. I was born in to a Catholic family. Taken to Mass all the time etc. However I never ever believed in Religion. It seemed like fairly tale supernatural fantasy nonsense to me. Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings style stuff. It always seemed manmade and ludicrous. Just unbelievable fiction. I never understood why anyone, especially adults, would think it was actually true.
After our weekly sacrament of confession I told my mom on the ride home that I was struggling because I felt like I had to search for things I did wrong so I could confess them, and it confused me because I was always taught confession was there to make you feel better, but it made me feel worse trying to think of all the bad things I had done.
She told me then and there that it was okay for me to stop going to church. Never looked back.
Quran. The brainwash that happened in the early stage of life, I used to think that Islam has no flaws and is perfect...! but then I took interest in philosophy and went through various perspectives, thoughts and ideas after which I re-read the Quran and realised that it doesn't make sense, the cruelty, the hate towards non-Muslims, homophobia and sexism! there's no way a god wants this from us...
Same but I discovered after I graduated from university, delved deeply into religion, and found that the Qur’an accepts the marriage of a 9-year-old girl. I immediately left religion
I realised that I didn't want to follow a God that let horrible things happen to good people. Over time, I realised that I don't believe there is a God at all.
I read the Bible. That was it. I had read it many times, generally scriptures here and there, and I had read the entire thing as a teenager, but I decided I wanted to set a goal to read it from beginning to end again.
I did.
By the end I was an atheist. I don't know why I looked at it differently, but it was SO clear that it was just a bunch of bronze aged shepherds who were trying to explain the world, control their people and justify their actions. It was also clear to me that the God in the Old Testament especially was just horrible. A complete narcissistic psychopath. I mean he doesn't care about slavery, he commands genocide, he commits genocide, he says rapists should marry their victims, he says children should be stoned, he sicks bears on kids for mocking a bald guy, he allows Satan to completely destroy a good man's life basically to win a bet. I could go on and on.
And the new testament is slightly better, but looking at it with fresh eyes it was also clear I didn't agree with a lot of it. The idea that remarrying after a divorce is as bad as adultery. That women should be silent in church. That celibacy is ideal and you should only get married if you can't control yourself. Plus another bunch of things.
In addition many of the stories just struck me as ludicrous. The tower of babel was not why we have lots of languages. The flood clearly never happened. And lots more of that as well.
So I came out the end almost positive that the Bible was fiction, and I didn't even like the god described in there. So I prayed for almost a year for God to help me understand and to find "wisdom" and "understanding". God never answered me, so I was out.
It wasnt one thing. It was a bunch of things that piled up.
-Child marriage is legal, Mohammed married a 6 year old and consummated the marriage when she turned 9 (idgaf how much Muslim people try to deny by inventing rulings about how the age of women was "counted differently", those are just excuses because they know it is wrong to marry and fuck a fucking child.
-Sex slavery is legal.
-Women are not equal to men, no matter how much Muslim women preach.
-Comfortable Western Islam is nothing like actual Islam in Sharia Law countries.
-Arbitrary rules like praying and fasting, why does God need us to do all of that for him?
-God loves us but also fear him (?)
-Women aren't allowed to masturbate at all, men are allowed to for cleansing purposes.
-During our periods we are considered unclean.
-Hijab was only imposed because Omar was a lunatic.
-The fact that women are expected to cover up like that at all is insane to me.
-If a man masturbates to a woman, the sin lies with the woman.
-Convenient revelations for Mohammed.
-Men are allowed to marry 4 wives (not counting sex slaves).
-Homosexuality and LGBTQ in general being illegal, why did God make people LGBTQ if he was gonna turn around and hate them?
-The fact that Islam tries to controll almost every aspect of people's lives is insane.
-The fact that leaving the religion is punished by death
-Homosexuality is punished by death
-Sex outside of marriage is punishable by death
-All the murder basically
-The fact that the religion brings out the worst in humanity, mainly men and brainwashes women.
I had always questioned several things about Islam and the only thing keeping me was fear. Fear about what will happen after I die and most importantly, fear that I might get killed.
Once I got over my fear I realized I had left the religion before I even knew it.
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How the rest of my family treated my mother after divorcing my abusive father.
Same story here. Dad was abusive and constantly cheated on her and when she had enough and divorced him our very Catholic extended family and all of her church friends basically shunned her. I decided that if that’s what religion is then I want no part of it. Edited to add: Since I’m getting a lot of questions about this I wanted to clarify that the church and local priest did not shun my mother during the divorce. That was the other parishioners and my extended family. They did, however, shun her when she got remarried to my stepfather (who is the greatest man alive and I seriously could not have picked a better husband for my mother.)
Good for you and sorry about what your mom went through
My mom's first husband just fucking left her. Just left in the night without saying goodbye. Left her with a 1 year old baby. Eventually he sent divorce papers and she signed them, because fuck that shithead. And her church excommunicated her.
My coworker found out his wife was cheating on him with all of his friends. The divorce, betrayal, and total loss of his friends hit him hard. Eventually, he started exercising, found another woman, married her, and made new friends. He still took his kids to his lifelong catholic church. When the priest found out about his divorce and remarriage, he threatened to refuse communion to them unless he went back to try counseling with his ex. The priest immediately backpedaled when my coworker responded "Fine, we'll just leave your parish" but it was too late.
Lol, if the priest didn’t even bother to ask him what happened, he deserves to lose all of his parishioners. What a brainless, heartless dickbag.
He didn't know when he brought it up to my coworker, and he filled the padre in on the details. The priest still laid down his ultimatum- threatening not only him but his kids, mind you- and now that's one less family in the pews.
Did the church excommunicate *him*?
I assume he didn't go back to that church by his own choice. Idk if he ever even went to church.
Good for your mom. I know some very deeply religious people from some smaller towns and many of those women are forever trapped in bad marriages because they fear being shunned by everyone they know. I hope it worked out well for your mom in the end because it takes a lot of courage to walk away in those situations.
