Noah got all the animals on the ark??? Yeah ok my 2nd grade brain called bullshit.

I was part of the Knights of Columbus in the Catholic church (the funny hat AND sword guys). I had been a Catholic for years, they gave a good pitch about whole life insurance and charity, and I was naive. We did a blood drive and pancake breakfast, honestly life saving stuff that was super easy to do. I asked them “why don’t we do this every month and make it easy for people to remember to do”. They said “that’s too much work” and “let’s not get overly ambitious”. That’s when I realized it’s all for show, they didn’t want to actually help people, they wanted to self promote. I decided to dive into my work as a neurodiagnostic tech and just lead a good life and actually help people instead of do the church thing.

Truth. I know I’m broken; but I need facts like oxygen. I don’t give a wet slap if you prove a point that shows I was wrong; hell I love that… it means I learned something or at least corrected an error in my knowledge.

So I need proof and facts. And with god I never saw it. There’s nothing there that is super natural. Joseph Smith wants us to believe in the Book of Mormon? Show us the gold plates…

Seriously, gods best plan, by which he will judge and condemn us to burn if we get it wrong; was to tell some poor shepherds and fishermen in the middle of a Roman backwater…

Yeah. No. Sorry

I grew up in an incredibly conservative, southern baptist town. When people say there is no hate like Christian love, that’s where they were talking about. I’m not kidding when I say part of the reason I have PTSD is growing up in a place like that while being trans and queer. Every bad experience I had there is inextricably tied up with Christianity in my head, because it was a pervasive background factor in all aspects of life in a way I think that people who grew up outside of that environment tend to believe is exaggeration or at least a century in the past.

So, that’s why I’m not a Christian. I did a meandering wander through other faiths for a few years before returning to the same feeling I’d had since I was a child: this feels fake and also vaguely embarrassing to be taking part in because I don’t believe any of it. I didn’t get anything out of the social aspects of any religious stuff so I didn’t see a point in going to something like a Unitarian Universalist church, which is probably where I’d go now if I developed a social interest in religion for some reason.

So our (Lutheran) church would bring all of the kids in the congregation up to the front to discuss a theme or passage during each service. We initially had a pretty cool female pastor (who—I later found out—was bullied into leaving because she was a woman 🙃); she at one point told us that to get into heaven, we only needed to ask God to let us in. It made sense to my naive little brain.

When I was 15, some asshole temp pastor called us up and asked if we know how to get in, and I replied with what I was told; he very condescendingly said “uh, no, you need to believe in God”.

I was irritated by his tone, yes, but I also hadn’t heard that before, strangely. His response really disturbed me. I thought, what about people across the world who have other faiths? Or children who die before they even have a chance to believe?? You mean my amazingly kind, Buddhist Vietnamese friend is going to HELL?? What the fuck???

So I began to research alternate viewpoints online, and discovered the ways in which Christianity doesn’t make sense and how it’s often used as an excuse to spread hate and suffering. I just couldn’t justify believing anymore.