Hi Everyone!
I am 43, live slightly north of the bible belt in the U.S., and a closet Atheist for several months now. As a child my parents took my siblings and I to church on Sundays but were never super religious outside of believing jesus died for the sins of mankind. It seemed to me like they took us to church as an obligation and I never felt comfortable going even after trying different churches as an adult. I attended a christian university, studied the bible on my own for many years, and studied many denominations of christianity while at the same time working alongside people of varying religious beliefs including hindus, muslims and christian fundamentalists.
Every church I ever went to had a pecking order, jealousy and hypocrisy and I always had a hard time reconciling that behavior with the teachings of christ. The judgment and hypocrisy I have experience over the years from many christians are behaviors I personally strive to refrain from. Where I live christians automatically assume their beliefs are shared by everyone, so they inject religion into conversations without a second thought. This happens to me a lot and all I can do is smile and nod or have no reaction.
My beliefs unraveled over the course of many years but once I began to hold my religious beliefs to the same standard I judged others by, the process moved quickly. Once I began to study the bible and notice all of violence, contradictions and sexism it made no sense to me that it would ever come from a supreme being, but I could see how man would be motivated to write it in order to exert control over others in a patriarchal society. It saddens and angers me greatly that in this modern age human rights are still being violated around the world in the name of religion.
I think my family suspects that I no longer believe because my parents bring up god and jesus when I am around and they never used to, but since they are getting older and probably afraid of their own eventual deaths I just go along with it to save their feelings. I’ve had religion crammed down my throat my whole life and am tired of it but don’t feel I can be honest with family, friends for fear of losing them. I am very glad to have found this forum so maybe I won’t feel as isolated, so thanks for being here and listening…
AllRight
Welcome to the party. Many here with similar stories. It can get emotional or rude, but the discussion is generally insightful and you can learn a lot.
Welcome. Hope you find this forum a way out of isolation ;-)
Hi.
Welcome, AllRight! I'm an ex-Christian as well. Just a little older than you. Hope you find some encouragement here.
Here's a link to some poems you might enjoy: http://www.solomonzorn.com/religious-poems.html
AllRight--welcome!
Greetings, when we pronounce your name should we hear matthew Mcconaughey in our head?
Another soul seduced by reason. Lost to the dark side and isolated from the protection of the flock. Is this how it ends? We must stand together in Christian unity, and reaffirm our belief in Christ, now more than ever. The Muslim Hordes are coming.
Welcome to the forum. And please forgive me. I have no idea where that rant came from.
But, but, but..what if they're right and we're wrong? We'll all burn in H E double dirty q-tips forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and....
Ok, you see where this is headed..
It's ok to be wrong once in awhile Allright.. in this case you probably aren't so pat yourself on the back and give them a nice big fuckoff under your breath and move along.. Welcome to the site.
Quote from: aitm on February 08, 2016, 09:53:07 AM
Greetings, when we pronounce your name should we hear matthew Mcconaughey in our head?
more like Linda Belcher from "Bob's Burgers" ;-)
Welcome Allright, to our little band of heathens.
I got a feeling you'll fit right in.
Hey everybody. Man it feels really good to know you're not the only who doesn't believe in God. Especially when you've been in a lds church your whole life and you finally snap out of stupidity mode
Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 10, 2016, 11:03:02 PM
Hey everybody. Man it feels really good to know you're not the only who doesn't believe in God. Especially when you've been in a lds church your whole life and you finally snap out of stupidity mode
Welcome. Former Mormon. The only other one, actually. Have you visited any ex-Mormon websites like R/exmormon on Reddit? 27,000 members, a very active forum. I left the church in 1992.
Haha sadly no. Lately I have just been feeling like if God truly loves everyone of his children then explain the holocaust in any meaningful logical basis.
Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 11, 2016, 01:01:25 AM
Haha sadly no. Lately I have just been feeling like if God truly loves everyone of his children then explain the holocaust in any meaningful logical basis.
Forget the holocaust..I just want the fuck to explain toothaches ..
When was the first time you guys started to question your religion. And if you were never part of one how did you become a atheist
In my case it took awhile. Left the LDS church in 1992, but became a Christian because I had a family and concerns for them. I did everything from youth leadership to cooking dinners for people to working with homeless people as a Christian, but figured out it was the same crap in a different bag. Became an atheist about 7 years ago.