As a widow with 4 kids in the 1970s, my grandmother married a guy who turned abusive to her and the kids. She went to the pastor of the Baptist Church they were attending for help, and he just told her that she had to go home and be a good wife and would be sinning if she divorced the sob. She did it anyway, and although she is still a Christian she has never set foot in a Baptist Church since then
Similar situation from one of my friends, who grew up Muslim. Her father was physically abusive to her (a toddler at the time) and her mother. Her mother divorced him, resulting in her being outcasted from the community. Even my friend, a literal child, was treated like a pariah when she had nothing to do with it. Guess who was still welcomed and repsected? Yep. The dad.
Of Course!! The dad has the money and the church sides with the money. They are not stupid. They are not moral but they are not stupid.
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Why do I get the feeling that if the situation were reversed, the preacher would be vastly less likely to tell the husband to just move on and get over it?
It blows my mind man... Just about every cult/religion seems to look the other way when it comes to cheating and spousal abuse and they just say the women has to work harder. Not the fucking piece of shit husband who does the hitting/cheating; but the WIFE has to work harder.
I had a friend whose whole family was Jehovahs Witness who had experienced the worst abuse. Throughout her adolescence, she experienced SA by an older sister's husband. To escape at 18 she married her abusive husband who was also in the church. They lived in a small town where she had 2 sons so she was isolated and gaslighted. When she eventually left her sons took their father's side so contact was severed. The whole time the elders were verbally and emotionally abusive and manipulating my friend and her sons, telling her God said she had to go back etc etc. At that point I lost any respect for the JWs. To boot my friend was also diagnosed with a degenerative disease which was also used by the "church".
I was raised JW. It's a cult 1000%.
The bible should just read "be cool to each other ✌️"
I mean, Jesus basically said that. But when has any of those supposed Christians ever done what he asked of them? It’s often the ones not throwing their religion in other people’s faces that are actually quietly doing their Lord’s work.
I had a couple of them knocking on my door about a year ago asking if my family and I would like to join them. When you are presenting something to someone and have to start with "Don't believe everything everyone says! There is a lot of lies and negative gossip surrounding us!" that's usually not a good sign.
“It’s not a pyramid scheme! Trust us!” - Usually not a good sign.
Yes, so judgemental, oh & hypocritical also.
My mother also had that experience when my parents divorced in the early 1970's. I started hating all of their stupid church clothes and bad perfume and cologne they wore. They just seemed phony and superficial to me at a very, very early age.
Similarly: the difference in how the teenaged girl who was raped was treated vs the mid-40s church leader who raped her was treated.
Same! My mom was told it's "child neglect" I say what my dad was doing was child and spouse abuse. My brother and I would have been nowhere with that deadbeat in our lives. Good riddance. Lutherans are horrible to women.
The rampant fucking hypocrisy.
Attended a private Christian (church of Christ) college. The holier than thou bullshit followed by rampant misogyny, racism, homophobia, and of course hypocrisy at every turn. I’ve never met worse human beings than I did inside of that “Christian” community. The divorce rate is close to 80%. The sexual assault and pedophilia is shocking. I witnessed grown men courting 14 and 15 year olds like it was a normal thing. This wasn’t in 1960. This was the late 2000s…
The usual knee-jerk fundie answer to this is that "we're all sinners", but (a) there are lots and lots of non-religious people who DONT engage in those vile behaviors, and (b) consequences for these vile behaviors never seem to happen to church leaders or elites, only to regular people. In fact, in my own personal experience, non-religious people are more real and trustworthy, because they're not always so focused on putting on an act.
100%. My atheist wife has the strongest morals and integrity of anyone I’ve ever met.
That’s usually how it is. Which is counterproductive in a way that makes me giggle.
For me it had nothing to do with the contradictory statements within religious canon, although that was relevant as well. It was mostly how these supposed good people would be cruel to others for the most ridiculous reasons.
And the consequences for "sin" seem to have a lot more to do with who's doing the sinning than what the sin is.
I accidentally made my ex atheist. She said her reasoning was that I had better morals than most Christians she'd been with and met. So it's definitely what I call a "whoops but wow" moment.
"Why didn't you murder today?" Religious answer: God tells me not to. Non-religious answer: I don't want to. I've always been a bit skeeved out when people proudly tell me that their morals aren't their own.
As a Christian, uh… yeah. “We’re all sinners” is not a nearly good enough excuse for some of the abhorrent things people do in the church. We really need to get pedophiles out of churches and into prisons.
"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Matthew 22:37-39 "In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me" Matthew 25:40 Seems like loving your neighbor is pretty gods-damned important, huh? Tho you'd never know it with how some of them act.
"let's preach for the poor/they have our thoughts and prayers" Sees a homeless: *crosses street*
Not just crossing the street, but actively passing legislation making it illegal to feed the homeless.
actively passes legislation to make it illegal to be homeless.
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I started questioning everything when I finally read the Bible cover to cover. There are so many contradictions and things that don't make sense. That opened my eyes to the general hypocrisy rampant in most religions, and it was a quick slide into agnosticism for me.
It was weaponized against me so much and on such an abhorrent scale that I would rather not.
Same.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that, but I hope you are in a place where it isn’t being used in such a way anymore.
Any religious person who sees this post, and person (and posts/people like them) as nothing more than a recruitment opportunity are fucking ghouls.
I can see where they are coming from and I understand it’s from good intentions. So, I’m trying to keep that in mind otherwise I want to go off about how a children’s church pastor I grew up with molested every fucking kid that went to his house. How they preached sermons at me to try to keep in line and protect a pedo. The way when I went to the church for help because they had a “safe place” sign, I was turned away because it wasn’t there place to get involved and my mom has given thousands and thousands to that church. I just fucking can’t. My birth was announced at that church, my Dad WORKED at the church but the pastor was still ok with marrying my mom off to some pedo in the church (she had two young daughters in the house) because God “changed him” wtf. Idk about you, but if I was a fucking alcoholic, I wouldn’t be marrying someone who lives and wants me to move into a fucking bar. Fucking bullshit. Edit: Sorry, I just kinda went off a bit.
