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I was born in a christian environment but it never made sense to me, and never adequately explained our situation in the world (like, why is poo poo so hosed up? if the devil is in control, why did god let him? etc). Recently I started reading Bart Ehrman's books and it's insane how many contradictions the bible has to no one seems to mention or notice. Alternatively have you ever met someone that was deeply religious and then deconverted?
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Dec 30, 2022 18:05
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I'd say years of praying for stuff that never came to fruition except for once and like 2 straight years of suicidality in my early twenties, praying for death and then just feeling so loving empty in a church kinda knocked the faith out of me. Thinking about how the church is just an extension of Rome and that Ireland was basically conquered, same as my brothers in south america. Losing the power ball. I still go with my parents on Christmas, I got my kids baptized cuz it makes my mom happy, but I can't picture ever attending mass again on a regular basis. I completely believe that the soul is real and that death is not the end but that's cuz of DMT. I guess most catholics are lapsed though. I dunno man.
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Dec 30, 2022 18:30
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When my best friend's mom died (aneurysm) in high school. I thought, "there's no way god would just merc one of the nicest people on earth." Also, all the stupid abortion poo poo. Like, calm the gently caress down.
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Dec 30, 2022 18:41
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Oh but the big one was when the churches got big mad at gay people in like 2006 or whatever when gay marriage was legalizing. I later went to a Jesuit college and they wouldn't let us have a gay-straight alliance, so we had a town hall with the administration. Two of them started spouting homophobic poo poo and we almost rioted. When the other admins said "we all need to respect each other's opinion," they deconverted several graduating classes in a second.
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Dec 30, 2022 18:46
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its all obvious bullshit OP
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Dec 30, 2022 18:50
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The Cult of Zorn: the hats we had to wear while mind-melding and the anti-gay stuff
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Dec 30, 2022 18:51
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I was raised catholic. There's something like seven sacraments, such as Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, etc. Confirmation is done when you are 16-17 years old, confirming you truly believe in god and the church. I went to weekend classes with a group of kids (teacher was likely a pedophile), but there were three cute girls in the group so I was okay with having to go. Basically the discussion is that you truly need to self-examine your belief in god, and then confirm it. Slight problem is that I was also taking classes in chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics at the time and the more I thought about "God?" I realized that, no, I just don't buy it. I still went through with the sacrament because I was too afraid to tell my parents or the church I didn't believe. There was a bishop at the church for the ceremony and everything. Besides a few weddings, I think that was the last time I ever attended church. Funny side story. My parents were out of town for a weekend, and of course I skipped the class and threw a party with my friends. The next morning we clean up and I take the cans and bottles to the recycling center. I'm standing in line holding a bag of crushed beer cans, dragging a bag of beer bottles and guess who shows up in the line behind me; pedo-teacher. He was all, "oh, hey we missed you last night". I replied something along the lines that I was sick; all while holding the evidence of a decent party in my hands.
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Dec 30, 2022 18:52
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Dilkington posted:The Cult of Zorn: the hats we had to wear while mind-melding and the anti-gay stuff once a child of zorn, always a child of zorn. 
