Mostly trying to relate.
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Mine was a very similar path to yours. Way too many little observations that alone could have been shrugged off as a rounding error but taken together it was clear that shit wasn’t adding up.
Then I started listening to biblical scholars and now there’s nothing that could convince me otherwise. It’s a collection of human literature. The good and the bad that had come from it is only a reflection of our humanity.
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 learned logic and stopped accepting cognitive dissonance.
It was kind of a slow burn. Every time I heard a new argument against the existence of God, I’d repeat to myself, “Just because I can’t think of the answer doesn’t mean there isn’t one.” You can only say that so many times before it starts to feel like you’re being stubborn.
Probably the most compelling argument was, to me, the contradictory nature of an all-knowing God existing in the same reality as free will.
I decided I was an atheist (logically) a long time before I started to feel like an atheist (emotionally). What pushed me over the line there was when it was pointed out to me the sheer arrogance of looking out at the massive, incomprehensible scale of the universe and saying, “the creator of that really cares about me in particular.”
So now I say I’m an atheist, somewhere between gnostic and agnostic. I can’t rule out the existence of something that could be called God by someone’s definition, but I’m confident the abrahamic god, the one I grew up with, can’t exist.
Pretty recently.
When the majority of people I grew up respecting decided to use their religion as an excuse to participate in or support a terrorist attack, a lot of things started unraveling pretty quickly. Turns out none of them actually cared about what Jesus wanted, but rather what that news station said.
With so many of my old friends and church leaders telling me hate was the answer, the cognitive dissonance didn’t have any ground to stand on anymore.
I’m really glad you were able to get out of that. And I hope that you’ve found a better community.
I was in 5th grade, and I had filled a notebook with questions about the bible and how passages in it contradicted modern science, as well as a bunch of passages from the bible that directly contradicted eachother. My parents took me to a bunch of different christian “scholars” and pastors and none could answer a single question in my notebook, other than “have faith.” It was then that I realized there was probably no god and the bible was a bunch of bullshit. And maybe there is a god, I am not against the idea, but I have still not to this day ever seen or heard empirical evidence that would lead me to believe there is one. Telling your kids they will burn in hell for eternity if they don’t believe in a mystical being is pretty fucked up. I had serious nightmares growing up about what would happen to me in hell. Talk about brainwashing.
It is literally child abuse. I was also terrified of hell before I realized it was all bullshit.
Learned about science. Primarily astronomy and evolution, and the evidence supporting it.
That killed Genesis, and everything else went with it
There were just too many contradictions and the more I learned about science, especially physics, astronomy, and psychology, and the way the world works, I discovered that there is always a rational explanation for things, even if sometimes the knowledge necessary to comprehend something is not something I possess personally at the moment. People who would preach in my church would confidently claim things I knew to be fallacies, misleading, or straight up incorrect, not out of malice but their own ignorance as well, and I stopped trusting the words of religious leaders as I discovered they were as human as myself- their faith didn’t protect them from error or make them better people, and eventually I just couldn’t fall back on faith or ideology to be the bedrock of my moral or philosophical compass because it just wasn’t trustworthy.
I moved out on my own and started asking the questions that I had previously been told not to ask at church.
Turns out there’s a reason you’re not supposed to ask those.
Your sweet aunt René well deck you in the fuckin’ face!
Few things will get an adult to hit a kid as quickly as that kid questioning their religion. This, from people who insist “God is love”
LOL, yes, there is a reason!
The hypocrisy of the religious. Hands down the biggest reason.
The exclusivity, in the negative sense.
The constant premise that there is something wrong with you if you don’t conform or otherwise fit the mold, or bend a knee to those thought of as superiors. Dissent is not allowed.
Pray problems away instead of actually doing something about them. Like school shootings.
The toss in all the rest of the BS like fighting other religions, wars in god’s name, god gave me (the win, the victory, saved my life but it wasn’t the surgeons, spared my house in the tornado but not the neighbor’s, my Mercedes, whatever) but not you because you’re gay or support LGBTQ, liberal, atheist, etc.
There really is so much to despise about people who using religion as a shield for their shitty beliefs and actions.
I was raised in a strict Christian sect and I took my religion very seriously and really wanted to believe for most of my life, but my brain just wasn’t really built for faith and I was a huge lover of science and so I wrestled for years trying hush the voice of reasonable doubt in my head… I prayed and prayed for more faith and never got anything in return. I tried to strengthen my faith by reading through the entire bible, which I did, twice, and that only made it worse because the gaps in reason became so much more apparent. Then during Covid lockdown a good friend of mine left the religion after several years and that gave me the strength and courage to finally say “I don’t believe, I can’t believe, and I can’t do this anymore.” It probably wouldn’t have taken me so long if I hadn’t been raised in a religion that believes in shunning and the fear of losing my family and most of my friends, but by that time a few of my friends had left and I felt I had a bit of a support net outside the religion and could walk out without the fear of losing everything.
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
Was raised going to church each sunday, but approaching confirmation age I realised I couldn’t mesh faith with my understanding of the world. That was it for me really, I’m quite open to the idea of god(s), ghosts, magic or other forms of the supernatural, but until there’s actual proof, I can’t believe in it.