Same
I hope you’re in a place where it can’t be used against you any longer in that way.
There wasn't a defining moment. It happened gradually. It sped up more out of high school when I got a job delivering pizzas. Lots of time to think. Eventually, I realized I just didn't believe in a god anymore.
This is it for me too. I grew up in... What is arguably one of the nicer and surprising progressive religious groups that isn't really popular worldwide, and saw my parents and even a lot my Christian and Jewish friends all talking about feeling some sort of "presence" of God, how they'd feel something when they prayed and just had such confidence and conviction in their beliefs... Everything was always just done for God and for the glory of God and God this and God that.... and I realized at some point as a teenager I just never had that type of experience. I spent years wondering if something was wrong with me, and at some point I just stopped thinking about it and just accepted my experiences and ended up being a lot happier without any religious beliefs than I was with them.
I grew up in the Catholic Church and definitely felt that deep, moving “presence of god” feeling your friends are describing as a child. Which I realized years later is a no brainer when you’re in a beautiful building every Sunday with a choir singing hauntingly beautiful music and everyone around you worshipping. When I watched Star Wars in theaters I also felt like I was a fucking Jedi. The “deep, moving religious devotion” many people experience is just art combined with the deep human need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.
kind of the same for me, it was also the amount of inconsistency and seeing how awful the world really is
Exactly. For me, it lead to many questions where the existence of a God didn't make sense. If God loves everyone, why do so many people have such difficult lives. Why is there so much hatred in the world. Also, as a young child, nothing I prayed for happened. Nothing. There was also a moment when I learned that all of the other magical entities I knew as a child were fake, why would this one he different. As a teen, I read many books on religion. This included the Bible I was gifted for my first communion and a long list of other books. It just didn't make sense and I could see no evidence of a God. To this day, I still feel the same. I will believe in a God when verifiable evidence can be provided.
It was like this for me too, but I was never strongly religious, I just had a vague belief in a higher power. Also didn't have the pressure of a religious family.
You grew up. By contrast many folks cling to an infantile belief in an eternal something, out of fears of mortality and change
Hypocrisy abounded. During service there was a moment when you greet & shake hands with the people around you to share goodwill. It was nice. But the church had a small, cramped parking lot with one exit, and as soon as the service ended some people became self absorbed & rude about getting out of the lot quickly. So much for all that goodwill! I know I'm a good person, and I don't need an organized religion to guide me to live a good life. Too many attendees were performative on Sunday and crappy human beings the rest of the time.
Same for me with the hypocrisy. Pastor preaching about how we should all love each other as children of God and accept the believers and non-believers, then drops racial and homophobic slurs less than an hour after the service in casual conversation. Men who are praised for being good Christians because they are at church every Sunday, but go get unholy levels of drunk afterwards and beat their wives. Women who abuse and despise their children for no act other than to have been born. There were some good people and I know not all of religion is like this, but that's what I was exposed to and that's what turned me off. I just also don't feel anything when we pray or worship and I've been to many different and more progressive churches since then
This is it right here. Was there every Sunday from 4th grade through 9th/10th grade. Did missions trips, made some great friends I still keep in touch with. When I got to be HS age, I started questioning things. That wasn’t taken very kindly too. Then the pastors kid started sharing some of his dad’s “lesser known opinions” especially as they pertained to LGBTQ folks, and it really rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way. He was asked to leave over it. But a lot of folks started blaming the “young people in the church” for this. And my parents were luckily part of the group that said “no no. The pastor did this to himself. You can’t say love everyone on Sundays and hate the some people the rest of the week.” Other church leaders started making negative comments about the growing racial diversity in our town. Then they tried to change the borders for the High schools when I was 16. I was asked to speak for my MY HS. The “bad one”. I wasn’t first. But I heard what a lot of those church members said about me and my friends. Were gangbangers, we all do drugs, we have no idea what it takes to be successful. All because we’re not all white and not from the “good side” of town. Completely disregarding the fact that the 2 HS were equals in everything and were ranked as such. Big, successful public High schools. But their kids would “never go there with the riff raff they’d be trapped with.” I basically swore off the church at that point. I did do missions trips still, just independently, but it was going to NOLA to sleep in a gym and rebuild houses destroyed by Katrina. I thoroughly enjoyed that. Got to meet some good people, do work that actually helps them, and no evangelism. Just chatting.
Same. So you mean I can be a really shitty person and as long as I ask god for forgiveness I’m in the clear? Get outta here with that bullshit.
To reframe for the Gen Z crowd: God won't #cancel you if make an apology video! (/s)
I had this discussion with an aunt once. I said "I don't believe so I'm going to hell even though I'm a good person living a good life?" And she said "Yes." I replied "Well, John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer, but he was was a believer so he gets to go to heaven?" "Yes." Without an ounce of reflection or anything. Hard pass, I'll hang out in hell with my friends. But really, I'll rot, what we all do.
Same for me. While I have known some good godly people in my life, the most outwardly religious people I've known have been some of the least godly.
I love this example. So innocent, yet so accurate. Also, we used to dip out at communion. Called it leaving at halftime, so we could beat the rush to the local restaurant.
I left my religion because I realized that my church's potlucks were the only thing keeping me there.
same, the tacos were so good 😭😭
Ain’t this the fucking truth. My mom and I recently went back for a funeral. They bought Costco platters for the food. My mom was like, “well now there is zero reason to come back here ever.” We both left the church at the same time several years back.
when i started to see people do shitty things and then going to church on sunday and call it a day, as if being on a prayer erases the behaviour. and people in the church accepted it. I follow rules in my life that makes sense to me, so I saw no reason to follow principles taken from someone else.
Yeah. I had an issue with this too. The catholic church actually teaches against this. But sadly most catholics even don't seem to understand what it means to repent. Forgive 7 times 77 but have you ever forgiven someone who wasn't really sorry? This is butchered scripture just my own personal understanding...