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Dec 30, 2022 18:54
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My dad lost his job when I was 6 years old and couldn't donate anything to our church. The priest apparently told my Dad that the job loss was because my Dad didn't do enough for the church, then suggested that maybe this was a "learning experience". My parents stopped going to church immediately. I didn't really care as a kid, I just felt like I had more free time on Sundays now. But my Dad had grown up Catholic and this whole thing really bothered him. When I was a teenager I got the whole story and that was enough for me to realize organized religion wasn't for me. I gave it another shot when I started dating my wife (since church is a big part of her parents' lives) and one sermon that included "lessons" like "married men shouldn't be around single women" was enough to forever give up on any kind or organized religion, at least in the Christian and Catholic mold. I'm not going to tell anyone they're wrong for going to church but it'll never be for me.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:02
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My parents weren't religious, and my dad always had a huge grudge due to being in a catholic school in the 50s in LA and getting beaten all the time there. But they still took us to the local unitarian church as a community exercise and since my friends mom was the priest? Preacher? Whatever she was, the head honcho lady Only time in my life I actually tried to believe in God was when I was around ten years old and I started facing the question of mortality and the fact that someday I will disappear forever. I found that scary, as many do, and so I decided I would believe in God. The problem though is that it's such complete and utter bullshit that I could never actually believe it. Lying to myself wouldn't make me feel any better, and I just could not believe it. Every bit of me knew it was crap. Now I'm completely at peace with my place in the universe and while I don't lust for death I am completely prepared for it, and I embrace it.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:03
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cult leader just kind of said "ok....that was it" with 9/11 and 
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Dec 30, 2022 19:10
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Prob when I was cursing in Daniel's Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church, I called one of the deacons a motherfucker. Reverend Henry E. Miller preached about my vulgar language. He told the congregation in the sanctuary that I got a nasty filthy mouth. They threw me out of church.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:10
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kntfkr posted:I guess most catholics are lapsed though. Yep, same. My small town of ~10000 had 4 catholic churches when I was growing up (broken up like Irish church, Polish church, French church). Over the last decade they all eventually consolidated into one. My mom was pretty much like "get confirmed, then do you can do whatever you want after." (i.e never go to mass again) I don't know that I ever truly believed, my dad was pretty blasé about church so I got it from him. My mom just seemed to be going through the motions. Honestly feel pretty lucky not having a super strict religious upbringing, my cousins can not say the same, and some of them are Trump supporters now. E: I also have a sneaking suspicion that ex-catholics are more likely to be atheists, than protestants who don't get loaded with all the spiritual woo in their services. SAY YOHO fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 19:11
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The best thing about going to church with the family every Sunday as a kid was that we'd stop by a donut shop after mass. Glazed donuts, cream-filled pastries; total bribe for getting me to go to church.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:19
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i lost my faith when I realized, that the priest who Confirmed me was only using his station to act like a he was a local mob boss. He got arrested and convicted for abusing a minor. My father made it clear to me, that THIS was the aspect of his faith, that is most worthy for everyone to aspire. Not the Jesus Christ, Son of God, who died, so that all our Sins can be absolved in the eyes of His Father. None of that pussy bullshit. Being in the Church is being Top Dog, gently caress over everyone, eat poo poo and love it.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:24
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I grew up in a secular culture and I kinda regret it. I could really use some magical thinking as a youngster
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Dec 30, 2022 19:25
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Better to have loved (jesus) and lost, then to never have loved at all?
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Dec 30, 2022 19:29
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Anyone wanna start/join a cult for you're midlife crisis? UFOs are too 90s but I bet we could do a whole bigfoot thing maybe
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Dec 30, 2022 19:35
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I grew up christian, but at the age of 12 or so i started to refuse to go to church with my parents because i was bored all the time. Around the same time i thought 'Hum. I kinda don't believe that there's some skydaddy watching down upon the people, doing miracles and judging people' in exactly the same basic way a child eventually stops believing in Santa. Eventually that lead to my parents not going to church anymore either because although i don't remember a whole lot of that time in my life anymore, i think i was a pretty unsufferable (but right) little atheist. A bit later i started realizing that any god in charge who allows genocides and wars to happen, is not a god who ever deserves to be worshipped. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 19:35
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Raised Catholic. In general, it's the promotion of hatred towards others, all the while pretending to reflect and live their lives based on the works of Jesus. Having a priest at my Sister's wedding calling for the end of Islam, and a different priest at my neice's baptism telling the church to vote for Trump, didn't help though.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:36
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For me it was the popular movie Religulous, by Bill Maher. He had some very insghtful points and when everybody walked out of the theatre we all took a vow never to believe a religion ever again.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:40
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If this is the world that God is striving towards he doesn't deserve recognition even if he does exist. Especially considering his most devout cheerleaders are the least human of us all.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:44
