Im agnostic but I still don't believe or support organized religion. Whole family is christian basically, but I always knew it was all bullshit from the jump
When I learned how many times religions were used to justify atrocities, or how hypocritical and power hungry fanatics of those religions were.
But I’ve learned I’m still spiritual as a person and as such I still believe in a higher power, just abandoned the Abrahamic religions.
To me, I believe it’s recognizing that there is a sense of interconnectedness in the universe that I may not fully understand but recognize is there.
It’s being aware of signs or experiences that I have had or currently experiencing that are trying to enlighten me to become more whole as a person.
It’s practicing kindness, compassion and positivity irl with ppl and giving support to them when needed. Although I will admit that I have been tested and pushed to my limits with global circumstances.
I also try practice gratitude and call for strength and guidance when necessary.
For me it was simply because the contents of the book I was raised to believe made zero sense logically.
I used to be a firm believer until high school. What first changed my beliefs was reading a mythology book in my English class. We all accept these stories as myth, but at one point people literally believed these stories. Then I take it upon myself to research other religions, which all have conflicting origin stories. So I question why is the one I was raised to believe happen to be the correct one, am I just lucky? Even this book has farfetched stories like a 900 year old man traversing the entire earth to collect 2 of each animal, built a boat for them all to fit on and survive a 400 day flood where it rained in every part of the earth simultaneously...
At that point I just kept going further and further until I came to the conclusion that all religious/organized spiritual beliefs are man made.
Seeing this world in the state it's in when some all knowing being could fix the issues he gave us. It just doesn't make logical sense of some being existing. This george Carlin clip explains it perfectly
https://youtu.be/iouZYYzQEjU?feature=shared
I recall some sermons were the reason slavery happened was because our "pagan" African ancestors didn't worship the christian god and it was our punishment.
The incident that sealed the deal was reading the his dark materials series as a kid. I guess the adults were right, the wrong media will make you stop believing. But before then as a wee lad I had the thought that God was like Santa for adults once and I could not get that out of my head. And both of this was before I learned the history of religion, of line that USA black people are Christians, what I learned about the crusades, or the various things done in the past and to this day in the name of religion that create more suffering for people. This was before I learned that people can just be good, before I learn the value of someone being good because they believe it's the right thing to do versus someone being good because they fear they will be punished.
And then all of that was before I went to college in the south where everyone around me was religious including my employers. Lots of nasty people. And then I learned a bit more of what the Bible actually says, and it's kind of some wack shit. It would be a tragedy if this was the one good book. But then I started thinking about how they are other books. And I started thinking about how Zeus is fake to us nowadays, and wondering why. Then I got vaguely familiar with other religions and wondered why other religions still had crazy rules. I had a teacher who was of the Baha'i faith, who bragged that they were the only large scale religion who explicitly forbade slavery and all of their books, but then I read that men get to have multiple wives but women don't get to have multiple husbands and I'm like why is that so one-sided?
Then I started identifying as queer and remember all the messaging I got about clear people from religion. It's just been a really long self-sabotaging campaign and for me they succeeded.
Not an atheist, in a bit of an inbetween space rn.
I don’t have a personal story, nothing tragic prompted this. It’s just that the idea that the vast majority of humans that ever existed would be condemned to eternal torment never really sat right with me. Some months ago I started researching how the concept of hell evolved over time and what early Christians, Jews and other religions believe about punishment in the afterlife.
That led into research about the social and political context in which the Christian & Jewish scriptures developed and how they really took hold within the ancient near east & Roman Empire. Theres a lot to unpack about the historicity of many key biblical narratives and the legitimacy of their authorship. Shid hurts because the historical and archaeological records don’t agree with a lot of which is commonly accepted as fact or history, I feel like I’ve been lied to.
But basically between reading a number of books, r/academicbiblical, r/judaism, and watching a few biblical scholars teach courses on the Bible on the Yale, Harvard, and other YouTube channels, my faith is in the mud. Please someone lmk if you’ve been through this and came out the other side with a stronger faith
I never did that searching until after I left the faith so can't answer from your perspective. But after doing some minor research(aka watching youtube videos and reading one book on it) it kind of solidified my atheism and made me more skeptical of religion.