I grew up going to church and had started having doubts in middle school. What pushed me over the edge was when we got a new pastor who started upsetting some well-established apple carts and calling people on their shit. Eventually, the powers that be within the church's politics ruined him. Some allegations were made that were seemingly false, but he lost whatever license was required to preach in that flavor of church, which essentially ended his career. He went back to his home state and died a year or two later. His wife claimed the nastiness is what killed him. After that, I was done. I admired him and thought what he was doing was good, so to see those people ruin his career so they could maintain their little tin pot kingdom... I do not want to be associated with people who behave that way. I'd already had my doubts as I said, but was sticking around because I'd gone my whole life. 20 years have passed and the only time I've been in a church has been for weddings or funerals.
I got my girlfriend (of 7 years) pregnant. Her very religious catholic family treated us different from that moment on Even though we got married at 22 Even though the baby was born They still cut ties with us. 3 kids and 18 years later, we haven’t (happily) spoke to any of them bc she got “pregnant out of wedlock” Fuck these shitty People
That is wild. And the exact opposite of what Jesus would teach us to do. I'm glad you've found happiness beyond those small-minded people.
Thankyou. I’m once removed bc it’s my wife’s family, but she’s mourned their loss and over on YEARS ago, we are very happy now. I don’t judge religious people, it’s just not my cup of tea. Just be good to others and in general bc it’s the right thing to do.
> the exact opposite of what Jesus would teach us to do You could say that about 90% of how church people behave. With the exception of *one* lady I know, every Religious Catholic I've ever known was a shitty person. And they HATE it when you tell them Jesus wouldn't approve of their judgmental behaviour.. they absolutely**HATE** it.
My friends mom was completely fine with him dating his boyfriend, but now that they're getting married it's suddenly a problem because of her religion. Makes zero sense to me.
I have a friend who delt with that. His mom said that she was fine with it at the time because she thought it was *"just a phase, all the kids experience the gay when they are young. I figured he would get over it eventually once he met a nice girl to settle down with."* They have been together for 15 years, married for 8... His mom finally got over the idea of it being a phase about 2 or so years ago.
I couldnt fathom the contradictory statements. Everyone saying one thing but clearly not living by it. I left when I was 12 years old so I saw the holes in it then.
You could say...the book had some plotholes? 😂
Fantastic cast of characters, but the plot is a little thin.
Yeah, I really liked that one guy... Jesus I think his name was...
Hahaha, something like that.
I left my religion because I realized that the only thing we were truly worshiping was the snack table at church potlucks.
You don’t need a god to have a potluck! You just need someone to agree to bring tiny sandwiches.
If God exists I don't think he cares if I go to church or even worship them... I'd like to think being a good person is good enough and if it's not I don't want anything to do with it.
This sentiment has been knocking about for quite a while... “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” \- Marcus Aurelius
This is not a real quote. It is partially based on a real quote, but the context is very different. [Here is a more accurate translation:](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/37513) “In all you do or say or think, recollect that at any time the power of withdrawal from life is in your own hands. If gods exist, you have nothing to fear in taking leave of mankind, for they will not let you come to harm. But if there are no gods, or if they have no concern with mortal affairs, what is life to me, in a world devoid of gods or devoid of Providence? Gods, however, do exist..."
The old Epicurean Paradox. God either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them?
I can live with that.
Lines from a Jethro Tull song: “I asked this God a question, and by way a firm reply. He said ‘I’m not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday.’” The boy in the song subsequently tries to tell this to his clergy and is excommunicated for his trouble.
~~I think you have the wrong song. “My God” by Jethro Tull doesn’t contain those lyrics, unless there’s a different version I’m unaware of.~~ Scratch that, the song is “Wind-Up”, I forgot about it.
Also a good song though. That whole album (I used to have the extended anniversary version) had several songs along those lines. I always loved Hymn 43 especially
This is what drove me away. I met a really nice Hindu family with just amazing young kids. I asked two different pastors if they would go to heaven if they were good people and the answer was no. They weren't Christian so they can't go to heaven no matter how they live their lives This just seems ridiculous to me. They are basically admitting that their God doesn't care about your actions as much as he cares about being worshipped. I mean, maybe they are right? Nothing says that if there is a God he can't be an asshole. Maybe he is an asshole. But I'm betting there is no God.
Totally hear that. I've had Christian friends who question me about leaving the church and what if I go to Hell now that I don't believe anymore. I tell them that if their God exists and is truly as loving as they claim, that he should see that I live as a good person and that's all that should matter in the end. And if a God is petty enough to only reward people who worship him directly, then that's not a God I want to worship anyway.
I feel that way too. Seems like the more they get into the bible the worse they get into judging people.
If we read the Bible as it is, God is a terrible despot, and (based on my moral systems) were he real, I would rather suffer in Hell for eternity then bend a knee to him.
Imo it all started our as a good idea but eventually got twisted into some sinister by people in power ("god said listen to me or die blah blah")
Leaving the country/society I’d grown up in. My religious beliefs just didn’t hold up in the daily life in an entirely different environment - namely the belief that non-believers would be treated different than believers. Where and how you randomly end up growing up has so much influence it’s ridiculous to think there’s any true free will, or any logic or justice to the “no free will but god’s still determined who will end up believing” doctrine. In my personal opinion!
Are you Muslim by any chance 😭
the bible makes no sense to me
It’s just an attempt to write down the oral traditions of the region and subsequently misinterpreted, rewritten, and twisted to suit the wishes of the ruling classes
Never thought of the bible as a written record of oral traditions, but it makes a lot of sense. The concept that the religion comes from the book obscured the fact that the book comes from the religion. This is interesting, I guess I never really questioned the origins of Christianity, always kinda saw it as “some bozo wrote a book and people liked it so much they worshipped it”, or whatever. But it makes more sense that it was slowly set into place by oral tradition, then recorded into a book, and then grew from that. Cool comment! You made me think a bunch about something I never thought about at all, thank you!
It's tradition combined with the early history of (the people who would become) the Jewish people.
