One Thing I Miss About Church is....

[KevinM1]

I did not become an atheist because I hated church.

Yeah, but who does?

I won't lie - being bored and/or scared/intimidated of church played a part in my atheism.

New England Catholic church services are fucking frightening if you're a kid with a modicum of intelligence.  You're in these dark, somber buildings where some person you don't know is droning on and on about stuff that doesn't make any sense.  All the adults around you are paying rapt attention to him.  At seemingly random times, the adults sit/stand/kneel in unison, and in a collection of robotic voices recite some weird shit.

It didn't help that we didn't know anyone else at the church.  New England, especially New Hampshire, towns are weird.  Large geographical footprints with not a lot of people.  So, it's not like in other places with a bonafide Main Street, with pre-planned neighborhoods in a grid.  People are spread out.  Unless you're in a 'city', no one walks anywhere.  There's no sidewalks and no public transportation.  You may know your immediate neighbors, if they're not the typical "let's stay out of each other's way and off each other's property" types, but even then there's no guarantee they go to the same church.

I'm also pretty introverted.  I dislike crowds, especially when they're mostly people I don't know.  I dislike group activity anything, likely because of the chaperone aspect of living with a permanent physical disability.  I have very little alone time, so I fiercely defend it.  Something like "let's go to a dank, dark building to be with a bunch of people you don't know in order to listen to weird shit, and act like fucking robots sitting/standing/kneeling while mechanically reciting even weirder shit" is the exact opposite of the kind of thing I'd want to do with 2-4 hours of my free time, even as a kid.

I could also see through the bullshit pretty early.  I remember asking my parents and brothers "If god is everywhere, and he knows what we're thinking and feeling at all times, why do we need to go to church?  What difference does going to a certain building at a certain time for a certain amount of time actually make?"  And, of course, no one could provide an adequate answer.  Just a lot of hemming and hawing.

So, while my childhood dislike of church isn't why I'm an atheist in and of itself, it definitely was the first step in figuring out that I've always been an atheist, even as a kid.  I have never understood faith.  I don't grasp how it can be good.  I've always, always been a "think for yourself; question authority" kind of person, even as a kid, so seeing people willingly and happily surrendering their will to an old white guy in a dress so he can make them do modified jumping-jacks for no real reason really made me question what was actually going on.