I read all of "Why I am not a Christian"
By Bertrand Russel

I was raised Catholic. It never really occured to me that there was a "none of the above" option for which god(s) you believed in until eleventh grade. I knew atheists existed before that but...I don't know, it just seemed like they weren't real. After this realization I abruptly became agnostic, maybe a 4.5 on the spectrum of theistic probability. It was a few months after that when it occurred to me that "impossible to disprove" =/= even remotely likely to exist, and I moved to a 6.9. The idea of an omnipotent, omniscient being just seemed inherently implausible to me, and when I realized that no one had ever actually proven that said being existed, or even came close, I dropped that belief like a hot, well...something really hot. I just kind of assumed that it had been proven, or else so many people wouldn't believe in it. I have long since abandoned such naiveté.

(March 13, 2014 at 3:53 pm)ThePinsir Wrote: Ex-Christian (non-denominational, I guess).

It was, no joke, George Carlin that led me to the Dark Side

Derren Brown did it for me

(March 13, 2014 at 2:26 pm)Chad32 Wrote: My grandmother would rather I shut out everything that goes against the bible too. That should be a red flag for anyone.

Indeed. I'm convinced that the people warning against literature outside the comfy circle of their religion are well aware of how convincing the counter arguments really are. Mormons tend to tell their members that anything that contradicts the word of god is a purposeful ploy of Satan to lead people astray. How convenient.

I was brought into christ-insanity through insanity. Once I realized that, I was good to go. I had become such an idiot with the idea that everyone of my family members were destined for eternal punishment. lol It took quite a bit of effort, but again, it wasn't my fault.

Raised Catholic, I was pretty young when I had doubts, mainly that with all the religions present how can you be sure which was right. Around the time of my conformation.. maybe when I was 12 or 11, I can't remember that exact age, but the stories of the bible just smelled like BS to me. The fact that it was enforced like absolute truth didn't help to convince me, voicing this to my mom she basically punished me, we started going to church again and I was enrolled to CCD a following year, even though she said I could be done after I received my conformation.

Going to church again didn't last long, but any ways I kept my views to myself, until a couple of years ago when I started exploring atheism more.

I used to be the best little church girl, especially as my life begun to get tougher. I was taught from very young that God is all I need in life and hell is too hot to be an un-believer
Then the internet shone its beautiful lights on me and BAM I was free to explore the world beyond church.
I began to watch debates and video's on youtube. I questioned why a religion claiming to be so loving does not accept same sex love.
Then became a Wiccan, broke off from that too. I kept on questioning my beliefs until the belief seemed absurd.

So here I am. Ta da.

Quote:I don't know if I've asked you yet what the "incident" was, but I can think of a few scenarios when we are talking about the Catholic Church, and most of those are unsavory.

No, no...this was a long time ago back when they still had their perversion well concealed.

Like I said, I was 11 and sitting at this lousy little fucking desk feeling my ass slowly go numb when I noticed the girl sitting next to me crying. I figured she was bored to tears like I was but finally Sister Mary Numb Nutz in the front of the room noticed her and asked what was wrong. The kid stammered out that her dog had died the night before. The nun made some "I'm so sorry" sounds and started to go back to her rehearsed speech about jesus or something when the kid asked if she would see her dog in heaven? The nun said "no...heaven is only for people." The kid burst out into loud sobs and I recalled thinking " that was a pretty lousy way of handling that...couldn't you just say "yes" to make her feel better." When fucking jesus didn't climb down off his crucifix and kick me in the ass it occurred to me that these people were more concerned with themselves than anyone else. From that point on I regarded them differently.

It didn't matter much. Within 2 years I stopped going to church and when I was 21 and studying Roman History in college I realized that their whole fucking story was fundamentally flawed.

But it all goes back to that one insensitive nun.

Fuck her.

I grew up ELCA Lutheran which is a quite liberal church by the standards of most Christian churches. For instance I was taught that a person who followed the golden rule/Jesus' one commandment would get into heaven because god didn't really give two shits about doctrinal disputes among humans and "living a godly life" was itself a de facto acceptance of Jesus.

However, even that open an environment can't get around the archeological and historical evidence. When you discover that the order of books in the bible has nothing to do with the order they were written, that both new and Old Testament books were edited by later authors to give them politically useful messages for the editors in their era, and that the when you know the context in which each book was written it changes the message and meaning of each book entirely you can't help but start to view judo-Christian beliefs as just another mythological set.

I think for me it was the knowledge that my much beloved uncle, my mother's only brother, was an atheist. When I found that out my first reaction was "how ungrateful" (toward god). But he was really a great loving guy who would play a ton of sports with us whenever he traveled from the San Francisco area to where we lived in San Diego. I think that opened the door a crack.

Given that we'd stopped actually attending the Methodist church my father came out of before I attended school and the fact that my father was away at sea (in the navy) and unavailable to proselytize much of the time, it was actually quite easy for me to let go of religion.