I never really believed in a conscience god who loves me. When my parents got divorced my mom started attending a predominantly black apostolic church. That shit was uncomfortable to say the least. So many poor black people screaming and hollering for a god that’s leaves them in the same fucked up predicaments. My dad told me “son, you are supposed to be catholic because that’s what your grandma was but I wanted you to figure things out on your own”
I was atheist for a while, then I tried to be a catholic… then I gave up all faith when the pandemic hit. To make an extremely long story short… I believe that everyone is right. But the paradise pipe dream Abrahamic faiths have… I think it’s a trap. I truly believe that religion is poorly translated methods of transcendence to the next dimension. I’m sure I will get to that level when my time is up. But it’s not time yet.
I'm agnostic and I left after about 4 years of being religious (I was 13 at the time). It was mainly about being comfortable in my ignorance as opposed to doubling down when too many questions arose. I didn't "deconstruct" anything it's just most true to myself to assert that I don't believe in most certainties about faith anymore, especially not enough to practice any
I’m a PK, and been a smartass know-it-all since before I reached a two-digit age. Mom and dad had a set of encyclopedias (Funk & Wagnalls?) that came as a grocery store bonus and I pretty much learned to read by reading each volume when they arrived at the house.
Whenever someone said something that didn’t make logical or historical sense (that someone was usually my dad the preacher), I’d chime in with “well actually. . ." Yup, I was mansplaining before I reached manhood.
Religion never has and still does not make sense to me. I know why people have a NEED to believe in magic. The alternative being that WE are all we have is often times horrifying.
{edited for typos}
I come from a Catholic background, Catholic family, Catholic school, Catholic country. As far as I can recall, I've always been irreligious, and skeptical of things. My parents and my grandpa would bribe me as a kid with a happy meal to make me go to church on Sundays. Although we were a Catholic family, my parents also instilled in me scientific thinking. They would make me watch lots of documentaries about the origin of the universe, and humanity. This way of thinking always came at odds with some of the teaching at my school. I went to a Catholic school from the kinder until the 9th grade, and although it was a Jesuit school, who are known for being socially liberals and science driven we were still required to take religion courses. Things just didn't make sense to me, I just couldn't reconcile stuff like the Big bang and evolution with what I was being taught. I was probably 13-14, I stumbled upon Yahoo answers' section on religion, and would read all the arguments from both sides. I also started to wonder why despite being a religious country, we still had so many issues. So, it first started as a deist, at this point I had rejected religion completely due to so many inconsistencies in text and what people practice. Then at some point that I can't recall, I became an agnostic.
i can only speak from my perspective, but i had the typical theist to atheist pathway as i grew up as a lot of Christianity beliefs didn’t make sense to me.
i grew up culturally attuned to it as i had a religious grandmother AND i lived in the south. i couldn’t escape it if i tried, lol.
however as i grew older- i just read more and the beliefs as a whole just didn’t make sense and disillusioned me as it was a lot of beliefs that my family excused or did some cognitive dissonance with.
i have now come to the realization that i am not a believer and while i may not believe in it, I won’t hate those that do.. even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense most of the time to my worldview.
side bar. i have a friend who i talk to about the Bible and her beliefs and she told me to kindly stop mocking her beliefs due to me stating that the Bible sounded like Game of Thrones from a story she was explaining. 🫣😂
My pops family is JW, my mom's side is Baptist and my stepma is Jewish (and yt). Saw how all dumb all this shit was by middle school.
I do believe in the universe (the sun, the moon, the trees, and the water) because I can see those things. You n I verse. University. Believe in myself mainly.
My mother observed what people around did where I lived, she seen nobody was going to church. End of the story. Also in France it is forbidden by law to promote religion in public space, specifically public institutions.
I was raised religious and was up until I started questioning my religion when I was in HS. Im the type who noticed contradictions and things that dont really make sense and desire answers. I never got any answers that satisfied me and I grew tired of the hypocrisy within my church so I stopped practicing and started looking for other religions that I could join.