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My parents were completely irreligious, and I never went to church or anything. I never was religious or did anything religious. I probably am more kind and moral than any religious person I have met. In fact I know I am because I don’t lie to kids. Like Chinatown said, it’s all obvious bullshit. Worse than that it makes normal people do abhorrent and wicked things. I don’t hate the religious but I do hate religion and all the misery it has caused over fabricated nonsense. Islamic fascism, Christian evangelical nationalism, Jewish Zionism and apartheid, Hindu nationalism, Japanese Shinto imperialism, etc. Thanks for asking OP
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Dec 30, 2022 19:47
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This tweet from Richard Dawkins
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Dec 30, 2022 19:47
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When I was ten years old I went to a prayer meeting and the pastor at the time said " If anyone in this room has the faith of a mustard seed then this boy will live" because the prayer meet was for praying for a sick kid at church. The next day that kid died. I figured it was all bullshit right then and there.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:48
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kntfkr posted:I guess most catholics are lapsed though. Yeah from those I knew growing up exactly one stuck with it, might have been because he was super close to his adopted dad and that was tied into it. A Fancy Hat posted:My dad lost his job when I was 6 years old and couldn't donate anything to our church. The priest apparently told my Dad that the job loss was because my Dad didn't do enough for the church, then suggested that maybe this was a "learning experience". My parents stopped going to church immediately. I didn't really care as a kid, I just felt like I had more free time on Sundays now. I heard an interview with one of the McElroy brothers who said they had grown up involved in their church and their mom worked there, until she got sick & the church did all they could to kick her off their health plan immediately. From my own experience I had gone to a Protestant church then later a mega church with a celebrity pastor. I casually asked a buddy on the finance team what the pastor was paid and he got super defensive and treated it like a top secret, red flag as growing up they put all the spending details in a yearly report so the congregation can have transparency about their money and leadership. Later when the mega church imploded turns out the answer was seven figures for him and six for his wife, the scandal was survivable but his “tough guy I’m gonna preach at this church until my own funeral” image was, uh, not accurate as he gave up immediately and moved out of state, and the multi-campus church attended by thousands was gone in a few short months. It was illuminating how even after that some friends still thought he was a brave prophet, and I was like “did you see him calling the cops on the local news team ringing the gate at his mansion?”
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Dec 30, 2022 19:53
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Stick Figure Mafia posted:This tweet from Richard Dawkins And in this moment, I am euphoric
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Dec 30, 2022 19:54
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It just always seemed real dumb to me op
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Dec 30, 2022 19:55
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The real answer is "I don't have a severe mental illness". My mental illness is relatively manageable.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:56
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Oppression posted:Raised Catholic. In general, it's the promotion of hatred towards others, all the while pretending to reflect and live their lives based on the works of Jesus. Same but it was the anti-gay bullshit while the clergy were well aware of pedophiles in the ranks and they kept sweeping them around to make it hard to track. Never met a gay dude who told me that I should feel guilty for existing and that I need to give him money for forgiveness and hate a dude down the street. Met plenty of priests that said that stuff, though!
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Dec 30, 2022 19:57
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LimaBiker posted:Eventually that lead to my parents not going to church anymore either because although i don't remember a whole lot of that time in my life anymore, i think i was a pretty unsufferable (but right) little atheist. My brother and I became insufferable atheists in our 19-20 yo range. Slowly destroyed my mother's faith over a decade. She's good with it though. Dad has doubts, but he still believes. I honestly feel bad to this day about that. I mean, as long as your belief system and you are not actively promoting crusades and jihads, go ahead and believe what you want.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:57
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My mother went to Catholic school in the 1950s, and the stories she’d tell me of how maliciously evil the nuns were would make anyone swear off religion for good. The worst story I can recall is a boy was talking during class, so a nun took a compass (that drawing tool with a sharp spike and pencil you make circles with) and stabbed the boy deeply with it in his thigh. He was forced to keep it in his thigh until school was over. And in those days, the parents gave consent for horrible poo poo like that because it was “God’s Will” and corporal punishment was normalized, so the parents of the boy couldn’t and didn’t do anything about it. My mom never believed in congregations of any religious matters after witnessing awful poo poo like that, so we were raised irreligiously and never went to church except for weddings and funerals. It was never brought up at any time in my upbringing, but since she still had faith in it, I had my holy communion just for her, even though I never once believed anything I was taught (and still don’t).
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Dec 30, 2022 20:15
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I was raised catholic. I did all of the steps. Baptism, confirmation, catechism classes etc. I developed a crippling addiction to opiates around 15 to help manage my OCD. It was the only thing that made me feel like my mind was manageable. As years progressed I progressed in my addiction and had to start up other drugs to make the hardcore opiate abuse manageable. I sold opiates to help finance my habit. What really made me lose all faith was the parents of small children trying to trade their kids for a night in order to not be sick. How could god, who is supposedly benevolent, do this to any child? There are other things like how fast society turns their back on you. How hard people are on the homeless when supposedly charity and good works is a part of christian faith. I just realized it was all bullshit. Every lie they told me. Lastly, I have had a number of ODs. There is nothing after this. I have been dead and revived. Enjoy what you have now. Tell your loved ones they are loved. Do things that make you happy and keep you mentally well. Help your community. Do these things because there is nothing else.
