I was raised in a religious family, went to church every Sunday.
When I realized I had actual questions that they refused to acknowledge, I walked away. I was eight.
Example question:
Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 offer two different creation myths. Why? Is one “right” and the other “wrong”?
Genesis one: Animals created first, then people (man and woman created at the same time.) 7 day creation.
Genesis two: Man created first, then animals for man to name, then woman from the rib when god realizes he made a mistake and none of the animals are a fit companion for man. Not a 7 day creation.
Answer:
The reason for it is plain in the original Hebrew. Genesis 1 is the Elohist tradition (the Gods are referred to, in PLURAL, as Elohim.) Genesis 2 is the Jawist tradition where God is referred to as YHWH or JHVH.
Early editors took two different creation myths and mashed them together.
If you can’t, or won’t explain that to an eight year old… well… doesn’t speak well for your faith.
Most churches won’t even employ someone who knows the answer to this.
It’s not even a “Won’t tell you.” thing; more of a “Why would anyone question the good book?” thing.
Whenever I looked too closely, I began to be black-listed and got the, “It’s too bad that’s where you are, because we hoped you would be a great leader.”
Not defending stupidity at all, btw, just further emphasizing the blissful ignorance that is largely exonerated in religious circles.
Which just kills me because the actual answers ARE out there.
For example - What’s the deal with the “begats” chapter and how were people living for hundreds of years?
Answer: They aren’t individuals, they are family lines. Such and such family came from so and so family and lasted 140 years before dying out.
Makes way, way more sense when you read it that way.
Amazing what you can learn by reading Asimov’s Guide to the Bible. ;)
hate.
specifically, there was some small LGBTQ protests that put the hatred into perspective- there were the protestors (who maybe went out of their way to be annoying and provoke things;), assholes, and everyone quietly cheering for the assholes.
it made me look at my own behavior… and I didn’t want to be an asshole (or perhaps, more accurately said: didn’t want to be that kind of asshole. I’m not a perfect person.). This prompted a slow slide from non-practicing through agnosticism into straight up atheism.
It didn’t help that it took 2-3 years before anyone reached out to me about why I left, and then it was because my mom had asked a pastor to do just that… he didn’t get it when I quote CS Lewis Mere Christianity (“That a person ought be a better person as a christain.”…) I was a better person as an atheist; because I wasn’t obligated to be an asshole.
edit to add: it wasn’t just the LGBTQ hate. that was just the nature of the incident that brought me face to face with the ugly truth. It was easy to say, for example, that West Burroughs Baptist’s aren’t real christians. There’s a lot of out-groups that christians hate on. hell, sometimes those outgroups are even other christians (how many wars have been started between catholics and protestants?) more contemporary, look at the hatred for refugees and asylum seekers.
hatred is a pervasive feature of Christianity.
I paid attention to the stories.
The story of Job in particular drove me up a wall.
God took everything Job loved to win a bet he already knew the outcome of. A bet he made with Lucifer.
Basically Lucifer tricked god into torturing an innocent man and god fell for it like a fuckin chump.
He either knows all and willingly tortured Job to prove a point to someone he shouldn’t give a single thought toward or he got duped which shows he’s either not all knowing or just a dumbass.
I always assumed the story of Job was total BS. Job was basically a sock puppet used to gaslight the fuck out of people that would otherwise question god’s motives.
The entire point is “you can’t understand”. which is one of the answers given by narcissists.
another one that annoys me is the garden of eden… the apple. you know. it doesn’t take a genius to see that, two quite literally ignorant humans - they had no conception of good and evil, purportedly- of course going to eat the fucking fruit.
Education. When I was young I grew up in a Catholic household, in a city where being Catholic is the norm, in a country that is very religious and superstitious as a norm. And then I had the opportunity to go on a student exchange and get immersed in different cultures, and I realized “these people have their own beliefs, a different religion, but they have the same ethics as me.” So I started leaning towards agnosticism - let everyone believe in what they want, to themselves. Years later I went to college, and had my first experience of Southern Baptist religion. That one rubbed me the wrong way. There was just so much disdain for anything different, so much “believe me because I said so”. That’s where I realized I didn’t believe in God, or the afterlife - I believed in ethical behavior, and in being good to other humans. The rest just fell into place after that. I really like Penn Jilette’s point: “I have no God, and I murder and rape all I want. And the amount of murdering and raping I want to do is exactly zero.”
I could never find an answer the question: Why is my religion the one that’s real and not all the others?