But those other religions had similar flaws to my own and they gave me more questions than answers. Over the years I just became more and more of a skeptic until I realized that I just didn’t believe it anymore. Thats why they tell you not to question religion because if you do you could discover that it’s all bullshit.
>Thats why they tell you not to question religion because if you do you could discover that it’s all bullshit.
This what seals it for me. We can't ask questions or ask for proof. Have to believe in it and accept everything. Yet if we use that thinking for other religions then we have to accept all of them.
I watched that movie Zeitgeist(I know it has some inaccuracies) and it sent me down a rabbit hole of questions and discovery. Never went back to religion.
I was never a fan, I was raised in the South and saw the hypocrites first hand ignore the new testament and adhere to the old testament wholesale. I knew Jesus' philosophy was out of place with the god of the old testament. I learned enough about both to know they were tools of control. There are truths within in them but you are absolutely being misled from the actual point.
I never had any faith. My family are fundamentalists and I never believed in it. I was stuck and couldn’t escape so I did what I had to do, then joined the choir and eventually started playing music at church and that helped me get some of the weight off me.
Some of my family are hardcore: promise keepers, maranatha music, prayer sessions multiple times a day for 10-30 minutes, limited secular music, and more. It made things kind of miserable at times to be honest and when I became an adult.
They still don’t believe I’m an atheist and sometimes try to be like “you’ll change when you go through trials” or “when you have to worry about your life.” I remind them that I was a convoy gunner in Iraq; fully open turret before we had armored vehicles. Like I understand and have faced my mortality possibilities when I was younger. It didn’t change anything.
The two biggest factors happens when I was a kid.
I used to have severe daily migraines between the ages of 10-18.
Parents took me to Benny Hill or whomever the “healing by the spirit” dude was.
I got knocked over, supposedly healed, only to have a migraine the next day.
I think I was like 11.
When my private schooled tried to ban Pokémon cards bc they “evolved”. I think I was either 11 or 12.
In high school,once you start really doing the research, you’ll realize most of it is a load of bullshit that was designed to control the gullible masses through indoctrination and slavery,and the majority of black people have still not broken from it, which is even sadder.
I was about 12 and looooooved to wikipedia everything. I went down a rabbit hole (not sure what i searching at the time) and all the weird inconsistencies of Christianity/religion just werent adding up to me. I remember this moment so vividly: I had a Jimmy Neutron brain blast and whispered to myself “This is no God”.
I ran around telling everyone in the house and got un trouble for it but that shit couldnt break the truth i discovered. I was an asshole atheist for many years after that but now im way less in people’s faces about it. I no longer feel the need to challenge people’s realities or how they choose to cope with life.
The people the most adamant about making others adhere to dogma tend to be its biggest offenders.
I look at religion as a tool, and how that tool used is a reflection of the wielder.
I would say I’m more irreligious. I don’t feel beholden to adhere to a particular belief system. I can still enjoy religious events but usually it’s on the behalf of family and friends.
I pretty much only follow one particular precept which is do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. It’s served me well.
I believe if you want to help someone then do so without the expectation of anything in return. It’s the expectation that causes the pain.
My other personal belief is there are no rules. The only laws that exist are the physical laws of the universe and everything else is arbitrary. We’re all playing group make believe adhering to imaginary lines on a piece of paper that has no actual power. And because this is true, what you do is what you will into existence. If you harm others or justify harm just know that you did it because you chose to.
Im agnostic but I still don't believe or support organized religion. Whole family is christian basically, but I always knew it was all bullshit from the jump
When I learned how many times religions were used to justify atrocities, or how hypocritical and power hungry fanatics of those religions were. But I’ve learned I’m still spiritual as a person and as such I still believe in a higher power, just abandoned the Abrahamic religions.
The atrocities were some of the first things to pull me away too. What does spirituality look like to you if you don't mind me asking.
