Ex-believers, what made you quit your religion/cult?
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I’ve left catholicism Because of the amount of bigotry and hate I witnessed in catholic some circles, from celebrating the death of a openly gay person, to calling for a g*nocide of the f slur (yk what I mean),the thing is. These some catholic circles are pretty much common. and I’m like. If this is what you teach. Then screw it, im leaving the church, then I left it and didn’t wasted my time getting around catholics, Then I found refuge in Anglican Church. Now I’m a normal, non-bigoted Christian living my life like how I want to , and now im slowly started to disconnect from my catholic community I used to be part of, no more tradcath nonsense, moral of this story. If your church/religion teaches hate, then you should just change it, or just become atheist at this point,
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I had waited a long time to have any kind of personal experience of God, and finally gave up. Like they said, the holy spirit was supposed to work in you, I prayed for it and looked for it for a long time. Since it didn't appear, no reason to excuse the problematic passages or shitty people.
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Learning about the world, in school and by reading humongous amounts of books when I was a kid and preteen. I eventually realised that "nah, I don't believe that." and that was that.
That's the sanitised version lol. A number of those books were by Erich von Däniken, unfortunately, and that simply "overwrote" Christianity in my young and impressionable science-fiction loving mind. Luckily I continued learning and not TOO long after I realised that was bullshit too and in the process I also actually realised why religion doesn't make sense to me.
tl;dr: HP Lovecraft made me atheist
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Adulthood makes you realise that there is no such thing as justice. Our lives are lived dancing in the palms of the Monetarists looking to make a quick buck. There is no karma and life is suffering as slaves to the elite.
If god exists, there should be no slavery, rape and wars.
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This was the primary reason for me leaving the church, but I had begun my whole "deconstruction" journey years earlier. Between losing my belief and losing my religion, I was there to be a good influence on the true believers. I eventually realised it was useless to do so, that these people who I once considered friends were actually just horrible people. I'm embarrassed how long I really ignored some toxic beliefs and actions just because the people committing them were doing so "for sincerely held beliefs". Trump and Covid were the real catalysts just because the way and the speed of their "mask off" transition made it obvious even to a socially inept person like me that they were just bad people.
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I grew up as a Christian. When I was around 15, someone asked me "if I hadn't be born a Christian, would I be a Christian?"
Considering it, I opened my Bible and immediately a verse popped out (in classic God fashion) saying "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have"So then I felt called even more to really explore, based on that:
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- I couldn't currently defend my faith reasonably
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- If God was actually real, he wouldn't be scared of people exploring arguments against Christianity, because the faith would be based on something ultimately true.
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- By exploring other faiths, arguments, etc, if I returned as a Christian, I would have a much stronger faith.
The more I explored these arguments, as well as gaining a better understanding of what the Bible actually is (in a history sense), more and more unraveled, eventually to the point I didn't call myself a Christian anymore.
Then over the next decade I went back and forth exploring alternative denominations in Christianity, as well as other religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Judaism), especially as I still felt a "spiritual pull" / intuition in a lot of situations. So it took me a really long time to separate that intuitive sense of direction from the belief system around the Holy Spirit specifically, and learn where trusting that intuition is effective, and where it can be misleading. That's been the most complex part of all of this.
I still enjoy exploring other belief systems, components of Christianity, and connecting with whatever that intuition is occasionally, as I do think there is a lot there for human psychological and emotional health that Western modernity sorely lacks. But that's how I lost my faith - God gave me the push I needed
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I learned about Gandhi when I was 12, and thought it was dumb that he would be in hell just because he wasn't Christian. Absolutely could not square that rule with the idea that "God is love". Figured it was all a bunch of bullshit.
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I asked the forbidden question too much. "Why?"
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I was a child who had been SA'd by an adult man. The adults around me told me to pray for forgiveness. I was 12.
Years later, I went to get a visitor's pass to visit a friend at my old Christian school. They aggressively denied me entrance.
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What does mean "being SA’d"?
