I’ve gone from Sunday attending to more lax and agnostic. Does that count? If so, is because of how inconsistent the actual practical actions of churches I’ve been to. Started protestant, but enough were hypocrites (remind me of the pharisees) so I stopped going. Became catholic and loved it, but the way the church has continually terribly handled the sex abuse pedo cases has disgusted me. Priests should be held to a higher standard, not lower.
Additionally, I don’t wanna be associated with the people who are Christian on TV. All the right wing Republicans in the US govt are terrible people. Whatever they say they are, I don’t wanna be a part of that. It’s hard to reconcile “love your neighbor” and then legislate their live away or give crazy people unfettered access to guns.
On a more practical level, I like a lot of the charity work and compassion taught by Jesus. I’m OK with the spiritual aspects. I cannot get behind the church’s message (mostly protestant) about personal relationship with God. If God intervenes, then that means it’s his responsibility when he doesn’t intervene and a lot of terrible things are his fault. If he doesn’t intervene, then a lot of what the church says is wrong. It doesn’t add up.
Your response caught my attention because I had a similar path, though only in Catholic Church, practicing religion in my 20’s, but moving away after mid 30’s.
At a practical level Jesus was right, showing compassion, living modestly…. but the interpretations of the churches - not only catholic - all the pomp and circumstance around mass, preaching, shrouding secrecy, asking the poor for money, etc. made me question churches in general.
After studying some philosophy, and learning meditation practices, I believe churches play an important role in society, including that prayer enables the masses to experience meditative states that have important health benefits. Religious teachings give something in which people can believe in, instead of facing uncertainties of life alone.
Also in many cases throughout history, churches anchored small communities together.
I believe people should experience church to decide on their own, but not being guilted to staying. Each person should be able to discern, choose their path, but there are always the crazy ones out there guilting and trying to impose their beliefs on to others. That is not right.
One big problem with your last paragraph: Baptism and many other rite to join religions happen at a very young age. These children know no world without the belief almost everyone around them practices. It’s getting their norm how live is. Leaving gets hard, it means leaving your life behind.
It was a slow process, but honestly the liturgy was boring and like out of touch. The narratives felt like they can’t really hold up to a contemporary audience.
That, on top of being very uninterested in being made feel guilty for random things. Sorry but I’m gonna continue masturbating and you insisting on guilt is not gonna make it stop, so what are we doing?
Finally, all the general nonsense and cognitive dissonance sealed the deal.
Fundies. Seeing how ridiculus and backward their beliefs were made me wonder about my own beliefs and one by one they failed to withstand the scrutiny I put them through.
I have never been religious (it was never a subject that came up in my family). What I found strange was when I started studying and moved to a larger city, alot of former christians I got to know told med how they stopped believing.
These were “extreme christians” if you compare them to other christians where I live (Norway, we’re not a religious society at all). When they went out into the world, they found out that they’d been lied to. They’d been told everyone else wanted what they had, and they’d be converting heathens left to right.
One girl I got to know, told me she noticed people physically rejected her and felt sorry for her when she told them about her religion and that they also could partake. The people also asked her very troubling questions she could’t answer, and they seemed to know the religious texts better than her. After that she started to question what she’d been told since childhood
A mix of a generational gap and me coming out. I still like the parts about treating people and animals with respect, but the whole “restoring mana through a church building” parts and going to hell for loving someone just seems strange.
I went down the rabbit hole of the Ancestral simulation, the Boltzmann brain, simulation hypothesis and these shows like matrix and westworld made more sense than any other religious text
I don’t think it ever sat right with me but I couldn’t say why at first. When I was pretty young the problem made itself more clear when we got a new pastor. I didn’t agree with what he was saying and perhaps more importantly what he was saying didn’t agree with what his predecessor was saying. I brought this up to my parents and they said that he wasn’t right about everything. Well that’s a problem then because it means all these beliefs are subjective. The more I thought about any one story parable text or anything, the more I thought that this is just another person who doesn’t really know anything. Even where it says “This is the word of god” Someone had to write it down. Someone had to translate it. The harder I looked for god the more I found men, and I do not have faith in men.
People. Way too many people are fake Christians that act differently than what they should. But as long as they go to church every Sunday, they believe they are a good person. You don’t need a book or the threat of hell to treat people how you would want to be treated.
That plus having faith in stories of a 2000 year old book written and re-written by humans. Just doesn’t make sense.
I befriended a lawyer in a online game years ago. When he found out I took the bible literally, we had debates about it, and he’d break down some of the passages in Revelations and try to get me to justify stuff like dragons. It opened my eyes to how ridiculous some things were, and how there was a reason one of the first things we were taught (Baptist) was not to question anything.
How it seems every religion believes they’re the “One True” religion, and the whole rest of the world is wrong. How throughout history, it’s fueled wars, and been used as a method to control people more than a way to help people.
How some priests garb themselves in expensive robes and surround themselves with gold or drive luxury cars, or preach on TV from practically a stadium while passing around the donations plate through a crowd of poor people while promising a afterlife gated by pearls.