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Dec 30, 2022 20:47
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Grew up Christian but Buddha gave me fried chicken one time so I decided to check out his philosophy. If I ever have a vampire problem I'm going to contact the Jesuits first though, I figure those guys are the most likely to have some form of stake gun.
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Dec 30, 2022 20:50
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ManBoyChef posted:Lastly, I have had a number of ODs. There is nothing after this. I have been dead and revived. Enjoy what you have now. Tell your loved ones they are loved. Do things that make you happy and keep you mentally well. Help your community. Do these things because there is nothing else. Frankly that's comforting. Finally I can get some god drat sleep.
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Dec 30, 2022 20:55
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Internetjack posted:My brother and I became insufferable atheists in our 19-20 yo range. Slowly destroyed my mother's faith over a decade. I never liked that about online atheists, converting people is what religions do.
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Dec 30, 2022 20:59
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My mom was a Mormon but it rarely if ever came up. I have a clear memory from when I was 8 or 9 thinking about the idea of god and thinking the whole thing was stupid. I suspect if you’re not born and raised into it, most of the time the idea of god is ridiculous.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:04
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I was raised in suburban neo-baptist evangelical circles, my mom was insanely religious. I was on fire for God and went on youth missions trips and stuff (which I still don't regret, it was more building houses and feeding people than proselytizing). Myriad things started to really shake my faith, like getting bored and reading a bunch of vile, violent old testament stuff while the pastor gave a sermon on God's love and unchanging nature, or a youth pastor that went super hard on how life-destroying pornography is and how the bible tells you to pluck out your eyes or cut off your hands if they tempt you to sin (notably, he always showed up with both eyes and hands, so I don't think the guy was practicing what he preached). The last straw, though, was one abhorrently bright morning, I was trying to walk off a hangover in Hyde Park and ran into one of the crazy fire-and-brimstone preachers at speaker's corner, who was shrieking about how only god and Christian faith can give people a moral compass - like really obnoxiously, he was repeatedly asking what stops people from murdering and raping each other without Jesus. It suddenly all clicked that a lot of church stuff is geared towards engendering any kind of morals on people who have such an underdeveloped super-ego or conscience that they need to outsource it to some kind of external tulpa-like entity. plus there's that whole "i'm queer as hell" thing that certainly would have caused friction if I'd stayed in the fold e: also even as a kid I never got a straight answer about how the book of Job is anything but God himself, infallible ruler of the universe, losing a bet and throwing a giant hissy fit about it, killing off scads of people in the process. The last few chapters are just God going "BECAUSE I'M YOUR MOTHER, THAT'S WHY" to a guy having a breakdown in the literal ashes of the remains of his ruined life. Rockman Reserve fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 21:08
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I grew up in the episcopal church which is a hard church to be rebellious in. They just like wine and silly ritual, which like, I can get behind in other contexts. Though as with any church, still has its flaws. Strangely enough the religious denomination I grew up with had very little with my current faith (the church of a million pentagram tattoos). No, 9/11, the evangelical right wing, watching people lose their minds, that did it. The hate in a loving gods name? Nah no, pass! I personally find world religions loving fascinating to learn and read about. There is so much to be said about someone through their beliefs, and how deeply personal they are. Also religious art is kinda cool. But once the state is involved or they become the state or enough of a column of force that now people are suffering? Hail Satan, leave me the gently caress alone to scream in the woods nude.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:14
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 23:39 |
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For me my mother felt it was important to raise us Southern Baptist like she had been, but my mother was a teacher who did not have problems with science and encouraged me to learn a lot of different ideas. My dad was raised Methodist but was quiet on the subject of religion and it became obvious to me he didn't believe like she or I did. So I asked my pastor what God would do with my dad. He's a good person who has done right by everyone I know. Why should he suffer in hell just because he doesn't practice our faith? The second the pastor said my dad was damned, I realized I couldn't stand for a religion that wished eternal suffering on people who don't conform to your exact beliefs. By the time I met my wife, I was basically agnostic and headed into atheism but my wife was super into spirituality of all kinds. I encouraged her to go to church, and she went to several! Then we'd talk about the contradictions and discuss other ideas. I think what ultimately reconverted her was realizing she was bi and the intense bigotry of the christians she'd met made her disillusioned. We both went through an aggressive atheist phase in our twenties, for which I would like to apologize to all the people I was a dick to. Still an atheist but I realized it's much more important to not be a dick.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:15
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