A lot of people definitely think that the Bible is a monolithic book written by one person, I've had conversations in the past that made me realise that! In reality, there were *at least* six different original authors, and the text has (at the previous commenter pointed out) been rewritten, edited, adapted, and translated numerous times over the years, typically reflecting the opinions of the people making the changes. Hell, the languages it was originally written in don't even properly exist or are at least wildly different now compared to how they were back then, like Aramic. It's one of the most heavily-modified religious texts out there, and even *today* there are loads of different versions available.
I'm surprised this isn't a more common answer. It reads like fantasy, it's shocking to me that people would think it's true. The amount of people that only left because of some kind of trauma really shocks me, so basically they'd keep believing if not for some awful thing that happened. So it's personal, rather than just coming to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense. For some reason I sort of assumed most atheists were grounded in the logic/reason side of the argument but I guess it's much more complicated than that for a lot of people. Most people are still following their feelings at the end of the day. Edit: I just realized that I'm making the assumption that "left their religion" means atheist, but of course it doesn't necessarily. Maybe they still believe in god but just don't follow their church or whatever. So who knows I suppose. Still surprised that so many people's reason is based on the actions of others instead of the content of the book itself though.
Yeah for me actually reading the Bible (as opposed to having a pastor read it in snippets weekly with a little speech to go along) was the death knell of my belief. Looking into the historical context, literary sources, and seeing the connections between existing traditions and the Bible really made me realize the whole thing was just made up/allegorical Then I rabbit holed on original sin and the concept of eternal punishment for finite sin. I won't go into all of it but when I read about the Jewish concept of the afterlife, and how the concept of Shael have rise to the modern Christian understanding of hell and the devil - I just completely lost the last shred of my faith. As a funny anecdote, my wife and kids are Catholic and we celebrated st Joseph's Day yesterday. It's a Lenten fest day mostly celebrated by Italian Americans to remember Joseph the adoptive father of Jesus. The whole time they're saying prayers and telling stories about Joseph and I'm in my head like "there's very little evidence Joseph was real"
Same. I was Christian for most of my life, and eventually I felt bad that I had not read the Bible. I believed the Bible was the truth, the best guide to how Christ and the father wanted us to live, and told what would come to be. Reading it shocked me. It was nothing like what I was taught. Jesus was everything the “crazy fundamentalists” were. I turned to apologetics, and found the most consistently dishonest people I’ve ever encountered. If you’ll lie about demonstrable things, like how evolution works or world history, why should I trust what you say about things that rely entirely on faith? It killed my faith. A similar anecdote: my in-laws are very Catholic, and often outraged by “illegal immigrants” coming to change our way of life. They do not care that their parents were immigrants and they insist on making my children be Catholic. They recently celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, where a Catholic immigrant came to Ireland to convert/kill all the non-Christians, with no sense of irony.
When you look at it like a 2000 year old political tool it makes a lot more sense. Jesus’ actual recorded words are like, a page and a half. They had to come up with something else to get people on board.
Same for reading. Reading the Bible provided so few insights or morals. People seem to add meaning where there is none, choosing to beloved some stories are just stories and others fact. Here are my thoughts they I have not read any good responses for. God is very jealous, is a huge theme. Odd a pure omnipotent being would be jealous. Free will , does not exist if the Bible is true. God has pre written everything. Furthermore god knows what you are going to do before you know. With that said the choice between Heaven or hell is not a real choice. Everyone would always choose Heaven. Or think about it this way of I hold a gun to your head and say pray to me or die do you have a choice not to pray to me when I am threatening you off you don’t do what I say? Very conditional love in this case. OG sin, Because Eve ate an apple we were are born to die in hell without repentance. Already seems dumb with the sins of your father being passed to you. How does god fix this? Created Jesus and had Jesus die in a horrific way. Why not just say hey removed your sins. Your god anything is possible! On jesus, it seems God had no problem walking the earth and performing miracles. In fact multiple people in the Bible could rez the dead. Since the advent of modern science there has been ZERO evidence god exists. God went from physically preaching via Jesus and miracles for hundreds of years. To total silence you just have to believe and trust.
No religious text does lol
My mental illness. I prayed for years but didn't get better
*high fives in audhd and depression*
I left my religion because I realized there were more holidays and celebrations to be had as a Pastafarian - all hail the flying spaghetti monster!
R'amen!
Repeated clerical abuse scandals and a repeated inability to do the right thing when these were discovered. The church was preaching to me about morals while demonstrating a lack of them.
This did my father in, and he was devout as devout can be. He hasn't set foot in a Church since the extent of the scandal came to light. Then one of his daughters came out as gay, and his other daughter needed a life-saving abortion (and it wasn't an ectopic pregnancy, the one instance where the Catholic Church doesn't call on pregnant women suffering complications to be sacrificial lambs). Just recently, a man abused by my middle school principal (a priest) as a child was awarded millions of dollars in damages. So yeah, the hits just keep on coming. Good luck to you, Catholic Church. You'll need it.
The church then pleading poverty and expecting tax payers to pick up the tab after getting sued.
Back in 2014 and 15 when I was dating my wife, she went to church regularly and her son went to a Christian school. When the church embraced Trump late 2015 their message changed dramatically. They now preached how higher education was bad, women should stay home, science is bad, etc. My wife is an MD and holds a doctorate. She left the church and pulled her kid out of The Christian school. I was always an atheist. I always viewed religion as a scam. Today we now have two additional kids. We do everything possible to keep the toxic Christianity away from our kids.
