As I said in my introduction, I was raised Pentecostal. My grandfather pastored a church, my family attended church three times per week. After I turned 10 or so I grew more and more aware of how hypocritical my family was concerning religion. They would pick and choose. Pentecostals put a high value on appearance, and it seemed to me that at least the people I was surrounded by valued that far more than things like decency, compassion, honesty, and empathy. They regarded people not included in their denomination as outsiders, and thusly, sinners.
It became more apparent as I became a teenager that there was something inherently wrong with this belief system. I was the kid in sunday school that got laughed at for asking questions like, why were biblical prophecies so vague, how could someone living thousands of years ago possibly have comprehended modern technology like guns and airplanes. Instead of giving me credible answers, they gave me regurgitated responses like god being the inspiration for prophecies.
As I began to read secular books and listen to secular speakers, I began having more complex questions regarding subjects such as astronomy and paleontolgy, and again, I was given the same regurgitated answers over and over, all the while being mocked for questioning. All this time I began to see how miserable most of my family was, even with this "truth". And it seemed to me that there had to be more to it than this. I officially quit attending church at the age of 16, but I had lost my belief in the ideologies before that. The holes in christian doctrine, and the holes in the morality that were held in such high regard by the believers became overwhelming.
Since that time I have become deeply immersed in philosophy, i've researched the history of modern religions, and ancient religions alike. And in the midst of all this information, I came to the realization that every religion that has ever existed has followed the same basic formulas, and answered the same basic questions. During that epiphany it occurred to me that quite possibly the reasons for the documented thousands of years that religion has existed were simple. In a time before we knew anything of biology, anything of physics, all branches of science outside of primitive astronomy deities filled in the blanks. I surmised that god/s were created to answer questions that we had begun to ask. And at last it all made sense. All of the common threads connecting monotheistic religions like christianity and islam, to polytheistic religions like norse and greek mythology shared the common goal of giving us answers before we knew how to find them.
For a long time I was angry, angry at my parents, angry at my extended family, angry at the preachers and teachers that had for so long enslaved me to a set way of thinking. So I became aggressive, I researched christianity with the sole purpose of dismantling everyone who believed. And before I knew it I had caused the same heartbreak on my parents that I believed they had caused me all those years before. I'm 27 now, and i've mellowed out a lot since then. I'm still viciously offensive concerning certain subjects like religion in government and the saturation of the American culture with christian idealogies and complete disregard for anyone outside of that group. However I have relieved myself to becoming more pro-active in support of athiesm, being less confrontational and more obliged to adult conversation than pointless dueling.
So there's my story in a nutshell, a rather large, blog like novel of a nutshell.
It became more apparent as I became a teenager that there was something inherently wrong with this belief system. I was the kid in sunday school that got laughed at for asking questions like, why were biblical prophecies so vague, how could someone living thousands of years ago possibly have comprehended modern technology like guns and airplanes. Instead of giving me credible answers, they gave me regurgitated responses like god being the inspiration for prophecies.
As I began to read secular books and listen to secular speakers, I began having more complex questions regarding subjects such as astronomy and paleontolgy, and again, I was given the same regurgitated answers over and over, all the while being mocked for questioning. All this time I began to see how miserable most of my family was, even with this "truth". And it seemed to me that there had to be more to it than this. I officially quit attending church at the age of 16, but I had lost my belief in the ideologies before that. The holes in christian doctrine, and the holes in the morality that were held in such high regard by the believers became overwhelming.
Since that time I have become deeply immersed in philosophy, i've researched the history of modern religions, and ancient religions alike. And in the midst of all this information, I came to the realization that every religion that has ever existed has followed the same basic formulas, and answered the same basic questions. During that epiphany it occurred to me that quite possibly the reasons for the documented thousands of years that religion has existed were simple. In a time before we knew anything of biology, anything of physics, all branches of science outside of primitive astronomy deities filled in the blanks. I surmised that god/s were created to answer questions that we had begun to ask. And at last it all made sense. All of the common threads connecting monotheistic religions like christianity and islam, to polytheistic religions like norse and greek mythology shared the common goal of giving us answers before we knew how to find them.
For a long time I was angry, angry at my parents, angry at my extended family, angry at the preachers and teachers that had for so long enslaved me to a set way of thinking. So I became aggressive, I researched christianity with the sole purpose of dismantling everyone who believed. And before I knew it I had caused the same heartbreak on my parents that I believed they had caused me all those years before. I'm 27 now, and i've mellowed out a lot since then. I'm still viciously offensive concerning certain subjects like religion in government and the saturation of the American culture with christian idealogies and complete disregard for anyone outside of that group. However I have relieved myself to becoming more pro-active in support of athiesm, being less confrontational and more obliged to adult conversation than pointless dueling.
So there's my story in a nutshell, a rather large, blog like novel of a nutshell.