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I admit I haven't read the entire Bible. I'm not a particularly pious Christian, and I certainly don't mean to try to convince anyone towards or against religion. That said:
I also love science. I'm an engineer, not a conspiracy theorist. I know the dinosours existed, I know evolution happened, I know the Big Bang was a thing. However, that doesn't mean Jesus wasn't a man who lived approximately 2000 years ago. It doesn't mean he wasn't a great teacher. It doesn't mean there aren't lessons to learn in any of the Bible's stories.
Because that's what they are: stories. They're not 100% perfect recounts of events that happened. Heck, they're most of the time not even 1% perfect recounts of events that happened. But some of them still have some wisdom worth sharing, just the same. At least, I think so.
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SA = sexual assault
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The most vile thing that can be done especially to a 12 year old kid. If hell doesn't exist we should build one specially for such scum of humanity.
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I dunno, it just made no sense. If people find out you're an atheist, they don't argue with facts, they argue with morals.
I'm sorry you need to believe in something with zero evidence to be a good person/find beauty in the world/be at peace with yourself/whatever, but I can just do those things anyway. I don't need to convince myself of certain facts for it.
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I was raised Catholic but rejected it pretty much immediately when I reached the age of reason (~13 or so).
So all I have to do is listen to and obey everything my parents, teachers, and religious leaders tell me and I'll go to heaven, but, if I had been born into a Muslim family in one of the countries we were bombing, doing that would get me sent to Hell and I need to reject everything I was taught, get on a plane, randomly walk into the right church, and believe everything they tell me. Oh, and if I was like some random Chinese farmer a thousand years before planes were invented, I guess I'm just fucked. Yeah somehow I don't believe that an all-good perfectly-just god would have every soul play fucking roulette to determine what their chances in life will be of getting into heaven.
It wasn't until much later that I learned about the history of this contradiction, which goes back to a 400's debate between Augustine and Pelagius regarding original sin. Pelagius argued that it was theoretically possible, but incredibly difficult, to live a life free of sin and therefore not need Jesus' forgiveness. He was also critical of the way Christians were integrating with the Roman empire, with all the same practices but now the social climbers called themselves Christian to win the emperor's favor while otherwise doing all the same shit they would otherwise. Augustine rejected this, arguing that the Father would not sacrifice the Son unless it was strictly necessary, furthermore, Pelagius' arguments would undermine the authority of the church (this was stated explicitly). Augustine invented the concept of original sin as something passed down through generations (despite this making zero sense), cited a mistranslated passage from scripture to support it, and used that to explain how even someone who lived a perfectly innocent life deserved to go to hell. This included, of course, fetuses. It was the Church's position for a very long time that if you have an abortion, or even a miscarriage, then your baby's soul is burning in hell.
What's particularly funny to me about this is that, after Pelagius was denounced as a heretic for saying people needed to actually live virtuously instead of just relying on Jesus to forgive them, he became so reviled that people were often accused of "semi-Pelagianism." All through the Reformation, everyone was accusing each other of being "semi-Pelagians" and trying to position themselves as the true inheritors of the Augustinian tradition. It wasn't until relatively recently that anyone started saying, "Hey, maybe the Augustinian position is actually kinda fucked up."
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As a kid religion seemed like make believe, still I followed it and thought of myself as Catholics into early adult hood. Eventually I just started referring to myself as an atheist.
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At some point I realised that this almighty being that loves everyone either is not actually almighty or just a massive cunt, considering it allows unnecessary unprovoked evil like children dying a long painful death from a disease that this being also happened to create.
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At about the age of 8 I could tell that Catholicism was evil. So that was it for me. Lots of specific things but just evil overall.
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I never really was into spirituality much and then over time I noticed Buddhism kept bumping into me and kept explaining things in more and more straightforward ways over the years so eventually I caved in and looked into it more closely and decided to practice Tibetan Buddhism because it felt more closely related to my own personal experiences and interests...it can be tricky to understand at first until you understand how all the symbolism works and then a whole world of information was opened up to me and I feel better than ever.
Those early Tibetan Buddhists really got a lot of things right from the start and still today I see science research come out suggesting the same things they figured out long ago.
