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i spent a lot of time when i was really little just praying to wake up one day as a girl. these prayers did not come true so hard that it took me like 25 years to get over all my repression and come out as trans.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:48
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I was never indoctrinated into any religious institution, as my father used to say, "religion is for idiots too afraid to think for themselves." While I wasn't nearly as bitter as he was, every attempt by the religious to convert me has failed miserably. My roommate however, grew up as the child of a pastor and had a ton of pressure to behave in a fashion as to not embarrass the church. He deconverted because he's gay and couldn't allow his parents faith to convince him that he's evil.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:50
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I was born and raised Mormon, and it was a couple of things: I got really heavy into science and Carl Sagan's books, watched Cosmos and just really felt like a deity or deities really didn't fit into the the entire question of reality. That and learning more about world history, you quickly come face to face with the reality that if there is a god or gods/goddess/etc they are either corrupt, negligent, or completely disconnected from the suffering they likely had a direct hand in. Far more likely that life, like so many things, was chance and coincidences lining up rather than some grand scheme or plan of a god. And yeah, as the above two posters said: I have a lot of LGBT friends, my partner is non-binary, and the idea that god would condemn them to purgatory or hell for happiness and love is beyond disgusting.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:52
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Catholic, here. For me, it was a combination of fundies focusing in on a few verses to have an excuse to be hateful fucks, and the idea of a loving, kind god being incompatible with a god that let the Holocaust happen, allowed pedos to be his priests and the churches that enabled them, lets rotten bastards like Kissinger live to a ripe old age while giving babies cancer, and so on.
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Dec 30, 2022 22:02
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My religious studies teacher Mr Hopper referred to Shadrach, Meshach, and ‘Abendergo’. This was the late 70’s, I was eight years old, and still thought that ‘bender’ was a great insult, so I laughed until I cried. When I’d collected myself, and explained he’d pronounced it wrong, he doubled down, refused to acknowledge his mistake, refused to even change his pronunciation, and in fact insisted I was mistaken despite having at least twenty bibles in the classroom. I got sent to the headmaster, who hit me hard with a stick for being disruptive. No gods, no masters.
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Dec 30, 2022 22:14
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Pretty much that Catholicism and Christianity breeds people the opposite of their beliefs, with lots of mental gymnastics so that gun rights = godliness, homosexuals are going to hell and have no rights but we love them!!!, and general gently caress you got mine attitude. After dropping religion entirely I was free to explore therapy, questioning, and drugs. This led to a practice of meditation and mindfulness which was the first “spiritual” tool in my life that actually did something, which helped me put my suicidal and depressive thoughts in a new light. I have thoughts but do not have to identify with those thoughts. Reading about meditation led me to Buddhism, which ultimately led me to Hinduism though the story from Buddhism to Hinduism is probably not interesting for this thread.
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Dec 30, 2022 22:18
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nothing, I rather enjoy drinking the blood of christ and do so frequently
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Dec 30, 2022 22:56
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I don’t have a lot to add that hasn’t already been said here about rejecting religion due to the nasty parts like bigotry but to me the cherry on top of of the whole stupid pie is the insistence of many Christians that evolution is a lie but poo poo like Noah’s Ark is real. I know not all Christians are creationists, but I absolutely hate this poo poo and I loving resent that it is even a debate that otherwise reasonable people get sucked into. I will never understand why so many Christians are so hung up on this one childish thing. It really just reveal how willfully dumb they are. One of my favorite things as a kid was learning about dinosaurs and fossils and the different epochs of life on earth. Evolution in particular was something I grasped at a young age and found fascinating how plants and animals descended from ancient forms and became what they are today, and continue to evolve. But wait, not so fast! You see, some people don’t “believe” in any of that and we have to listen to them too! We have to have a discussion about how GODDDD in his workshop at the North Pole made elephants and lions and wood lice all at one time out of modeling clay a few thousand years ago and gently placed them on earth like a giant toddler and this is just as reasonable a view as any of that “science” you are learning about. We certainly don’t want to upset anyone by telling them the story they were told in Sunday school when they were three isn’t true. STFU
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Dec 30, 2022 23:06
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Growing up my mom tried her best to raise me as a good Pentecostal child, but I always hated going to church and never really believed in any of it. What killed it for me was that I was always bored in church so I would grab a bunch of the religious newsletters and pamphlets that the church had so I would have something to read during the sermon. One day one of them had an article explaining how dinosaur bones were "put in the ground by SATAN to DECIEVE you". As a dinosaur obsessed kid, I stopped believing completely right then and there. I showed the article to my mom and explained that I didn't believe in any of that, and if that's what they're teaching in church I don't want to go anymore. Fortunately, she was way more reasonable than I've seen other Christians be, and we eventually agreed that I would still go until I was old enough to stay home by myself, but didn't have to participate and I could bring my own reading material. She went 0 for 3 on raising good Pentecostal children and eventually kind of stopped going to church herself.