Welcome, AllRight and KnightHawk!
And Welcome also, knighthawk.
I hope you'll enjoy it here
Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 11, 2016, 01:01:25 AM
Haha sadly no. Lately I have just been feeling like if God truly loves everyone of his children then explain the holocaust in any meaningful logical basis.
The Trial of God by Elie Wiesel
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Its a love/hate relationship ... see Genesis
Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on February 11, 2016, 01:09:46 AM
Forget the holocaust..I just want the fuck to explain toothaches ..
The Tooth Fairy is needing to pay his mortgage
My mother is very slightly religious, my father an atheist. But I was slightly spiritual as a child. Entered religion as part of marriage, and supported it to the max, at least as a social/cultural thing. Spirituality continued to develop, fell out of marriage, and out of religion eventually. Even more spiritual now, but irreligious.
Welcome, AllRight. I'm pretty new here too. It's a nice place. I tend to spew my brains out on the pages, and no one's complained about the mess yet.
Welcome, both of you!
Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 10, 2016, 11:03:02 PM
Hey everybody. Man it feels really good to know you're not the only who doesn't believe in God. Especially when you've been in a lds church your whole life and you finally snap out of stupidity mode
I remember being 6 , leaning over the open freezer door, thinking that the adults were scared and taking any explanation. My father later told me that it was important to conform, or I would be shut out of prosperity by the rest of humanity (This is apparently what is meant by "Cristlike") . That may have been true, but now that huge lots of people have been shut out of prosperity just because they aren't type A enough, I'm in the poor house with many believers.
I've come to realize one thing. Religion can't be trusted as a legal thing. Look at the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. People proclaiming that they have found the light of God and that this person is the one who was making pacts with the devil yadyadyadyahayada. So many people were accused and the reverends never thought of anything else and thought that God speaks to everyone. read or watch The Crucible by Arthur miller and it sounds so funny what they're saying
Completely different culture from most of our experience, but not unlike fundie society even today. And the Puritans were ... assholes to begin with ... just like ISIS. ISIS (Xmas version) founded the US. They didn't need courts, they needed padded cells.
Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 11, 2016, 01:15:44 AM
When was the first time you guys started to question your religion. And if you were never part of one how did you become a atheist
I had the best mom. When I was very little, she told me that some people (including her) think you go to heaven when you die, and some people think you just don't exist anymore. So even at that age she left it up to me to decide what I believed. My dad (a very kind, and intelligent man) told me, some time later, that he didn't believe in God.
As a teenager, one of my best friends was a quiet atheist. He was an extremely talented artist at age 13 (now a nationally renowned sculptor), and inspired me to improve my own art. I also picked up on his worldview a little, and became, superficially, an atheist.
But as I got into smoking weed, I started wondering about mind-stretching experiences, including spiritual ones. I almost got taken in by a cult called the Rosicrucians. I ended up picking up a Bible one day, and reading something Jesus said (I think it was about love). It was unlike anything I had read before, in my limited experience at the age of 16. So I started reading more. I remember wanting to believe, but my conscience made it really hard to swallow the Old Testament stories. I had to retrain my mind to accept the "truth."
After about 15 years as a fanatical Christian (who once burned all his sci-fi books and comic books, and smashed all his vinyl records, for Jesus, before attending 2 years of Bible college), I became schizophrenic, and started experiencing phenomena that have been deemed hallucinations. In the process of explaining those experiences to myself, I succumbed to a lot of delusions. Over the next five years I realized that my beliefs about God were a delusion as well. By 2001, I was a firm non-believer.
Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 11, 2016, 01:15:44 AM
When was the first time you guys started to question your religion. And if you were never part of one how did you become a atheist
I was very young when I started to doubt, the same age as when I started to realize that Santa was a myth. The similarities between a fat old man, who I never actually saw, and an all powerful god, who never actually showed up were obviously uncanny. From there, I never stopped doubting. Not to say, I didn't believe in God anymore. I did, although not with a great deal of conviction (which according to my grandmother was a serious sin). I was easily influenced by well meaning authorities in my life, who insisted God was real, although they never actually said how they knew. At least, not in any meaningful way.