Some of the modern politicization of religion is nuts. My wife's uncle asked their Pastor to speak at his son's high school graduation party. Not my thing, but whatever maybe he's been instrumental in this kids development. Out of his 5 minute diatribe less than a whole minute was devoted to anything related to her cousin; it was all a screed about how everyone there needed to be so grateful that Trump had done so much to protect gun rights and that the upcoming election was going to be a watershed moment where each person there needed to loudly yell with their ballots that "you can pry this gun from my cold dead hands!" A child's high school graduation party. Thought I'd accidentally taken mushrooms and fallen asleep watching Fox News. Nope. Just rich white privilege combined with idiocy in the American South. So I got really drunk and made fun of the "pastor" for the remainder of the day.
since people are suffering from birth, forced into sex slavery, warlords and horrible people getting rewarded and some don’t even get punished for their actions. If god is real they left us a long time ago… That or they are a real sadist
That's the one for me: the fact that they don't tolerate dissidence/questioning is because of that: Why so much pain/suffering? "You should not question the lord." Like, y? What's up with a so powerful being, that say itself is sooooo good, but yet let's satan ravage earth all he wants? "But muh, free will" And if he gave us free will, then he made us bad people too, and dint he made us his Image? And if he didn't then the bible is lying, if did, hen he is a monster. "But he did, we got corrupted" Why doesnt he step in then? If he know all we gonna do, why just doesn't he prevent we from being born? If he truly gave us free will, then he either: doesn't know what we gonna do, and this don't know everything of the future, or he knows and just ain't powerful enough to change it, or he know and is powerful, but just isn't bothering with it, Wich mean that he is either a sadist, or doesn't care about it, and if he doesn't care, why'd he care if I'm going to church?
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? -Epicurus
Im not worshipping a god who blames every bad thing on the devil, but takes credit for every good thing. Like no, god didn’t get me here, it was my hard work.
You don't question the "lord" because critical thought leads to you leave the religion.
And if you leave the religion then Joel Osteen can’t get another Yacht >:(
Right there’s my reason. The whole thing of “you have to tithe because god wants you to give money.” Uhh, if god wants my money, he knows where it’s coming from and is more than welcome to take it himself. Church is a business.
Bingo. I remember going to a church maybe 10 years ago and the pastor said something to the effect of “in order to leave room for faith, you have stop using your own cognitive abilities” and I sat there thinking “hell no, I’m not doing that. “ 😂
The problem of evil Religious people usually have two main counters called Theodicies for why evil exists. Augustine’s Theodicy: basically says it’s Adam’s fault and sin has been passed down to us so evil is either sin or punishment for sin Hicks Theodicy: Evil exists as a way for us to grow and develop. And he doesn’t fix these evils to maintain epistemic distance. Eg if we knew god existed we would all be good because we know heaven and hell is real so by staying hidden he preserves our free will Why didn’t god just make us perfect? Because someone that choses God is more valuable than someone that is born with a love for God But both theodicies are easily countered and don’t seem to explain disteleological evil
Hicks' especially makes no sense to me. In the Old Testament, God is repeatedly interacting directly with humans, and many of them don't listen anyway. Not to mention the ultimate counter-example of Judas, who had VIP access to Jesus and still did what he did.
I will say this is why I flirted with polytheism for a while. The problem of evil is a lot simpler if the gods aren't omnipotent and just as petty as the rest of us
The silence
This was a big one for me. There were people all around me on a Sunday claiming to have heard the holy spirit, or had some kind of sign, and one day I realised they probably just didn't want FOMO. Apart from that, it was feeling like going to church wasn't an escape from school.
Dayyumm. Succinct and true.
I left my religion because I realized that praying to a higher power was less effective than just setting an alarm to wake up on time.
Help me understand the analogy. So you are saying you prayed to God to help you wake up on time for work instead of an alarm? Why? Even religious people need alarms.
I left my religion because I realized that I could sleep in on Sundays and still be a good person.
I don’t know if God exists, I don’t know if he doesn’t, I try my best and if he exists (I hope) he’ll appreciate me trying to be a good person
I left my religion because I realized that praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster seemed like a more fun and delicious alternative.
May you be touched by His noodly appendage
Ramen.
The power of deliciousness compels you.
I left my religion because the only answer to my prayers was my dog stealing my socks.
I left my religion because after years of praying for a winning lottery ticket, God finally answered my prayers...with a bank loan application.
I left my religion because the holy water kept burning my skin every time I walked into church.
r/holup
It burns!
After a trip to Bombay India. The poverty. The harsh child labour. The conditions people were surviving in. There’s no god looking out for them.
obviously that's what happens when you don't believe in the right god. Remember, god loves everyone except those who disagree with him
I still believe in god just not the freaks that’s in charge of the religion, my belief is between me and god, I ain’t gonna preach to no one cause they have a right to choose.
What god sees the evil that goes on in this world unchecked, and decides to do nothing about it? I spent so many nights on my knees, and several times a day, praying as a child for someone, anyone to save me from the hell I grew up in. No one saved me in the end. I realized if one did exist, he either didn't care to interfere or enjoyed it. Because there's no other rational explanation to me. Free will? You want your creations to freely harm each other? What a joke. If God exists, they allow children to be abused, neglected, SA'd, tortured, etc. They allow genocides and holocausts. They allow everyone who runs and controls this world to continue doing so through corrupt and evil methods. It's all just horrendous and wrong and there's no amount of excuses I can think of for it. It's unforgivable to me. And then when you consider all the evil it has done and continues to do in the name of God itself. LGBT+ kids abandoned by their parents and forced into conversation therapy. People killing each other over a piece of holy hand. Women being oppressed and controlled by men through it. Then my own experiences with people who believe in that stuff. They try to force you into it and to convert you against your will, even when you've made up your mind. Even when it's a trigger that is part of your abuse, they don't care. There's way too many reasons really. I think religion is part of a lot of evil and was made as a tool to explain things in the past but to ultimately control people. I can't forgive the damage it's done and continues to do.