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Dec 30, 2022 23:11
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Being a good catholic boy, dutifully following the rules, praying, all that stuff, and I still ended up as someone who likes dudes and dicks. Everything was done "right" and yet I'm a hell bound homosexual so I immediately began thinking maybe something was a bit troubling about the church That and all the terrible things the church has done, the atrocities of the world that have happened, are happening, and will probably continue to happen being handwaved away as "it's all part of god's plan" ok if this is god's plan he's a sick gently caress
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Dec 30, 2022 23:15
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Taking a shitton of LSD in my early 20s erased my mind's capacity for religion. Haven't looked back with regret.
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Dec 30, 2022 23:24
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i think around the time i got inducted into a coven of skateboarding vampires that all smoked cloves i started to question God
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Dec 30, 2022 23:25
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Chinatown posted:its all obvious bullshit OP
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Dec 30, 2022 23:27
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Nobody in either sdie of my family has been religious since my great grandparents so when I was like 10 and I learned about what religion actually was it was like "wow that's weird, good thing most people don't believe in that stuff". I later learned that most people kinda do believe in that stuff, just not so much where I lived lol e: also I think neoliberal individualism as practiced in the west drives people away from organized religion pretty strongly, if we're all meant to be individual rational actors in an economic system that expects us to make perfect and reasonable choices at all times then obviously people are gonna get pretty critical of the millenia old books and teachings that are full of contradictions and logical inadaquecies to explain anything about the world we live in. PiratePrentice fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 23:30
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you're all going to hell amen
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Dec 30, 2022 23:31
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Also I've always laughed at the notion of being rewarded after you die. Like dude, if you believe that, can you come build me a mansion? I'll pay you for it when you're dead. promise.
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Dec 30, 2022 23:38
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I’ve always been an atheist. I think gods are people, religious text are history, and phenomena are science. I also think religion is ambitious and that people aren’t stupid for pursuing it. Like to study a part of creation that’s so profound it takes a lifetime to learn, that’s p cool. I think religion is shaping the future and defining ways of life for people, and it sort of fills the void of the question of what’s out there before us. It’s important to think of this poo poo whether you subscribe to it or not. I think they’re all correct but also Unitarians are full of it. 
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Dec 30, 2022 23:39
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it's weird that as I get older and have been an atheist, or at least irreligious for longer, I actually like and appreciate Jesus a hell of a lot more like, as written, he's absolutely the kinda guy you'd wanna hang out with - loved to party to the point where he burned MP on turning water into wine to keep the good times rolling, was friends with sex workers and the poor and dregs of society, spent his time trying to help and teach people, only really got super stupid mad twice - at people overcapitalizing faith (understandable) and a loving tree (who hasn't had one of those days)? he was for staunch taxation and social programs, he'd basically be a communist today. and he was a carpenter who could fish, those are cool then paul comes in and fucks everything up because he hates women so much
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Dec 30, 2022 23:49
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ClamdestineBoyster posted:I’ve always been an atheist. I think gods are people, religious text are history, and phenomena are science. I also think religion is ambitious and that people aren’t stupid for pursuing it. Like to study a part of creation that’s so profound it takes a lifetime to learn, that’s p cool. I think religion is shaping the future and defining ways of life for people, and it sort of fills the void of the question of what’s out there before us. It’s important to think of this poo poo whether you subscribe to it or not. I think they’re all correct but also Unitarians are full of it. Nah, worrying about poo poo that is by definition beyond your understanding just does you harm. It will work however it works and you have no say in the matter, so just focus on the people and things around you that you can bring happiness with.