Our pastor did a whole six-week long study of Acts, talking about how we needed to give more so we could fund mission trips and whatnot. I got caught up in it all (he was quite the orator, I’ll give him that) and donated a decent chunk of the money I’d been saving up to get a new iPod.
My sister went on one of the mission trips and had to pay for literally everything out of her own pocket. Despite the plentiful donations for, allegedly, that express purpose.
Cherry on the cake was that they soon broke ground on a new youth group building (which we didn’t need), complete with a coffee house (with prices and menu comparable to Starbucks). All I could think of was Jesus getting pissed at the vendors and money changers in the temple and flipping tables over. “‘My house will be called a house of prayer’, but you are making it ‘a den of robbers’.”
I was raised Mormon. Mormonism is somewhat unique in that it claims to have a modern prophet and leadership that are directly led by god, and it strongly encourages members to pray to god and ask god for confirmation that this is true. Mormons are also taught that god would not allow their prophet to lead them astray, and that your local leaders are also inspired by god in what they do in their official capacity.
I was a missionary when shit started to break. I had a nervous breakdown; I am on the autism spectrum (although that diagnosis wasn’t available at that time; it was almost 30 years ago, back in DSM-III), and being a missionary was a lot too much for me for many, many reasons. I became suicidal. My leaders–again, people who were supposed to be called by god and led through inspiration from god–insisted that I must be acting in some sinful way, and that it was sin that had led to me being suicidal. They encouraged me to read my scriptures and pray more–as if I wasn’t already doing that a lot as a missionary–and to repent of my sins (whatever they were, because I sure as fuck didn’t know). If I was not sinning in some way, then Satan never could have taken hold in my heart, and Satan was obviously what was causing me to be suicidal. Obviously these commandments did not help, because I wasn’t doing anything ‘wrong’ in the first place.
But that leads to a problem: I believed that these people were called by god, and acting under god’s instructions, because I had received a spiritual witness. However, it was clear that they were wrong; I was not acting in a sinful manner (certainly less so than other missionaries!), and I had nothing to repent of. So these things are clearly contradictory: if I have received a spiritual confirmation from god that these men are led by him, then what they are saying must be from god and therefore true. But I know my own actions, and I know that I haven’t done anything that is sinful under any remotely normal definition of sin. Therefore, the feelings that I believed were spiritual confirmation must not have been spiritual confirmation at all.
Once you realize that feelings can not be a reliable way of knowing if something is actually true or not (or True, for that matter), then all of it falls apart. You realize that ‘answers’ to prayers are just feelings, not communication from the divine. The bible is suddenly a book of myths. Miracles dissolve like fog in the sun. When you look at religion–not just Mormonism, but all religion, and you compare it against things that can be verified empirically, none of the claims stand up.
Even though the foundations of my faith cracked while I was a missionary, I was unable to accept the meaning for several years, because Mormonism is a cult, and it’s very hard to escape even when you know it’s garbage.
Well hello fellow exmo. I gave it up in my late teens. Found myself playing “devil’s advocate” too much in discussions with my friends. Tried to pray about it all Joseph Smith style, but just got absolutely nothing. Realized that I had never enjoyed Church, never felt at peace there, and just generally came to the conclusion that the essential problem of free will and comparative religion and the extremely specific truth claims that Mormonism requires weren’t holding up. I was also completely eeshed out by the thought of a patriarchal blessing, and I felt no calling whatsoever to go on a mission. I wasn’t as traumatized as some, growing up in the Mormon hinterlands of the American south (NE Florida) meant the LDS were a little less high and mighty and I had a circle outside of the church, but the pressure to conform and stay is very real.
I only resigned formally when my mom sicced the missionaries on my never-Mo wife and me after I moved to Texas.
Ultimately, even as religions go, its theology is very silly and its most ardent adherents are real jerks.
Ultimately, even as religions go, its theology is very silly and its most ardent adherents are real jerks.
All religions’ theology are very silly when you look at them critically.
True, but there is an almost childlike literalism to the small amount that is unique about Mormon theology, plus it all arose in the era of the printing press and governmental archives, so there are fewer excuses. It’s also culturally very top down and high pressure, as you are keenly aware. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call the mainline LDS church a cult, but it’s definitely closer than, say, the Episcopalians.
When I look at Dr. Steven Hassan’s BITE model for high-demand religions, the Mormon church ticks most of the boxes to some degree. Take behavior control: “4.Control types of clothing and hairstyles”. Okay, you don’t have to wear only white, and a specific model of white sneakers. But you are expected to wear opaque clothing that covers temple garments completely, and wear clothing that is free of an ‘offensive’ imagery or text. Beards and long hair are strongly socially discouraged, and will get you kicked out of BYU, as will visible tattoos and piercings. When you skip to “4. Regulate diet – food and drink, hunger and/or fasting”, well there’s the word of wisdom, and fast Sundays. And it just kinds goes on and on. They don’t do some of the things (murder, rape, etc.), but they do a lot of them to some degree.
At a minimum, it’s an unhealthy degree of authoritarian control.
At a minimum, it’s an unhealthy degree of authoritarian control.
You’re not wrong.