My mother gave me a little leeway, however. She said she believed in God, but now and then she would encourage me to explore my doubts. I don't think she did so consciously, but I'm not sure. I think it was more like doubt didn't alarm her as much as it did everyone else in my life. When my grandmother dragged me off to her Baptist Church for my first Sunday school experience, my mother told me to ask the teacher who made God, which I dutifully did, and ended up pissing the poor man off because I wouldn't stop pestering until he could give me an answer that made sense, which he never did.
And then, as I got older, science in elementary school was hands down the most fun subject. In high school, I learned about evolution for the first time. This explained how life could evolve without a hand of a creator, which had been a problem for me up until then. Then college came next along with some rudimentary explorations of critical thinking and very basic logic. We read what amounted to bullshit from various philosophers. I studied geology, biology, anthropology, and things about the fossil record kept showing up and cross referencing with each other. At his point my religious training just fell apart into bits and pieces of totally nonsensical dogma.
I could no longer justify a single reason for believing in a God. Although, I continued to believe anyway, or at least tricked myself into believing I believed, until somewhere in my 50s when I faced up to the fact that I didn't believe, and hadn't for many years. That realization about myself was a profound insight, one of the moments when a bright light of understanding suddenly turns on, and things become intensely clear.
Quote from: Baruch on February 12, 2016, 06:11:44 AM
ISIS (Xmas version) founded the US.
Oh, come on. It's fun to play cowboys and Indians.
Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 11, 2016, 01:15:44 AM
When was the first time you guys started to question your religion. And if you were never part of one how did you become a atheist
Wondering how god supposedly "blesses" some people, particularly sports figures while he lets children starve and be molested was one of the reasons I began to question my religion. Being raised in a "christian" home it slowly unraveled for me. I never felt comfortable in any church I went to and somewhere in the back of my mind I think I knew it was all a fairy tale like Santa Claus. Another thing that really struck me is meeting people at work from all over the world and seeing how their religion is just as important to them as christianity was to me and I would think "yeah, if I were born in another part of the world I wouldn't be "christian" but have been indoctrinated from birth into another religion and feel just as committed to it."
What's funny is I am 16 and go to church but more because my parents can't handle me telling them anything. If I told them I don't believe in god they would shove more scriptural and spiritual stuff down my throat. I am going to keep it a secret until I'm 18-20 when I'm going off to college that way I won't be punished for having a different opinion on life. What are your thoughts?
welcome
Quote from: AllRight on February 12, 2016, 04:47:05 PM
Another thing that really struck me is meeting people at work from all over the world and seeing how their religion is just as important to them as christianity was to me and I would think "yeah, if I were born in another part of the world I wouldn't be "christian" but have been indoctrinated from birth into another religion and feel just as committed to it."
An oldie, but a goodie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl_TrvIIcBY
Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 12, 2016, 05:53:22 PM
What's funny is I am 16 and go to church but more because my parents can't handle me telling them anything. If I told them I don't believe in god they would shove more scriptural and spiritual stuff down my throat. I am going to keep it a secret until I'm 18-20 when I'm going off to college that way I won't be punished for having a different opinion on life. What are your thoughts?
I began somewhat doubting when I was around your age, but the thought of there being no "creator" seemed baffling, overwhelming, and depressing. I went on that way for so long that eventually I realized the problem: the fact that I
wanted to believe so badly meant that on a fundamental level, I really didn't. Wanting to have faith and actually having it aren't the same thing, and I think many people who claim a belief in some god actually fall into this category. I think many people can see the logical fallacies, anachronisms, oddities, inconveniences and hypocrisies within their religions, but the thought of turning it away is worse because there has to be
some alternative, right? If not the Christian God or the Muslim God or even something less tangible like karma, then what? It's when you decide, well, maybe then nothing, or perhaps I'm ok with not knowing and that's ok, that you experience real freedom.
Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 12, 2016, 05:53:22 PM
What's funny is I am 16 and go to church but more because my parents can't handle me telling them anything. If I told them I don't believe in god they would shove more scriptural and spiritual stuff down my throat. I am going to keep it a secret until I'm 18-20 when I'm going off to college that way I won't be punished for having a different opinion on life. What are your thoughts?
I hate church now. I couldn't sit there in silence and listen to the retarded sermons and testimonials, or the long winded prayers. Even singing hymns is not as enjoyable anymore. It would be unbearable, for me, to keep quiet about it. I don't know if I could do it.
But, for you, it is probably pragmatic to wait till college. Good luck, and whenever you need to share your thoughts about it, the forum is always here.