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Dec 30, 2022 23:50
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Raised strictly Catholic, but my parents are smart so I was always surrounded by science stuff. I was never taught that the old bible stories were literal and that most of it was gravy until Jesus showed up, then it got real. I had doubts about my faith starting in first grade, but I never missed mass or CCD for 18 years. I stopped going as soon as I got to college, even though I still more-or-less believed in god. Over the next couple of years I realized none of it made any sense to me, and I'd never really felt the presence of god the way faithful people describe it, despite being a good boy who said his prayers and went to church. I put my faith in myself and my loved ones, and that was the beginning of me turning my life around and finding my identity. It took another 10 years or so, but I got there. I'm still flawed as poo poo but I at least know who I am and I don't hate him.
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Dec 30, 2022 23:54
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Colonel Cancer posted: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 Who said you can’t do both? https://books.google.com/books/about/Silent_Invasion.html?id=hMf3TgEACAAJ
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Dec 30, 2022 23:56
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FoolyCharged posted:Nah, worrying about poo poo that is by definition beyond your understanding just does you harm. It will work however it works and you have no say in the matter, so just focus on the people and things around you that you can bring happiness with. This is why materialism is more respectable than navel-gazing spirituality imo
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Dec 30, 2022 23:59
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Raised Catholic. I had looked at porn earlier in the week and I was supposed to confess it (privately at least) during mass. I didn't feel bad about doing it, however, and if I did say I was regretful, then I'd be lying to God or whatever, and I couldn't reconcile that contradiction for a while, so I just say gently caress it and decided to not give a poo poo about "sinning" if it doesn't affect anyone else but me. Also a bunch of questioning me and my friends at the time were also going through, like real teenage poo poo, like "so is God watching everyone poop all the time", "if God is everywhere then is he in poop also", etc. My mom insisted to me to at least get the first Communion and I did (theres one picture of me in that day and I'm frowning lol), then I never went to mass regularly again, and when my grandfather passed, my parents also stopped going to it.
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Dec 31, 2022 00:04
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Also it pisses me off so much how much people let God take the credit for their own achievements. Like when they make a big purchase, or get a degree or whatever and they go "This is a gift from God", and internally I'm going "no it wasnt you paid/worked for it argh".
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Dec 31, 2022 00:08
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Space Kablooey posted:"if God is everywhere then is he in poop also", etc. lol I never thought about this one
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Dec 31, 2022 00:10
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FoolyCharged posted:Nah, worrying about poo poo that is by definition beyond your understanding just does you harm. It will work however it works and you have no say in the matter, so just focus on the people and things around you that you can bring happiness with. You’re not going to tell me how poo poo is going to work or what to believe in you loving cocksucker.
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Dec 31, 2022 00:12
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PiratePrentice posted:This is why materialism is more respectable than navel-gazing spirituality imo I think there's a genetic component or something that makes some individuals more invoiced to magical thinking. I've just never believed in any of it. I've also never felt any spiritual inclination. I grew up Methodist but never actually believed any of it, or even cared about it, because the bible's boring, church was boring, and nearly all church-adjacent activities were boring too. Then 9/11 happened and nearly every church in America turned into a branch of the Republican party.
