Religious to Logic (tell me your story)

[ReB]

If you were religious, but then turned to atheism, I would like to hear your story. What was your religion before? Why did you do it? What did your friends and/or family think? How did this change affect you? Please, make it long too, I'm going to be in photography class for the next hour.

[MilesTailsPrower]

GodDidn'tDoIt!

[Rev. Rye]

I was a Lutheran (Missourah Synod). I noticed something really odd about John 3:16 at an early age; It could be summarised as "God sacrificed himself to himself to change a rule he made himself." It all just made the whole venture seem entirely pointless. Then I read more of the Bible, and God just became less and less likable; even Jesus had moments of being a total prick, like when he condemned a tree for not having any fruit for him, even though it's out of season. You'd think an avatar of an all-knowing being would have known what fruits would be in and out of season. By the end of that, I decided that I would join the side of Satan. But then, the final step occurred: I read Bertrand Russell's "Why I am not a Christian," and totally stopped believing in God and Satan altogether. By this point, my old church turned out to be totally corrupt and my parents treated it as an understandable consequence of that. Even when I went to a Catholic school, my teachers were readily accepting of my non-belief. They never forced their religion on me, and, in my actual religion classes, I argued with my teachers enough that some people seriously told me I should join the debate team. I didn't because I couldn't stand the structure of debate clubs: a very formal structure, and getting assigned topics you don't care about and positions you don't hold because you think they're bullshit (to this day, I cannot see how any reasonable person could argue that any side of the Israel-Palestine debate has any sort of moral high ground.) But I digress. At any rate, it hasn't really had too much of an effect on my life. I mean, there's a lot of nominally Christian people whose religion doesn't really have much of an effect on their lives.

[ReB]

Very good ^

[The Grand Nudger]

I've always loved the fig tree thing. Jesus as carnival huckster.

Step right up step right up watch me perform a miracle!

::focuses really hard on the tree and nothing happens::

I have cursed this tree ladies and gentleman, right before your very eyes, the next show is at 3:30.

[fr0d0]

I was religiously atheist and then I freed my mind and became a born again Christian. I'm still fighting that dogma, the all pervasive secularist mind meld, but you guys surely know how that goes.

[The Grand Nudger]

[Jesuslovesyou]

Judging from the title of this thread you consider 'Atheism' to be synonymous with 'logic' - this is tragic.

Atheism is synonymous with apathy, nihilism and despair.

[ElDinero]

Oh dear....here come the wolves...you've really done it now.

JLY, do you actually want to learn anything about atheists or just spout misinformed blanket statements at us? Atheism is certainly not synonymous with any of those things. I do agree that atheism isn't synonymous with logic either, for the record.

[searchingforanswers]

For me the problem of hell and wordly suffering were too much for me to continue to believe in god. After that, I started reading the bible and realized the "kind and loving" guy I was worshipping was an idiotic prideful asshole. Ironic isn't it? God forbids pridefulness but is the most prideful character ever invented? So much so, he gets offended by people who don't believe in him to the point of eternal torture. Fuck him and whoever wrote about him. I decided I wouldn't wanna worship him even he was real. Thank god he's not.