Went to Afghanistan. Saw mutilated kids, kids with no legs from landmines, burned alive, dead ones. No God is watching over anyone. We are all there is.

In the words of Bob:

“Most people think great God will come from the sky Take away ev’rything, and make ev’rybody feel high But if you know what life is worth You would look for yours on earth And now you see the light You stand up for your right”

Everyday, stand up for your right to live in a peaceful world, or be stood upon.

It’s very interesting honestly. I swapped from Catholic to evangelicalism at 14 (just me not my family, tho they supported it) and stuck with it till I was 20. It was super about it. Youth group 2 days a week plus 3 hour mass on Sundays, God was ALWAYS on my mind, every decision, every action, every goal. Then my friends went to college, and I didn’t, I stuck around now forced to interact with the older crowd. They weren’t just hypocrites, they were cruel and controlling and pointlessly manipulative. It became clear that the church I was at wasn’t the place It was for me for years so one day I decided to just stop showing.

It was the first addiction I ever quit. The anxiety I felt was… Immense. It took two weeks for me to start thinking clearly about it, and it was wild how easily I recognized I was literally brainwashed. I no longer needed the mental gymnastics to justify myself.

My life didn’t improve or anything after that, and funnily enough I only ever saw one of my, off to college, friends again, many years later. He did try and get me back in but I was way past that stiff by that point. Surreal experience in hindsight

It did help very much that the biggest part of my sociale life was outside the church. In fact i was slowly drifting away

It was a fucking struggle to leave, let me tell you.

I suddenly suffered from a crippling disease (made worse because I was 10 and generally healthy before that, so it was mind boggling at the time), and no one in the church gave a hoot. You’d think a community of people who believed in a loving god would care that such a god would randomly punish a kid… so when everyone just told me to accept it I understandably grew pissed. That then blossomed into asking questions about others with diseases, famine, war, death, bla bla bla, and every answer was just stupid.

Buuut, I was in a super religious family, and went to a religious school, and was a part of a very community focused church, so it took until I left at the age of majority to really leave religion behind. I argued with every single dumb christian I could find for my teenage years, because I wanted to find someone who actually had a good argument. Humorously enough, the best argument ever made to me was by someone who didn’t even care about christianity except that he ‘was’ one by dint of other people being christians: maybe it was necessary for god to send people to hell and have a shitty life… except obviously that’s a shitty god that I wouldn’t care to worship, so finally in college I said good-fucking-bye to the entire mindset.

As for what happened, while I was still under the parents’ control and the school’s control, I was labeled as a troublemaker and generally ostracized. My mother would wail (reasonably) about the situation, but stopped making me go to church as I entered high school. The extended family that still cared about religion just chalked it up to attention seeking and ignored it, which was fine by both parties.

I was raised Mormon.

I remember chilling in the computer lab at university when I came across someone’s Jehova’s Witness deconversion story online. It was so eerily similar to my experience that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Because it wasn’t my religion, I was able to see it the way an outsider might see my own.

It broke something inside me irreparably. Faith became a dirty word. All conservative values instantly vanished. I guess this conflict had been beneath the surface for some time but finding that story lit a match.

I mean what kind of religion needs to brainwash its members not to seek out material critical of itself? What kind of religion puts you in a room, alone, as a teenager, with a 50-year-old man who is asking you about your sexual habits? What kind of religion has billions of dollars in real estate investments? What kind of religion requires you to ring people’s doorbells and pester them about your religion? What kind of religion asks you to (despite how they phrase it) hate gay people?

I stopped having anything to do with the church after that. When it comes to integrity, I can’t pretend. I was able to hold my ground against all the creepy shit that happens when you leave a cult. And now, 20+ years later, I rarely even think about it.

I used to be super religious. I even studied to be a priest. Married a super religious lady. Then like five guys I went to seminary were in jail for pedos. Last one hit too close. It devastated my faith. Then my wife cheated on me. We had a lot of catholic friends. When she got pregnant they threw a party for her and turned their back on me. That was enough of that. I’m now an Atheist. Christianity is a cult. Not just one denomination. All are cults. Fuck that.

People have been vocal about me being an atheist. My health is not well. Talked to my mom about death. Pretty much she told me she would give me a catholic funeral even if I don’t want it.

One thing I can tell you. Women all are looking for that good Christian man. So I’ve been single since the. I had a fling with someone after the divorce but I think that was a mistake.

Still not over my piece of shit wife. Catholic friends refer to her as my wife. Not my ex. Married for ever thing.

Honestly I miss going to church and involved with everything. But never going back to that. Amen

I actually read The Bible when i was a kid. That is what got me off of religion. That book is all kinds of fucked up, if you actually read it.

The more I travelled as an adult and reflected on what I’d learned about Jesus, the more i began to believe he was actually Buddhist.