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Dec 31, 2022 00:15
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During my Lutheran confirmation I asked the pastor if since all those Old Testament dudes got to sleep with their wives’ slaves does that mean it’s a-ok for my grandpa, an elder and big funder of the church, to keep getting caught banging the maids he hired because grandma was too classy for housework? He got really mad and told me to stay on topic. Called my mom in for a meeting and bless her heart she really tried but about halfway through she lost it and broke out laughing. I ended up being grounded for a month anyway and that’s about when I decided church wasn’t for me.
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Dec 31, 2022 00:15
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I was raised christian - like evangelical-jesus-camp christian and I never really questioned it until one day I was talking to a middle-school friend, whose family happened to be Greek - like he was second generation/third generation, so there was still a lot of culture in the family. I said something like "heh, how's it feel knowing your ancestors worshipped all those gods. At least now we know the REAL god." His response: "Well there's just as much proof they existed as any other god." Really made me think. Anyway, I spent a lot of my early twenties trying to de-indoctrinate myself. Colonel Taint fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 00:18
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Space Kablooey posted:Also it pisses me off so much how much people let God take the credit for their own achievements. Like when they make a big purchase, or get a degree or whatever and they go "This is a gift from God", and internally I'm going "no it wasnt you paid/worked for it argh". I hate it more when a doctor saves a life and only God gets credited. Or someone does something incredibly stupid and attributes their rescue to god. Like just stop it! People are working very hard to keep your dumb rear end alive.
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Dec 31, 2022 00:25
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I was raised a Christian and I started to suspect something fishy when I was a kid, and would come to my parents with questions about religion and be VERY troubled when they didn’t know the answers. Over the years, I just became less and less into going to church. My parents noticed this and we all eventually kind of stopped going regularly. I feel like we were mainly going for me, and when my parents realized that church definitely wasn’t the path I was going to be heading down they didn’t keep making me go. They eventually stopped going too. I don’t think my dad ever actually believed in God. My mom is a believer, but she mostly just keeps it private and I respect her for that. I really had no negative experiences or got any bad messages through all the years I went to church as a kid. Pastor was a very nice guy who preached tolerance and love for literally everyone. That was pretty much the attitude of everyone else I ever heard there too. One time… ONE TIME… this women stands up and asks for prayers that that like the gays and atheists leave us alone or something. And the pastor shut that poo poo down right there and said this church was open to absolutely anyone who wants to be there, or even if they just need a place to sit down and rest. So yeah nothing but positive messages at church. I just couldn’t get past the logistics of the whole “god” thing. And as soon as I joined the Philosophy Club in high school there was no turning back after that. I have considered myself an atheist since I was about 15. When I was younger I always wondered if it was just a phase or something, and religion would make sense to me again eventually. Nope. In 20 years I haven’t heard anything to push me even the slightest bit back towards religion, and I’ve only gotten more and more comfortable with my own mortality and the impermanence of existence and the fragility of life. Bloodfart McCoy fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 00:27
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Space Kablooey posted:Also it pisses me off so much how much people let God take the credit for their own achievements. Like when they make a big purchase, or get a degree or whatever and they go "This is a gift from God", and internally I'm going "no it wasnt you paid/worked for it argh". So many expensive cars going down the road with 'Blessed' either on the license plate or a sticker on the car. DickParasite posted:Then 9/11 happened and nearly every church in America turned into a branch of the Republican party. Honestly it was a long time coming, the Evangelical movement really took off in the late 1900s and the GOP largely aligned around them as part of the Southern Strategy, but a lot of the 'conservative religious ideals' predate even this century, with revivalism of the late 1800s and early 1900s, especially in the South quote:New York Times opinion columnist Bob Herbert wrote in 2005: "The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks".[91] Aistrup described the transition of the Southern Strategy saying that it has "evolved from a states' rights, racially conservative message to one promoting in the Nixon years, vis-à-vis the courts, a racially conservative interpretation of civil rights laws—including opposition to busing. With the ascendancy of Reagan, the Southern Strategy became a national strategy that melded race, taxes, anticommunism, and religion" Most of it comes down to hate and fear being easier to preach and motivate than love, tolerance, and kindness. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 00:28
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God is stored in the Balls
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Dec 31, 2022 00:32
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I was raised in the Methodist church but went through confirmation at a bible church after a move and this loving clown of a mentor I had was schooling me on young earth creationism and poo poo that I already knew was wrong from my high quality public education. The whole process really just taught me that those people were idiots. Hail satan
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Dec 31, 2022 00:33
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My father, the wannabe cult leader, has all the charisma of a brick. Combine that with the bits of the Bible I was exposed to adding up to "this is not a god worth worshipping", and poof, I became an atheist as soon as I learned what the word meant. Which was age 22, when I first encountered the word in a book.
