Ex-believers, what made you quit your religion/cult?
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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.
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When I was 10 my dad committed suicide and my grandparents told me we'd never be able to see him in heaven. Pretty much broke my little brain for awhile trying to understand how a just and loving God could separate a young boy from his father for eternity.
Never could, and now I'm a proud atheist disappointment to my grandparents.
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This is me with mormonism. I never truly believed. The Bible and the bom were just stories to me. I tried, I really, really wanted to believe in it, to feel that "holy spirit" everyone was talking about, but I simply wasn't convinced. Everyone around me claimed to believe though, people that I trusted, so I thought that maybe I could fake it till I make it and it would eventually just "click". It never happened, and by my mid-teens I finally reached the point where I didn't even want to believe anymore. So, yeah, I'm also atheist now.
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Your story is all too common, and I saw a lot of this growing up. I was there as a child overhearing the comments about people. Seeing and hearing my parents and church and school leaders talking shit behind backs, amd being judgy as hell towards anyone and everyone.
Yes, God forbid you seem like a burden or "different" in any way. Their "acceptance" of you will come with a lot of caveats.
I'm glad for your sake and your life you are aware and see it for what it is. You're better off.
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Someone read those books thoroughly and decided they are not worth the cost of staying in a damaging situation.
You have not read them and yet you to want to defend stories you don’t think are true, but might have some little pearls of conventional wisdom? And just gloss right over that the religious trauma caused them serious harm they are still recovering from?
Just pointing out that your luke warm defense of your favorite children’s stories in this context comes across as extremely tone deaf.
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I was always kinda skeptical but the event that triggered my way out was when I asked my mom how can God expect people, who were raised with other religions, to believe in him instead when they simply have no idea. She said they know about God and it’s their own fault for not believing in him. And that for me was not logical because I knew from my own experience that I only believed in God because that’s all I knew.
But it took a while for me to completely stop believing in any deity or whatever supernatural power because I kept looking for reasons why we exist. Now I don’t care for that. Sure the Big Bang is mysterious and we might never solve it but there is no sense in making things up either. Everything else can be explained by science so let’s just go with that.
If the Christian God wants me to believe in him, he should stop being so vague and contradicting. Turn the moon into cheese. Pluck a mountain out of the ground and float it in the sky. Whatever, he is almighty, he should do almighty things.
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I worked as a researcher and started applying the scientific method to the bible and faith, and it fell apart. before i tried to "disable" critical thinking on many issues in the bible and push those issues away.
Also, I realized that my faith kept me from accepting responsibility for my actions and kept me externalizing responsibility to god and/or the devil and other people. -
I was a nerd, so I tried really really hard to prove logically that my religion was the correct one... and failed.
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It was not answering the questions that science could answer
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It is so very frustrating when some one elevates their indefensible personal feelings to the level of cosmic law.
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At that moment, the student was enlightened.
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I appreciate your response and the other person who replied to you is right as well, but I wanted to add that I can "appreciate" Bible stories the same way I can appreciate other myths or legends, many of which the Bible stories originated from. I love mythology, it fascinates me, especially seeing who borrowed from who, but that doesn't make them real or worth worshipping.
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The question doesn't directly apply because I'm not an ex-believer, but I am sort of ex-church (attendance).
After years of praying for healing, for myself and others, and seeing nothing happen (beyond the natural healing that would have happened anyway had I not prayed for it), I prayed for someone to be healed and he died.
So that's how healing manifests through me. You aren't or you die. This seems in direct contradiction to Jesus' claim that all who follow him will do greater things than he did, which I interpret to mean at least the same as what he did, one of which was that everyone who came to him got healed.
So my church attendance is on hold for now while I work out why God doesn't want to involve me in his work. I'm still a believer, but obviously I can't preach "God heals" when my only direct evidence is that he doesn't. I'll go back when it's clear what he wants me to do.
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I was a Christian.
I was an "everything has an explanation" type of kid/teen and was always asking why/how.
This led me to looking into different denominations of Christianity with different explanations but none of them sat right.
Eventually I gave up and decided that this must not be true and became a sort of "reddit atheist".
I left that because I eventually found things that I also could not explain within this understanding and also found new explanations for things that didn't make sense as a Christian.
This led em to looking deeper into many other religions and I eventually found one that satisfied me (which I will avoid saying to not draw hate/accusations of propagandizing which I don't want to deal with)
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My brain started working.
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Absolutely not, I 100% agree.
To your point about who borrowed from who - one of my favourite examples is the story of Noah's Ark, or less specifically, "The Great Flood". So many religions and mythologies have a Great Flood story. It's fascinating to see how similar or different certain people's recounts were of historical events like that.
Like I say, at this point in my life I'm still of the opinion that a good chunk of the Bible means well, but who knows? One of these days I might run out of sci-fi novels to read and go cover to cover, old testament to new. It's certainly possible my mind might yet change.
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Similar here, region locked gods lol.
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I used to attend church with a small following (50-60 members). The pastor seemed very kind at the time and still does some charitable things... But when my grandfather was dying in the hospital, he suggested that suffering brings you closer to God and any kind of hospice or pain-relief was a sin.
The next Sunday I attended, the pastor starting mocking the medical staff during a sermon, basically airing my family business and likened my family to Judas. I walked out and never came back.
Some of my family still attends his church. I saw the pastor a few years ago and extended my hand for a handshake and he walked away.
My mom and I talk about this whole situation sometimes (she attends a different church). "If you hear something at church you don't agree with, don't bring it home with you." That was her way of saying that the pastor is just a person, too. Take what you can from a lesson and apply it for good in your life.
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Does it count if you live in a very religious state that has pushed religion down your throat all your life but you resisted? For me I think I was about 22 when I started to see religion as not just a personal belief, but as a tool used by power hungry men to hurt and control others. I used to respect my religious peers, now I feel sad for them, because I know that they were raised into it so hard that I can't really blame them. The sad thing is, even though I live in one of the most developed nations in the world. I am still in a part of it where criticism of religion, past not believing it, can come with a high social price.