Quote from: Knighthawk1001 on February 12, 2016, 05:53:22 PM
What's funny is I am 16 and go to church but more because my parents can't handle me telling them anything. If I told them I don't believe in god they would shove more scriptural and spiritual stuff down my throat. I am going to keep it a secret until I'm 18-20 when I'm going off to college that way I won't be punished for having a different opinion on life. What are your thoughts?
Ultimately you have to protect yourself and if telling you parents means they won't pay for your college or shun you and you really value the relationship I would try to keep it to yourself. You shouldn't be punished for your beliefs. If you don't care and are paying for your own schooling and have no inheritance that you will eventually lose out on because of telling then be honest if you want. I tend to be outspoken but the older I get I am learning when it benefits me to keep my thoughts to myself. Work is especially not a place I can be myself. It's hard to be guarded all the time especially when many around you are constantly spewing religious babble. which is why I am glad I found this site where I can be honest about my non belief.
Quote from: Solomon Zorn on February 12, 2016, 06:42:35 AM
I I became schizophrenic, and started experiencing phenomena that have been deemed hallucinations. In the process of explaining those experiences to myself, I succumbed to a lot of delusions. Over the next five years I realized that my beliefs about God were a delusion as well. By 2001, I was a firm non-believer.
My only son nearing his 18th bday began having religious based delusions over a year ago and has been under the care of a psychiatrist ever since. This was the last straw for me. How could a loving god let my only baby have these horrible self depriciating thoughts (he was having thoughts like demons telling him he wasn't worthy and that he would go to hell). This kid is one of the sweetest, kindest (yes I know mom is biased) and was suffering horrible delusions that made him terrified to be alone and unable to sleep at a time that should have been one of the happiest of his life (senior year). This whole experience made me feel so guilty I even ever introduced my son to religion.
Quote from: gentle_dissident on February 11, 2016, 01:49:04 PM
I remember being 6 , leaning over the open freezer door, thinking that the adults were scared and taking any explanation. My father later told me that it was important to conform, or I would be shut out of prosperity by the rest of humanity (This is apparently what is meant by "Cristlike") . That may have been true, but now that huge lots of people have been shut out of prosperity just because they aren't type A enough, I'm in the poor house with many believers.
I remember having terrifying nightmares about god when I was little. It was always like he was sending a violent storm with dark clouds after me for being "bad".
Quote from: TomFoolery on February 12, 2016, 10:47:56 PM
the fact that I wanted to believe so badly meant that on a fundamental level, I really didn't.
^
Quote from: AllRight on February 13, 2016, 07:14:56 AM
I remember having terrifying nightmares about god when I was little. It was always like he was sending a violent storm with dark clouds after me for being "bad".
Yeah, I had those. Every little transgression, I worried about going to hell over -- Catholicism really has raised guilt to an art form. I started wobbling a bit in my senior year - Catholic HS, we had a theology teacher who genuinely encouraged questioning one's faith as a way to strengthen it and was willing to take the risk of loosening it further. College broke that once and for all -- although I moved into polytheism rather than atheism. At least modern Wicca isn't about making you feel guilty for just being human.
Quote from: trdsf on February 13, 2016, 01:38:34 PM
At least modern Wicca isn't about making you feel guilty for just being human.
I get some fantastic herbs at great prices at our Wiccan tea shop. The witch stuff is pretty, and appeals to my fondness for fantasy. I like to use Tarot cards as a psychological tool.
As long as the Wiccans provide me drugs, psychology, and Skyclads, I won't put the freaks down.
Quote from: gentle_dissident on February 13, 2016, 02:22:03 PM
I get some fantastic herbs at great prices at our Wiccan tea shop. The witch stuff is pretty, and appeals to my fondness for fantasy. I like to use Tarot cards as a psychological tool.
As long as the Wiccans provide me drugs, psychology, and Skyclads, I won't put the freaks down.
And they don't feel obliged to preach at you and/or convert you.
Just open your heart as they love to tell folks.. Just open your heart to Jebuski and he'll fill it with joy and blah, fucking blah.. I tried it and what I learned is that to open my heart I would need a cardiac surgeon and it would really hurt..
Sorry, but the ONLY reason I'm opening my heart is if I require open heart surgery and it's not going to be some imaginary dead spook,but a well qualified surgeon in a hospital.