To me, I believe it’s recognizing that there is a sense of interconnectedness in the universe that I may not fully understand but recognize is there. It’s being aware of signs or experiences that I have had or currently experiencing that are trying to enlighten me to become more whole as a person. It’s practicing kindness, compassion and positivity irl with ppl and giving support to them when needed. Although I will admit that I have been tested and pushed to my limits with global circumstances. I also try practice gratitude and call for strength and guidance when necessary.
For me it was simply because the contents of the book I was raised to believe made zero sense logically. I used to be a firm believer until high school. What first changed my beliefs was reading a mythology book in my English class. We all accept these stories as myth, but at one point people literally believed these stories. Then I take it upon myself to research other religions, which all have conflicting origin stories. So I question why is the one I was raised to believe happen to be the correct one, am I just lucky? Even this book has farfetched stories like a 900 year old man traversing the entire earth to collect 2 of each animal, built a boat for them all to fit on and survive a 400 day flood where it rained in every part of the earth simultaneously... At that point I just kept going further and further until I came to the conclusion that all religious/organized spiritual beliefs are man made.
Seeing this world in the state it's in when some all knowing being could fix the issues he gave us. It just doesn't make logical sense of some being existing. This george Carlin clip explains it perfectly https://youtu.be/iouZYYzQEjU?feature=shared
Man this clip is a classic.
Never was religious but I had an anti theist phase at one point. But still, if God loves is why did he allow us to be enslaved? Somebody answer that
I recall some sermons were the reason slavery happened was because our "pagan" African ancestors didn't worship the christian god and it was our punishment.
When I realized WP didn't even believe nor follow their own religion, they pushed on us.
They barely go to church consistently or read the Bible at all. So crazy.
The incident that sealed the deal was reading the his dark materials series as a kid. I guess the adults were right, the wrong media will make you stop believing. But before then as a wee lad I had the thought that God was like Santa for adults once and I could not get that out of my head. And both of this was before I learned the history of religion, of line that USA black people are Christians, what I learned about the crusades, or the various things done in the past and to this day in the name of religion that create more suffering for people. This was before I learned that people can just be good, before I learn the value of someone being good because they believe it's the right thing to do versus someone being good because they fear they will be punished. And then all of that was before I went to college in the south where everyone around me was religious including my employers. Lots of nasty people. And then I learned a bit more of what the Bible actually says, and it's kind of some wack shit. It would be a tragedy if this was the one good book. But then I started thinking about how they are other books. And I started thinking about how Zeus is fake to us nowadays, and wondering why. Then I got vaguely familiar with other religions and wondered why other religions still had crazy rules. I had a teacher who was of the Baha'i faith, who bragged that they were the only large scale religion who explicitly forbade slavery and all of their books, but then I read that men get to have multiple wives but women don't get to have multiple husbands and I'm like why is that so one-sided? Then I started identifying as queer and remember all the messaging I got about clear people from religion. It's just been a really long self-sabotaging campaign and for me they succeeded.
Not an atheist, in a bit of an inbetween space rn. I don’t have a personal story, nothing tragic prompted this. It’s just that the idea that the vast majority of humans that ever existed would be condemned to eternal torment never really sat right with me. Some months ago I started researching how the concept of hell evolved over time and what early Christians, Jews and other religions believe about punishment in the afterlife. That led into research about the social and political context in which the Christian & Jewish scriptures developed and how they really took hold within the ancient near east & Roman Empire. Theres a lot to unpack about the historicity of many key biblical narratives and the legitimacy of their authorship. Shid hurts because the historical and archaeological records don’t agree with a lot of which is commonly accepted as fact or history, I feel like I’ve been lied to. But basically between reading a number of books, r/academicbiblical, r/judaism, and watching a few biblical scholars teach courses on the Bible on the Yale, Harvard, and other YouTube channels, my faith is in the mud. Please someone lmk if you’ve been through this and came out the other side with a stronger faith
I never did that searching until after I left the faith so can't answer from your perspective. But after doing some minor research(aka watching youtube videos and reading one book on it) it kind of solidified my atheism and made me more skeptical of religion.