I’ll stop here but yeah. It was actually a pretty devastating realisation for me, as religion was a huge part of my life up to that point.
I am involved with a bunch of atheist social groups. In my very anecdotal not scientific observations I have noticed that Muslims have the hardest deconversions. Any thoughts on that? Also is there anything I can do when I meet ex-muslims to help?
In my experience one of the problems is that Turkish society is based so much in religion meaning like you are seen like a deviant or something by people around you when you say “fuck that” about religion. When I was younger another thing that I found shitty was the double standards of people when you try to vent on the internet. ex-christians are allowed to say “fuck christianity” and people will show solidarity but whenever I said “Islam is maybe bad?” People called me an islamaphobe, that closed me off for a while about talking about religion. Both of these peoblems were mostly things that bothered me when I just left religion and nowadays I am more at peace with myself and with people I care about around me. what you can do is probs show them solidatity and understanding.
In the end, I had a 2 pages-document of pros and cons for leaving church…
Some of them:
If I wasn’t part of Christianity and had the choice to join, would I do it? No.
The scandals
Their actions to keep the scandals under the radar which made it even worse
Wasted money in Germany. A bishop in Germany bought a bathtub for 15k €. That’s a prominent case, but there are a lot more
The fact that the church is literally a throttle of evolution.
Still no equality between men and women (I’m sure, they’ll do that at some point. But it’s the church. So, it’s gonna take 600 years)
No proof of existence of a god or whatever
There are n religions saying, their god is the real one. At least n-1 of them must be wrong.
Only 3-5% of the money you pay as a member via taxes goes to charity (in Germany)
The “Bistum Köln” in Germany has so much money… They started investing it and bought shares of companies.
I became a member of a religion when I was < 1 year old. I confirmed it when I was 13??? Most other live-relevant decisions are 18+. This should be the same here.
Religion lessons in school felt like a waste of time
Church is a black box. No one knows what they are actually doing, how much money they own, …
Church has an own “justice system” in Germany, which is terrible.
Most Christians prefer not acting christian when they are challenged.
I didn’t want to finance an Anti-LGBT group
Ratlines, a.k.a. “How the church helped Nazis to escape Europe after WW2”
… and 10 more points.
Also, I found only 3 or 4 very bad arguments to not quit
And when I realized that the only thing keeping me in there is “fearing” how some people (mostly family) might react when I’d quit, I knew, I had to quit as soon as possible.
Oh wow, I never wrote my reasoning down, but most of your points hit home. Churches guilt people to stay in, and if the collective sees one escaping from the doctrine, they “dispatch” those who are fearful to try to instill the same on you.
I do believe though that church and religion kept communities and societies together, quelling some of the human fear of the uncertainties of life, so there is some value there, but just not for those of us that see all of these cons you listed.
First drop of doubt for me began at a Wednesday youth service. Not only was I such a strong believer that I went to church in the middle of the week, I drove myself because I was the only one in my family who wanted to go. The youth minister was giving a class on cults and the more he spoke the more it sounded like my entire life was being part of a cult. Following that thread led to me finally admitting to myself that I don’t believe anymore about 6 years later. It was a long road with lots of doubt and denial but that one sermon on how to identify a cult woke me tf up.
That’s actually hilarious. By all accounts, religions are definitionally cults. Though colloquially we tend to define cults as ‘dangerous’, even though there are many cults which are arguably more tame than some ‘religions’.
That was basically the answer he gave me when I asked what separated us from a cult. He must have forgotten all the evil done in the Christian God’s name because Christianity also has a history of being dangerous.
The first thing was how the catholic church handled the sex abuse allegations.
The second thing was how they taught that the Bible was “the literal word of God”, then changed church doctrine away from the Bible whenever it suited them.
The third thing was how, when my son died at 15, everyone was ok with that being “part of God’s plan”. What the fuck kind of God has a plan that requires 15 year olds to die?
I kept asking for supernatural things to happen, or to win something like a small school lottery. The fact nothing happened, let alone a clear punishment, did disappoint me.
When I discovered that Santa was fake was when my faith started to really crumble.
Sometimes listening to the Pastors speak gives me a nice sensation on the back of my neck. I later discovered ASMR. I sometimes still listen to old religious people speak, but I’m not actually paying attention.
Here’s the real reasons why:
Finding too many things I disagreed with or did not understand from the text.
Having a religious preacher fail to explain them to me.
Discovering other religions exist.
Learning what a cult is and making 1:1 comparisons to most religious entities.
TLDR: i did rational thinking due to my scepticisms and stopped believing.
I was born into a middle-class Hindu family in South India. Being from south we werent much religious to begin with. But my mother side of family was tad bit more religious than my fathers side of family. Usually during temple festivals, prior to the main day they would have “parayanas” or like preaching equivalent. Its basically retelling of stories from ramayana or bhagavad gitas and other literature. This guy who will tell the stories does good job at that, in the sense that his aim is to tell us the morals and the leasons we need to learn from it and to not take the story in literal sense. Those were good, those stories did help me have a strong moral compass growing up and instilled a good sense of religion.