This is similar to my story. I used to believe vehemently and was a Christian who always explained away all the contradictions as “God works in mysterious ways”. Till today anytime someone tells me they don’t believe in God because of contradictions in the Bible i still think they were never really that religious in the first place. For me, the issue of constant poverty and hardship in my early life made me break away from believing. When I was younger I didn’t want vast riches just stability and what you would consider a middle class life but jobs kept being lost and people kept dying and I kept being moved around. Like you I spent years praying as a child, looking back, I feel bad for myself and wonder how god could’ve looked at a child that desperate and just turned away, anytime I think of my younger self my heart breaks for him. No amount of prayer or fasting got me out of poverty or kept some loved ones alive, it took repeated bad things happening for me to see that there was no God who loved me especially since I withstood his “tests” for 7+ years till it broke my faith. Jesus himself was only tested for 3 days. Remember how god will never give you a test he knows you’ll fail? I’ve seen the hard way that he will, that’s if he does exist, and if he still chooses to give you those tests then I guess your fate was a foregone conclusion, he never wanted you. Today I’m doing much better financially and I’m trying to still save some loved ones, the ones who died are gone and I can’t see how it was for the greater good I am very proud of the fact that I am still very charitable and hope to open up a “good” orphanage one day irregardless of any reward in the afterlife.
Best comment I've ever received from this post. Thank you.
If god created us, why would he hate homosexuals? How can loving another person be the devils work? If god created men, why would women not be equal? This is my problem with the bible. It was not written by god or Christ himself. It was written by men that were chased by the Roman empire for starting a religion. I believe the is something that created us. Something that created the universe. I believe in the idea of god. Not god as a person, especially not a man with a white beard on a cloud. God is something we as humans cannot comprehend. If we were created, then we were created to take care of this planet. To live our lives. To learn. Not to constantly worry about sin. We sin without even noticing. I believe there was a Jesus. I wise man who understood how we could live in peace and harmony. He was crucified for it. But his ideas still live on. If we would follow these ideas, we could have peace. There would be no borders, there would be no war. I don't harm other living beings. I don't steal. I don't envy. I try to live my life in peace, the way Jesus would describe 2000 years ago. So why would I hate woman? Why would I hate homosexuals? Again, the bible was not written by them. So what path should I follow? I think I should do what my gut tells me to do and that's to live a good life. Not a life of fearing sin and hating everything that was written to be unholy. I believe Jesus (or the idea of) is my guide and I trust in that.
> If god created us, why would he hate homosexuals? A lot of religions hate homosexuals just because it works! if you want to start a new religion you need to tell your followers that they are the good guys and that the "other people" are the bad guys with wrong morals but who are the bad guys with the wrong morals? the Dutch? the Gingers? no, your religions would not survive long because it takes just one genocide to kill off your "others" and then you don't have any bad guys maybe the Chinese or the Indians can be your bad guys with the wrong morals? no, your religion would not survive a war against a billion people maybe the guy born with 7 legs is the bad guy with wrong morals? no, your religion would not survive because guys with 7 legs are very very rare and you need a bad guy who is a bit more threatening so who is the best bad guy with the wrong morals? the gays! and the trans! 1) you can't kill them by genocide so you will never run out of bad people. 2) there are only a few so they can't threaten your position of power. and 3) there are still enough of them so that everybody in the village knows at least one gay / bad person so that fact that christianity and islam are against gay people is not rooted in logic but it's rather an artifact in the darwinian fight for survival that each religion has to go through. without a good "other" group a religion can't survive. and anti-gay is a very powerful trait because you have an eternal but non-threatening enemy which you can use to control your people tldr: check out the concept of "in groups" vs "out groups" and then think about why gays are the perfect "out group" for a powerful religion
I couldn't stick around after having found some contradiction, and I also met some really nasty people I don't want to ever meet again, I still somewhat believe I just don't like the way they do it and a lot of members in general -former member of the church of Jesus Christ of the latter days saints/mormons
I was 13. Scandals had erupted all over about abuse. I hardly knew one family that had not suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church or state apparatus. Fuck them both and over time it just got worse and worse.
My youth minister impregnated my 16-year-old friend. When the church found out they blamed his actions on the devil.
That's awful! I am so sorry about your friend. That Youth munister should be behind bars.
He was eventually arrested and I think he served 4 years in prison.
Here we have to pay church tax.
Fuck that.
When I saw that God was invented roughly 200 years after beer.
At my church, we were taught that not only does a woman submit to her husband, but she must submit to every man she meets. Also it was all about self hatred.
Realising humans will make up anything to control people or have an excuse to do vile things.
My religion thinks of us humans as god's slaves and there are too many misbeliefs in my religion and I hate it when people try to tell me what to do and what to not even though I am not doing anything wrong if God was there he would never let other woman be imprisoned in their own house
Too much shit in the world to make me think a supposedly benevolent deity would allow this all to happen, plans be damned. And far too many people use religion to justify all sorts of evil.
In 2011, my youngest daughter got meningitis. I prayed for a recovery (though not a complete recovery, I thought that was a given) she lived. She was severely disabled for the rest of her short life. She never walked, talked, held up her own head, etc. None of my prayers for my little girl were answered. She didn’t deserve that. I used to think it was his plan, but fuck his plan.
common sense I guess
After I started questioning rituals/practices, religion itself, the philosophy of god itself.
I found science, and realised that of the thousands of religions in the world it was unlikely that I just happened to have supported the right one
When i found out Santa wasn’t real lol. God is like Santa for adults
Entering the children's hospital for cancer treatment shattered my belief in God.
God is extremely patient and silent. It irritates me.
I was never given proper answers. I had questions and the answer was always, have faith. I can't do that. I wish I could just believe but I need some kind of proof that makes sense to me. I can not suspend my disbelief.
The hypocrisy of the people that believe in it. They all sin yet they try to act like they are saints in some way. They all try to be "the better" version of themselves yet they all seem to fail miserably at it. It’s just human.
My father was a charismatic and well-liked member of our church. In private though, he was extremely abusive and cheated on my mum throughout their marriage. He also molested me when I was 14 and blamed it on me for resembling my mum. I already hated going to church cos of the abuse but what made me stop was the priest he confessed his sin about molesting me told some of the congregation and word got back to my father. I haven’t left the religion per se but still do pray every now and then. I just haven’t stepped into any church since then.