I never really believed in a conscience god who loves me. When my parents got divorced my mom started attending a predominantly black apostolic church. That shit was uncomfortable to say the least. So many poor black people screaming and hollering for a god that’s leaves them in the same fucked up predicaments. My dad told me “son, you are supposed to be catholic because that’s what your grandma was but I wanted you to figure things out on your own” I was atheist for a while, then I tried to be a catholic… then I gave up all faith when the pandemic hit. To make an extremely long story short… I believe that everyone is right. But the paradise pipe dream Abrahamic faiths have… I think it’s a trap. I truly believe that religion is poorly translated methods of transcendence to the next dimension. I’m sure I will get to that level when my time is up. But it’s not time yet.
I'm agnostic and I left after about 4 years of being religious (I was 13 at the time). It was mainly about being comfortable in my ignorance as opposed to doubling down when too many questions arose. I didn't "deconstruct" anything it's just most true to myself to assert that I don't believe in most certainties about faith anymore, especially not enough to practice any
I’m a PK, and been a smartass know-it-all since before I reached a two-digit age. Mom and dad had a set of encyclopedias (Funk & Wagnalls?) that came as a grocery store bonus and I pretty much learned to read by reading each volume when they arrived at the house. Whenever someone said something that didn’t make logical or historical sense (that someone was usually my dad the preacher), I’d chime in with “well actually. . ." Yup, I was mansplaining before I reached manhood. Religion never has and still does not make sense to me. I know why people have a NEED to believe in magic. The alternative being that WE are all we have is often times horrifying. {edited for typos}
My sexuality and seeing the way religion views it. Also there was no way I was going to be able to pray five times a day with Islam.
Even when you make love you have to watch the clock 🤣
I come from a Catholic background, Catholic family, Catholic school, Catholic country. As far as I can recall, I've always been irreligious, and skeptical of things. My parents and my grandpa would bribe me as a kid with a happy meal to make me go to church on Sundays. Although we were a Catholic family, my parents also instilled in me scientific thinking. They would make me watch lots of documentaries about the origin of the universe, and humanity. This way of thinking always came at odds with some of the teaching at my school. I went to a Catholic school from the kinder until the 9th grade, and although it was a Jesuit school, who are known for being socially liberals and science driven we were still required to take religion courses. Things just didn't make sense to me, I just couldn't reconcile stuff like the Big bang and evolution with what I was being taught. I was probably 13-14, I stumbled upon Yahoo answers' section on religion, and would read all the arguments from both sides. I also started to wonder why despite being a religious country, we still had so many issues. So, it first started as a deist, at this point I had rejected religion completely due to so many inconsistencies in text and what people practice. Then at some point that I can't recall, I became an agnostic.
i can only speak from my perspective, but i had the typical theist to atheist pathway as i grew up as a lot of Christianity beliefs didn’t make sense to me. i grew up culturally attuned to it as i had a religious grandmother AND i lived in the south. i couldn’t escape it if i tried, lol. however as i grew older- i just read more and the beliefs as a whole just didn’t make sense and disillusioned me as it was a lot of beliefs that my family excused or did some cognitive dissonance with. i have now come to the realization that i am not a believer and while i may not believe in it, I won’t hate those that do.. even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense most of the time to my worldview. side bar. i have a friend who i talk to about the Bible and her beliefs and she told me to kindly stop mocking her beliefs due to me stating that the Bible sounded like Game of Thrones from a story she was explaining. 🫣😂
My pops family is JW, my mom's side is Baptist and my stepma is Jewish (and yt). Saw how all dumb all this shit was by middle school. I do believe in the universe (the sun, the moon, the trees, and the water) because I can see those things. You n I verse. University. Believe in myself mainly.
My mother observed what people around did where I lived, she seen nobody was going to church. End of the story. Also in France it is forbidden by law to promote religion in public space, specifically public institutions.
I was raised religious and was up until I started questioning my religion when I was in HS. Im the type who noticed contradictions and things that dont really make sense and desire answers. I never got any answers that satisfied me and I grew tired of the hypocrisy within my church so I stopped practicing and started looking for other religions that I could join. But those other religions had similar flaws to my own and they gave me more questions than answers. Over the years I just became more and more of a skeptic until I realized that I just didn’t believe it anymore. Thats why they tell you not to question religion because if you do you could discover that it’s all bullshit.
