Johnny, your background sounds almost identical to mine. The camps I went to took place when I was around 11. Same mess, same spews etc. etc.
Truly ironic, but it was the idea of hell that made me want to believe, but in the end, it was hell that started my disbelief. I was 15 when I told my Southern Bible Belt beating family that I no longer believed in any of it and that I was an Atheist. (Should have been a fly on the wall for that "Conversation". I thought they were going to call the preacher up to lay his hands on me....lollolol...)
Johnny, I spent the rest of my life doing some of the same research and came to the same conclusions. Just hang in there, it took me almost 10 years after that to finally break my mind completely free of the BS..It's been over another decade and I actually feel better today than when I was growing up all those years before I was 15.
You stated:
I don't believe that God can ever be disproven, but I just can't believe in a god at this point in my life.
A man once said, "I don't know what "God" is; but I know what he/she/it is not".
That's a wonderful quote that can stand against every denomination of Christianity/Judaism and every sect of Islam.
Bottom line is that none of it matters and never will. Usually when people ask me what church I go to, or what denomination I am.....My reply is usually that, I have my own understandings of life, and leave it at that. Now if they persist, that's when the gloves come off and the tongue lashing begins....
Truly ironic, but it was the idea of hell that made me want to believe, but in the end, it was hell that started my disbelief. I was 15 when I told my Southern Bible Belt beating family that I no longer believed in any of it and that I was an Atheist. (Should have been a fly on the wall for that "Conversation". I thought they were going to call the preacher up to lay his hands on me....lollolol...)
Johnny, I spent the rest of my life doing some of the same research and came to the same conclusions. Just hang in there, it took me almost 10 years after that to finally break my mind completely free of the BS..It's been over another decade and I actually feel better today than when I was growing up all those years before I was 15.
You stated:
I don't believe that God can ever be disproven, but I just can't believe in a god at this point in my life.
A man once said, "I don't know what "God" is; but I know what he/she/it is not".
That's a wonderful quote that can stand against every denomination of Christianity/Judaism and every sect of Islam.
Bottom line is that none of it matters and never will. Usually when people ask me what church I go to, or what denomination I am.....My reply is usually that, I have my own understandings of life, and leave it at that. Now if they persist, that's when the gloves come off and the tongue lashing begins....
Intelligence is the only true moral guide...