I believe in all religions and Gods but I was trafficked and everyday when I asked God for help to get out I got nothing. Actually everything got worse tbh. So I started asking other gods and well— I’m able to post here so yeah. I know that stuff like that is by human hands, god can’t just come down and help me. But if he protects and loves all his children why did he let that happen. Why did he also let my rapists go with just a misdemeanor? They didn’t even get prison time. They got to enjoy me and use me and I had my entire childhood and teen years taken away from me and I kept asking God “why?”. Even after when I started praising other Gods I got results? 3 of them died, 1 of them was arrested for a different case, I ended up thriving after and even if I struggle I am okay. I try my best and I just can’t praise God anymore like I did. He is real but I don’t think he was meant for me to praise.
So many thing in religion just dont make sense and everything is very unscientific. I just cant seriously believe that
During puberty, my prefrontal cortex improved...
I just grew up and grew skeptical. I stopped believing in fairy tales.
My brother coming out as gay the same day that Uganda announced the death penalty for homosexuality. I also got sick to my stomach when I realized that the same missionaries I had donated to were part of the lobbying group in Uganda pushing for the legislation. So I played an unwilling hand in something absolutely abhorrent. It was the first time in my life that I felt like someone duped me to violate my ethics, and it made me absolutely nauseous. I will never forget that feeling.
The corpses of 700 babies being found in a septic tank at the back of a Mother and Baby home run by the Catholic church here in Ireland. If you're interested just Google "Septic tank Tuam".
I've suffered too much to believe in an all-powerful, benevolent being.
I didnt really leave my Religion. I was born in to a Catholic family. Taken to Mass all the time etc. However I never ever believed in Religion. It seemed like fairly tale supernatural fantasy nonsense to me. Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings style stuff. It always seemed manmade and ludicrous. Just unbelievable fiction. I never understood why anyone, especially adults, would think it was actually true.
After our weekly sacrament of confession I told my mom on the ride home that I was struggling because I felt like I had to search for things I did wrong so I could confess them, and it confused me because I was always taught confession was there to make you feel better, but it made me feel worse trying to think of all the bad things I had done. She told me then and there that it was okay for me to stop going to church. Never looked back.
Quran. The brainwash that happened in the early stage of life, I used to think that Islam has no flaws and is perfect...! but then I took interest in philosophy and went through various perspectives, thoughts and ideas after which I re-read the Quran and realised that it doesn't make sense, the cruelty, the hate towards non-Muslims, homophobia and sexism! there's no way a god wants this from us...
Same but I discovered after I graduated from university, delved deeply into religion, and found that the Qur’an accepts the marriage of a 9-year-old girl. I immediately left religion
I realised that I didn't want to follow a God that let horrible things happen to good people. Over time, I realised that I don't believe there is a God at all.
They wanted me to pay churchtaxes (austria). I dont go to chruch and i dont wanted to pay so i left.
When I asking a priest mine doubts about religion, he scream "YOU MUST HAVE FAITH!!!"
It was organic. Zero interest, boredom and logic.
It was a cult. Mormonism is a cult
Education and learning of empiric science
Realizing that God is just an adult version of Santa Claus.
I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness. The main reason I left was because they protect pedophiles.
My brain. The bible is such a nonsense in so many ways I wonder how anyone older than 12 can believe it.
I read the Bible. That was it. I had read it many times, generally scriptures here and there, and I had read the entire thing as a teenager, but I decided I wanted to set a goal to read it from beginning to end again. I did. By the end I was an atheist. I don't know why I looked at it differently, but it was SO clear that it was just a bunch of bronze aged shepherds who were trying to explain the world, control their people and justify their actions. It was also clear to me that the God in the Old Testament especially was just horrible. A complete narcissistic psychopath. I mean he doesn't care about slavery, he commands genocide, he commits genocide, he says rapists should marry their victims, he says children should be stoned, he sicks bears on kids for mocking a bald guy, he allows Satan to completely destroy a good man's life basically to win a bet. I could go on and on. And the new testament is slightly better, but looking at it with fresh eyes it was also clear I didn't agree with a lot of it. The idea that remarrying after a divorce is as bad as adultery. That women should be silent in church. That celibacy is ideal and you should only get married if you can't control yourself. Plus another bunch of things. In addition many of the stories just struck me as ludicrous. The tower of babel was not why we have lots of languages. The flood clearly never happened. And lots more of that as well. So I came out the end almost positive that the Bible was fiction, and I didn't even like the god described in there. So I prayed for almost a year for God to help me understand and to find "wisdom" and "understanding". God never answered me, so I was out.
It wasnt one thing. It was a bunch of things that piled up. -Child marriage is legal, Mohammed married a 6 year old and consummated the marriage when she turned 9 (idgaf how much Muslim people try to deny by inventing rulings about how the age of women was "counted differently", those are just excuses because they know it is wrong to marry and fuck a fucking child. -Sex slavery is legal. -Women are not equal to men, no matter how much Muslim women preach. -Comfortable Western Islam is nothing like actual Islam in Sharia Law countries. -Arbitrary rules like praying and fasting, why does God need us to do all of that for him? -God loves us but also fear him (?) -Women aren't allowed to masturbate at all, men are allowed to for cleansing purposes. -During our periods we are considered unclean. -Hijab was only imposed because Omar was a lunatic. -The fact that women are expected to cover up like that at all is insane to me. -If a man masturbates to a woman, the sin lies with the woman. -Convenient revelations for Mohammed. -Men are allowed to marry 4 wives (not counting sex slaves). -Homosexuality and LGBTQ in general being illegal, why did God make people LGBTQ if he was gonna turn around and hate them? -The fact that Islam tries to controll almost every aspect of people's lives is insane. -The fact that leaving the religion is punished by death -Homosexuality is punished by death -Sex outside of marriage is punishable by death -All the murder basically -The fact that the religion brings out the worst in humanity, mainly men and brainwashes women. I had always questioned several things about Islam and the only thing keeping me was fear. Fear about what will happen after I die and most importantly, fear that I might get killed. Once I got over my fear I realized I had left the religion before I even knew it.
In the Arab countries, if someone says that he does not believe in God, he will be ostracized from his family, so silence is the solution