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Dec 31, 2022 00:57
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GoodyTwoShoes posted:My father, the wannabe cult leader, has all the charisma of a brick. Combine that with the bits of the Bible I was exposed to adding up to "this is not a god worth worshipping", and poof, I became an atheist as soon as I learned what the word meant. Which was age 22, when I first encountered the word in a book. Curious to know about how your father is a wannabe cult leader/more about this
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Dec 31, 2022 01:10
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The one time I was able to skip Sunday school it was because I had a dentist's appointment, and they had a pizza party while I was gone. I've been mad ever since. But seriously, I got bored very easily during the ritual of nightly prayers and weekly mass, and sometimes my mom would suddenly call me for for 10-15 minutes of prayer for no reason and then scold me for not sitting still the entire time. I never really formed a spiritual attachment to religion like some people do and only believed in the surface-level "Christ died for our sins, good people will go to heaven and bad people will be d*mned (but if you say d*mn you're going to be punished for swearing)" thing preteens learn. Eventually I got old enough to actually comprehend the teachings and realized that condemning good moral people just because they believe in different/no gods or are LGBTQ or even for no reason at all (sup Job) was pretty messed up and that sent me down a slow path towards lapsing. Also it helped that even my mom who is still a believer eventually stopped going to church outside of special occasions, as did I. There's still a part of me that wants to believe, if only for the existence of an eternal soul, but I don't trust most organizations to not abuse others while claiming righteousness. EDIT: Also it probably helped that my dad and his mom (who lived with us) weren't religious either, agnostic/atheist depending on the year. Dad would drive me and Mom to church and then just read a book or play my Gameboy in the parking lot until we were done. One time he saved over my Pokemon save and I guess I can blame church for that too also I never got to try communion even though I've been confirmed. I was denied the Christ cracker and the juice because I was deemed too young, and now I'm gay MiracleFlare fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 01:20
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Regalingualius posted:Catholic, here. This is exactly the same sentiment that caused me to lose my faith. Same with the fact I have pretty bad OCD. Why does that poo poo exist? Sometimes life is a nightmare.
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Dec 31, 2022 01:42
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In elementary school, I went to boring methodist church, where there was a Samoan language service where I didn't understand anything that was said but the hymns were hype, and a English service that was innocuous "Jesus wants you to be nice to your neighbors" type messaging. We had juice and donuts afterward, and everyone talked about the recent high school football game. In middle school my aunt started going to a megachurch with a youth group and encouraged me and my cousins to go. It was cool, they had pizza and a Sega Dreamcast. There were girls from other schools to talk to. We ended up going to a Bible study youth camp where they let loose with the crazy. They blindfolded us and screamed at us to teach us about how much Christians are persecuted across the world, they talked about how our schools lie to us, the earth is 4000 years old, dinosaurs didn't exist, demons are real and prowl the land, and all of our friends not at the camp were going to hell. It was a huge WTF. Is this what church really is and I hadn't noticed? I figured this wasn't for me and stopped going. My folks were cool with it. After I came home from college, I would go to the Samoan language service with my grandma to spend time with her up til she passed. It was perfect, I didn't have to listen to the message, and the songs were still good.
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Dec 31, 2022 01:48
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the beardy jerk at the top of my religion called me an abomination and well be that as it may i found it rude
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Dec 31, 2022 01:49
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