Still struggling.

[MTL]

Indoctrination is a really powerful thing. It causes grown adults to go through their whole lives, right into their grave, believing in fairy stories.

You've done really well to break free at an early age. But it's still got its hooks into your emotions, and our emotions are very powerful things. Even when we know they are illogical, they can swipe the logic aside and smother us. I'm really sad for what you're going through, but I think it's perfectly natural.

All I can say is that in almost every case I've ever heard about, the effect of the indoctrination does fade over time. Even if it doesn't fully go away, it gets easier to deal with.

Have you tried yelling at God? Challenging him to come do something? Told him to fuck off? Invited him to kill you? This has helped some people I've known.

I have to agree with this, and I'm kicking myself for not addressing it in my earlier post.

As I said, I was raised from birth in a devout Baptist home,
and despite my stance of Agnostic/Anti-Theism...

(and I do NOT regard "Agnostic" as "Atheism Lite", btw....to me, it is NOT an easy thing to be an Agnostic,
and it troubles me that people treat it as if it is just a noncommittal form of Atheism)

...I know exactly what Rob is talking about; the indoctrination gets into your bones when you're exposed to it from an early age and is a difficult thing to shake completely, indeed.

And I wrestle with depression, probably due in some significant measure as a result of that.

I also remind myself that Religion tells people everything they want to hear,
all the while claiming to be about existing primarily for the reason of singing glory to God:

-unconditional love
-unlimited forgiveness
-eternal life, escape from death
-justice for wrongs
-having "God on your side"
-explaining the inexplicable
-a reason for being
-an invisible best friend or fairygodmother looking out for you

etc.

I figure any God worth worshiping would neither have to bribe people to worship Him,
nor threaten them with Hell if they didn't.

My "Eureka" moment was when I figured out that "faith" and "religion" are two words that are used interchangeably but shouldn't be.

"faith" simply means, to me, a reference to having faith that God exists

"religion" means all the unnecessary dogma people feel the need to apply to their raw faith,
instead of just admitting they don't know anything about God's parameters,
and never will....

...and religion also means that you are not merely content with applying dogma to your faith,
but you ask other people to adopt the same dogma.

Having figured out the vital need to separate these two ideas from each other,
I then learned that there is such a thing as "Deism";

and while I am NOT a Deist,

Deism is the one form of belief that I have no real problem with:

If people want to believe in God,
but reject all the dogmas and religions of the world as likely to be false and therefore potentially heretical,
I can get on board with that.

Faith, without Dogma, is to me, like a snake that has been de-fanged.  It's harmless.

If all Theists were Deists, I wouldn't have any problem with Faith at all, for the most part.