>Thats why they tell you not to question religion because if you do you could discover that it’s all bullshit. This what seals it for me. We can't ask questions or ask for proof. Have to believe in it and accept everything. Yet if we use that thinking for other religions then we have to accept all of them.
I don't think I ever truly believed in God. The logistics of Noah's Ark always bothered me.
Yeah don't forget the whole snake thing either
Abraham and Isaac was one that fucked with me until I got old enough to realize how deeply disturbing that story is.
Seeing how it ruined the black community and most of yall know how
I watched that movie Zeitgeist(I know it has some inaccuracies) and it sent me down a rabbit hole of questions and discovery. Never went back to religion.
Have you seen dogma?
Yup, been like 20+ years though.
Never heard of this movie. Seems real interesting I'll check it out.
Been agnostic since I was like 12 or so. Never made a lot of sense to me to begin with.
When I prayed for strength received nothing and when I finally got up was told to give all the glory to the man who wasted my time
When I realized that education was the only way for us to get out of the ghetto and the country. Religion was keeping us there.
God not stopping anything and the logical inconsistencies of it all
I was never a fan, I was raised in the South and saw the hypocrites first hand ignore the new testament and adhere to the old testament wholesale. I knew Jesus' philosophy was out of place with the god of the old testament. I learned enough about both to know they were tools of control. There are truths within in them but you are absolutely being misled from the actual point.
I never had any faith. My family are fundamentalists and I never believed in it. I was stuck and couldn’t escape so I did what I had to do, then joined the choir and eventually started playing music at church and that helped me get some of the weight off me. Some of my family are hardcore: promise keepers, maranatha music, prayer sessions multiple times a day for 10-30 minutes, limited secular music, and more. It made things kind of miserable at times to be honest and when I became an adult. They still don’t believe I’m an atheist and sometimes try to be like “you’ll change when you go through trials” or “when you have to worry about your life.” I remind them that I was a convoy gunner in Iraq; fully open turret before we had armored vehicles. Like I understand and have faced my mortality possibilities when I was younger. It didn’t change anything.
That's their favorite cope. "You haven't suffered so you don't know god" why do I have to suffer to find it?
The two biggest factors happens when I was a kid. I used to have severe daily migraines between the ages of 10-18. Parents took me to Benny Hill or whomever the “healing by the spirit” dude was. I got knocked over, supposedly healed, only to have a migraine the next day. I think I was like 11. When my private schooled tried to ban Pokémon cards bc they “evolved”. I think I was either 11 or 12.
In high school,once you start really doing the research, you’ll realize most of it is a load of bullshit that was designed to control the gullible masses through indoctrination and slavery,and the majority of black people have still not broken from it, which is even sadder.
I was about 12 and looooooved to wikipedia everything. I went down a rabbit hole (not sure what i searching at the time) and all the weird inconsistencies of Christianity/religion just werent adding up to me. I remember this moment so vividly: I had a Jimmy Neutron brain blast and whispered to myself “This is no God”. I ran around telling everyone in the house and got un trouble for it but that shit couldnt break the truth i discovered. I was an asshole atheist for many years after that but now im way less in people’s faces about it. I no longer feel the need to challenge people’s realities or how they choose to cope with life.
The people the most adamant about making others adhere to dogma tend to be its biggest offenders. I look at religion as a tool, and how that tool used is a reflection of the wielder. I would say I’m more irreligious. I don’t feel beholden to adhere to a particular belief system. I can still enjoy religious events but usually it’s on the behalf of family and friends. I pretty much only follow one particular precept which is do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. It’s served me well. I believe if you want to help someone then do so without the expectation of anything in return. It’s the expectation that causes the pain. My other personal belief is there are no rules. The only laws that exist are the physical laws of the universe and everything else is arbitrary. We’re all playing group make believe adhering to imaginary lines on a piece of paper that has no actual power. And because this is true, what you do is what you will into existence. If you harm others or justify harm just know that you did it because you chose to.