My personal experience with christianity

[abaris]

I grew up in a Roman Catholic family, but my parents were very secular and expected me to ask questions and follow science. God was hardly a part of the equation.

But when I started school in 1969, religious education was part of the curriculum. I hardly remember anything from these times, but what stuck was the fear of doing a wrong step. The relgious educators, if that's what you want to call them, came up with some novel ideas. They constantly reminded us of the dangers of hell. I can't even remember anything positive being tought about religion. Yes, Jesus was there, somehow, but he was always mentioned in connection of the other guy. The one waiting to torture us for all eternity if we break the rules in some minor way.

My religious believes were based entirely on fear. There never was anything good about it. And when I grew up, the fear was still a constant companion. When I had my first sexual feelings, there was that peeping Tom looking over my shoulders. You know, it always strikes me as odd, how preoccupies churches are with the sexual behaviours of people. Maybe because they can control people better, if they attack their natural instincts, making them supress them or making them feel guilty if they indulge in their natural needs.

I also grew up, laughing at gays. Not hating them, mind you. They were a laughing stock, kind of a joke. It took longer to get over these prejudices than it took me to abandon religion. To my shame I have to admit that I only began to accept gays when I learned that my best friend was one.

To this day I fight against what religion did to me. They screwed me up royally. And even if my mind refutes everything they ever said to me, my subconsciousness sometimes brings up that feeling of guilt.

Come to think of it, I ultimately denied the notion of god, when I really started to think about the things I knew. I always believed in science, but over a long period of time I took stock. I no longer could believe that the god of the bible existed. Why would he show himself only some 5000 years ago? The world was some 4.5 billion years old after all. There have been the times of micro organisms, the times of the dinosaurs. And then there has been the time when humans started to emerge. From a common ape ancestor, speaking as a layman and believer in evolution. Some real evolutionist can explain it better, I am sure.

Then, much later there have been Neanderthals, finally meeting homo sapiens, the only time when two actual races of humans existed, and still no god. The first high cultures and a multitude of gods.

All in all, why would an almighty god reveal himself to a half nomadic people of desert dwellers? That did it for me. I'm a history buff, I studied history at the university and I'm very much aware of how much knowledge we lost because of religious bigotry. The knowledge of the classical age was lost because of the christian culture of ignorance and the result were the Middle Ages with it's embrace of superstition.

But most of all, I didn't want to worship a being presenting itself as that petty little bloodthirsty creature, which is present in every page of the old testament. To quote the words of the old band "Blood sweat and tears": I can swear there is no heaven, but I pray there is no hell. I'm still not completely over my childish fears. There are still times when I struggle to not fall into the trap of the gods of the gaps nonsense and there are still times when back in the deepest depths of my subconsiousness the old guilt emerges.

[KUSA]

It is hard to unbrainwash yourself. I can totally relate to how you feel. Fortunately I have let 99 percent of it go. I suppose some of it will always linger.

[Sejanus]

From a common ape ancestor, speaking as a layman and believer in evolution. Some real evolutionist can explain it better, I am sure.

Evolutionists? there are only people who understand the scientific fact of evolution, and those that don't. Evolutionists exist as much as yahweh.