When i hit puberty i was still religious, not overly but somewhat in the middle between the level of religion of my father and mother. My mother being slightly more religious and still following “andhavishwas” (read blind belief) which were stuff that people tell you to do or not do. Many of those stuffs do not make any sense, some example which i could think are
to not go out at sandhya (dusk) time when the ritual lamp is lit
to not have a bath at dusk time
to not shake your legs when sitting on chairs or beds.
to not eat anything with oil in food if there was a death in the family (not just close family but extended one too) for the next 18 days
to not get out of house unless for emergencies if there was a death in the family (same) for the next 7 days.
to not apply oil to hair while looking at mirror
And other countless many more stuff which differ from region to region. No one really followed most of this stuff but stuff like this is probably something most Hindu’s probably heard if they have atleast an elder in their family or extended family. Many of this stuff even though not strictly enforced is really annoying cause you get that stare or long advice like why it should be followed from your elder or your mother(in my case). Do understand that its not just these i listed but many many stuff which effects even day to day quality of life. Seeing my christian neighbour and friend not having such restriction on till how much time they were allowed to play outside and lousy me who had to drag my ass inside my home before dusk was always something which bothered me but it was not even a reson to forsake hinduism entirely. But i did try to find rational answers to why those were not permitted, why i should not do something because someone told someone and that someone said the same to their next generation and so on. I did find the reason for some of them eventually before i was 13 or something, for the examples listed if anyone is still reading and curious (or else skip to next para),
I believe the ritual lamp litting thing comes from early age practice of humans lighting fire to keep animals or other things out (Hindus believe lighting lamp will clear out negative energy)
once early humans have lit fire at dusk they stop going ut for resource and wind up with the day, they wont bath since most often ponds or water bodies will often be a little farther from their settlements and its a risk going out to bath at night. That might explain the restriction to not bath at night time.
for point 3, early hindus used to keep jars, baranis (a type of ritual jar) specifically underneath bed or below tables. Shaking your legs would probably hit those jars and it may have been something made up to protect those jars.
for point 4 and 5, i think it was safety practice. In early days a death in the family would mean they have had disease. And since early village hindus life was centered around temples, preventing people from family which recent death would prevent spread of disease. And avoiding oil food comes from this same belief as often oily food are avoided when one is sick. As for the oil on hair in front of mirror, i seriously have zero clue.
Reasoning with my mother over these stuffs was like reasoning with a brick lol. These stuffs never really did affect my stand on religion though, only just snags which made me question stuffs which elders say. When i was 16-17 is when i started doubting my religion. Hinduism sure is the oldest religion and many stuffs in hindusim are borrowed by other other religion like atma and jeeva and tree of life (notice atma and jeeva sounding similar to adam and eve) and the story of manu rishi who took the advice from a fish that the world is going to be flooded and who built a boat. These and many other stories or their equivalent being found in other religion made me think at that time that possibly other religions might have cultural exchanges with Hinduism at some point and may have based their religion of them. As i was a Hindu then I respected other religion,but this realisation made me a bit at unease because at that time it bothered me that not much people were talking about it, but the similarities were many. This made me again look for other similarities, i read about the mahabharatha epic again and the ramayana, this is when thesame rational side i had when i was debunking those “andhavishwas” kicked in.
How the hell could any of those stories be true, an epic on that scale would leave evidences that not even a million year could cover up. And the timelines, those are way off. There is no way we did have that much advancement in the early age and still be a monacrchy based rule . Someone really took their creative lberty and created a fantastic epic story to teach the importance of Truth and morals. And someone took that story and made it a religion refined over thousands of years and still refined even today.
As a lot of these stuffs made me sceptic i began to really see them as stories and fables just something to teach morals and values. I realised most of the limitation that were sett on my life were self bound.
Any last sense of religion i had was lost when i was 20 years old seeing the bullshits happening around the world, even on my locality. Politicians and many so called “peoples leaders” down in north India and other parts doing genocides and atrocities that i would do anything to dissociate myself from them on any similarity i have with them. People destroying mosques, cow vigilantism in north, mob lynching, caste bullshit. None of these are lessons from Hinduism but these people are hiding in its cover and associating how they live and what they do with them, inspiring and conditioning childrens to grow up believing it is what hinduism is. If there ever was a god, that god is dead.
I stopped believing in Hinduism as a religion with that and consider myself an atheists (i have a atheist friend who claim i am not a true atheists, but i dont want to dwell on proper term which best describes me). But i do still believe on some of the morals and lesson in truth it had given me and thats all i keep from Hinduism. Never prayed, lit a lamp, or went to a temple ever since then.
When my pastor told me the earth was 2000 years old but he still uses gasoline made from prehistoric plants didn’t help much to keep me there and that dinosaurs aren’t real, along with science being the main enemy.
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