Hi everyone.
I was born in a semi-rural area in Georgia in 1997 to a Southern Baptist family. Until age 7, I went to a Christian school before transferring to a local college prep school.
I went to church on a weekly basis (and still have to) as a kid. I was well versed in Christianity from a young age. When I was 7, I became "saved" because I overheard my mom talking about my younger sister wanting to be, so I wanted to be first.
When I got into Middle School, I was bullied occasionally my first semester, something I wasn't used to. I quickly conformed and became an asshole and bullied others for a while. Hiding this from my family, things got worse until I was suspended from school in 8th grade for cussing out a teacher. It shocked and devastated my parents, so I made the decision to truly dedicate my life to God in the last months of Middle School.
That summer, we changed churches to a really big, nationally known church here and I became very active and made friends with some guys at my school and other area schools. So I went into High School as an adamant Christian. I was young-earth and Arminian, and had debated once or twice online with some poorly educated atheists and lost, but not devastatingly. During that year, I watched myself go from being more controlled by religion than my friends to less. I had begun getting into politics and as my ideologies shifted from largely far right to slightly left, I began doubting my beliefs. As I became more educated in sciences, my beliefs began to be questioned more and more.
I remember sitting in physics March of my Freshman year one day and the reality that my beliefs contradicted scientific knowledge. Thus began two months of searching for truth.
By the time spring exams rolled around that year, I had finally stopped believing in God. I saw science and historical inconsistencies, so I stopped believing in god at this time.
I never opened up to my family out of fear of being kicked out of my house, so I went from being a very outgoing person to a very introspective one, and my doubts about God's lack of existence diminished drastically over the next few months as I kept digging, finding morally objectionable areas of scripture to further my argument against the existence of God.
I quickly became depressed by the time 10th Grade began, and in September and October, I couldn't bear the thought of coming out to everyone out of fear that I'd lose them all for my lack of belief (which is a legitimate concern to some extent). For two months I was suicidal and cried myself to sleep every night.
By November, I subconsciously began building a wall around myself to keep the reality of this being my only life from being detrimental to my mental stability. Things slowly got better until December of that year, when my parents finally sat me down and asked my why I wasn't active in church like before, etc. I finally had to tell them and spent hours talking with them that night about what happened.
They took it better than expected, granted they openly admit to a double standard in my and my sister's upbringing now. I'm open about my beliefs at school and no one was able to judge me for it because most of the smarter students at my school aren't adamantly religious or religious at all. Those who are wouldn't dream of arguing with me either, so I've been okay. I'm currently the student body's co-secretary and serve on multiple clubs and sports teams for my school. Not to brag, but I am one of the most intelligent students in my class (I asked the smartest girl in our grade to Homecoming by making a piece-wise function that spelled out "homecoming date" on a coordinate plane, hahaha). Things have gone better than expected for me since then, which pleases me. The journey was certainly a struggle, but I'm glad that chapter of my life is over and I no longer have to live in mental captivity and can evaluate anything quite objectively.
I was born in a semi-rural area in Georgia in 1997 to a Southern Baptist family. Until age 7, I went to a Christian school before transferring to a local college prep school.
I went to church on a weekly basis (and still have to) as a kid. I was well versed in Christianity from a young age. When I was 7, I became "saved" because I overheard my mom talking about my younger sister wanting to be, so I wanted to be first.
When I got into Middle School, I was bullied occasionally my first semester, something I wasn't used to. I quickly conformed and became an asshole and bullied others for a while. Hiding this from my family, things got worse until I was suspended from school in 8th grade for cussing out a teacher. It shocked and devastated my parents, so I made the decision to truly dedicate my life to God in the last months of Middle School.
That summer, we changed churches to a really big, nationally known church here and I became very active and made friends with some guys at my school and other area schools. So I went into High School as an adamant Christian. I was young-earth and Arminian, and had debated once or twice online with some poorly educated atheists and lost, but not devastatingly. During that year, I watched myself go from being more controlled by religion than my friends to less. I had begun getting into politics and as my ideologies shifted from largely far right to slightly left, I began doubting my beliefs. As I became more educated in sciences, my beliefs began to be questioned more and more.
I remember sitting in physics March of my Freshman year one day and the reality that my beliefs contradicted scientific knowledge. Thus began two months of searching for truth.
By the time spring exams rolled around that year, I had finally stopped believing in God. I saw science and historical inconsistencies, so I stopped believing in god at this time.
I never opened up to my family out of fear of being kicked out of my house, so I went from being a very outgoing person to a very introspective one, and my doubts about God's lack of existence diminished drastically over the next few months as I kept digging, finding morally objectionable areas of scripture to further my argument against the existence of God.
I quickly became depressed by the time 10th Grade began, and in September and October, I couldn't bear the thought of coming out to everyone out of fear that I'd lose them all for my lack of belief (which is a legitimate concern to some extent). For two months I was suicidal and cried myself to sleep every night.
By November, I subconsciously began building a wall around myself to keep the reality of this being my only life from being detrimental to my mental stability. Things slowly got better until December of that year, when my parents finally sat me down and asked my why I wasn't active in church like before, etc. I finally had to tell them and spent hours talking with them that night about what happened.
They took it better than expected, granted they openly admit to a double standard in my and my sister's upbringing now. I'm open about my beliefs at school and no one was able to judge me for it because most of the smarter students at my school aren't adamantly religious or religious at all. Those who are wouldn't dream of arguing with me either, so I've been okay. I'm currently the student body's co-secretary and serve on multiple clubs and sports teams for my school. Not to brag, but I am one of the most intelligent students in my class (I asked the smartest girl in our grade to Homecoming by making a piece-wise function that spelled out "homecoming date" on a coordinate plane, hahaha). Things have gone better than expected for me since then, which pleases me. The journey was certainly a struggle, but I'm glad that chapter of my life is over and I no longer have to live in mental captivity and can evaluate anything quite objectively.