Now, I believe the person we call “Jesus” was actually Caesarion…the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.

Raised catholic, did religious ed, catholic high school, made to go to church every week and on holy days of obligation. Then I went off to college, and dutifully got up the first sunday and went to church. While I was mumbling along with the Nicene creed, I thought, “But I don’t believe this stuff; in fact, I disagree with most of it.” I left quietly before the creed was over, and never voluntarily went back. I guess realizing I’m an atheist helped. 😄

What made me do it was the unending stream of contradictions in the bible internally, between the Bible and reality, and between the Bible and what people say is in the bible in order to fix the other two.

It’s the old “nobody could show me why I should believe any of it”, including me. And the more I looked for answers, the more problems and contradictions I found.

I have plenty of contact with my family, my parents are both great people and it helps a lot that they’re not so much religious as that they think “its important”. My more extended family has made a few tries, I occasionally get into discussions with a few aunts, uncles and cousins, but they’re not exactly good at it. It’s just looping around the same old terrible arguments that quickly end when I ask them to show that it was Jahweh who created the universe, and not Bob.

The church made the biggest effort to get me back, but they have a financial incentive, unlike everyone else. It was an incredible pain in the ass to get removed from church rolls before GDPR.

For me it was the fundamental contradiction between God being both good & all powerful. If (S)he created everybody exactly the way they are, how are they to condemn anyone to hell? Some people are born incapable of communicating or understanding anything, some people are born with their wires crossed and are just evil, some are born in a time/place where they never hear “the good news”. Why would a good and loving God condemn them forever for being exactly what (S)he designed them to be?

The Christian Bible I grew up with was rife with examples of people God created and designed specifically to be antagonists so they could be punished: Cain, Pharoah, Ahab & Jezebel, Judas Iscariot, Ananias & Sapphira, The Beast & Antichrist, etc.

I was already really good at not believing in literally every other religion around the world, so I asked myself what made the religion that I was raised in any different?

How did I know I was lucky enough to be born into the right faith? If I had been born elsewhere, wouldn’t I just feel the same way about whatever religion is worshipped there? And so is that the infidel’s fault that they were just born in the wrong place, with no one to tell them that they had it wrong? Or perhaps would they think the same about me?

And so if our religion truly was the right one, why didn’t our supposedly omnipotent deity just make everyone else born into societies that worship it, or render infertile anyone who didn’t? Or if someone else’s religion was the right one, with a similarly omnipotent deity (or deities), why was I born here?

Raised Catholic, as in Catholic schools all the way through high school. In high school I started learning about other religions, especially ancient ones, and Christianity started looking like just another example of mythology. The central belief that Jesus “died for our sins” is based on the ancient idea of using sacrifices to gain favor with the gods. The “holy trinity” aspect was what really boggled my mind. God sends his Son (i.e. himself) to Earth and lets the Romans execute him, thereby sacrificing himself - to himself - to persuade himself to forgive humans for Original Sin - which we didn’t even commit, it supposedly happened in the Garden of Even, long before we were born.

Somehow a Supreme Being intelligent enough to create the whole universe decided a sin committed by an ancestor should bar the human race from eternal salvation. Even as I type this I’m still amazed people can actually believe that nonsense, but to ancient people it did make sense. Back then whole families were often punished for the misdeeds of a family member. This is where we got the concept of disowning somebody - casting them out of the family was a declaration that the family wasn’t responsible for that screwup’s actions anymore. It was self-defense against getting everybody thrown in prison or exiled to the desert. But I don’t think most religious people bother to question their indoctrination or reduce it to essentials. Maybe they’re afraid if they think about it too much it means the Devil is trying to steal their soul, I don’t know. It just seems childishly silly to me.

Raised in religious schools from an early age until early teens. Decided it wasn’t for me for multiple reasons, though the idea of the surety offered by religion is still something I miss despite the negatives of that same surety.

Nothing happened after I left. I just stopped associating with people that used religion when I could, and simply just nod and “uh huh” with those that have to talk about it. Me disagreeing with them isn’t going to change their mind. Yes, things are fine with the family, they weren’t fanatically religious to begin with. Nobody tried to drag me back.

Grew up in lots of religions. Settled into Mormonism at 16. Went on a mission. Got married. Raised my kids in the religion. Always had my misgivings and issues. Was always called to teach. Adult Sunday school, children, men, etc. Always taught from both sides and left it open to others to see. Not fully white, so always had that going as well with perspective. When my oldest came out as trans and gay, I could no longer in good conscience continue to support what the church taught so left and never looked back.

I was 10 (IIRC) when I though:

• God knows the future.
• Therefore God knows that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit.
• Therefore God is either a liar and doesn’t see the future or a bastard that knew exactly what would they do and wanted to punish them.
• In either case, why worship it?

And the next step was understanding that it was a fictional character.